God Keeps His Promises

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Family Father, the thing I asked you would, that you would bring clarity to Pastor Cameron, that you would bless the preparation and the work you've put in, that you would be, that your Holy Spirit would fill him, allow him to know what it is you have for him to say to us today, that you would be his divine editor. Lord, that we here today would be filled with your Holy Spirit, that your Spirit would prompt us to hear what you have for us, that you would open our minds, our ears, and our hearts to be receptive to your word. And might this all be for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you, Luke. Good morning, Conduit. How are you today? Good. We got a lot of ground to cover, so we're not going to belabor the point at all. We're going to be celebrating communion together this morning as well. And so we want to make sure that we leave plenty of time to not have to rush through that. So as Pastor Luke said, we're starting a new series today through the book of Exodus. If you're unfamiliar with Exodus, Exodus is the second book of your Bible from the front.

So we have Genesis at the beginning of your Bible, and Exodus is the very next one. And it's a really key and critical part of the story of the people of God. And so we're going to be spending basically the summer on it. So we have about 18 weeks planned throughout the book of Exodus. So settle in a little bit. Don't be afraid to get familiar with the book, because we're going to be there a while. And we're asking God's blessing on it. We know he will. Exodus is the book of the Bible. Exodus as the book is the story of how the covenant people of God, who we know as or who were named at a certain point in history, known as the Israelites, were delivered from their slavery in Egypt and then went on a long, a long journey, both by in terms of like the distance traveled, but also it was a pretty long journey in what they experienced and what they went through. They went through a long journey towards the land that God had promised to give them as a part of his covenant promise with Abraham, who was the spiritual and ethnic father of

The nation of Israel. Exodus is the story of, it's the story of God's promises. God made promises to his people, and it's a story that relays a lot of those promises. Exodus is a story of God's faithfulness, that even though the people time and time and time again show themselves to be unfaithful, that God time and time and time and time again shows himself to be faithful. Exodus is the story of the development of God's moral law, and we don't always like to think about that, that God has a standard, that God has a target. But Exodus is kind of the epicenter of the beginning of that as he gives a moral law to his people and says, "Hey, look, I'm giving this to you as a means to set you apart from the people around you." And of course, in Exodus, we see the bulk of the moral law found within the Ten Commandments, so we'll be spending some time there. And then finally, Exodus is the story of God's presence. In the last 10 chapters or so of the book of Exodus, you will see the story of Exodus, we'll see that God instructs the people in how to build a

Mobile dwelling tent for his presence, a place that he can be worshipped, a place that will bring the centrality of worship back to the Israelite nation and where his presence will dwell while they are traveling to get to the Promised Land. So we'll be talking about God's presence and about even the orderliness and function of worship in the people of God. Now while Exodus is a story of the people of God, it is not primarily a story about the people of God. Exodus is primarily a story about God himself, about his faithfulness, about his promises, about his law, about his presence. You're gonna meet a guy named Moses who is kind of like the main human actor in the story of Exodus. And Moses acts and speaks and works and leads, not on his own volition or in his own plan, but he does all those things on behalf of God himself. Directly in relationship and communication and in presence with God, Moses acts on behalf of God to the people and himself comes under the blessing of God, comes under the instruction of God, but also comes under the punishment of God for his own disobedience and unfaithfulness. And then when Moses and the rest of the Israelite

People act defiantly and sinfully in the face of God's presence, God remains faithful, God remains steadfast. And so we're gonna see that a lot in this story. The word Exodus, the way that this book or this story is titled Exodus literally means exit or departure. There's no secret really hidden meaning or anything like that. If you were to say there was a great Exodus out of conduit at about noon today, the meaning would stay the same. There was a great exit or departure out of the building today. And so obviously the actual deliverance of the Israelites from their slavery and captivity in Egypt is central to the themes or the story of the book of Exodus, because it literally signifies the Israelite people exiting or departing the nation of Egypt after they had been enslaved there for generations. But that doesn't really explain how the Israelite people got to Egypt to begin with and why they were there at all. If we just start on the first pages of Exodus and begin reading, you might ask the question, well, it seems like we're kind of starting

