Turn back in your Bibles to Exodus
chapter 16. Exodus 16. We are in our second
consideration of training day as we are making our journey
through the wilderness once again with the Old Testament saints
and learning some things about the way God works. And for those
of you who are new with us, we are going through a series in
the book of Exodus on the children of Israel's journey through the
wilderness into the promised land. And we are learning some
things that we have been taught before, but we realize that it's
all right to be taught again those things that we had learned
before, because we often, often let them slip. So we will be
going through about another 10 weeks of revisiting these Old
Testament events I'm trying to see what the Lord has to say
to us again about what it means to be taught how to depend upon
God, how to trust God, how to walk with God, how to live with
God. Last week we dealt with the need,
the need of a situation that had become bitter to the people
of God because they were three days journey into the wilderness
and they found no water to drink and God came through, didn't
he? God came through. And this is the thing that we
will learn week in and week out, that God comes through. So now let me get you into some
trouble as I prepare to preach to you. I want you all to say
with me, God comes through. And God comes through every time. Now I notice everybody didn't
say that. But I want to make sure that
you understand that that's going to be the theme from heaven to
earth as the children of Israel make their excursion from Egypt
to Canaan. God is going to come through
every time. Now, those of us who have come
to know the true and the living God in the person of Jesus Christ
for some years now, we must admit that God has been faithful to
us. Is that true? That not one thing that God has
promised us has ever failed. Not one time. Not one time. Now, in the manner in which God
deals with us and addresses us, we have come to learn that God
will deal with us on his own terms, not ours. And we have
discovered that you can wrestle with God, but you're going to
lose every time you try to get God on your page and do things
your way. See, when God called you out
of darkness into His marvelous light, He brought you into a
whole new paradigm, a whole new construction, a whole new worldview,
and you have to now learn how to walk with God. You gotta learn
how to walk with God. And so the children of Israel
were a bunch of former slaves, like you and I were slaves of
sin. You and I were in bondage to
hell. We were under the authority of a ruler who had no love for
us. His job was to wear us out and send us to hell. And then
the true and the living God broke in on the scene without us asking
for him. and saved us from our wretched
condition and brought us out with a high hand and in great
power to show us how the gospel effectually saves a sinner by
grace. And then God began to lead us
as his own people. And I told you last week what
Israel had to learn quickly as they were going to make their
journey from bondage to freedom to success and glory, they had
to learn that they were under new management. Didn't we talk
about that last week? And when you come under new management,
you come under a new constitution. You come under a new covenant.
You come under a new set of principles. You got to throw all that other
stuff out the window that you learned under that old system.
And so Israel is going to struggle like you and I struggle. You
might as well set the facts straight now. One of the things you're
going to see in the life of the children of Israel is yourself.
Israel is going to struggle until Israel comes to realize that
God is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. That God cannot
lie, he cannot change, and he will not fail. but we are called
upon by God to trust Him, which is the hardest thing a human
being can do. Trusting God is hard. So all I need is one witness
in the house to bear record with me. Trusting God is hard, isn't
it? Trusting God is difficult. Trusting
God is counterintuitive. Trusting God is not something
that we do naturally because God's thoughts not our thoughts
and God's ways are not our ways now those two principles right
there are enough to keep you and I discombobulated and struggling
all the days of our life can you imagine having to always
defer to God's thoughts before you act because you know your
thoughts are naturally going to be contrary to God's thoughts
and every time we act out of our own thought we get in trouble
not sometimes every time You know, you would think that we
would learn that if I yield to my thoughts, I'm going to get
in trouble. But we have this audacity, this propensity to
still try to trust our schemes and our machinations every so
often. Well, let me see if my thoughts
are right this time. No, they're always wrong. They're always wrong. And it
takes a long time to get to the place where we say, Lord, take
me by the hand and lead me to glory land. And don't listen
to nothing I say, because everything I say is wrong. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard.
But we've got to learn some things today. So without any further
ado, we'll work our way through seven points today. I've got
so much to talk about, but I'm just going to spend a few minutes
talking about a number of things. First and foremost, If you read
verse 1 through 4 of our text, we come across another test. Chapter 16, verses 1 through
4 clearly allude to us the situation and then God's response. And
when they took their journey to Elam, all the congregation
of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of sin. Don't
mark that as sin in the sense of transgression. This is simply
a location, a place in the wilderness that was some distance from Egypt. Now the children of Israel are
deep, deep, deep, deep into the wilderness. Let me help you establish
the context. It's one thing to be three days
away from water. We struggled with that last week,
didn't we? God intentionally let Israel out into the wilderness
three days journey so that they would begin to learn what it
means to worship God and depend upon him. Now we are two and
a half months into the journey. That's a long time, isn't it?
Especially to be walking and to be carrying children and goods
and clothes and resources and food. And all we had was the
food that we brought with us from Egypt. Two and a half months
in, our resources are drying up. We are 1.5 million people
deep. That's a lot of folks walking
the backside of the Arabian desert where there are no resources. There is no Jack in the box.
There's no McDonald's. There's no Burger King. There's
no pizza joint. Are you hearing me? Nothing. and you are walking through this
desert. Now you may feel comfortable
for a day or two or maybe a week with 1.5 million people, but
because the desert is so large, after a while, 1.5 million people
look just like our group here today, 600, 700 people. It gets
small, it gets small. And then all of a sudden you
become self-conscious. especially when you fall prey
to once again, what we will see in our point. Our first point
is the horizontal dilemma. Remember we talked about the
horizontal dilemma, the incapacity on the part of the human to be
able to look up and maintain a vertical perspective with regards
to the one who was leading them. The failure for us to be able
to transcend the immediate circumstance. As one scholar put it, Israel
was the kind of people that were trapped by the moment. Trapped
by the moment. And a lot of us live our lives
like that. Trapped by the moment. They don't have the capacity
to rise above the moment and consider the benefits of the
past, nor the benefits of heaven, nor the promises of the future.
