“God Always Remembers” Exodus 2 (Sermon Recap)

The relationship between God and his people is often described in parent-child terms. We are to look on him as our Father. Certainly, having God as a Father causes us to have some big expectations of him. This is God we're talking about! Real life, however, makes us doubt God and makes us wonder if God truly is our Father, if he truly is someone who will, like any good father, follow through on what he promises us. Do we really have a God who notices us, pays attention us, and acts in accordance with what he promises us? Exodus 2 will go long way to showing us that we do indeed have this kind of God.

When Exodus 2 begins the situation remains desperate for the Israelites. Pharaoh the king of Egypt has instituted a nationwide program to drown every Hebrew boy. Into these horrible circumstances a baby is born. We would think that this baby would immediately be killed but the baby is miraculously saved and in fact adopted by one of the daughters of Pharaoh. This boy gets named Moses, and he grows up in the royal court getting the finest education a person could get back then. By v.11 he is full grown adult man, 40 years old according to Acts 7:23. Moses seems like the person in perfect position to save the Israelites from their slavery and oppression under Pharaoh. In just one act, however, everything falls apart. Moses kills an Egyptian who was beating one of Israelites and the word gets out on what he did. Moses is forced to flee the country and go to Midian. There he gets connected to a family, marries one of the daughters of the family, and settles in for the next forty years working as a shepherd.

So Moses for the time being is out of the picture. Exodus 2:23 tells us that the king of Egypt then dies – perhaps now things might change? Sadly, they do not. The people of Israel remain enslaved and oppressed. Things seem to be over for these people. But the truths contained in Exodus 2:23-25 tell us differently. These people will survive and be set free, and it's because of the relationship they have with God. Here are a few things to note from these verses:

1. God's people must cry out to God. When a kid gets hurt they immediately cry out for the parent. This cry can be very loud at times and probably even a bit over dramatic. But what parent would have it any other way? The cry of a child to their parent is a cry that invites, that begs, for the parent to come into that child's experience. It's a cry through which the parent is able to bring healing if needed ("Here's some bandages Johnny"), encouragement ("You're going to be okay!") and context ("It's really not that bad. Look, you don't have any scratches on you.")

In prayer, we are able to cry out to God as a child cries out to their Father. And in so doing we will see the Lord move towards us to bring the healing, the encouragement, and the context we need for whatever situation we are in. The problem today is that too many of us are crying out to everything but God for help. Israel had this problem later on when instead of crying out to God they began to cry out to other nations for help. People today cry out for help to trendy self-help books, to horoscopes, to alcohol, to drugs, to various relationships or people. The problem inherent in all this is that none of these things can really give us the outside unbiased perspective we need on life since they all are themselves deeply part of the life of this world. But even more importantly, these things are unable to give real transforming help in and of themselves. In fact, I would argue that no matter what we do or where we turn it all largely ends up back in our laps, with the onus on us to deal with things on our own strength.

God gives us a much better direction to turn to – one that can give us real help. God invites us to turn to himself. See for example Ps 18:6 and Ps 121:1-2. Real life, with all its fears and doubts and anxieties, is a unique opportunity to connect with God. It is a regular means by which we can really see how powerful it is to have God as a Father. Indeed, to live and grow as a Christian means regularly crying out to God saying, "God, my Father! Help me every day!"

2. God hears the cries and responds to the cries of his people. Notice the words used to reinforce this for us in Ex 1:24-25. We are told that God heard and God saw. Like any good dad, God's senses are specially tuned to his kids. In fact, before we could even give attention to ourselves God was giving deliberate attention to us. As we are told in Eph 1, God "choose us in him before the foundation of the world," and "predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ."

We are also told that God knew. The idea here is that God entered into the situation of the Israelites. He didn't just know about what was going, God personally resonated with what they were going through.

This of course is not the only time God has done this. Indeed, the story of Jesus is the story of God entering into our world and knowing us, knowing what we go through, knowing why we cry out and what it is to cry out. There's nothing that anyone has experienced - no rejection, no depression, no heartache, no trial, no illness, no temptation, nothing! - that God can't resonate with at some level.

Finally, we are told that God remembered his covenant. Here is the key phrase. This phrase tells us that we have a God who will ACT. He will always follow through on his promises. To say that God "remembers" is not to say that he had forgotten about Israel and all of sudden needed to have his memory jogged a bit. Rather, to say that God remembers is to say that he always does what he promises to those he is in relationship with. The whole history of God in relationship with his people can be described as a series of promises and fulfillments. God promises, then he remembers and acts at the right moment in fulfillment of his promises.

