Exodus - Songs of Redemption
Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that you would reveal yourself through your scriptures. Lord, that as we open Your Word, we might behold Your glory and Your goodness. Lord, we ask that this might glorify You. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:So we've been in the book of Exodus, in case you hadn't noticed. We've been here a while. I think we're in chapter 15. So we got to be up there. It's probably like ten or so weeks or so we've probably been doing this.
Speaker 1:And Exodus, right? The word exodus means literally an exit, a leaving. And it's got this magnificent theme of redemption, deliverance, freedom, liberation. Right? Those kind of words kind of come to our minds because we've so far, we've been really talking about the fact that Israel was in captivity.
Speaker 1:They were slaves under Pharaoh in Egypt, and God has delivered them, set them free. And we've kind of gotten to this turning point in the story. They've escaped the land of Egypt. They miraculously crossed the Red Sea. Pharaoh has been crushed by the sea, and they're no longer pursued.
Speaker 1:They're free. It's kind of got this like air, this moment of just kind of freedom. And I was thinking about that. I was like, Man, what? I don't have anything that dramatic for sure in my life.
Speaker 1:But like, what what what are those, like, elements of just, like, feeling free and carefree and kind of, like, expansive and open and excited about what's in front of you? And I was kind of it was made me think about my last day of school back when I was, like, in high school. Right? Summer hits, and you're just like, oh, I've got the whole summer in front of me. Right?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna have some fun. I'm gonna enjoy myself. Maybe I've got a trip or two lined up. That kind of just freedom of knowing that you weren't stuck in that ongoing school. And as much as I enjoyed school, I loved summer break.
Speaker 1:Or what about I was thinking back to sort of I was like, my first solo road trip, right? As like a single guy somewhere in my early twenties, getting in my car, some camping gear, and just driving somewhere, and nobody really knowing where I'm going, except for me, which was maybe not the smartest idea. But having just this kind of freedom and this kind of the open road and being able to go and do what I want and that kind of experience, feeling kind of freed and delivered and kind of expansive. That's at least the best thing that kind of came to my mind. But I think, too, we also know in maybe more serious moments when we've maybe had a stress or a worry or an anxiety or a sadness, and it's felt very oppressive on us?
Speaker 1:Maybe we've been in a situation where we're just like, I don't know how this is going to work out. I'm in big trouble, or this is frustrating, or I'm stuck. And we feel stuck there for a long time. And then we have a moment when we finally get to the other side of it. That situation is over.
Speaker 1:That circumstance has passed. It didn't work out as I feared it might. Things turned out okay. And you have that moment where you just kind of, like, relax your shoulders for the first time in a while and you haven't realized how much how tense you've been about that worry or circumstance or anxiety. Right?
Speaker 1:These are just small little kind of glimpses helping us maybe think and kind of picture what's going on when we talk about this redemption that the Israelites were experiencing. And that feeling that can be so fleeting, right? When we get past that anxiety, that fear, and we're just like, Oh, turned out all right. God was faithful to me in that. But man, how quickly do we forget about that and we find the next thing to be worried about, the next thing that we're afraid we're not going to get past, the next thing that's going to be difficult, the next circumstance?
Speaker 1:And it's like we're terrified again. Right? Like, we're we're like, oh, no. You know? Like, there's, you know I don't know.
Speaker 1:I like roller coasters if you can get me on one. I have, like, a love hate relationship with them. Ask my wife. But, like, once I've been on a roller coaster, it's not so bad the next time. Right?
Speaker 1:Because I'm like, oh, yeah. I know this hill. Last time I went over this hill, I was okay. I should be okay again, I think. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, there should be a level of assurance knowing, oh, I've been through this before. God's been faithful before. But we struggle with that. Right? And we need to kind of call to remind remembrance this need in this experience of God's faithfulness in delivering us from things.
Speaker 1:And the Christian life, right, Jesus has set us free. He has delivered us. This is the language of the New Testament. And I was thinking about things that we might need actual, real deliverance from, more than just from school or needing a good road trip or something like that, but actual deliverance. And I was thinking, you know, some of us some of us need deliverance from our past, from things that happened to us that we've not been able to get over.