They're stuck in the moment. Have you been there? Stuck in
the moment and when you are stuck in the moment, you don't have
a promise to lean on For faith is the substance of things hope
for well when you're stuck in the moment You are as carnal
and unbelieving as the person who has never heard the gospel
When you're stuck in the moment when you're stuck in the immediate
circumstance, when you are trapped by all of the external events
that appear to be completely against you, you are in the wilderness,
all your food is gone, there is no water to be found anywhere
and as far as the eye can see, all you see is desert. I'm flying
over to Africa several decades ago and I had to go across the
desert And I'm 35,000 feet up in the air. Well, we descended
to about 20,000 feet. And I'm looking out at a plane
over the plains of the desert. And we're flying across the desert
at about 500 miles per hour. And it took us hours to fly across
the desert. I'm saying, Lord, don't let this
plane go down in the desert. Because as far as I saw back
behind me and as far as I can see in front of me, there is
no help. So let's just keep this bird
flying all the way until we reach civilization. So I respect Israel. I respect their plight. I respect
their challenge. I respect their difficulty. Because
it actually, by way of application, applies to someone who is put
in a situation where they have no resources at all. None! Now, I doubt if there's
a person in the room here who has ever been in that precise
kind of situation. I doubt if you could come up
here and stand up here and say, I had days when I had nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing. I
couldn't find anything on the right or on the left or behind
me or in front of me. And I was completely like the
children of Israel in the middle of the desert. I doubt if I could
find one person who would come up here and say that and be accurate
about it. Now, it's one thing for you to
feel like you don't have anything. But fail to utilize the resources
that are available to you out of pride or ignorance or stubbornness. You know how we do Lord, i'm
gonna trust you But then the helicopter comes by to save your
drowning butt and you fail to reach out and grab the life raft
No, and i'm using this by way of a practical application because
daily you and I are going through trials And a lot of times we
neglect the benefits and the resources and the providences
that God brings into our life. So I want you to respect what
Israel is going through because what Israel is going through
is test number two. Now when God puts you in a test,
He puts you in a place where you must now reckon with God. Because there are no human resources
wherewith you can now change or alter the circumstance on
your own. He let you try that all the way
up to the test. And he stripped you of all the
resources. Remember what we learned? Marah meant to trickle out, to
trickle out, to trickle out like a leaking faucet. You are satiated
and so thirsty and so famished that you are ready to just drink
a gallon of water at once. You cut the faucet on and just
a drop comes out. That frustrates you. Well, this
is what Israel is struggling through. continually in the wilderness,
being famished, being fearful, being carnal, being selfish,
and needing, legitimately needing, legitimately needing. The food
is gone. This is where the context is
rendering us the complaint that comes to us in verse 2. And the
whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses
and Aaron in the wilderness, And the children of Israel said
unto them, would to God, you know how religious we can get
even complaining against God's providence? Would to God we had
died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we
sat by the flesh pots. Do you understand how delusional
you get? when you are stuck in the horizontal
dilemma. And the only reasonable response
you have and reflection is on things you thought were good
in the past. And you know how we paint the
picture like it was so wonderful. So wonderful. Here, these were
a bunch of slaves. under the difficult and rigorous
control of a master who took away the mortar so that they
had to make bread without straw. They're under a laborious, grievous,
toilsome situation back there in Egypt. How on earth could
they translate that horrible condition to sitting by the flesh
pots? That's like living right next
door to the restaurant. That's living on top of Safeway.
I'm just saying the mindset here is extremely Deceptive and deceiving. Oh That we were back in the days
when we live right by the flesh by four points in your outline
another test and another revelation The revelation first of all comes
through the test where we discover our carnality you guys know when
we're not under test when we're not under pressure when we're
not under trials and We have a tendency to fancy ourselves
as being spiritual and wise and mature and strong in Christ.
Have you ever failed for that lie in your life? You've been
doing well for about a week and you thought you were strong,
strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. And then
you stub your toe and you realize how carnal you really are. This
is what Israel is going through. I want you to get this now. There
are real people with real issues like you and I have, and the
test becomes a revelation both of them and God. The first one
is murmuring, once again exposing the horizontal dilemma. You guys
can take that concept and work with it because you'll discover
that when you are stuck in that horizontal, you can't see God
actively, providentially in your life, nor can you believe Him.
You can read your Bible forever and a day, but while you are
stuck in the horizontal dilemma, you can't believe God. Am I telling
the truth? You're reading, and God is talking
about how He comes through every time, how He would never suffer
His people to drought or thirst or famine, that He will always
meet their needs. And in your own mind, you're
trying to find a way to correlate that promise with your experience,
and you can't believe it. That's what happens when you're
stuck in the horizontal dilemma. Here you are waiting and hoping
and praying and desiring for a job and you haven't gotten
a job in one year. You're really tripping. You're
tripping. God, you know, I don't know if
God comes through. That's the horizontal dilemma. The second one becomes the complaint
factor. That's the second one that comes.
When we get stuck in the horizontal dilemma, we move from a lack
of believing God and the promises of God To complaining this is
going to be the constant theme. I told you the word murmur means
you go Just like an engine that's stuck you cut the engine on you
rev it up, but the transmission doesn't work And that's what's
going on in the soul in your soul you're constantly complaining
Someone knows what i'm talking about And it wears you out It
wears you out. You know, after a while your
soul turns around and looks at you and go, man, what's that all about? That's
what David said in the Psalms. So when he said to his soul,
my soul, why are you disquieted in me? Why are you cast down? You know, that's what the spirit
has to do to the soul. It has to turn to the soul and start
telling the soul, man, you tripping. The same God that made me made
you. He's our deliverance. Look to God. I will yet trust
him as my continence as my God as my strength That's what David
said, right? Sometimes you got to talk to yourself like that
Shake yourself from the stupor of your carnality and get back
to the place where you are trusting God but we get the complaining
and it's just fascinating how this model works both in relationship
with God and In the husband and wife scenario, but I diverse
let me get back. The third one is I the delusion
of better days. Let me say this because I've
heard people who are trapped by the horizontal dilemma for
long periods of time often depict yesterday as being better than
today. You meet these people. These
are people who I call time warp people stuck in history. stuck
in history past. These are the folks that you
used to know 20 years ago and you guys went your way and you
met up with them 20 years later and they still talking about
what y'all used to do 20 years ago. And you have moved on so
far from those individuals that when you ran across them, you
didn't even know their name. Hallelujah. God had delivered
you so much that you didn't know their name. And you want to be
cordial, so you say, Lord, reveal this person's name so I can act
like I have some interest in them. But in fact of matter,
I really don't care. I just want to be cordial here.