Thus, in Exodus 2 we see God remembering the promises he made way back when to Abraham (cf Gen 12:2-3, 15:13-16), which got passed on to his son Isaac, then to his son Jacob, and finally all the way down the line to the Israelites in Egypt. God remembered them, which is to say that God would now begin to accomplish the great things he had promised to do for them.

But an even better example for us is Luke 2:25-35. There we read about an old man named Simeon who was waiting for God to remember the biggest promise of all. This was a promise to bring a salvation for all peoples. It was promise whereby God's people would be made up of both Jews and Gentiles. Simeon knew and rejoiced that God had in fact remembered his promise the moment he set his eyes on baby Jesus.

Jesus provides the way by which we become part of God's people and can now look to God as our Father. In Jesus we can cry our hearts out and know that God will hear us, see us, know us, and respond to us. Because of this, we can know that if we have Jesus in our life we have a Dad who will give us the healing, encouragement, and context for every struggle and oppression and difficulty we face. This can, and should, release us to cry out boldly to God every day for his help and to live boldly for God every day, leaning on his help.

“God Is There (Even When He Seems to Not Be There)” Exodus 1:1-21 (Sermon Recap)

The first two chapters of Exodus stand out because of how little mention there is of God. He seems for the most part to be completely absent and largely passive. This begs the question - what should we do or think when we expect God to show up big for us and he doesn't show up? God's people, the Israelites, had every reason to think that God would show up big for them. Exodus picks up right from where Genesis left off, and based on where Genesis ends we would think that Exodus would immediately launch into the story of God's people triumphantly returning to the land God had promised to their ancestors.

This however is not what happens. The Exodus story begins with the Israelites still in Egypt and being brutally oppressed by Egyptians under the direction of Pharaoh the king of Egypt. Pharaoh was afraid of how many Israelites there were in Egypt, believing that they were a potential future threat to the empire. So his plan was to make sure they remained under Egyptian power. His plan began with enslaving the people, and soon escalated to an effort to slowly decimate them by killing their newborn boys. To do this he enlisted two Hebrew midwives. However the midwives we are told "feared God" (Ex 1:17). They recognized God's authority over all things and thus refused to obey the king's commands. Their fear of God is recognized by God and ends up blessing these midwives with families. And despite the king's efforts, the Israelites continue to increase in number (Exo 1:20).

How then should we view all this? Often, the reality is that while God's people today, the church, have great ideas and plans and great expectations of God, roadblocks come up, problems arise, and we find ourselves feeling quite alone and wondering where God is and what he's doing. The temptation is to give up and resign ourselves to defeat. What Exodus 1 shows us is that God is there and that he's always there with his people, even when it most seems like he's not there. In fact, throughout this chapter we can see God's "invisible" hand working. The Israelites kept growing even under oppression only because of God. The midwives were kept safe and were successful in their efforts only because of God.

It would be much later when God finally began to do big things on behalf of the Israelites in visible and obvious ways. It certainly happened much later than the people wanted. But it happened when God wanted, which means it happened at the perfect time so that the most perfect display of his greatness would be witnessed and experienced by his people.

Suffering and God's seeming absence often seem to be preconditions to God working great triumphs on behalf of his people. This first story in Exodus is one example of this, and it points ahead to an evener great example of this in the story of Jesus. Those around Jesus definitely thought God was going do big things through him. Jesus was the Son of God after all! But then Jesus was arrested, beaten, and crucified. And on the cross Jesus hung there forsaken, alone, abandoned, crushed. God seemed totally absent. If there was any moment to doubt God and his promises it was that moment of Jesus hanging on the cross.

Yet this bloody shameful death served as the setup for the greatest and biggest act of God in human history, namely, the rising of Christ from the dead, and his victory over all evil and death and sin. The story of Jesus reinforces and amplifies the main lesson to be learned in this beginning story of Exodus – that even in suffering, even in doubt, even in disappointment and discouragement, God is there, he's always there, working on behalf of his people and for the sake of his great name.

To become a Christian means looking through all the evils done to you and all the evils you've done to others until you see the God who was there, who was always there, steadily leading you to himself. It's seeing how the first big act of God in your life was setting Jesus before you and saying, "Trust me by trusting in what I did for you through him."