Speaker 1:Or maybe things that we've done that we feel regretful or shameful over that we can't undo. Maybe we need deliverance from a sin that we're stuck in. Maybe that sin could be lust, it could be lies, it could be gossip, it could be unrighteous anger that flows out of us. All of those being sins that have a tendency to kind of bury us in a cycle, things that feel like they have their own sort of will of their own that come out of us. We could need deliverance from those.
Speaker 1:We could need deliverance from an unhealthy cycle. We continually go through the same relationship pattern, or this keeps happening to me over and over again. I get myself to a good place, and then I make decisions that end up putting me back into the same place I was before. We could need deliverance from that. We could need very real deliverance from a physical ailment or a circumstance that we find ourselves in.
Speaker 1:We're not experiencing a level of freedom and new life in that space yet. So these are all things that we could perhaps need deliverance from, redemption from. And the question today that I'm kind of asking is what if God wants to tell your exodus story? What if he wants to tell about your exit out of a circumstance? And today we're going to talk about that.
Speaker 1:We're going to reflect on what do we learn about this this pattern of deliverance and redemption in the Bible? What do we see here in the story of Exodus and how does it connect to the Gospel and the rest of the Bible? So that's that's where we're going to go today. And we're like I said, we're kind of at a hinge point. We've kind of reached I don't know if it's technically halfway, but essentially halfway point in the narrative.
Speaker 1:Right? We can kind of divide the the story of Exodus into two parts, Egypt and the wilderness. And they've gotten out of Egypt, and they're getting ready to go towards the wilderness. We've at the beginning of our sermon series, we said that there are four themes to the book of Exodus, and that is God's promises, God's faithfulness, God's moral law, and God's presence. Now so far in the first 15 chapters of the book of Exodus, really the two of those that have been really prominent have been God's promises and God's faithfulness.
Speaker 1:And so chapter 15, which we're going to be studying today, kind of emphasizes those two. And then from this point on, it's going to move more towards God's moral law and God's presence are going to become more of the central themes hereafter. So this is a point for us to kind of look at the story through the rearview mirror, perhaps take some big takeaways from it so that we can kind of look forward to where the story is taking us next. So go ahead and open up in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 15. I'm going to read it in its entirety.
Speaker 1:Well, not the entirety. First 21 verses for us. If you don't have a Bible, there should be one in the pew in front of you underneath, and we have lots of Bibles for free in the back on those bookcases that are for you for you if you don't have one. We want you to have a copy of God's word if you would like one. Exodus chapter 15.
Speaker 1:This is a, it's a unique chapter in that it kind of breaks the narrative for a moment. We've been in story, story, story. This happened. This was said. This was done.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden, it changes and we have a poetic song for the good portion of the chapter. So that's what we're going to be studying today. Exodus 15 verse one says, then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord saying, I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song.
Speaker 1:He has become my salvation. This is my God. And I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war, and the Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
Speaker 1:The floods covered them, and they went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power. Your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries. You send out your fury.
Speaker 1:It consumes them like stubble At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up. The floods stood up in a heap. The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue you. I will overtake.
Speaker 1:I will devoid the divide the spoil, and my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword, and my hand shall destroy them. But you blew with your wind, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like you, oh, Lord, among the gods?
Speaker 1:Who is like you majestic in holiness, awesome in your glorious deeds, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, and the earth swallowed them. You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed. You have guided them by your strength to your holy abode. The people have heard, they tremble.
Speaker 1:Pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistine. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed. Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them because of your greatness of your arm.
Speaker 1:They are still as stone till your people, O Lord, pass by. Till the people pass by whom you have purchased. You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which you have made and your hands have established. The Lord will reign forever and ever. For when the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, the Lord brought brought back the waters in the sea upon them.
Speaker 1:But the people of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea. Then Miriam, prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine or a hand drum in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. And Miriam sang to them, sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. It's a little different than, like, our modern worship songs.
Speaker 1:Right? Right? It's a little bit different, different style. But analyzing and looking at the poetry in the Bible is honestly one of my favorite things to do. And there are so many things that we could talk about when it comes to this passage, even just from like a Bible study element.
Speaker 1:But I don't want us to get lost in too many details. I want us to kind of get what's going on here at a big picture level, kind of draw out these principles. Because remember, my question is is what does God want to do for you? How does he want to craft an Exodus story in your life? How might he be calling you to experience that freedom and redemption in your own life?
