Without the Spirit of God in
us, our heart could not cry out, Lord. I'd like to ask you to turn in your
Bibles to the 14th chapter of Exodus, please. As I said a moment ago, the first
thing that I heard sitting in this chair over here coming from
a man who's nothing more than a man saved by our Lord Jesus
Christ, a sinner saved by grace. But yet a man who spoke God's
Word, and that man told me, the God of all creation, the creator of all things is
Lord of all. Otherwise you wouldn't call Him
God. You couldn't call Him God. For the title of God must mean
everything. All things are of Him. All the air we breathe, everything
that happens to us, everything that happens around us. He's
God of everything. Or He's not God at all. This morning I would like to
talk to you about great things. Great things. What comes to your
mind when you consider the phrase great things? I was speaking to Danielle about
that a moment ago, the rock formations of Yosemite. Have you ever stood at the bottom
of the El Capitan rock and looked back? or maybe at the ice fields of
Canada, by Jasper, Canada. 300 feet of solid ice on top
of a 200 foot ridge. And it's just straight up and
down, and it never melts, maybe a little bit, enough for a river
to come out the bottom and travel 850 miles out and become the
Columbia. What about the night sky? Have
you ever stopped? You know, I've got to tell you
something. One of the things about staying up here on the weekends, and
I believe we're going to start staying here a lot more, but
the stars up here are amazing. Yeah, I've been camping, and
I've sat on top of mountaintops and French meadows, Forest Hill,
and even up here at Echo Summit, Tahoe, and seen the stars. And
they're magnificent, absolutely. But when you live down there
in that smog-infested valley, everything is filtered through
the smog, even at night. You think that yellow stuff goes
away at night? No, it's still there. And you don't see the
stars because there's so much other light around you. But you
get up here out of the valley where you've got no light around
you, you can look up and it's just, man! What a great thing
our God has created! How cool! All that stuff! And of course nowadays they can
see beyond what we can see with the naked eye, and there's even
some really, really neat stuff out there that we can see. And
God created all that. Those are great things. How about
the ocean? You ever sit on the beach of
an ocean and think about how great that is? It just goes on
and on and on. The waves just keep coming and
keep coming. Oh, the life that is out there
in that deep. All the different magnificent
animals that our God has created. What about an event? Does it
bring to your mind maybe an event when you think of great things?
Some, like myself, may think of a child. Was that a great event for you?
Some may be thinking about a marriage. Possibly one sometime around
August. Could that be a great event?
I bet it is. 42 years ago, I had one of those
great events. 40 years ago, I had another great
event when my son was born. And then a little bit after that,
I had another great event when my daughter was born. So an event
could be a great thing also, could it not? Could that be something
that follows that comes across your mind? We all have something
or some event that we can call a great thing in our lives. Or
maybe you don't. Are you with me in Exodus 14?
I'd like to take a look at an event that one might call a great
thing, beginning at verse 21. And Moses stretched out his hand
over the sea. And the Lord caused the sea to
go back by a strong east wind all that night. And he made the
sea dry land and the waters were divided. And the children of
Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground. And the waters were a wall unto
them on their right hand and on their left." Are you getting
a picture of this? This is a real event, folks.
This is not some fairy tale story or a parable. This really happened. This is
how Israel was delivered from Egypt. And these people are walking. The winds picked up yesterday,
didn't it? Yeah, that's what the Lord says right here. All night, and made the sea dry
land. So the winds picked up yesterday,
and now we're walking right between walls of water. I can't even
imagine what that looked like, but it had to be something spectacular. And the waters were a wall unto
them on their right hand and on their left. And the Egyptians
pursued and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even
all of Pharaoh's horses and his chariots and his horsemen. And
it came to pass that in the morning, watch, the Lord looked out, looked
unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of the fire
and of the cloud and troubled the host of the Egyptians. And
he took off their chariot wheels, that they draved them heavily.
So that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel,
for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians. And the
Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea,
that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their
chariots and upon their horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his
hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its strength when
the morning appeared, and the Egyptians fled against it, and
the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And
the waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen
and all the hosts of the Pharaoh that came into the sea after
them, and there remained not so much as one of them. But the children of Israel, the
people of God, All the different nations that had been in the
world at that time. It wasn't just Egypt and Israel,
you know. They still had the Canaanites
and all of the other ites and Hittites and all the other ites
and all the Hittites. I already said that. But there
was a lot of other people out there. But there was only one
people. One people who had the oracles
of God with them. Those who were chosen of God.