This trust sets a pattern now for our whole lives. To accomplish God's mission will for mean each of us a deliberate trusting and fearing of God. We will only be able to move forward with confidence when we know and trust that in the end God wins and that nothing can threaten that. Indeed, with only two midwives God was able to stop the murderous efforts of the mightiest king of that time. And above all, God was able to use his Son Jesus to stop every evil, dark, sin infested power from ruling over our lives.

This is a great encouragement! We should be honest though. It is likely that we will go through suffering and even doubt and discouragement before experiencing the fulfillment of God's promises for us. However, we will persevere, we will fear and obey God and stay "on mission," if we look with strong focus and dependence on Jesus. Jesus is the constant reminder that God is there and that he is always there working.

A Thought(full) and Purpose(full) Community - Remember the Mission Sunday (Sermon Recap)

Last Sunday we took time to consider what kind of church God would have us be and what God would have us do as a church. More specifically, we asked, "How does the Lord want Roosevelt to fit into his mission to transform all things and bring everything under the reign of Jesus?"

I believe the charge to Roosevelt is twofold. First, we must be known as a thought(full) community. By "thought(full)" we are saying that we want to be a community that is full of thoughts about God. Over and over in the Bible we see that God is deeply concerned to have his people have their minds and hearts filled with thoughts, remembrances, reflections, meditations, upon God. Some examples include Exodus 3:15, 13:3, 1 Chron 28:9, Ps 1:2, 119:15-16, 77:11-12, Matt 16:22-23, Phil 4:8, Heb 10:16. There is one subject however that should tie all the thoughts of minds and hearts together, and that is Jesus. Jesus is the key work of God that must be at the center of all our reflections. See for example Eph 3:14-19, 2 Cor 4:6, Col 3:1-2.

Practically speaking, this means the mission of our church will always be tied into digging deep into God's word, for that's where we find what God wants us to think about, and more specifically continually meditating upon the gospel, for that is the main storyline of God's word.

Thoughts full of God must lead us in a certain direction. So, secondly we must be known as a purpose(full) community. By "purpose(full)" we are saying that we want to be a community that is full of purpose for God and specifically full of purpose for Christ. So for instance in Col 3:1-2 we are directed to have our minds set towards the direction of Christ. In so doing we then must be actually seeking Christ and the things that are associated with Christ (v.1). Some other examples of purpose set alongside thoughts are 2 Cor 10:5 and Phil 3:14-15. Arguably Matt 28:18-20 can be seen through this grid as well. Jesus gives his disciples two things to set their minds and hearts on, the fact that all authority in the cosmos belongs to Jesus and the fact that he will always be with them. Now, with those two facts in mind, the disciples are given a purpose, to go and make disciples of Jesus from all the nations.

Practically speaking this means that the mission of our church should be directed towards seeing as many people as possible encounter Christ for themselves. With that in mind I set before us the vision of a Roosevelt community that is known for boldly and constantly connecting with those who don't know Christ and boldly and constantly speaking the gospel to them. I have in mind a church where the majority of us, at least 60% of us, are the kind of people who are constantly talking to other people about Jesus. Some will of course be better than others at this. But all of us at the very least can be asking people, "Hey, this may be an awkward question but I want to know, 'What do you think about Jesus?'"

This could be a very big missional step forward for our church. Be praying that we take this step with confidence that the Lord truly wants to bless this kind of thing. By God's grace, let's be known as a church so full of Jesus that we just can't shut up about him.

“You Are My Lord” Psalm 16 (Sermon Recap)

Without Jesus there is little reason to trust God with your life. But because of what Jesus represents, namely the victory of God over everything – every evil, every sin, every difficulty, we now have every reason to trust God and believe in him by first believing in Jesus.

But what happens after you've trusted in Jesus? What happens next after you say, "You are my Lord" (Ps 16:2)? Psalm 16 offers us at least four answers.

The first answer is in the last part of Ps 16:2, and it is foundational to all the other answers offered in this psalm. When God becomes your God, you will feel the full goodness of the Lord. To say that the Lord is good is to say that all of life is meant to show his goodness. But even more, as this verse points out, it's to say that any time spent without the Lord is not good. Good does not exist apart from the Lord. Any consideration of something good begins and ends with God. As D.A. Carson puts it in For The Love of God: Vol 1, "In comparison with knowledge of our Maker and Redeemer, nothing else is worth very much, whether in this life or in the life to come. Apart from the Lord, we 'have no good thing.'"