Speaker 1:So let's kind of dive into it and look from it from that standpoint. The first thing that I think is really important for us to learn about redemption is that it's not all about you. Your redemption is not about you. It has way less to do with you than you actually might think it is. It's actually one of the things that I think keeps us from experiencing redemption, is we get so fixated on me, myself, my circumstances, what's happening around me and how I feel.
Speaker 1:And I think that sometimes keeps us trapped. Look at what this passage chooses to focus on. Let's read again. We'll look at verses one through seven. Begins by saying, I will sing to the Lord for he he has triumphed gloriously.
Speaker 1:The horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song. He has come become my salvation. This is my God. I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him.
Speaker 1:The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host, he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them. They went down into the depths like a stone.
Speaker 1:Your right hand, oh Lord, glorious in power. Your right hand, oh Lord, shatters the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries. You send out your fury. It consumes them like stubble.
Speaker 1:Who is that passage talking about? Is it talking about me and you? Is it talking about the Israelites and how brave they were? No. Right?
Speaker 1:It's talking about how mighty and strong the Lord is. You ever hear stories from little kids? You know, they get to that age where they learn the words and then, and they begin to just tell you a story after story. And nothing I'm not trying to be hard on kids here, but like those stories tend to revolve around them. Right?
Speaker 1:Their little world, what happened to them. They kind of forget about the fact that anybody else might have been there with them or that you might have been right there with them and watched the whole thing play out, but they need to tell it to you again. Right? They see everything through the lens of themselves at that stage. And and sometimes it might be tempting to kind of see our own stories and our testimonies and and places and where God's gotten us through them and and for some reason kind of forget to focus on the one who actually saved us.
Speaker 1:We get more caught up in retelling how it felt for us and more focused on, Oh, what was the big obstacle for me? And how did I have to hang in there? And and here, they don't get caught up in that. They very quickly say they talk about what they're going to do. They're going to praise the Lord, and then they go straight to it.
Speaker 1:Not talking about themselves, but they're focused on God. Here it is in its kind of key. It might be your Exodus story, but it's for God's glory. That this is this is the key, that your story of your life is absolutely your story. But you will miss the true story of your life if you don't see God's glory in it.
Speaker 1:That's what makes the difference between something that is just a story of me going through something and a testimony. A story of me going through something is just me telling you a story, just like how it was for me, how this was difficult, how I maybe overcame this. But a testimony a testimony is where I show my weakness, and then I say, but God, and I show God's glory. That's a testimony. And that's what an Exodus story is meant to display.
Speaker 1:The whole story of Exodus isn't about like, Gee, Moses did a great job, didn't he? I mean, not all the time. Like, he was pretty reluctant to help deliver the people from Israel. He actually caused a murder earlier in the story. Remember that?
Speaker 1:That's going to come up again, I'm sure, when he reads the 10 Commandments. Right? He is not this perfect leader. And the people of Israel, like, they're pretty quick to panic. They're not this mighty force.
Speaker 1:They're not an army. They're a bunch of escaping slaves. The story isn't about them. It's about God's glory. It's about him triumphing over the enemy.
Speaker 1:And this brings me to my second point, is that we do actually still have an enemy. We do have an enemy. Now, it's not pharaoh. We don't have a modern day pharaoh at this point that we can kind of point to. We're being oppressed by this particular individual at like a large scale.
Speaker 1:Right? That's not the world we live in right now. But we do indeed still have an enemy. Oh, before I go on, this is just too good of a Bible little thing for me to not share. I will be sad if I don't.
Speaker 1:In verse seven, where it says, in the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries, talking about that enemy, you send out your fury. It consumes them like stubble. Does anybody remember where stubble came up earlier in the story? It's when they the bricks the Egyptians denied the Israelites bricks to make or straw, straw stubble to make the bricks. And here, the story is like, guess who was consumed like stubble?
Speaker 1:Just a really cool poetic moment. Bible nerd here. Self confessed. But we do have an enemy, and this this passage does take moment to recognize and acknowledge that. If we look in verse nine, it says, the enemy said, I will pursue.
Speaker 1:I will overtake. I will devoid divide the spoil. My desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. And then I feel like this next verse should start with a giant capitalized but.
Speaker 1:It says, But you blew with your wind. The sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness?
Speaker 1:Awesome in your glorious deeds, doing wonders. You stretched out your right hand, and the earth swallowed them. There's this wonderful contrast that's happening in verses nine and ten. Verse nine, if you notice, it's just, I will, I will, I will. And it's saying what the enemy was saying.