Our Lord is preaching election. And the waters returned and covered
the chariots and the horsemen. But the children of Israel, in
verse 29, walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea, and
the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their
left hand. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand
of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the
seashore. And Israel saw that great work. which the Lord did upon the Egyptians. And the people feared the Lord
and believed the Lord and His servant Moses. What an event
these people of Israel had just witnessed. Can you imagine what
it must have been like to be bound in slavery? You and I can't even comprehend
what slavery is. even though our government seems
to be talking a bunch of foolishness about it right now. We have no
idea truly what it would be like to be slaves. Here we have a people who were
bound, bound by the Egyptians in a way
that we can't even comprehend, beaten, used, used OK, so we
lost 500 today putting that big rock up there on whatever pyramid. OK, that's no biggie. We've got
500 more over here. That's the attitude of the Egyptians. That
was their attitude. Our dogs are better taken care
of than these people. The burden of sin is on every
man. And that's what sin is like. That's what sin does to men and
women. The burden of this people. Imagine
what it was like for them to stand on the other side now.
And that great thing that they had just seen delivered them
from their bondage. The Egyptians could no longer
pursue after them. They no longer had to worry about
it. They may have had other worries to worry about ahead of them,
but for this moment, that bondage was gone and they were delivered
by the only one who could, God Almighty. And it was perfectly
clear who did it. What a great thing that must
have been to see. But know this, there were people right there
in that group who saw that great thing. Who saw the wall standing
straight up and down and walking on dry ground underneath it. They saw it first hand and yet
they did not know the wonders of the Lord and the greatest
deeds that He would do. Turn in your Bibles to the book
of Luke, if you would, chapter 8. Many witnessed the great miracles
of God, and they missed the greatness of them. Do you understand what I mean by
that? We saw the great miracle of God separating the Red Sea, but they did not understand what
it meant. They did not see that it was
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ saving us, saving His chosen
people, saving His elect, those for whom He is loved before the
foundation of the world, before anything was ever made. A picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ and what He would go through, what
He would go through to save us. He would go through judgment.
He who is perfect in every way was made to be sin that we would
be made righteous in Him. These people saw the miracle
of God right before their very eyes, yet they're going to go
out into the wilderness and forget it. Which is exactly what you
and I would do. Which is exactly what many have
come into this very building and have done. We are few. God has brought a lot of people
into this building over the 20 years that I've been here. Many
come and many go. Why are you staying? The Lord has placed His miracle
upon your heart. He has shown you who it is that
did that miracle. That miracle of delivering you
from the sin that you once were in. That doesn't mean we don't
sin still. We still have the sin of the
flesh. But my spirit stands in the Lord Jesus Christ perfect
as He is. My Savior has paid for that sin. And although I dread it and I
try not to, I can count on His promises. Can you? Can you stand on His
promises? Because His promises are sure.
I shall never leave you nor forsake you, He says. That's a promise
that's so sure, we can count on it. We can put everything
we have on it. These ones who witnessed this
great miracle of God, they miss the greatness of it. For instance,
we know that the manna from heaven, they got out here into the wilderness.
Oh, Moses! We missed the fine herbs that
we had. We had it so good back there
in Bond Beach. Oh, yeah, they didn't care if
we lived or not, and they killed us all the time. But the foods
were much better than what we have out here. We had doves. We had birds. We had food. We
had nothing out here. Moses goes to God. He says, God,
we've got to feed these people something. OK, fine. I'll give
them something that nobody else has ever seen. And it tastes
like honey. We'll give you some little wafers
and we call it manna from heaven, bread from heaven. They saw the miracle of manna
growing in the desert. And they had no idea what manna
meant. They had no idea what it was
a picture of. They had no idea that it was
the food from heaven that you and I feed on. No, we don't eat His flesh. We
don't actually eat and drink His blood. But that's what sustains
me. That's what sustains us as we
go through this world, seeing all the stuff around us, seeing
our own sin within our flesh. The only thing that sustains
me is to know that my Lord and Savior has paid for that with
His flesh and with His blood. The only thing that keeps me
going with that very knowledge of my sin is that He has paid
for it. And now He looks at me as though
I am as righteous as He is. He sees that sin no more. What about the rock? You know, they were traveling.