In the middle of some type of story. Why are the Israelites in Egypt to begin with? Why are they the slaves of the Egyptians? How did they get there and where exactly do we even find ourselves in this story up until this point? And that's kind of the danger of preaching from like just starting at a book where there's a whole lot of stuff beforehand without dealing with or kind of like painting a little bit of context for how we got to the point that we're at right now. And so that's for the next few few minutes. For the next few minutes, we're going to try and give a brief overview of why the Israelite people are even in Egypt to begin with, because they're not Egyptians. That's not the Promised Land. That's not where they belong. But for whatever reason, they find themselves in this place that they're not supposed to be. Why did they need to be delivered from the Egyptians at all? Why is that a central aspect or part of the story? All of this is important because it would be next to impossible to overemphasize how central the story of the Exodus is to Israelites

And how crucial a role that the whole story has, even in the story of our own faith. One of my hopes and desires throughout this series is to use the book of Exodus and the story of Exodus to point you to its foreshadowing of the gospel. The main themes of God's promises, of God's faithfulness, of God's salvation, of God's deliverance, don't start in the New Testament. They start right from the very beginning, Exodus included. And so we'll see that the story of Exodus is not just great stories that you would maybe expect to see or hear in a Sunday school class, but they're stories. They're stories that communicate points about God's faithfulness, about God's promises, about God's deliverance for our own lives as we seek to follow Jesus now. Some of the most significant stories in all of scripture come from the book of Exodus. I mean, if you were to ask people like, tell me some of your favorite Bible stories, you would probably hear a good handful of the ones that are central to the story of the book of Exodus. You would hear things like, well, oh, the plagues. I don't know if that's anyone's favorite story, if it is. See me

Afterwards. The story of the plagues, right? But then you have the story of the Passover. You have the story probably of the most public and fantastic miracle that has ever occurred, the parting of the Red Sea, right? And the walking of the Israelites through that. You have God feeding the Israelites in Exodus chapter 16 in the wilderness through manna and quail in this awesome, miraculous provision of food. You have, of course, the first story of the Ten Commandments. You have the building of the tabernacle. You have all of these stories that are central to even our own understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. And they all find their place here in the story of the Exodus. So how did we even get to this point? Well, in Genesis chapter 12, as we have talked from this stage before, Genesis chapter 12, God called a man at that point whose name was Abram, whose name would later be changed to Abraham. He called to Abram the original father of the people that would be called Israel. And he called him away from everything that he was comfortable from, everything that he knew, everything that was familiar to him. And he said, hey, Abram, I have a

Plan for your life. Not only do I have a plan for your life, but I have a plan for your descendants and their descendants after them and their descendants and their descendants and their descendants. I am going to make you from your lineage into a great nation. And I will protect you. And those who curse you, I will curse. And those who bless you, I will bless and I will be a blessing to you so that you may be a blessing to the world. Through you, I will be a blessing. And so God created this covenant relationship with this guy named Abraham. And he said, hey, look, I'm going to give you descendants. I'm going to give you a land for all of your descendants to settle in and call their own. It's going to be a great land. It's going to be the best land. It's going to be a land flowing with milk and honey, right? It's going to be, it's going to be the land for your people. You're going to get protection and you're going to get blessing. And I'm giving it to you with

A commission that you would take all of these things, not just for yourself, but that through you, you would become a conduit of my blessing to the world. But as time went on, Abraham, in conversation with God, was like, hey, God, I know you said you were going to give me descendants and land and promises and blessings. I just want to let you know, I'm like up into my nineties and a hundred. I'm like a hundred years old and my wife, a little bit younger than me, but pretty old herself. And we don't have a son. And so this whole promise of descendants and a people coming from us, what I don't, I don't know what's going on, but I don't see it here. It's not here. But in Genesis chapter 15, verses two through six, God reminds Abraham that he will indeed fulfill his promises, that he will indeed give him a son and that son would be coming soon. Genesis chapter 15, verse two through six. But Abraham said, Oh Lord God, what will you give me for I continue to be childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abraham said, behold, you've given me no offspring and a member