Because what you have at this moment is history meeting future. And the two are going in opposite
directions. And there is no relationship to be established when future
meets history. I'm going this way, you're going
that way, and we're just two ships passing on the sea. I'll
see you later. And sometimes when we are in
the horizontal dilemma, we can start talking about the past
as if it was better than the moment. And that's a complete
betrayal of the gospel. It's a complete betrayal of the
glory of God. It is an utter diametrically
opposite of what God has called you to. Totally opposite of what
you've been called to. You and I have been called to
forward thinking, a forward agenda, an upward calling, future promise,
a future plan, a future glory, the people of God are pressing
toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. We've
got no business being stuck in the past. You've got to be careful
too on an academic level. particularly my pastor brethren
and my young theologians and the young brothers that are teaching
and preaching. Be careful that you don't fall prey to listening
to the stories about how well it used to be 500 years ago or
300 years ago. Please follow me now. That kind
of exaggeration of the truth will get you in trouble. I want
you to understand that the whole human race has been having problems
since Adam and Eve failed. The world has been full of trouble
up to this very moment. In fact, you know who I like
most? I like Jacob. That's when Jacob finally made
it to Egypt after his son Joseph was a forerunner to bring them
in. And you know, God had to work Jacob over, didn't he? I'm
going to talk about him in a moment. But by the time Jacob gets to
Egypt, entering into the blessings of a promise that was given to
his granddaddy, Abraham, when Pharaoh asked Jacob how he was
doing. Do you know what Jacob said?
He finally told the truth for once, because you know he was
tricky, Jacob, telling lies, hooking and conniving all the
time. and yet God had his hand on him. Finally, he said, few
and evil have been all my days, Pharaoh. I'm going to just tell
you the truth. I've been having trouble in my life since day
one up to this very moment. Now, he was a child of God. He
was a child of God. You know what he was admitting
to? He was admitting to the providences that had taken place in his life
because he failed to recognize the faithfulness of God and he
was doing things in his own strength. You remember how he went after
Rachel, end up having to work almost 20 years for that sister?
You got to be in love to work for a sister for 20 years. And
yet God was stripping him, breaking him down, changing his character,
destroying his strength. Remember when he met the God
of glory for himself and God stuck his finger on his side,
the angel of the Lord broke his hip in order to turn his name
from Jacob to Israel. If any man be in Christ Jesus,
he's a what? new creature and when God actually saves you,
he doesn't exalt you, he humbles you. When he saves you, he does
not exalt you, he humbles you. The gospel has to become a reality
in your life. When God saves a man or woman,
he does not, he will learn that he cannot, he must not ever steal
God's glory. So Jacob had to learn, few and
evil have been my days. I say that to say this, the Hebrew
writer put it in Hebrews chapter 11 verse 15 and 16 about the
whole panoply of believers from Abel all the way to the New Testament
that if the children of Israel had a real desire and a real
want to go back to Egypt, they would have found a way to get
there. I want you to see that. Now watch this, because this
is a principle I want you to get. This is a principle that's designed
to keep you from falling prey to apostasy. Hebrews chapter
11. Listen to what the Hebrew writer
says. I want you to get this. And then I want this to resonate
with you as an axiom, as a principle, so that when you are listening
to your brothers and sisters talk about how good it was yesterday,
how good it was last week, how good it was a few years ago,
how good it was when I was back in the other place. that you
can step back and make sure that when the ground opens up and
swallow them up, it does not get you. Hebrews chapter 11 verse 13 says
they all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having
seen them afar off. That's the nature of the walk
of faith for the believer. You guys know that? You and I
have promises that we do not fully receive in this life, but
we do see them afar off. And it's what compels us and
it's what Propels us toward the promises. That's what it means
to walk by faith and they were persuaded of them They embraced
them and they confessed now watch it now that they were strangers
and pilgrims on the earth when your mindset is that your family
is the family of God and that your journey through this world
is one of a Pilgrim and a stranger you won't be trapped by the seductive
and alluring Distractions that this world has to keep you from
making the end of your journey Now if you think if you think
however mentally That God has saved you in order for you to
enjoy this life your best life now you're gonna be in trouble. Listen to what the text says.
For they that say such things declare plainly, the word is
boldly, that they seek a country. The operative word is seek. When
you meet people that are forward thinking, upward bound, glory
bound, their whole focus and prism and pursuit transcends
the temporal and the immediate. They deal with what's in front
of them. They don't deny what's in front of them. We have to
deal with what's in front of us. In fact, that's what God wants
us to do. We're going to learn that in a moment. But true believers
who are committed to the promises of God walk in hope of the glory
of God. We just want to get from day
to day moving forward in the calling with which God has called
us. This will keep us from being trapped by the lie that yesterday
was better than today. Mark verse 15, and truly, if
they had been mindful of that country, the operative word is
mindful. If they had been mindful of that
country from which they came, mindful of what country? Egypt,
the world, the sinful past that you and I were bound to, enslaved
in, that was destroying us and tearing us apart, of which we
thanked God like I don't know what when he delivered us from
it. But now that we are walking in a new way that requires a
new contract, a new paradigm, a new model of thinking, a new
way of life, because we're under a new management by a new king,
a new sovereign, whose ways are not our ways and thoughts are
not our thoughts. And so we got to be transformed by the renewing
of our mind that we might know the good and acceptable and perfect
will of God. And all that takes work to change
my thoughts. so that I can stay on course
for the glory of God with the God of glory who delivered me
out of darkness into his marvelous light. If I fail to understand
that principle and find myself thinking about yesterday, yesterday,
how it used to be yesterday, the Hebrew writer said, an opportunity
to go back is available for people who are always thinking about
yesterday. This is how you see people fall
back into sin. This is how you find people who
fall into apostasy. This is how you find people who
drift away, gradually drift away from the race. We talk about
the pattern all the time. They hear the gospel, it powerfully
impacts them. They sit up front for about a
month, six months, a year. Then they start working their
way to the middle world. Then they're all the way at the back row.
Then they come in late. Then they hit and miss every
month or so. Then we don't see them again. They were mindful
of the other country. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
They're mindful of the other country. So it's very important
for you to know that there is a digression and a gradation
of a process by which, if you are not careful, you can find
yourself out. This is the danger of what the
Hebrew writer is saying in Hebrews 3 when it says, so we see that
they could not enter in because of unbelief. because of unbelief. Point number two, go back with
me to your text. So God is going to deal with this. I want you
to, if you feel like you are precisely like the Israelites
today, I just want you to know God's laid his hand on you. He's
going to deal with you. He's going to help you understand.
And part of him helping you understand is when he brings you under teaching
that is poignant and clear and precise, poignant, clear, and
precise. that does not mind getting into
your business and dealing with you personally. That's how God
deals with you. That way you know the voice of
the Lord in the ministry of the word is specifically for you
rather than kind of a generic message that you can kind of
listen to or not. You can tell when you come to church that
God is talking to you. He's talking to you. And that's
how God breaks you out of that kind of thinking that sets you
up to be trapped. Point number two, an act of redemptive
revelation. So what God says in chapter 16,
verse three and four is this. In verse four, he says, then
said the Lord unto Moses, behold, I will rain bread from heaven
for you. And the people shall go out and
gather a certain rate every day. Now here it is that I may what?