Speaker 1:The enemy was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to destroy. I'm going to plunder. And then verse 10, it's like, But God, you destroyed them.
Speaker 1:You stopped them in their tracks. That is the story. And so you might say, okay, Luke, but what's that got to do with you and I? We're not under Pharaoh. Well, let's turn briefly to first Peter chapter five.
Speaker 1:It's all the way on the other side of your Bible. First Peter chapter five. It's going to be verses eight through 11. This is Peter is talking to believers who believe in Rome, and they're beginning to experience some of the early conditions of persecution and difficulties in that space. And these are the the ending words, essentially, the final exhortation that Peter has for the church that he's talking to in verse eight of chapter five.
Speaker 1:He says, Be sober minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called to you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
Speaker 1:To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Amen. So Peter's final exhortation has this reminder that there is an enemy, there is a Satan, there is an accuser, and that he's prowling, seeking to devour those in the church. And this is a warning.
Speaker 1:Now, are two tendencies, and if you've ever heard me talk on this topic before, you'll be maybe tired of me saying this, but I just think I can't get past the wisdom of this, is that there are two tendencies when it comes to talking about demons and Satan in the spiritual realm. The first tendency is to ignore it and dismiss it. That's to simply say, Oh, the world is all that we see, and we don't need to worry about Satan. That's like a cartoon and dah, dah, dah, dah. And we just kind of ignore it.
Speaker 1:We never consider any of the spiritual levels or implications when it comes to these things. The other extreme is to see Satan and a demon hiding behind every corner in every circumstance in our life. This isn't unique to me. C. S.
Speaker 1:Lewis wrote this in the introduction to his book, The Screwtape Letters, which is his reflection on the experience of temptation and distraction and the strategies of the enemy. It's a great book. Pastor Cameron and I recommend it to people on a regular basis. Screwtape Letters by C. S.
Speaker 1:Lewis. So I think this is important for us to remember, is that if you find yourself over here in the camp where you just never think about it, I would encourage you to perhaps think about it. If you're over here and you're in a place where it it's on your mind a lot, I would encourage you to surrender more of that to the Lord and walk more in a confidence of faith. I would just encourage us to find a place where we're we're neither running into a place of fear nor in a place of ignorance. Right?
Speaker 1:Because the Bible warns us of this. And I I want to look at another page. We're going to turn to the book of Ephesians chapter five now. So it's going backwards in your Bible, in the New Testament, couple books. Ephesians chapter five.
Speaker 1:We preached on this Gosh, was that last year? Time is flying. Ephesians chapter five chapter five verse eight. This is important for us to recognize here. It says, for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Speaker 1:Walk as children of the light. For the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. So now this little passage, it's talking about to the Ephesians. The Ephesians were embedded in a culture of idol worship.
Speaker 1:They were surrounded by witchcraft. When the Ephesians church meets Paul and they give their lives to Christ, in the book of Acts, you can read about how they brought all of their books of witchcraft and they burned them. And that the church here was such a was having such an impact in the spiritual realm and in the economy of demons, essentially. Like people were earning money from witchcraft and from fortune telling and all of these things that the church was cutting into that market that they wanted to kick Paul out of town and because he was impacting the spiritual realm so significantly. So we see that this passage is mentioning it, but notice the emphasis here.
Speaker 1:This was something that I just kind of as I was reading it yesterday, I was thinking about it. The Bible really does not spend its time emphasizing the strengths, the schemes, the prevalence of the enemy. It does say that the enemy is there, that Satan's about, that he has schemes. But whenever it talks about it, its emphasis is not on the enemy, but it's on us. It's on us to live into a new identity.
Speaker 1:It's for us to not live in darkness, but to live in light, to understand that we've been set free, that Christ has inaugurated the kingdom, that the enemy has lost the war even though skirmishes rage on. This is what I'm trying to kind of get at here is that I think it is easy to fall into a place where we can can begin to attribute perhaps too much to the enemy. I think one of the really sneaky schemes of the enemy is that we have a moment where we I'm feeling tempted. The enemy must be tempting me. I'm experiencing this.
Speaker 1:This must be an attack from the enemy. And we have that. And what happens then is we suddenly get focused on the enemy. We get focused on what's going on. And what we fail to then do is turn our focus to God.