Of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars. If you are able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. So God spoke to Abraham and said, Hey, look, look at the stars in the sky. Can you count them? You can't. All right. Great. Guess what? Your descendants are going to be as numerous as the stars in the sky. The promise, the fulfillment is coming. Just hang on a hot second. When did that come? It did end up coming not without a little drama in the whole thing. We don't have time for all of the drama of it. We may get to it at some point, but God gave Abraham a son in Genesis chapter 21, one through five, the birth of Isaac. Now, if you know the story at all, you would know that this was not actually

Abraham's first son, but we're going to get to that here in a minute. And in Genesis chapter 21 verses, verses one through five, the Lord visited Sarah, who was Abraham's wife. And he, as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised the Lord who filled his promise and Sarah conceived and bore Abraham, a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him, Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, who Sarah bore him Isaac. And Abraham circumcised the son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. And Abram was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah had said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham and Sarah that nursing, that they would nurse children, yet I have borne him a son in my old age. And so, as we, so Abraham got the original promise, then the promise was given passed on again to Isaac. We see the promises of God being fulfilled and then it's Isaac's turn. And in Genesis chapter 25 verses 19

Through 34, we see that Isaac and his wife, Rebecca had twin boys by the name of Jacob and Esau. Esau, in the story of Genesis, famously sold his birthright as the first he came out. Esau actually came out first. And so he technically would have been the child of the promise, the one to receive the inheritance, the one to receive the first in line. We would have tracked our descendant line through Esau, but in a famous story, Esau, so overwhelmed with his flesh, sold his birthright to Jacob. And Jacob became the child of the promise, the child through whom we would trace our descendants and our line. He sold it for a pot of stew. And Jacob deceived Isaac in his old age to bless him. We don't hear much more about Esau in the story of faith, but we do hear about his, his descendants. In the early, early times of the Old Testament, the descendants of Esau are called the Edomites. And we can trace their lineage throughout the story of scripture as being constantly at odds with the Israelite people. So we're left now, we went from Abraham, and then we went to Isaac,

And now we are at Jacob, tracking the descendants and the line. Jacob marries two people. He marries Rachel, and he marries Leah, two separate women, which then gave him, Rachel and Leah, both gave to Jacob, their main servants, also to conceive children. And so Jacob, the father of the 12 nations of Israel, had sons with Leah, had sons with Rachel, had sons with Bilhah, and had sons with Zilpah. I know you all thought, right, that all of these stories of our heroes in the Bible, were all these nice and clean, without drama, or without issues stories. Until you get to guys like Jacob, you're like, bro, had four baby mamas. This is just the truth, right? Like, I didn't make this up, right? This is just what happened. And certainly there were cultural differences, certainly things that we don't understand, but to suffice it to say, out of these four women, Jacob had 12 sons, and these 12 sons would become the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel, of the Israelite nation, right? One of those sons, one of those 12 sons, was a guy named Joseph, who's my favorite biblical character, is my favorite biblical story, story of Joseph. Joseph was sold, famously,

Had a coat of many colors that his father gave him. Joseph was kind of like the favorite, and the other 11 brothers hated him for it, and with kind of good reasons, he was kind of a brat, early in life. He was. He really was. You can read that in the story, it's very clear. He enjoyed the fact that his father loved him the most, and reminded his brothers constantly about it. And they finally had enough of him, and so they took his robe off of him, threw him in a pit, and then some travelers, some sojourners, which we believe to be Egyptians, came along the way, and they'd be like, "Oh, wait, why don't we just sell him into slavery instead?" So they pulled him out of the pit, sold him to these Egyptian slave owners, and they took then Joseph off to Egypt to become a slave out of their jealousy and hatred for him. So now, so Joseph, now living in Egypt, one of the 12 sons who would become a head of one of the 12 tribes of Israel, is living as a slave in Egypt, and through