Test them. Test them. Prove them. That's what he said last week,
didn't he? Another test, another revelation. They are murmuring,
complaining. They're telling Moses and Aaron.
They're complaining at the two. This is one of the points in
another test, another revelation. When you and I are trapped by
the horizontal dilemma, we love to blame secondary causes, tertiary
causes. We love to blame the people around
us for our problem. Children love to blame their
parents. Wives love to blame their husbands. Husbands love
to blame their wives. Employees love to blame the employer. This is when we're stuck on the
horizontal as if God's not on his throne running the universe.
as if God hasn't specifically ordained the events that are
transpiring so that you can come to trust him in his manner and
method of delivering you. But you're so stuck on the horizontal
dilemma that you are blaming the things seen instead of trusting
the things that are unseen. Now, you know, so long as we
are operating out of that model, we are not walking by what? We
are not walking by what? We are not walking by faith.
can be sure of that. And we're going to see this when
we make our way down the line. Did point number one come through
for you guys? Good. Point number two then, an act
of redemptive revelation. Let me talk about this briefly.
I love the manner in which we do ministry here because whatever
class we teach, whether it's our women's theology class, our
men's theology class, our Friday Bible study, everything relates. We make sure we operate out of
sort of a Continuum of themes running through every class.
I've been talking to us about biblical theology, which is history
according to whom Jesus History according to Jesus the Bible
is about Christ. This is a hymn book H I M book is about him
not you us him and so what we want to see is the glory of God
in the person of Christ emerging through the scriptures because
Christ is the answer to our needs and Is he? He's the answer to
our needs. But God is going to reveal Christ
to us as the answer to our needs according to our needs. That
means in the plethora and panoply of all of the virtues and attributes
and qualities and offices of Jesus Christ, who is the riches
of God's wisdom and the treasure of God Almighty for our soul.
He's going to meet us in Christ in a specific way today. He's
going to meet us as the bread of life. But it's designed also
to not only teach us that God is faithful, but you and I are
called upon to respond to God, respond to God a certain way. This is what he means by he will
test them. He will prove them. He's going
to rain down manna. He's going to bless them in spite
of their murmuring. Isn't that how God does to us?
We complain, he bless us anyway. Isn't he good? Now he does that
because that's his nature. Naturally God is naturally merciful
naturally gracious naturally giving he gives because it's
in his nature to give but You are going to learn how to correspond
to his giving to you Because you're under contract You're
under contract. So he says I'm gonna test them.
I'm gonna test them. I'm gonna test them I just need
you to understand that what he is doing is setting up a process
by which they will appreciate the blessing The text said, I
will reign manna. I will reign bread from heaven
for you. Do you understand what God is
about to do? He's taking a complaint on the
part of the children of Israel that goes to the core of their
being. And that is needing food and sustenance to take care of
their life. The word bread is a generic term. It's not just
talking about a loaf of bread. I mean, it could, but it's not
talking about a loaf of bread. It's talking about every form
of resource and sustenance for your life. The bread is a euphemism
that we use often when we talk about, now this dates me way
back to the 60s. Brother, you got any bread? Then
we pull out a dollar bill, right? Well, we call that in theological
terms, a synecdoche. It's a synecdoche term and it
means the part representing the whole. The dollar bill is designed
to go by the loaf of bread. But before we buy the bread,
we call the dollar the bread because we know it has the power
to buy the bread. And in fact, that's what Solomon said when
he said, cast your bread upon the waters for after many days
it will return to you. In other words, invest your money
properly. Are you guys hearing me? And
we can make the commodity relationship between bread and money with
regards to our Lord Jesus Christ, because he is the riches of God.
And he is the resource of God by which all of our sustenance,
all of our needs can be completely and totally met. But we have
to follow a program. He's going to bless them with
bread from heaven. Do you know what the psalmist calls this
in Psalm 78 verse 24? He calls it angels food. I'm not going to stay here too
long because I want to get through my seven points tonight. I do want
you to understand, however, when God now resolves to intercede,
and tells Moses and Aaron, step out of the way, I'm about to
do something of which is going to be evident. That Moses and
Aaron could not have anything to do with this particular blessing. Now God often blesses us through
His means. He blesses his people through
his teachers, his pastors, those who communicate biblical truth
to you. The Spirit of God uses the truth that the teacher expounds
to bless your soul. God uses means, does he not?
Therefore, muzzle not the ox that treads out the corn, all
those principles. Who is Moses, or who is Paul or Apollos, but
ministers by whom you believe. We are means by which your faith
is edified, and we thank God for them, don't we? But there
are times where God has to show you that this is about you and
God alone. And in the second test, what
God is saying to Israel is, I want you to I want you to recognize
that what I am about to do right here, and this principle is going
to be a standing principle that's going to carry you all the way
through the wilderness every day. Every day. Every day of your life until
you get to glory land, I, not we, not me through them, but
me alone. Emphatically, I am going to rain
down from heaven bread to feed your soul. This is why he told
Moses, Moses tell all the people to come near, tell these knuckleheads
to come near, bring them near so that they can be reminded
of the cloud and the fire, the presence of God's cloud, which
represents the majesty of God. as the sovereign of the universe.
The cloud in the scripture represents sovereign power. It's what Jesus
said to Caiaphas when Caiaphas said, tell us, are you the son
of God? He says, hereafter shall you
see the son of man coming on the clouds of glory with great
power. Jesus ascended up to heaven in
a cloud the angel said he shall return again in like manner He
will come in the clouds of glory. It represents God's majesty Represents
his power. It represents the mystery of
his authority because the clouds separate us from heaven So that
all we can do is look at the cloud then his fire was there
the presence of the fire and The cloud by day, the fire by
night. That's the presence of the Lord.
