Happy Thursday!
I wanted to share my notes from my sermon from last night. I hope this blesses you as much as I blesses me. The book of Exodus is full of examples of having to trust God for guidance. What we have to learn is that while the Israelite's after leaving Egypt had the pillar of smoke during the day and the pillar of fire at night to follow. We don't have that same thing, we have the Holy Spirit, we have Gods word. Please reach out if you have any questions.
Exodus 13:17-22
I. Following God story; God will often call us to Step out in faith, to do that we have to learn to follow God, He’ll have your back! The whole book of Exodus has one central theme, as God’s people we need to follow after God. He will lead us, He will take care of us, He will be our guide. He will allow us to go through things that are uncomfortable to bring us to a place of complete reliance on Him. This evening we’re going to learn how God leads us, why He will sometimes take us the long route to get where we need to be.
II. v. 17-18 God lead them away from the Philistines the long route.
a. Why?
1. Lest the people change their minds.
a. Israel was not ready for war, having just left Egypt, and witnessing the power of God as He freed them as slaves, the Hebrews had some growing they had to do, they had to learn that their God would sustain them regardless of what seemed like would be a giant task.
b. How do we know the Jews didn’t have that moxie, that grit that they would need to be able to go into battle, most importantly would be willing to rely on God to save them? Even though God had brought them out of Egypt with such power, they still were not ready for war. Let’s look ahead a little bit turn one chapter ahead to chapter 14 verses 11 (read or have one of the kids read) can see that they were not ready with a preview of the Red Sea, the spies that went to check out the land. (Deuteronomy 1:27) Looking ahead to the battles to come. The spies who went into the land of milk and honey, but they also saw giants. When they came out, they whined again about how God brought them out of Egypt to just kill them???
2. Towards the Red Sea. The Long way.
a. God sometimes will take us the long way, 2 reasons
1. He has something He wants to teach us. God wants us to grow in something most importantly He wants us to grow closer to Him.
a. Wouldn’t it be nice if life was a straight line? You really think so? But we know that It’s not. When you’re hiking on a trail is the trail ever straight? No? Right? It is always crooked, and if you’re going up a mountain it has switch backs, pop-outs, and really hard parts. But the end result when you get to the top is pretty amazing. Think about the best view you’ve ever witnessed to get there was pretty rough, I know some of you maybe haven’t experienced it…yet, so think about a hard time or something hard that you accomplished and when you finally got your reward that you earned you knew that it was worth the work.
2. The reason that God wants us to grow closer to Him is so that He will get the glory not us. Have you ever felt like you were at the end of your rope and you had nothing left to hold on to? I can tell you that I’ve been there. There are times in my life especially when I was a teen living on my own that I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish something. And boom out of nowhere it was taken care of. The only explanation was God took care of what was going on, the only thing that I could do was to give Him the glory. You may in your life have something going on right now at school, or home, or your job, that it seems like you have no control over. I can tell you without a doubt that God is in control. Letter from Jesus
III. v. 19 this is a fulfillment of God’s promise to save His people from Egypt.
a. Another proof of the fulfillment of God’s promise to not leave the Jews in Egypt, even so much so that the bones of Joseph were not left there. So, looking at this here we can see that no one was left behind not even Joseph.
IV. v. 20-22
a. Etham was on the edge of the wilderness and one step closer to the Red Sea. the Hebrews are finally leaving Egypt getting out of dodge,
b. What is the purpose of the fire and the smoke? There is a special reason that we’re going to learn here. The simple answer is that so the Israelite's have something to follow, I mean you because they just up until recently they were slaves but now they leave Egypt and don’t have any sense of direction, so we know the fire and smoke gave them something to look for, something to follow but there is a deeper meaning too, something that is for us.
1. Now we don’t have a pillar of fire or even a cloud of smoke to follow but God has given us some things that we can use to follow so we know that we’re heading in the right direction. There are a lot of other influences in our lives today. Things that are trying to get us to follow what they are saying.
1. His word. (“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet”. Psalms 119:105) Turn with me to 1 Tim. 3:16-17
2. The Holy Spirit (Pentecost) John 16:7-8
a. How do we know what we’re hearing is from the Holy Spirit is real? By knowing what God’s word says. God will never contradict His word. This is why it’s so important to know God’s word, to ready it and know what it says, to be a student of it
3. Others (Paul follow me as I follow Christ) There is a challenge with this one because we are human which is why we need to be grounded in God’s word. If that person we’re following isn’t following Christ we’re going to know.
a. I need all of you to remember there are a lot of influences in your lives today what are some of those? Is it social media, Netflix, twitter, your friends, or where ever you get your news. Those aren’t necessarily bad things but, you need to be wise about that stuff and run it through the lens of the Bible Gods word. We have a lot of noise and it’s easy to get caught up in things that will draw you away from Jesus. They aren’t blatant either usually it will seem like things that might be good but as you begin to dig deeper you need to be aware that it’s drawing you away from Christ and getting you to take your eyes of the fire and smoke.
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