Speaker 1:We fail to look up and say, Okay, if that's a reality, I can acknowledge that. That means I need to move in this direction. I need to move Godward. I need to do what this passage says and begin to live as a child of the light, not a child of darkness. I need to be reminded of that.
Speaker 1:And so it ought to not incite fear. It needs to not incite an emphasis or concern. It's a need for us to shift our focus, to take a moment to turn, orient ourselves and walk towards Jesus. And similarly, on the other side is if we're just over here trying to gut it all out in our flesh and trying to make it all happen, and we've never actually paused to perhaps consider, you know, maybe I need to pray about this and not just try and do it because maybe there's a spiritual component here. Maybe there's something going on that I need to pray about.
Speaker 1:Not out of fear, but out of trust and faith in the Lord. And it's on both of those that we need to bring ourselves to a place where we acknowledge we have an enemy, but we more loudly and more gladly proclaim that we have a Lord who triumphs over any enemy that we have. So back to Exodus 15. I think this is a really key thing that we can learn here, and we'll have plenty of time to talk about it in the coming coming portions of Exodus. But we must make note of testimony so that we don't forget God's faithfulness.
Speaker 1:With testimony, what the Lord is doing in our life, has done in our life, His presence, His power, His faithfulness, we have to make remembrance of this. We need to write it down. We need to remember God's goodness and His faithfulness. If we look at verses 14 through 16 here in Exodus 15, it says, The peoples have heard. They tremble.
Speaker 1:The pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistai. Now these are the chiefs of Edom dismayed. Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them because of your greatness, your arm, they are still a stone till your people, O Lord, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased.
Speaker 1:What is that passage talking about? Because we've talked all about Israel and Egypt. Israel and Egypt. That's what we've talked about. All of a sudden, it's talking about Philistines and Moabites and Canaan.
Speaker 1:What is it talking about? What it's talking about is it's talking about the future. This song, this right here, this song of praise is situated in between. They have just gotten out of Egypt. They've just crossed the Red Sea.
Speaker 1:And now they're looking forward to the enemies that are in the promised land that they will face. And they're saying, We have every reason to be confident. We have every reason to not fear. In fact, they have every reason to fear because of what just happened, because of God's faithfulness here. It's giving them a moment of courage, of recognizing that God's faithfulness is true, that it's ongoing, that it doesn't have to be a place for us to fear.
Speaker 1:The people should remember and have faith, but even in this very same chapter, they again panic about water. If we're going to get to Mount Sinai and they're going to go and they're going to say, Oh, no, we're at this mountain and Moses has disappeared. We should have just stayed slaves. Like, they just got delivered from four hundred years worth of slavery. They just crossed the Red Sea miraculously.
Speaker 1:Egypt, the strongest army with the chariots and the horses, was destroyed by the waters. And then they got kind of anxious waiting, and they forgot all about that faithfulness, and it distorted how they saw the future. We need to take a moment to remember and notice God's faithfulness. Just yesterday morning, we were at men's breakfast. We meet every other Saturday, by the way.
Speaker 1:Saturday mornings downstairs. It's a good time. So we met this past Saturday, yesterday. And we were taking a moment and we were going through our weeks, and we were just trying to notice, Where was God in my week? That was the question.
Speaker 1:Where was God in my week? How did He show up? And as we're going around the table and people are realizing, they're like, Wow, God was in my week a lot. God was showing up. There was God moments, moments where all of a sudden that God felt like he was highlighting something for me.
Speaker 1:It felt like God was speaking to me. It felt like there was this moment, there was this circumstance that I had prayed about being in, and all of a sudden I find myself in it. And God was faithful. All of these testimonies of God's faithfulness in small and big ways throughout our weeks as we just went around the whole room. And it's really easy with our rushed routine cycle of our lives to go through a week and not take notice of all the places that God's showing up.
Speaker 1:I was reading a book on Sabbath. It was called Keeping the Sabbath Holy. And the author, she was talking about this practice at Sabbath dinners of having what she called a God hunt. And by that, she meant you're looking back in your week, and you're hunting for where God was showing up, hunting for where He was working, where you maybe didn't notice at the time, but then you think about it and you're like, Well, that was definitely an answer to prayer. That was definitely a moment where God was inviting me into some faithfulness.