A series of incredible, God-ordained events, Joseph rose to significant power in Egypt and was placed second in command of the whole of the Egyptian Empire. He had a specific task of preparing the nation of Egypt, the empire of Egypt, for a prophesied famine that was coming. There was a dream given to Pharaoh about a famine. Joseph was able to interpret the dream. Pharaoh was so impressed with Joseph's ability that he said, "Okay, Joseph, I want you to be in charge of preparing the nation of Egypt for this coming famine." The seven years, there's going to be seven years of abundance in agriculture, and then there's going to be seven years of famine. Get us ready in the seven years so that we're ready for the seven years. And Joseph did that and did it incredibly because the Lord was with him. And so when the famine hit the land, people from all over the world aimed to buy grain from Joseph in Egypt, including his 11 brothers that once sold him into slavery. Now it's hard to even do this. It's impossible to do this justice with one sentence, but after reconciling with his brothers in this God-ordained meetup that they had buying and

Selling grain, the 11 brothers and their families came down to Egypt to live in the best land that Egypt had, the land of Goshen, to ride out the rest of the famine. So Joseph was like he went to Pharaoh in Genesis, chapter 47, and he said, "Hey, my family is here. They're all shepherds. Would you please give them land that they can come and reside here until the famine is over?" And Pharaoh is like, "Man, you have been such a servant to me. Your family is my family. If they're good at their job at being shepherds, I will give them my flocks to watch over. And I will give them the best of the land that's available in Egypt." And in Genesis, chapter 47, Joseph brokered this deal with Pharaoh where his 11 brothers and all of their descendants and Joseph's family lived in this land in Egypt. And so then we get to the end of the book of Genesis, which is kind of the end of the patriarch type of story. And in Exodus, chapter 50, verses 22 through 25, we see kind of the

End of the Joseph era. So Joseph remained in Egypt. He and his father's house. Joseph lived 110 years, and Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation and the children of Machir and the son of Manasseh were counted as Joseph's own. And Joseph said to his brothers, "I'm about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to our descendants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, "Surely, God will surely visit you and you shall carry my bones up from here, " and then Joseph died at 110. And now we're in Exodus. Now we're there. And then so now when you go into Exodus and you read the first couple of verses in Exodus, it makes a little bit more sense as to how this all happened. These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each of his own household. So in verses two, three, and four, you see all of the brothers of Joseph, all the descendants of Jacob, verse

Five, were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died and all his brothers in all that generation. So Joseph and all of his brothers died and all of that generation that originally came down to Egypt, they all died. They all went away. Verse seven, "But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them." And so they went from 70 plus Joseph's family to actually saying, "But man, something happened and they just multiplied in their numbers and they grew to a very exceedingly strong group of people. The land was filled with them that says this wasn't without its own issues." Let's read the rest of this section of scripture here, starting in verse eight and going through verse 22. "Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, 'Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against

Us and escape from the land.' Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh, Storcetes, Pithom, and Ramesses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel, so they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shipra and the other named Pu'ah, 'When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birth stool, if it's a son, you shall kill them. But if it's a daughter, she shall live.' But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them because they let the male children live. And so the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, 'Why have you done this and let all the male children live?' And the midwives said to Pharaoh, 'Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they

Are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes.' So God dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, 'Every son that is born to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.' So you see, the people of Israel, by the blessing of God and by the providence of two midwives who feared God and refused to kill these babies, made the nation, the people, grow exceedingly large and strong. Even despite Pharaoh's insistence to his own people, 'Hey look, we're not we're not getting the job done over here. If you see a Hebrew baby boy, throw him into the Nile River.'

So what I want to draw our attention to is this kind of like what seems as though a fairly benign, non-purposeful detail of the story of the Israelite people, which is that they went from 70 people in Egypt to somehow such a massive group of a nation that the nation of Egypt itself was fearful of them. How did this happen? What is the point here at all? It's my contention that what we see in Exodus chapter 1, 8 through 12, it's not some like flute of mass reproduction, but was the continuation and fulfillment of God's consistent promise to the people of Israel. 'I will give you descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.' What we see in this part of the story as the Israelite nation grew was that God was keeping and fulfilling his promises to his people. And the reason God was keeping and fulfilling his promises to his people is because we serve a God who keeps his promises. We serve a God who keeps his promises.