Sadly, we so very often try to find good from things apart from the Lord. We do so because those things (things like sex or power or money or attention) seem to hold some promise of good for us. The Bible however confronts us with a much different reality - nothing can give us good unless it first comes through God. We cannot experience true and full goodness unless we are living in a relationship with God as our Lord. Everything else we might run after will only bring sorrows (Ps 16:4).

Secondly, when God becomes your God, you will feel the full delight with the Lord. There is first the delight of being with other people who also have made God their God (Ps 16:3). This is the delight of being in community with people who hold in common a serious commitment to God as their Lord. The real source of this delight however is the Lord himself (Ps 16:11). We should not overlook the bold claim made in Ps 16:11. This verse is telling us that with God there is complete, full, maximum joy! There are eternal things to enjoy with God. The joys we experience now all eventually end, whether it is the short term joy of meal that ends with the completion of that meal or the longer term joy of a relationship that ends with the death of one of the partners in the relationship. With God however such endings do not exist. Having God be your God means that there are things we will able to enjoy and delight in with him forever.

Thirdly, when God becomes your God, you will feel full security because of the Lord (Ps 16:8-10). When the Lord becomes your Lord, you gain the sound confidence of knowing that God has you and that there is nothing that can take away his presence in your life. You are safe in life and you are safe even in death.

How can we know this for sure? For this answer we look in the New Testament. Peter and Paul both quoted from Ps 16:8-10 and tied this passage to the resurrection of Jesus. God raising Jesus from the dead was his promise to us that just as he did not leave Jesus in the grave but raised him from the dead, so also will he raise all his people from the dead. Jesus' resurrection is a promise to all those who've made the Lord their God that they also will be set free from death spiritually and physically. Spiritual freedom means that we never need to fear that we will be apart from God. He will always keep us safe and secure with him. Physical freedom means that our very bodies will be kept safe from the power of death and in fact be made brand new.

God did not abandon Jesus, and now through Jesus and our relationship with God, neither will we who have believed in Jesus.

Fourthly and last, when God becomes your God, you will feel full satisfaction with the Lord (Ps 16:5-6). To be satisfied with the Lord is to say that the Lord is who you choose for yourself. And once you have him, you are fully satisfied. Being in the same space with God is a satisfying and pleasant experience. To have God as your God is to always have enough. What he has given you has "fallen into pleasant places." You have a "beautiful inheritance." You have God!

For truly, there is there is nothing in this world, nothing in this universe, more important than having God be your God. Clearly this can't be in just name only. For God to really be your God, and for you to then experience the goodness and delight and security and satisfaction that is only found in him, you have to set him before you as it says in v.8. Your heart must be open to his counsel and instruction. This means shaping your life in such a way that it is clear that that God is indeed God over your life.

How can you be sure that you are in fact shaping your life in this way? Hebrews 12:2 tells us about the necessity of looking to Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the throne of God. In looking to Jesus, in depending on the power of his death to kill all the wrongness we have within us and living in the power of his resurrection to keep all that wrongness forever dead within us, we will go in the right direction, we will have God be truly our God, and we will experience the full richness of all of what that means.

“How Long Lord?” Psalm 13 (Sermon Recap)

What do we do when it seems like God is not there? When it seems like God has closed up shop and isn't coming to the answer the door, especially when we need him the most? Psalm 8 addresses just these sorts of times. The psalm deals honestly with the pain and angst that comes when we travel through what the Puritans called "the dark night of the soul" or "the soul's wintertime." But it's from that honest place that this psalm then points us to the Lord and helps us see how we can in fact still trust in him, even in our most difficult troubles.

But first we start with lament (Ps 13:1-2). "Lament" is the word you use to describe what you feel like when you are slowly disintegrating and your world is falling in on you and all you can do is cry out to God, "How long?! How long?! How long must this go on?!" There are three things that bring David to lament in this psalm. First is God's seeming absence (Ps 13:1). Second is loneliness, naturally because God is absent (Ps 13:2a)). Third is defeat (Ps 13:2b), that sense that the enemy, whoever or whatever it is, has ultimately won the battle and stands in victory over your life.

Sadly, many people stop here. But lament is pointless and even pathetic unless it drives us even more to God. We must remember that the main issue here is, "Where is God?" Lament helps us express this honestly and even emotionally. But prayer is where lament begins to be worked out with possible answers.