Speaker 1:That was a moment where I didn't know what I was going to do, but God came through for me. Hunting for God. And when we begin to have a mindset where we look for and we notice God's faithfulness in our lives, we begin to notice it more often. We begin to go through our week and not just look back at it. But as we're going through it, we're more likely to notice what is God doing in the here and now.
Speaker 1:So we need to make note of God's faithfulness so that we can remember and remind ourselves of it. My next point here is that God delivers us to be with him, not necessarily for our own purposes. What do I mean by that? I mean that God's got redemption for you and freedom for you, an exodus out of sin, out of cycles, out of unhealth, into newness of life, out of your past. But it's not just so that you can have a great life.
Speaker 1:It's so that you can be connected to Him, so that you can have a relationship with Him, so that you might be where He's at. Look at verse 17. Verse 17 of chapter 15 says, You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. It's talking about bringing the Israelites to God's holy mountain and placing them there, that they get to live where God lives, that they get to be in his presence. This is that one of those themes that we're turning towards in the book of Exodus I talked about earlier.
Speaker 1:God's presence. So God doesn't just set you free. God isn't about to set us free so that we can run back and choose our own captivity. Sometimes we get out of something and then we just turn to another idol that just ultimately turns us back into a place of slavery, not into freedom, but towards idolatry and sin. So those are a couple kind of big ideas here, but I want to spend my last little bit here just connecting the story of Exodus to the wider story of the Bible and show you how Jesus ultimately is even connected to this story.
Speaker 1:What has Jesus got to do with the crossing of the Red Sea and the deliverance out of Exodus? How is Jesus connected to that? I want to talk about that so that we can kind of have a final conclusion here. I want to pause or not pause, but in doing that, I want to just ask a question and let's just think for a moment if we're familiar with the Bible. Where has water shown up in the Bible?
Speaker 1:Where has water been in the story? Shows up in the very first couple of pages, right? In Genesis, right? The Spirit of the Lord is hovering over the water. The earth was formless and void.
Speaker 1:And we kind of get this picture of just endless sea, no land. And what does God do? He creates dry land out of it. He separates the land and the waters. He fills the waters and the land.
Speaker 1:Right? So there's this this idea in the Bible that water is often representative of death. It's often representative of chaos, of uncreation. And God creates out of that, and he brings order to it. What else?
Speaker 1:There's another story that comes not too far after that. It gets it ends up on nurseries for some reason and children's Bibles. Noah's ark. Right? Water again.
Speaker 1:God's judgment on a planet and a humankind that had completely rejected Him. And judgment comes in the form of water that floods the earth. It becomes formless and void again and almost uncreates it again. It's this death. But this time, there are some that are spared.
Speaker 1:The ark, God provides a salvation through that, through the ark. Water shows up in the book of Exodus, shows up really early on in the story, right? When Moses, all the firstborn children of Israelites are meant to be killed, and Moses is meant to be killed, what happens? He ends up getting put in a basket and he gets placed in the Nile, a body of water. And he passes through that water, a symbol of death, of chaos, of uncreation.
Speaker 1:And he's found on the other side of it, given a new life, and he survives. Notice, too, who was in that story, who was part of that story, because when Moses is found, there's a young woman there who then makes a connection with Pharaoh's daughter and says, Can I find an Israelite woman to nurse the child for you? It was Moses' sister, Miriam, was there at the deliverance at the Nile when Moses was saved there. And then who here is singing this song and proclaiming it and leading the worship in the congregation after the crossing of the Red Sea? Miriam.
Speaker 1:Miriam, his sister, again, saw a cool moment where we kind of see the story of Exodus being bookended by two river deliverances of sorts, and Miriam playing a significant part in both of them. Water continues on. There's more. I'm not going to go through don't worry. I'm not going go through every water story in the Bible.
Speaker 1:But the other ones that come to my mind that are significant would be Jonah. Right? Jonah gets swallowed. He gets tossed off the boat because he's fleeing from God. He gets swallowed by a big fish and he's taken down to the depths to Sheol.
Speaker 1:He goes through this kind of death process. He's going down into the chaos, into the death, and then he comes out. Later, Jesus says what to a faithless generation? Says, You ask for a sign, but no sign will be given except for that of the sign of Jonah. Referring to what?