When God makes a promise, he does not break it. And although the fulfilling of God's promises in our lives often feel very labored and slow and that we must wait a long time for them, that God is not slow in keeping his promises. In fact, later in the New Testament, Peter, the apostle of Jesus says this, he says, 'The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises as some count slowness.' But he is patient towards us, not wishing that any of us would perish, but that all would reach repentance. That there is a purpose behind the perceived slowness of God fulfilling and keeping his promises in our lives. And that promise that for the fulfillment of those promises is always linked with the change of someone's heart. It is always linked with the work that God is doing internally to a person. So he's making them fit, making them prepared, putting them in the right position of life to receive the fulfilled promise after their heart has been transformed in repentance. But listen, this promise that God has given

To make the descendants of Israel numerous was not a promise even that just started in Abraham's life, the father of the nation. I'm going to go really quick through, like, to show you that this is a promise that God's mind was set towards creating a people that would be for himself the conduit of his blessing in the world right from the very beginning.

In fact, in the creation account, as God was creating Adam in Genesis, chapter 1, verse 28, God blessed them, he said, and he said to Adam and Eve, do what? Be fruitful and multiply, right? Subdue the earth, have dominion over it. This is my creation, which I give to you. Be fruitful and multiply. It wasn't just for Adam. It was also for Noah as well in Genesis, chapter 8, verse 17, that after they came out of the Ark, that his descendants were told to now go multiply and fill the earth once again. Of course, this was a part of the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant to Abraham. In Genesis, chapter 17, verses 2 through 6, my covenant is with you, you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. I have made you the father of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful and kings will come from you, God said to Abraham.

We see then record that this same type of promise was passed on to Abraham's son Isaac. In Genesis, chapter 26, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and I will give to your offspring all of these lands, and in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Same promise that he gave to Abraham. And then finally to Jacob, the father of the 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel in Genesis, chapter 28, God almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you so that you may become a company of many peoples, the scripture says. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham. And so listen, this was a promise that began right from the very beginning of creation. I will make for myself a people, they will multiply, they will go out and be my blessing, and that promise will follow through generation after generation after generation after generation after generation. I am a God that keeps my promises, God says.

Now, I have to wonder if there was some insightful Israelites living in Egypt in this time,

Maybe reflecting a little bit on the reality that, well, yeah, I mean, we're pretty sure that my dad and my grandfather, my great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-great-great-great-great, they always talked about how God was like, going to do these things for us and make us into a great nation and give us land. And we were going to be a blessing, but man, it doesn't look like it. By where we're at now, we're making bricks for the Egyptians and they're our slave masters. And like, life is horrible. We don't have a land of our own. I wonder how the Israelite people throughout the generations from Abraham to the Exodus would have described their experience of God fulfilling his promises.

Do you think that they would have described their experience of the growing nation as they were enslaved in Egypt as one they looked on with awe and wonder as God weaved his promise throughout history?

Like, wow, hey, kids, look at the history of our people. Look at the tremendous way that God has worked through all generations to remain faithful to his promise. Isn't God good? Doesn't this inspire and build our faith and hope for the future

As we're in slavery in Egypt and a land not our own under the evil taskmasters of the Egyptians? I'm guessing probably not. I'm guessing that in the midst of their slavery, they had a difficult time both recalling or focusing on the reality that their God is a promise-keeping God. Why? Because that generation was consumed and overwhelmed with their current situation. They were in it up to here. They were enslaved. They were treated harshly. Their children were taken from them and killed.

Where they live, the increasing pressure and oppression of the new Egyptian ruler. They were refugees. They were sojourners. They were aliens in a land not promised to them. They were living in this liminal type of space where the promises of generations were still kind of hanging in the balance. Yeah, we kind of remember God saying something once upon a time about us being a great people, but it doesn't really feel like it right now for sure.

And while focusing on what wasn't happening, man, we're here in Egypt making these bricks. We're losing our lives. While they were focusing on what God's promises are not available to us anymore, while they were focusing on all of what wasn't happening, they missed the very real, long, faithful fulfillment of God's promise in the midst of their suffering.

If you think about it for a second, as they were so uber focused on their suffering, that they missed the very real thing that was happening among them. That in the midst of their suffering, God had fulfilled his promise.