And the fire signifies and represents metaphorically the holiness of
God. God is holy. Our God is a consuming
fire. He purifies and he purges everything
that comes his way. And if it doesn't have any substance,
it will be consumed. This is the God that Israel was
dealing with. This is the God that just brought them out of
the Red Sea. This is the God that just turned the bitter waters
into sweet waters. This is the God that is saying,
I haven't left you. You're complaining, but I'm still
here. Now you know we are jacked up when you can look out the
window at night and see the Father. Know God's still present. You
can wake up in the morning and open the door and see the cloud
and know God is still with you. and complain about, will God
take care of me? If he's with you, what you think
he's with you for? If not to take care of you. Are
you with me so far? Can I keep talking? And see,
so what our Lord is about to teach them is, you guys are experiencing
something that had nothing to do with you. You didn't set out
to have a relationship with me based upon a mutual contract
that you and I drew up where you said, you know, now, Lord,
listen, we recognize who you are and we know who we are and
we would love to enter into a league with you. No, that's not how
salvation works. Am I telling the truth, ladies
and gentlemen? Salvation is not God's work in your work. Salvation
is not you coming to God and giving God a plan and telling
him to sign on. Salvation is God coming into
your life. when you all tore up, broke down,
your head between your legs and God saving you without even asking
you. It's called sovereign grace where
he delivers you out of your bondage, set you on solid rock and tells
you, I am the God that delivered you. You will follow me. That's
what salvation is. So listen, when God saves you
by his grace, your job is to sit down and be taught of God. That's your job. And so God says,
okay, now I want to teach you something else. I want to teach
you something that I'm with you and I'm going to provide for
you. I want you to stop complaining against your leaders. Now you
ain't going to do it, but I want you to stop, but you're not going
to do it. Cause see, you know, when you
can't get to God, you get the leadership. That's just the rule. I'm just
telling you, that's it. It's across the board in every
sphere of life. You don't throw stones at stones
at the mediator. However, in this situation daily
for the next 40 years, God is going to directly exercise a
daily supernatural event whereby he is going to rain manna down
from heaven. Psalm 78 calls it angels food. That's some good stuff. Have
you ever tasted it? Yes, you have if you're a believer
in Christ. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Paul called
it in first Corinthians chapter 10, spiritual meat, spiritual
meat. The people of Israel in our context
called it manna. We'll talk about that down the
line. What God is going to do is give them their provision
every day, every day, but they had to follow certain rules. They had to follow certain rules
in order for them to understand the nature of the relationship
between them and God on the grounds of the grace and mercy that God
would extend to them. See, you and I cannot come to
Christ. You and I cannot come to God and have a relationship
with God. Watch this now. I'm going to
help you where you get to act willy nilly and expect God to
just bless you anyway. I'm sorry it doesn't work like
that. You and I just don't get to be who we are and what we
are. You know, I am what I am. When God saved you, you were
what you were, but he's changing all that. And the part that we
don't like is the discipline to which God is calling us. But
now when he moves us out of a slave status of being under the bondage
of the devil into a sonship status, where we move from a slave status
to be sons and daughters of God, he's moving us into a dimension
of what we call the obedience of what? Faith. the obedience
of faith. That's where all of his children
live. That's where all of God's children
live in the context of what we call the obedience of faith. Are you guys hearing me? The
obedience of faith, which means God is requiring you to trust
him with a process which is going to require you to do what God
says do in order for God to do what God says he's going to do.
Are you hearing me? Very important for you to get
that. A lot of Christians are walking around famished, dry,
despairing, discontent, struggling with all kinds of things because
they're not doing it God's way. They're not doing it God's way.
And so Israel is going to learn that God's going to come through.
He's going to show himself faithful, but he wants to follow certain
rules. And here's the third point that I'm going to set down that's
very clear. God does accommodate our weakness,
doesn't he? Does he? Yet this one too is
one of those strange little tensions that we have to resolve in our
life. There will be times when you
and I will act a fool and God blesses us anyway. I'm telling
the truth. I'm telling it as you. You will
do the stupidest thing. And in God's goodness, he overlooks
the stupidity of that event for several reasons. I mean, he could
have taxed you, right? But he chose not to in that situation.
Not because God doesn't care about how you behave. Nothing could be further from
the truth. When we talk about accommodating our weakness, what
we are talking about is God dealing with us as a father deals with
his children. That's Psalm 103. As a father
pitieth his children, So the Lord pitieth them that fear him. And the Lord has been so gracious
not to always and directly and severely deal with us according
to our what sins. It does not mean that God is
indifferent to sin. You know, I wish I wouldn't have
to use that qualifier. I really wish that I wouldn't
have to say what I'm saying right now. I wish that there were enough
mature saints in the house who would know that when the Bible
depicts God as accommodating our weaknesses, as being patient
with us because that's part of His nature, remember we learned,
Exodus 34 verse 7, the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, the Lord
God who is gracious and merciful, and long-suffering goodness and
plenteous and plenteous and mercy and kindness. This is his attribute.
This is who he is. God always takes his time. So
here you are doing wrong again and again and again and again
and again. And under the false assumption that God doesn't care
about it simply because by nature he's patient. Again, he's dealing
with us in the same fashion that often we deal with our children.
Those of us who have become veterans and gotten our veteran card at
being parents, we thank God for the gift of patience that he
has instilled in us over time, don't we? Because the downline,
see the older kids got it right away. Remember that? Our first
born, second born, soon as they got in trouble, whack. I mean,
we're going to fix them right away. You know, I mean, they
come out the womb, we got paddles. They're not even two weeks old.
We're going to straighten them out. By the time we get to the
third or the fourth child, we'll leave him alone. He'll work through
that. The last child, you give them all kind of room, don't
you? Because you know eventually they've got to learn how to live
life for themselves. It's not that we are approving
of their evil or their inclination to sin. It grieves us when our
children go contrary to what we have taught them. And so it
grieves God. And so it grieves God. he'll
get at you see two more months from now in fact no another week
from now in our account contextually God's gonna kill 3,000 people
in one day that's the day Moses is gonna wake up and say you
know there was something about God I did not know and he can learn
something about the holiness of God cuz he gonna say now Lord
if you act like this from time to time I don't think we gonna
make it Listen to me, ladies and gentlemen,
God acts like that from time to time. He's the same God yesterday,
today and forevermore. And because he's holy, he will
deal definitively with sin when you fail to recognize the mercy
of God. Will you hear me, child of God?
He will deal with it. And so the children of Israel
are given an opportunity to see the kindness and goodness of
their heavenly father, them being his adopted son, and he accommodates
our weakness. But he does that in order to
demonstrate the fact that God is faithful. Now, I asked that
this morning. Isn't God faithful, saints? Isn't the God who has
begun a good work in you capable of bringing it to full fruition?
Isn't the God that called you able to perform that thing which
he called you to do? So god's able to get us from
egypt to glory He's able to do it, but we've got to learn the
lessons. Do we want to learn the lessons? This is what i'm
saying, you know, we're in boot camp This is learning dependence
upon god before we enter into the land and exercise the deployment
skills that he teaches us in the wilderness I talked about
this five or six or seven years ago to grace when we were in
the other place I remember teaching us this Um, about 10 years ago,
we had about 80 people, 90 people. And I was saying to a saints,
listen, you got to learn to walk with God because God has an objective.