Speaker 1:To his death and resurrection. Jesus' death on the cross, entering into the grave, into the chaos, into the uncreation is like the passing through the waters and then coming out the other side on the third day in resurrection and newness of life. This is true for us. This is the idea of baptism. We are baptized.
Speaker 1:Right? That's what we do here as Christians. We just did it a few weeks ago. We get into a pool of water, and what do we do? We dunk someone in it.
Speaker 1:Sometimes aggressively, but we dunk someone in it. Why? Because it's representative of the death of Jesus, of entering into that chaos. And then what? We bring them back out in the newness of life.
Speaker 1:Paul makes a comparison. He says the Israelites were baptized into Moses through the crossing of the Red Sea. It was their own story of deliverance. And he says they weren't faithful even though they were baptized, and let us learn from them. We'll talk more about that.
Speaker 1:But the point here being is that Jesus makes a pathway through by faith in him. What do we see in each of those stories is we see an element where Jesus, who was there at creation, brings creation out of chaos in the beginning. Jesus, is there, provides God provides a way of salvation, the ark through the flood. Again, we see an ark covering and carrying Moses through the Nile. We see the deliverance of the Red Sea when they cross there again.
Speaker 1:God makes a way. We see an idea of a reluctant Christ in Jonah who goes down into the depths, comes out in resurrection, and then preaches good news and deliverance to a people. And then Jesus ultimately fulfills those images, fulfills those pictures, and says, I am the greater deliverance. I am bringing freedom, life, and liberty. I am bringing a end to sin, an end to death, an end to captivity of spiritual darkness.
Speaker 1:You're no longer children of darkness but children of light. Jesus makes a pathway through through him. Jesus leads people and leads us and each of us through whatever it is that we are stuck in, whether that's sin, our shame, our cycles, our our habits, our situation, he provides a way through, but it's through faith in him. It's not through what we do. It's not how hard we work.
Speaker 1:It's not how hard I pray. It's through faith in Him. I want to turn to John chapter 10. John chapter 10. John chapter 10, I'm going to start in verse seven.
Speaker 1:This is Jesus talking about who he is. He says this. So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door.
Speaker 1:If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and come out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Speaker 1:He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, he who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me. Just as the father knows me and I know the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Speaker 1:Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and he's the doorway. He's the door here. He says, If the sheep pass through the door, they find pasture. They know my voice and they follow me, and I will take care of them. I will lead them to deliverance, to a place of peace, to a place of rest.
Speaker 1:This is Jesus saying, Look at me. Don't don't get fixated on something else, but pay attention to me. I'm the good shepherd. I will make a way for you. This is his promise of who he is and how he will be with us.
Speaker 1:Keep your eyes on the shepherd and watch fear disappear. This is the thing, is when we get caught up I was talking about this earlier. When we get caught up in our circumstances, when we get caught up in our sin and how stuck we are in our shame, all it's going to do is keep us more stuck. All it is, is going to create more self fulfilling prophecies. We're just going to speak more lies over ourselves.
Speaker 1:It's always going to be this way. It's never going to get better. There's no way out of this. It's going to end this way. And what that does is that just sets us up to make that more and more true.
Speaker 1:The more we say that to ourselves, the more we do it. But when we fix our eyes on the Good Shepherd, when we turn to Jesus and we say, Lord, you've got me. You hold me in your hand. You have delivered me from ultimate sin and death. You will deliver me here and now.
Speaker 1:Doesn't mean that it's going to work out the way you think it's going to work out because it didn't work out the way it thought the Israelites thought it was going to work out. They I don't know what they expected, but I don't think they were expecting the Red Sea and all the plagues. It was not exactly the way that they had envisioned it. But God does deliver, and He does want to deliver you. He's calling you to look at Him, though, to follow Him, to focus on Him, to have a bigger picture of who He is.
Speaker 1:That's why I think the psalm that we're reading in Exodus, that song, is a its focus is on God. Because the bigger picture we have on God, the greater our faith will become. The less fear is going to dominate us, the less we're going to have to panic, the more we're going to be able to say with Jesus, What does worrying add to my life? Who's ever gained a dollar in their bank account because they've worried about it? Who's ever added an hour to their life because they were anxious?
Speaker 1:No one. So let us look to the Good Shepherd and follow Him into green pastures. The more you fix your eyes on God, the more free you are going to be because you aren't living captive anymore. Follow the shepherd, and he will deliver you. Like I said, it might not look like what you think it's going to look like, but the Lord is faithful.