In the midst of their suffering, God had done what he had said he always would do. "I will make you a new great nation. I will give you descendants. I will make you more multiple than the stars in the sky. You will be so large and so powerful." And now we have the Egyptian ruler being like, "I don't know what's going on with these Hebrew people, but they are reproducing like crazy and now I'm scared of them. We better do something quick." See, sometimes in the midst of our suffering and pain, our suffering, our pain, and our grief, it's easy to convince ourselves that God is not working. God cannot possibly work in the midst of this painful situation. All I feel is pain. All I feel is suffering. All I am is enslaved to this situation. God's not working. God is absent. God has forgotten me. I am all alone. God has abandoned me to figure it out all by myself.

And in this, then our perspective changes so that the majority of our focus and our attention now becomes fixated onto our suffering, onto the unfulfilled parts of God's promises.

You see, we actually get into a state in our lives where it is possible to worship our suffering.

To worship our pain. To worship our grief. Well, what are you talking about? I hate it. Right? You do, but it's the only thing you think about. It's the only thing you talk about. It's the only thing you dream about. It's the only thing that's on your mind. All of your being is fixated on your suffering, on your pain, and on your grief. It has captured the fullness of your attention, and anything that has the fullness of your attention is the thing that you worship.

It is possible to worship our suffering and our pain by allowing it to be the sole focus of our attention, thereby surrendering our identity as a child of a promise.

When I worship my suffering, what I say to God is, "God, I surrender and I forfeit my identity as a child of your promises in my life, and I am now going to pick up an identity as a child of suffering, pain, and grief. This is now the foundational part of my life, my suffering, rather than over here that you have made a promise to me, God. No longer am I a child of promise. I'm a child of pain. I am a child of disaster. I am a child of brokenness and abandonment, and we live into that identity, and it becomes the way in which we process the world and our relationships and our worship of God. We become immersed in a worshipful experience of our own suffering and pain. But listen, if we could just for a moment even get a glimpse, get a re-glimpse of God's promises for our lives, we might see the awe and wonder of hope that we are missing. If we could just fix our eyes on the long view of God's faithfulness, we would find the hope necessary to sustain us through our suffering, through our grief,

And through our pain. See, our change in focus, our change in perspective or viewpoint shifts to the generational faithfulness of God. You know that our focus on the generational faithfulness of God is an antidote to despair in your life. You're despairing, sitting under a dark and heavy weight of hopelessness for the future, or hopelessness for the situation, or hopelessness for this relationship, or hopefulness for this sickness. Get your eyes off your circumstance for just a brief second and ask God to give you a picture of how he has been generationally faithful to you. And your suffering and your despair and your hopelessness will be replaced with the hope that we have a God who fulfills his promises, who keeps his promises.

This is not foreign to the rest of scripture either. The New Testament writers wrote about this extensively. Paul, especially Romans chapter 8 verse 18, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us." What's he say? He's like, "I know what I'm going through and how bad it stinks. It does not compare to what I know is coming, to the glory that will be revealed." He says later in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, "We do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away." Anyone feel that lately? I feel that, it resonates with that statement. "Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day." Why? How? How could that possibly be the case? "For this light and momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for what the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

He finally says in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 13, this is one of my favorite verses in all of scripture. I'm going to preach this at your funeral. Just let you know, I am.

This is a core verse that all the funerals that I preach at. 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 14, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep who die,

That you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep." Listen, grief happens, suffering happens, pain happens, but I just want you to be encouraged, brothers and sisters, that we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Our grief exists, our pain exists, our suffering, it does exist, but it is not like the world experiences it. We have a hope rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and therefore we will grieve, but it will not be, it will not be in grief like those who have no hope. We will not live in despair. Listen, this is not as though, I'm not making the case that as a Christian person, we should have a worldview or a belief that just because we have faith in Jesus Christ and in eternity, that suffering somehow disappears from our lives. Or that there is this expectation that those of us who walk with God must live in kind of this like perpetual state of denial that pain, suffering, grief exists. Like, oh no, I'm

Doing just fine. Aren't you doing just fine? Yes, we're all doing just fine, right? How many people this morning when you asked, hey, good to see this morning, how are you doing? We're like, I'm actually horrible, but I have hope for the future, right? Because we all, at least a little part of us, at least a little part of us, we all come to spaces like this being like, yeah, man, but I can't say how I actually am. Because that's not what the person of faith does. Listen, this is not a scriptural or Christian practice at all. Grief exists, pain exists, suffering exists, and the scriptures never exhort us to deny that they do. What it does encourage us to do is to put on a different set of glasses to see our suffering, our grief, and our pain through the ultimate lens of hope rooted in the faith that God keeps his promises.