He has a purpose. He has a goal for us as the people
of God. And it's not to save you in the kind of sit you down
and let all the blessings of God terminate on you. See, this
is a narcissistic, selfish type of mindset where you think salvation
is about God, just simply opening the doors of heaven and blessing
you with all carnal blessings in earthly places. No, it's about
calling you out of darkness into his marvelous light, transforming
you by his grace and using you to become the means by which
men and women come to know the Savior. And until your soul has
come to that place, you will never be satisfied in this life.
You will never be satisfied in this life if all it is is that
God becomes a bellhop to bless you with material things. All
right, let me go on to my next point. It's very important to
know. Okay, point number four, the obedience of faith. Again,
look at what it says in verse four, part B. The Lord said unto
Moses, behold, I will reign bread from heaven and the people shall
go out. I want you to mark this now. We're getting ready to get
into a very critical component. the people shall go out and gather
what does it say a certain rate one more thing every day and
the people I'm gonna rain bread from heaven that's my job I'm
gonna perform a miracle every day You won't be able to say,
well, you know, this was bread that came out of the terracotta
tree that's in the wilderness. It's kind of a little gooey substance
that at the right time with the right weather, it looks like
manna. No, that's what the naturalists say. No, God's raining bread
from heaven. And let me help you understand
how profound this miracle was before I developed this point
of the obedience of faith again. When we talk about God providing
manna for the children of Israel, I already told you 1.5 million,
right? You guys got that number? I want
to help you understand what that's like in terms of the proportion
of what God had to do every day. Because there were no cows and
horses. There was no, I told you, no McDonald's, no Jack in
the Box, no restaurants in the wilderness. So God's got to come
through every day. Do you know what God had to do
to provide the needs of those people sufficiently every day? He had to rain manna from heaven
to the tomb of 15 million pounds. 15 million pounds of manna every
day with the exception of the Sabbath for 40 years. Did you guys get that? See, this
was no small miracle. 15 million pounds. You had to go out every day and
every man, the representative of every home, is to gather an
omer each. That is a certain quantity for
every person in the house. That quantity amounts to, in
our time, in terms of measures, about three quarters of a gallon. anywhere from a half a gallon
to three quarters of a gallon of manna was given to every individual
every day. Are you guys following me? If
you had a gallon of milk, that's enough to hold one person a day,
right? In fact, for many of us, much more, right? The point is,
is that when they went out to labor according to the will of
God, are you ready? There was more than sufficient
to meet every man's need, every child's need every day. God had finished the issue of
their being hungry. In fact, you know what he did?
Some of y'all know this. God gave them hot biscuits in
the morning. That's what we call the manna.
Hot biscuits. Hot biscuits in the morning. And at nighttime,
this is what the text says, you're going to look out and you're
going to see the hand of the Lord and you're going to see
the chicken flying from the east. Chicken flying from the east.
and east wind sending the pheasant, the pheasant, the pheasant. Every
evening, the pheasant is gonna come and land at your front door.
Fried chicken in the evening. No, let me change that. Because,
you know, we're at the more, we're in the more health conscious
stage. 10 years ago, I used to call
it fried chicken. Today, I'm gonna call it baked chicken.
Broiled chicken, okay? Broiled chicken in the evening,
hot biscuits in the morning, Does God provide for his people?
Now watch this. And a rock that followed them
all the way through the wilderness, ready to give them water anytime
they needed it. That's what the Hebrew writer,
that's what the writer to the Corinthians said. And that rock that followed
them all the way through the wilderness was Christ. The bread
is Christ. The pheasant is Christ. It's
all Christ. to meet the needs of God's people
all the way through the wilderness. Can God furnish a table in the
wilderness? Absolutely it can. But see, now
I'm telling you, you're under judgment right now. Because you're
talking and you're happy, shouting hallelujah and all that. But
these things are transferred as a figure to our everyday life.
And is God able to meet our needs every day like he met their needs?
And the only way you can know that is if you are corresponding
with God's will according to the principle of the obedience
of faith. See, the text tells us that God
said, this is the manner in which you will see my glory, if you
do it my way. Verses 16 through 18, listen
to it. In Exodus 16, verse 16 through 18. This is the thing
which the Lord hath commanded. Gather of it every man according
to his eating, and Omer for every man according to the number of
your persons. Take ye every man for them which
are in his tent. And the children of Israel did
so, gathered some more and some less. And when they did meet
it, that is measure it, with an omer, he that gathered much
had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.
They gathered every man, watch this now, according to his eating.
Do you know what God did in the process of letting them gather?
I'm gonna help you, this is how some people are. Oh, we got this
manna. Man, I'm gonna scoop up as much
manna as I can get. I'm going to scoop up, you know,
they out there with sacks and everything, gathering the matter,
headed back to the house, got all this matter. They were only
supposed to take a look, but they got, you know, because we're
going to sell some. And when you get in the house
and you pour it out, you find out it's just enough for today. And the person that's walking
in the weakness of faith, that goes out and just gathers a little
bit out of fear and trepidation. He got issues with the manna.
We'll talk about that in a moment. But he goes out and gathers just
a little bit. When he comes into the house and puts it on the
table, he has sufficient to meet his needs. Are you guys hearing
me? Now, what is God teaching? Several
things. First and foremost, it really
is not about the manna that he fed them in the wilderness. This is what Jesus meant when
he said in John chapter 6, Moses did not give you that manna which
comes down from heaven. I am the true bread of life.
that meets your soul. The manna they got from Moses,
or in the days of Moses, came from God as a typical picture
of the reality of Jesus Christ, the sufficiency of the soul.
Are you guys hearing me? Otherwise, they wouldn't have
had to gather it every day. Because once you eat of Christ,
you come to find satisfaction in Him. Here's the principle,
however. As they are gathering, they are being taught to trust
God. Here's the principle. First and
foremost, Matthew chapter three says it like this. Chapter four,
man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds
out of the mouth of God. Listen carefully to this saints.
I got to teach today. What God calls you and I to do
is to trust his word every day, every day to believe God daily. And the point of believing God
daily is the point of relationship. Listen to me carefully. The point
of believing God daily is the point of relationship. See, if
daily I've got to go to God, if daily I've got to trust God,
if daily I've got to depend upon God, if daily I've got to ask
God, daily I've got to relate to God. If I could just go get
a whole storehouse in one day, well, I ain't got to talk to
God for six months. I was a good Jewish businessman.