Speaker 1:He will be with us both in the valley of shadow of death and in the green pastures. The shepherd is with us no matter what. I would encourage us to stay close to the shepherd. And you might be like, Luke, what does that mean? What does it mean to stay close to the shepherd?
Speaker 1:What does it mean to fix my eyes on Jesus? Sounds real motivational, Pastor Luke, but what does that mean? I'll give you three things. First is I would ask you, are you praying more than you're venting? This one convicted me, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1:Am I praying more about something than I am running it over in my mind or complaining about it to somebody? Maybe I need to make a commitment to myself. Say, You know what? Before I complain or verbally process it with someone, maybe I need to pray about it first. Maybe I need to take it to the Lord in prayer before I begin to kind of try and deal with it and let it become a pattern that I just go over and over and over in my mind.
Speaker 1:Am I opening my heart to truth? Am I opening God's Word? Am I taking you know how long it takes to read a chapter of the Bible? Most chapters of the Bible. Like, maybe five minutes.
Speaker 1:Right? There's the Bible app. There's a gazillion resources I could go on about that could help you engage with the Bible. But I just what would it be like to just pick a verse find a verse of the day app and just read that verse three times out over the course of your day. Read it before you each eat your meals.
Speaker 1:Read the verse of the day at breakfast. Read it right before you eat lunch, and read it at dinner. And see how that perhaps just begins to saturate your heart and mind in truth. And then finally, are you spending time with the people of God? It is awful hard.
Speaker 1:I want to say this carefully. Not saying that you can't have personal experiences with Jesus and with God. But I am saying, why would you make it more difficult by separating yourself from the people of God? One of the primary ways we experience God's love is through the other people who also follow God loving us. Being in community, we have to be together.
Speaker 1:And I don't just mean being here at church. I mean talking to one another, calling one another, praying with one another, being in a group, sharing a meal, sitting in silence, just being together. If we're doing those three things, praying, open ourselves to Scripture and spending time with the people of God, we will have a much easier time staying close to the shepherd. A much easier time. Our perspective will more easily shift towards Him.
Speaker 1:My last thing for us, because like I said, I don't know this morning where you might feel like, Lord, I could really use an exodus. I could really use an exit out of this circumstance, out of this sin. Or maybe, maybe you're here and you're like, I could just really use Jesus. I could really just use an exit out of my life because I've been trying to do it by myself for a long time. I've been trying to grit it out and make it happen.
Speaker 1:I've been trying really hard to be a good person. I've been trying really hard to improve my life, to build a life and live whatever dream it is I think I'm supposed to be living. But I'm tired of it, and I'm dissatisfied. And I want to have a good shepherd. I want to know the good shepherd.
Speaker 1:Period. Maybe that's you. And I think that that if that's where you're at today, I think I want I want to invite you to say yes to that. I want to invite you to say, Lord, I want to be your sheep. I want to know your voice.
Speaker 1:And I'm tired of trying to lead my own life and dictate my own right and wrong, I want to follow yours. I want to follow you. Wherever it is you find yourself at, I have just this simple, very, very simple prayer that I would encourage us to perhaps pray this week. Pray it often this week. Pray it as often as you feel stressed and anxious.
Speaker 1:Pray it as often as you feel stuck and out of control. Take just a moment, take a deep breath, relax your shoulders and say, Lord Jesus Christ, lead me. I think a simple prayer like that, where we surrender my will, I surrender my expectations, surrender myself to the Good Shepherd. Say, Lord, I feel like my right now, I feel like I'm facing some waters. Maybe they're ankle deep, maybe they're waist deep, maybe they're up to my neck.
Speaker 1:But Lord, I know that you can make a way. Lord, I'm going to not focus on the waters. I'm not going to try and do this in my own strength. I want to focus on You. Pray, Lord Jesus Christ, lead me.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Just take a moment and let that come up from your heart and then just see what the Lord does with you. See where the Lord leads you this week. I would love to hear any testimony from that next week if you take this prayer, put it into practice, and if you begin to experience and notice the Lord's leading. Because I truly believe that if we seek the Lord even in a small way like this, he is faithful to meet us and lead us.
Speaker 1:Conduit, as you go from here, I pray that you would see the Good Shepherd and you would hear him leading you. Conduit, you are loved. Go in peace.