A few things about suffering and then we're going to be done. Suffering is not purposeless.

Sometimes we endure difficult circumstances in our lives. And in the midst of them, we are stuck asking the question or wondering what in the world is the purpose of this thing other than for me to just squirm under its pain. And it can become very normal. It can become, this can become the central question. What is the purpose of this thing that I am experiencing? Now I've said this before and I will say it again. This is anecdotal for my life, but it's also kind of anecdotal for like 20 years of ministry and helping people carry their suffering. And then we're going to see that it's not just anecdotal, but it's actually scriptural, right, that we grow the most in seasons of suffering.

You want to know, you want to ask Cameron Linehart, hey tell me the time in your life that you grew the most in your faith in the Lord. You're going to hear a sad story.

You're going to hear a difficult story. You're going to hear a painful story. You're going to hear stories of suffering. You're going to hear stories of pain. You're going to hear stories of grief. You say, okay, tell me the time, the second time that you grow the most in your Lord. You're going to hear the second most painful story of my life and the third and the fourth. And this is anecdotal to my life, but I believe it's also anecdotal to yours that if you look back upon the times in your life where you were given the opportunity to grow most significantly, if you took a long view on what happened, you would recognize that it was through the seasons of your greatest pain that you grew the most significantly here. Yes, we grow the most in the seasons of suffering. Now, this may be an inappropriate application, but I'm going to pull this right out of Exodus chapter one verses 11 through 14, because as the pressure came down from the Egyptian rulers upon the Israelite people, what happened to them? They grew more and more and more. What's

To say? Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens they built for Pharaoh's store cities. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad and the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel, the more they were oppressed, the more they grew and spread abroad. It may take, listen, it may take some time for perspective to develop in your life that reveals that growth has occurred. We don't actually really always perceive that we've grown until we're like a little distance down the road from the thing that made us grow. We don't ever actually experience the growth in the moment, right? And so since we can't experience the growth in the moment, what do we have to do? We have to stand in the place of trusting the God that has brought us to the moment, knowing that when we get to the place of looking back on what happened, we're going to be like, okay, now I get it. Now I see it. Now I understand. It may take some time for perspective to develop that reveals the growth

That has occurred, but if we allow suffering to do its work in us, it will produce gold-plated character trust in God.

Again, Peter writes about this, 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 3 through 7. This whole, Peter's whole epistle is about suffering, about the suffering that the Israelites are, that the believers are going through.

In 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 3 through 7, he says this, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Translation.

Significant trial in testing is a necessary ingredient in the sanctifying of your life that will make your character more precious than gold.

And the more we try to escape the pressure of suffering, the more we forfeit the sanctifying work of God for our lives. We must, just listen, no one likes to hear this, you must let suffering do its work in you. You must let pain take its time. It is important to not rush your suffering.

I know that's a little like, "What are you talking about? Rush the suffering, please."

Yeah, but listen, anything worth, anything worth building takes time. Anything worth, anything worth any value takes effort to produce, and suffering's job is to produce things in us that our normal, everyday life doesn't have the capacity to do.

And so, the quicker that we try to escape the suffering that we're in, the more pain is actually afflicted on us because we stay in a steady state of never being transformed in our lives, because we're always trying to get out from underneath the hard thing that God is pressing into us. Always trying to make it go quicker. Always trying to do an end around God's trial, God's suffering, this grief, so we can just get through the pain. But listen, there's more pain waiting on the other end of an untransformed heart than there is the pain that you experience in the midst of God's transformation of you.