But the reality is, follow me now, that's true. The reality
is, and they went to try to do it, didn't they? The text said,
and some went out and they got as much as they could. And what
did it do? It bred worms. Did it breed worms? God's law was inviolable. He
was not going to let them store up so much as to where they could
neglect God. And I can make application to
that with the Scriptures, too, and the Word of God, too, and
how some folks can, as it were, be so enamored with gathering
knowledge, gathering doctrine, gathering ideas, gathering concepts,
a biblical trail, storing up multitudes of information in
the head, and not have a walk with God every day. Are you hearing
what I'm saying? And not walk with God every day. and not walk with God every day.
So what God wanted them to do was to depend upon Him every
day. Acknowledge the miracle of grace
every day. Acknowledge the need of grace
every day. This is why our Lord, who is
the true bread of life, taught the disciples when they said,
Master, teach us how to pray. This is how you pray. Our Father,
who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this
day our daily bread. And literally, as day by day,
portion us that which is necessary to bless ourselves. See, it was
about relationship. It was about relationship. It
wasn't about hoarding. See as Americans we hoard we
store it up and we won't interest on it and everything The second point then is When you
and I are compelled to are driven to hoard We are demonstrating
a kind of unbelief in the faithfulness of God to meet our need every
day Am I making some sense if God tells me Jesse all I'm gonna
give you is enough for today You got to come see me tomorrow
and I opine and I complain and I bicker and I try to work my
way around it, then I'm not believing God. I'm just not trusting God. And these are the principles.
See, what God is doing is training His people to trust Him as the
source from whom all blessings flow. Are you guys getting that?
The source from whom all blessings flow. So the obedience of faith
is critical. Now, He's proving them and He's
testing them Because God tests us all. I need to set this example
before I go to points five and six. You do wonder sometimes whether
or not God's going to come through with a promise, don't you? But
he's done that with every one of his people. I'm thinking about
Abraham. God told Abraham, leave your family, leave your kindred,
leave everybody. You're 75 years old and I'm going
to give you a son and you're going to be heir of the world.
That was at 75. Do you know how old Abraham was
before that promise came to pass? 100 years old. He went through
25 years of testing. Are you hearing me? Is that a
test? He got in trouble too, didn't he? Waiting on God to
fulfill his word, right? See, so the word of promise always
requires the patience of faith. Better write that down. Might
be in your outline. The word of promise always requires
the patience of faith. There are lots of people who
will hear the word of promise and want the blessing and the
fruition of it right away. But it's only coming on God's
time. And it's coming on God's time, child of God, because God
has to qualify you by changing your character in order so that
when he blesses you with that thing, you will do the right
thing with it rather than still his glory. for him bringing to
pass the blessing and you not being mature enough to deal with
the blessing at the time that he gives it to you. I think about
another brother whom God tested. You know who his name is? Joseph.
God gave Joseph the promise that he would reign over Egypt. 17 years old. The brother started
telling everybody, God gonna make me reign. God gonna make
me reign. I'm the sun, you the moon and the stars. I'm reigning
over you. Got in trouble, didn't he? Because
no flesh shall glory in the sight of God. His brothers threw him
into a pit and wanted to kill him. So did Egypt, right? Joseph
didn't know the way in which God was going to raise him up
to reign. He had to come to learn it. He
had to teach Joseph the principle of the obedience of faith as
a son. See, we get the promise and we
get the shout and hallelujah, but we really don't like the
process. But the process is the same for us as it was for Christ. You got to come down. You got
to come down. God's got to humble you. He's
got to bring you down. He's got to humble you. He's
got to cause you to condescend and stop trusting in yourself.
He's got to cause you to depend upon God and call upon God in
sincere mercy for God to bring to pass all of God's promises
in your life. God's got to bring you to the place where you stop
believing that there is some intrinsic value in yourself by
which God has chosen to bless you. Now that's so hard for us.
Because we love walking around every day feeling like we are
just a little bit better than the next sap. But the reality
is, is there is none righteous, no not one. And there's not one
of us that's better than any other person. And it's never
based upon our person that God chooses to bless us. You don't
have intrinsically anything in you where of God would be pleased
to bestow blessing upon you and not another. And in fact, the
one upon whom he is going to bless is going to be the person
who says, like the Apostle Paul says, we have this treasure in
earthen vessels that the excellency of the glory may be of God and
not of us. We're nothing but clay pots of
which people put excrement in. Take out to the dump and burn
that's the language Paul used and God chooses to take clay
pots and pour in the treasure and the riches of his glory in
Christ and use us for the edification of others But he ain't gonna
glorify the pot That's the struggle Here you all get to go around
and be the receptacle by which God pours blessing out in other
people's lives if you and I are doing the right thing. We talked
about this being vessels in our indicative class. If you are
a vessel of the Lord, he takes your vessel, pours into that
vessel, and then takes you and pours into other people's lives.
And what did the vessel do? Nothing. And what did the vessel
look like? Nothing. So that we wasn't even
talking about the vessel, we were talking about the resources
in the vessel that blessed somebody else. This is what we're talking
about. Israel had to learn how to walk
with God. Are you guys bored with me? Give
me a few more minutes. I'll move on to point number five right
quick. This is important. I could talk about Job. Job had
to go through this. David had to go through this.
Didn't David have to go through this? Samuel anointed David,
told David he was going to be king in Israel. David feeling
good, but it took David a good 10 years to get beat down by
the present king before he took the throne. He had to get beat
down by the present king, running like a fugitive on the backside
of the mountains, asking, God, where are you? God says, I'm
on my throne. That's where I'm at. I'm the
same place where I am now, where I was when I called you out of
the backside of the mountain, when your daddy didn't want you
and your mama didn't want you, where you wrote the psalm, when
my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will take me up.