And the rock went with them. And water flowed from the rock
in the desert. What a miracle that must have
been to see! But yet they could not see with
the heart what that meant. The water, a picture of the gospel,
the good news that goes out. We drink the still waters of
our life in Him. Many witnessed the great miracles
of God and they missed the greatness of them. Yet in all these things
the people turned and they went their own ways. The most wonderful
thing our God has done for me, the most great thing that I can
tell you today He has done for me, is reveal Himself to me. To give me an understanding of
who He truly is. To personally touch me. that I wouldn't walk through
life and see miracles all around me and not know what they meant.
Now I know what it all means. It means my Lord is Lord of all. You see, that's true worship
of God, folks. Recognizing, understanding, and
declaring that He is Lord of everything. Not just Lord of
this, this. No, He's not Lord of that over
there. That's their own free will. They don't want to give
that up to the Lord. Our Lord is Lord of everything. Or you cannot call Him God. Heaven came down and glory filled
my soul. We can see all the greatness
of our Creator throughout all of creation. The wonder of birds. The wonders of a mole that just
pops up out of the ground. Kathy didn't think that was very
wonderful, but it still is. We can see the wonders of the
body. When you think about the heart
that pumps in our chest, isn't it amazing how that muscle moves
all that blood through the body and the body works? And all that
stuff works together. You put something in up here
and it comes out other places. This is all just a magnificent
thing that our God has created. You know that, don't you Danel?
Being a nurse. But can you see the greatness
of His love? The greatness of His love for
His people. Has He touched your heart and made you whole? Are you with me in Luke chapter
8? Join me in reading verse 26. Luke 8 verse 26, And they arrived
at the country of the Gadareans, which is over against Galilee.
And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city
a certain man, which had devils long time, and wear no clothes,
neither abode in any house but in the tombs. in the tombs of
the dead. What a sad picture. But this is a picture of you
and I before the Lord came and gave us a new heart. We were
dead in trespasses and sin until the Lord came to us. Not lost to Him, but lost to
ourselves and gave us life. We abode in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out
and fell down before Him. Verse 28, with a loud voice,
and he said, What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of
God, Most High? I beseech Thee, torment me not. For he had commanded the unclean
spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught
him, and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters, and he
broke the bands and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.
And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said,
Legion, because many devils were entered into him. And they besought Him that He
would not command them to go out into the deep. And there
was there a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain. And
they besought Him that He would suffer them to enter into them.
And He suffered them. Then went the devils out of the
man and entered into the swine. And the herd ran violently down
a steep place and into a lake and were choked. And when they
that fed them saw what was done, they fled and went out and told
it in the city and in the country. And when they had went out to
see what was done and came to Jesus, they found the man out
of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus,
clothed and in His right mind, and they were afraid. Here is
this man who at one time would break any of the chains you could
put on him. Who went around screaming and
crying out and acting all the things that men do in the world.
And now, what is he doing? He's sitting at the feet of Jesus
in what? In His right mind. They also which saw it told them
by what means, verse 36, that He was possessed of the devils
and was healed. Then the multitude of the country of the Gadareans
round about besought Him, speaking of our Lord Jesus, to depart.
to depart from them, for they were taken of great fear, and
He went up into a ship and returned back again." Now here's what
I want you to see. Now the man out of whom the devils
were departed besought Him that He might be with him, speaking
of being with Jesus. But Jesus sent him away saying,
return into thine own house and show, and show how great things
God hath done unto thee. And he went his way and published
throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto
him. He who has light does not hide
the light that is in a closet or under a bed. No, the light
is placed. It's placed where it can light
up the room. When God has revealed His great love to one of His
chosen people, we cannot withhold it. In John 4.14, our Lord said to
the woman at the well, But whosoever drinketh of the water that I
shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give
him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting
life. We can't hide the fact from those
around us that our God rules everything. I mistakenly said
something to somebody the other day about, look, oh, you're one
of those. Well, yes I am. I seriously doubt
I'll ever have another conversation with that person. Not because
I don't want to, but because they probably don't want to. But to declare that my Lord is
Lord over everything, oh, you're one of those. When one has been given the gift
of faith, the gift of belief, the new birth, the new heart,
the gospel flows as a river, and we publish what great things
our Lord and Savior has done for us, don't we? What has your God done for you?