So the next step in this journey must be prayer (Ps 13:3-4). It's important to see that this prayer emerges right out of the previous verses. In this prayer the psalmist is saying, "If I stay here in this place, I am overcome and fall down defeated and essentially "dead." The enemy will get the last word. This prayer is a cry out to God to not let this happen! God can't let the enemy win. He can't let the godless get the victory. And why can't he let this happen? It's because there is a relationship between God and the person praying. This is the important background to the prayer found in v.3. Notice what David says here. He is looking for answers not just from any God, he's looking for answers from "my God." While he can't figure out what God is doing, he knows that nevertheless God is the one and only place he must go to find support .

This is the one constant throughout this psalm and it gives us the direction we need to go if we are to get through the dark night of the soul. Frankly there are not many specific answers for why certain things happen to us. There are no clear answers, at least right now, for why some of us go through certain types of physical suffering or financial hardship or relational heartbreak or emotional pain. But our lament as we experience these things can still find a true and powerful resolution once we realize the powerful answer God has in fact given us. This answer is himself, and even more a relationship with him where we can see and know him for who he really is.

It's only when you've really seen and known God that you can end up ultimately in trust (Ps 13:5-6). Trust comes not so much from looking at your present circumstances but at the past. And what the past reveals is who God really is, namely, a God who is always loyal and committed to those with whom he is in relationship. To enter into a relationship with God is to enter into a commitment that God will never abandon. The Bible is full of examples of God's rock solid loving commitment to his people. Time and time again God has proven himself to be a God who saves and who will always save his people. He is a God who always has and always will do far more good towards those he loves than they could ever imagine or think.

It is in this God, then, whom we place our trust! It is in this God we can find hope and confidence and joy, for our hope and confidence and joy is based not on us but on him and our relationship with him. What's so great about this is that while our trust in God may be seem weak and feeble at times, it is still a reliable trust because it is based on God. The main question always is, have you put your trust in the Lord?

Remember, we trust in a Lord who knows what it is to cry out in lament. Consider the words of Jesus on the cross, "My God my God why have you forsaken me?" That is the cry of lament. This is the cry of someone who knows what it is feel abandoned, alone, and defeated. In Jesus what we are seeing is the Lord God allowing himself to be forsaken, to go through the dark night like we all must do, so that he might establish a safe path through that night. By following Jesus we can ourselves take that path and find a God in the end who we can trust and rejoice in.

Jesus is the key evidence of God's steadfast love towards us. Without the story of Jesus, we would not be wrong to say that life is dark and painful and meaningless. But with the story of Jesus, we can now say that while life is often dark, there is a light to help us walk through the darkness. While life is often painful, there is healing to help us endure it. While life often seems meaningless, there is in fact a bearer of life who has come and infused eternal meaning into our lives.

This is what the story of the gospel, the story of Jesus, does for all those who have believed in Jesus. Jesus gives our cries of "how long" power, because we can know for sure that God will and does hear our cries, and Jesus gives us our cries of "how long" confidence, and even joyful hope, because we can know for sure that God will answer them for our ultimate good in the end.

Don't Be Hating the Church

I loved this post from the blog, Between Two Worlds:

Kevin DeYoung, in Why We Love the Church (pp. 87-88, line breaks mine):

But then again, consistency is not a postmodern virtue. And nowhere is this more aptly displayed than in the barrage of criticisms leveled against the church.

The church-is-lame crowd hates Constantine and notions of Christendom, but they want the church to be a patron of the arts, and run after-school programs, and bring the world together in peace and love.

They bemoan the over-programmed church, but then think of a hundred complex, resource-hungry things the church should be doing.

They don’t like the church because it is too hierarchical, but then hate it when it has poor leadership.

They wish the church could be more diverse, but then leave to meet in a coffee shop with other well-educated thirtysomethings who are into film festivals, NPR, and carbon offsets.

They want more of a family spirit, but too much family and they’ll complain that the church is ‘inbred.’

They want the church to know that its reputation with outsiders is terrible, but then are critical when the church is too concerned with appearances.

They chide the church for not doing more to address social problems, but then complain when the church gets too political.

They want church unity and decry all our denominations, but fail to see the irony in the fact that they have left to do their own thing because they can’t find a single church that can satisfy them.

They are critical of the lack of community in the church, but then want services that allow for individualized worship experiences.

They want leaders with vision, but don’t want anyone to tell them what to do or how to think.

They want a church where the people really know each other and care for each other, but then they complain the church today is an isolated country club, only interested in catering to its own members.

They want to be connected to history, but are sick of the same prayers and same style every week.

They call for not judging "the spiritual path of other believers who are dedicated to pleasing God and blessing people," and then they blast the traditional church in the harshest, most unflattering terms.

HT: Mike Wittmer