I'm still here. I'm just preparing you for the throne. which requires
humility. Humility. Are you guys following
me? Humility. And that's the thing that we
are struggling through, ladies and gentlemen. The humility process
that's required for you and I to enter in. Let me go on to point
number five. The simplicity of Christ, the
glory of God. This is the thing that really
tripped Israel out. Look at verse 14. And when the
dew that lay was gone up, Behold upon the face of the wilderness
that lay a small round thing Got it as small as horror frost
on the ground and when the children of Israel saw it they said to
one another What's that? Got it. What's that? It is matter
because they did not know what it was Now God had already told
them what it was He told them that it was his glory. And in the morning you will behold
my glory. God manifested his glory to them
and they still didn't recognize the glory of God. That was the
glory of God. And yet in appearance to their
carnal eye, to their fleshly eye, there was nothing appealing
about it. Can I tell you what the scriptures
say? He was a root out of dry ground. There was no form or
comeliness in him that we should desire him. No beauty at all. There was no external beauty
in the God-man Jesus Christ by which you and I in our carnal
fleshly mindset would be attracted to Jesus. See, if the Lord Jesus
was here today in our service, you wouldn't know him. Because,
you know, in your mind you got whatever image you got concerning
the glory of God in the person of Christ. And I guarantee you
it would not correspond with reality. Because the God-man
Jesus Christ, when He came, He came in humility and in insignificance
and in a fashion that would not cater to your lust and my lust. When he came, he came in the
kind of humility that was designed, watch this ladies and gentlemen,
to meet our needs, not our wants, our needs. The hoarfrost, the
bread, like coriander seed, the latter part of the chapter says
in verse 31, a small little wafer, cute, but not super gorgeous,
but completely sufficient for the need. This little act of
a miracle corresponds to the condescension of the God-man
Jesus Christ, the bread of life. I'll tell you the test here is
the ability for you and I to recognize the glory of God and
the humility of our Savior. The ability for you and I to
find the sufficiency of God's grace in the lowly person of
Jesus Christ. The ability for you and I to
find contentment in a Savior who was willing to take on our
nature, our humanity, our weakness. He came in the likeness of sinful
flesh. There was nothing about Jesus
on an external level where He looked any different than the
rest of us. No halo. He didn't float. His clothes
didn't glow. But one time on the Mount of
Transfiguration, He looked like everyone else. What's the point? The bread of life necessary for
the sufficiency and the welfare of the souls of men and women
is designed for our soul, not our flesh, not our carnal past. Oh yeah, they tried to bake it,
broil it, barbecue it, saute it. But whenever you do that
to the gospel, you lose the efficacy and power of the gospel. And
this is what religion does every day. They try to beautify the
gospel and clothe the gospel over with carnal allurements.
And when you do that, you deny the efficacy of the gospel. Also,
you deny the necessity of the sinner for the efficacy of the
gospel. Because the necessity of the sinner, now follow this
now, is not that all of your bills get paid, that your life
goes wonderful here. The necessity of a sinner is
eternal life. It's eternal life. Eternal life
in your soul. in your soul, in your soul. God bringing your soul out of
death into life and bringing you into union with himself through
Jesus Christ. That's what the soul needs. Now
that bread would meet that need so long as they followed the
obedience of faith daily. Are you guys following me? So
long as they will follow the obedience of faith daily one
more point. I need to say this i'll wrap this up I'm going to
jump over to point number seven point number seven. This is critical
We'll be able to deal with this again because in the wilderness
sojourn Major events took place twice In the wilderness sojourn
major events took place twice and i'll tell you why because
we by nature are slow I thank God for it. So we'll
find ourselves meeting the manna and the bread again in the book
of Numbers. But here's the last one I'll share with you. This
will be very instructive to you who have heard the gospel for
a long time. This is the last one. Point number seven. Are
you there? The glory of God in Jesus Christ that's designed
to lead to rest. The glory of God in Jesus Christ.
Now, the glory of God here we're speaking of is the manna, right?
It's the relationship between the people of God and God on
a daily pursuit of their daily needs, the bread. Give us this
day our daily bread. Drawing that bread in Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, right? Saturday. On the sixth day, you gather
twice as much, right? So that you don't have to gather
it when? On the seventh day. What does the daily process of
the obedience of faith of trusting Christ and eating the bread of
life? What does that do it leads us to the seventh day? Are you
guys following the pattern in other words? It's not simply
about you enjoying Christ and the sufficiency of grace in your
life It's designed to lead you from that state of insufficiency
in yourself to fullness in Christ to ultimately a state of wherein
we are ready to worship God. From Monday through Saturday,
we walk with God, we feed on God, we trust in God, we depend
on God. God meets our need so that by
Saturday night, I'm ready to worship God Sunday morning. I'm
ready to worship God who led me every day, met my every need,
every need. So by the time I come to church
on Sunday, I'm already full. I'm already taken care of. My
soul is already satiated. I'm already happy. God has met
my needs in Christ every day. Today is a day of rest. Rest. Rest come unto me all you
that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest Take
my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly of
heart and you will find rest To your soul when you feed upon
Christ feed upon I mean feed on him I'm not talking about
store him up like knowledge Get this truth and that truth and
that doctrine and that doctrine is stored on the shell feed him
Feed on Christ, eat him, divulge him, bring him into your soul
as your daily need. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
So that you experience the power of his grace to keep you, to
guard you, to lead you. to guide you, to change you,
transform you, communicate with you, bring you in the union with
God so you enjoy God and God enjoys you and He reveals Christ
to you in such a fullness of way that you are able to say,
my soul is satisfied in God. There's a difference. There's
a difference. There's a difference. And when
you get to church on Sunday, we call it the Sabbath in our
reformed churches, a old term that corresponds to the Old Testament
Sabbath. It's a time where we worship
in the context of rest because we have experienced the grace
of God daily meeting our needs. Warning. Warning. It's good, isn't it good? Is
that good? I just want to find out. Warning. Warning. The gospel is designed
to lead to rest. But you've got to trust in the
process, the journey and the goal. You're not going to get
it all in one day. But where there is no rest. This
is the practical application. It's clear that you have abandoned
the gospel's authority, its influence, its blessing and promise in your
life. Where there is no rest, it's
clear that you have abandoned the gospel's authority, influence,
and promise in your life. A return to the gospel, therefore,
is a return to what? Rest! You know how we get in
trouble? Life gets us. Anxiety set in. That anxiousness. That troubledness
in your soul and mind. And yet you're a believer. You
say you trust in Christ. But somehow, inadvertently, Unwittingly,
for a long period of time, you really weren't feeding on Christ.
You really were not rejoicing in Christ. You really were not
dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. You really
were not abiding under the shadow of the Almighty. You really were
not drinking the water of life, eating the bread of life. You
really were not depending upon God. You were coasting! And the
carnality set in, and therefore, you found yourself drifting from
the resources drifting from the resources. And now you are without
the blessing of rest. Has anybody been there? Now watch
it now. The answer is returning back
to Christ. It's asking God to make the gospel
glorious to you all over again. So glorious. that no matter what
you are going through right now, it pales in comparison to the
Spirit of God drawing near and bringing you into the bosom,
the bosom of God the Father through Jesus Christ and speaking peace
to your soul, speaking rest to your soul, speaking assurance
to your soul through the power of the Gospel. This is what God
is training His people to do, to adore Christ, to need Christ,
to feed on Christ, to walk with God by faith every day, to find
the rest that's in Christ and Christ alone, and then to be
able to authentically and legitimately, every time we gather together
to worship, worship from a place of rest in Jesus Christ. Class number two, amen.