He saved me from me. What do you mean by that? I was
on the path to destruction. And I didn't know it, but I was
one of His. I was like a lost sheep wandering around on the
hillside. And He came to me. He came to me by drawing me in
that I would hear His gospel preached and know who He is. It may be the way we walk. It may be the way we talk. You
know, all you have to do is walk around and enjoy the creation
of God around you and people will say, why are you always
happy? Look what my Lord did in the
clouds up there, isn't that cool? Oh, you're one of those. It may be the way we talk or
the way we walk, but the light does shine. Has the Lord done
great things for you? Oh, what it is to be a certain
man, like that certain man. Or a certain woman, like that
certain woman. For God to call them a certain
man or woman means that they're His. It means they belong to Him.
Now I belong to Jesus. Oh, what it is to be a certain
man or a certain woman, one for whom the Savior has given the
greatest gift of all. The greatest thing of all. That was the giving of Himself.
God became a man. Glory was made flesh. Heaven
came down. He was born of a woman, born
under the law that he would fulfill that law perfectly for his people,
for his elect. And he did it perfectly without
spot. This is my beloved Son, said
God from heaven, on whom I am well pleased. He did it perfectly. We who could
not are saved because He did. His obedience, even the obedience
unto death, is our only hope of salvation. His justice is
satisfied for us. In 2 Corinthians 5.21 we read,
For He, God the Father, had made Him, God the Son, to be sin for
us, His elect. who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. A day of judgment
is coming for all. Those who have walked in their
own righteousness shall be cast away into eternal damnation. If you are trusting in anything,
anything that you have done, If you think because you have
walked down to the front of the aisle and prayed some prayer
with some man, or made a decision that you'll start following the
Lord Jesus Christ, or you got into the baptismal waters and
you think because you got in there, or you come to the Lord's
table, or you stop doing whatever you were doing on Sunday and
you start coming to church, if you think any of those things, God is going to say to you, Depart
from Me, ye workers of iniquity. God's people stand in Christ
and in Christ alone. There is nothing in the flesh
that we can have any confidence in. And that includes your thoughts,
your feelings, whatever. Put those things aside and believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ. There is a people for whom Christ
died. A people that were given to Him
before the world was. God the Father gave God the Son
a people that God the Son would pay their sin debt with His own
precious blood. This people are from every kindred,
every nation, every tribe. And in the day of His power,
through God the Spirit, they will be made willing. They will be made alive. We who
were once dead now live because of Him and for Him. Turn over to the first chapter
of Luke, chapter 1, and I'll bring this to a close. When God, by His Spirit, through
the preaching of His Word, has put His light of truth in one
of those for whom He has loved with an eternal love. And that's
what He says. He says, I have loved you with
an eternal love. That means eternal that way,
to eternal that way. He's always loved us and He will
always love us. We are amazed by His sovereign
loving grace. A grace that would save a wretch
like me, as Paul said. Mary was blessed with carrying
the God child. He whose name is Emmanuel, God
with us. He who is called Jesus, for He
shall save His people. And her reaction is no less than
of all who are brought to know the Savior. Look at verse 46 with me of chapter
1, Luke 1, chapter 1 verse 46. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord."
Mary had just seen an angel of the Lord come to her and tell
her who this child in her was, and who the child in her cousin
Elizabeth's was. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify
the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. For he hath regarded the lowest
state of his handmaid. We know our depravity. For us to look to the only God,
we must see what we are first, and we are completely depraved
of anything that we could give to Him. We have nothing. And my spirit hath rejoiced my
God, for He hath regarded the lowest state of His handmaiden.
For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy
is his name. And his mercy is on them that
fear him from generation to generation. He hath showed strength with
His arm. He hath scattered the proud with the imagination of
their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats and
exalted them of a low degree. He hath filled the hungry with
good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away. He hath
opened His servant Israel in remembrance of His mercy, as
He spoke to our fathers through Abraham and to His seed forever. Our God is great for great things
He has done. Amen? Would you stand with me
please?