Sorry. Do not try to rush the suffering. It has a purpose in its time to produce the heart that is fit and ready to receive the fulfillment of God's promises. Listen, I'm going to share with you this one story, and then we're going to, I'm going to give you a prayer to be praying this week. But it's an example of someone who tried to rush through the suffering, and it came back to bite all of creation badly. Remember the story of Abraham that we talked about tonight? And he had his son Isaac, but he was like, "Hey, God, where is this son that you promised? He's not here. I'm the laughingstock. My wife was the laughingstock. I know we're old, but are you going to fulfill your promise or not?" And him and Sarah are looking at each other and are like, "Well, I guess God's not going to do this, and it hurts sitting in this place of unfulfilled promises in our life from God. So I guess we'll have to take matters into our own hands, get out from underneath the suffering of not having a son, and do it ourselves."

And so Sarah gave to Abraham her servant, a woman by the name of Hagar, and said, "Okay, Abraham, go sleep with my servant. Get her pregnant. Maybe she'll have a son. That will be the heir, since God's obviously not getting the job done himself."

All right. Well, Hagar gets pregnant, and she bears a son to Abraham. The son that she bears was a man named Ishmael. Now, you may know Ishmael as the father of the Muslim nation. So from the Muslim faith traces their lineage back to Ishmael. That is their core father, the father of their faith. And so as Abraham was trying to rush through the suffering of—what do you think God wanted to do with Abraham and Sarah? God wanted to press deep down into their souls. This reality is, "I don't care if you're 80, or if you're 30, or if you're 100. If I make a promise to give you a son, I'm going to fulfill my promise, and I'm going to give you my son. I'm just trying to get you into a space of understanding how deep my faithfulness is." And Abraham's like, "Well, it's not happening fast enough, and it hurts, so I'm going to do it myself."

And God's like, "That's not what I wanted to do." And rushing through that suffering has chased the people of God all around God's creation since then. And we'll continue to until Jesus returns.

Listen, the more we try to rush the suffering and the work that God desires to do through it, the more long-term pain we do to ourselves. The more long-term damage we do to ourselves.

I want to leave you this morning with a prayer and an invitation. Okay? The invitation is this. We're going to have communion here in a moment, and as is our custom, of course, you can come up through the center aisle to receive the bread and the cup. And then if you would like to stay at the kneelers and pray, you may do that as well.

What I recognize in the room this morning and in our congregation as a whole is that there are many of us, many, many, many of us carrying significant burdens of suffering, pain, and grief.

And in our own desire to make it go away or to make it easier, we've been trying to control it and twist it and manipulate it, right? And trying to get it to go away by this measure or that measure or this thing or that thing. And for whatever reason, it's still sitting here on you. And what my invitation to you is this morning is to either where you're seated or up here at the altar after you take communion, is to tell the Lord in prayer, say to the Lord, "Lord, help me surrender control of my suffering and pain so that you may do in me whatever it is you need to do in me in order to make me into the person you desire me to be."

A prayer of surrender, a prayer of letting go of control and submitting yourselves to the sanctifying work of God through the circumstances of your life. And then throughout the week, we'd like you to, if you, this is an invitation, no judgment if you don't, to pray this prayer. You can take a little screenshot of it if you want, to pray this prayer. And as many times as you get into a place where you're like, "Man, I am underneath it this morning. Heavenly Father, I do not want to rush through this season and miss seeing the work you are trying to do in me. Please give me the endurance necessary to produce the character you desire that I may fully hope in you. I submit myself to you in this season and I will stay under the suffering as long as it takes to be more like Jesus. But please make it quick." It's okay to pray that, right? It's okay to be like, "Hey, Lord." Listen, because God doesn't,

God is, do you know how, do you know how much God loves you? And how, listen, listen, wrap your noodle around this one, okay? Is that God's, God's, like the imposition of suffering upon your life is God's gentleness and kindness to you.

God could crush you, crushed, under the weight of our sin, under the weight of circumstances, under the weight of brokenness. But God has his finger so closely on the dial of just what is necessary for you to become more like Jesus. And he's not cranking up the dial of suffering just for his own entertainment. He's carefully watching the circumstances of your life and in your heart in an active pursuit to produce the life of Jesus in you, who himself suffered and was without sin.

So, but it's okay at the same time to be like, "Lord, I'm going to sit under this. I am going to sit under this. I am going to sit under this." But if you could speed it up at all, I am up for that plan too, okay? Honesty is good. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Conduit, you are loved. Have a great week.