continue to remember those who
requested prayer, especially Moose Parks and his family with
the situation. Remember them to the Lord and
remember the others who requested prayer also. Seek the Lord's
help for them. Other than that, I can't think of any other announcements.
So we're gonna worship service with hymn number 272. There's
only one, two, three, seven or eight of us, so we gotta sing
out. ? Hope is built on nothing less
? ? Than Jesus' blood and righteousness ? ? I dare not cross the sweetest
frame ? ? But wholly lean on Jesus' name ? ? On Christ the
solid rock I stand ? ? All other ground is sand ? When darkness fails His lovely face
I rest on His unchanging grace In every high and holds within the veil. On Christ's solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. His oath is cover, not his blood. Support me in faith. All around my soul gives way. He then is all my hope and stay. On Christ a solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. ? He shall come with trumpet
sound ? ? Oh may I then in him be found ? ? Rest in his righteousness
alone ? ? All blessed to stand before the throne ? ? On Christ's
solid rock I stand ? ? All other ground is sinking sand ? underground
is sinking sand. M number 517, On Jordan's stormy
banks I stand. On Jordan's stormy banks I stand
and cast a wishful eye I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land. Oh, who will come and go with
me? I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land. promised land. Oh, who will come and go with
me? I am bound for the promised land. No chilling winds, no poisonous
breath can reach that healthful shore. Sickness and sorrow, pain
and death, are felt and feared no more. I am bound for the promised
land. I am bound for the promised land. Oh, who will come and go with
me? I am bound for the promised land. When shall I reach that happy
place and be forever blessed? When shall I see my father's
face and in his bosom rest? I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land. If you have your Bibles turn
with me to Exodus chapter 3. I'm going to read verses 7 through 10. And the Lord said, I have seen
the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and I have heard
their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their
sorrows. And I am come down to deliver
them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that
land into a good land, and a large, into a land flowing with milk
and honey, into a place of the Canaanites and the Hittites,
the Amorites, the Perizzites, and the Hibbites and the Jebusites.
Now therefore behold, the cry of the children of Israel is
coming to me. I have also seen the oppression wherewith the
Egyptians oppressed them. Come now therefore, and I will
send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people,
the children of Israel, out of Egypt. Let us pray. Our Father
in Heaven, most glorious God and Father, full of mercy and
grace. We thank you that you have shown
us grace and mercy, that you have saved us by your
grace and renew mercies every day as we rise to face another. We're thankful, Father, for the
shed blood, the perfect death of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who
by himself purged our sins, put them away, cast them behind
your back, sunk them to the bottom of the sea, separated them from
us as far as the east is from the west. We are thankful that
you have not dealt with us after our iniquities, but you know
our frame, you remember that we are dust. We thank you for
everlasting, eternal love that loved us, Because you would,
there was nothing in us that was lovable or conducive to your
affection for us. We thank you, Father, for the
eternal love that you have shown. Father, we pray for those who
are sick. We pray for our shut-ins, for those who are traveling.
Remember especially Moose Parks and Sandy The situation they're in with
Dee and pray for Christy, the children. Bob and Jeanette, all
those that minister to him. Pray for Christina, his sister.
Lord, we ask that you'd give them comfort and peace in Christ.
Our hearts are broken. We pray that you would do what
only you can do, heal the brokenhearted. Help us, Lord, to remember that
we are dust. And only a breath separates us
from here in eternity. And we know that you hold that
breath in your hand. Father, we praise you for your
goodness. For the fact that you show mercy
to whom you will show mercy and are gracious unto whom you will
be gracious. That you do your will in the army of heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay your
hand or even ask what doest thou. Your dominion is from everlasting
to everlasting. You sit upon the circle of the
earth and view all that's in heaven as grasshoppers. The nations
are but sands of the balance and drops of the bucket. But we know that your word abideth
forever. Give us a love for it and a hunger
for it. We pray in Christ's name, amen. Now Moses stands here unshod
on holy ground. His face is hidden because of
his sin and his unworthiness to be in the presence of the
Almighty. Every sinner trembles when confronted with the truth
that God is absolutely and infinitely holy. The Lord has told Moses
to take the shoes from off his feet, for the ground whereon
he stands is holy ground. And what makes it holy is that
God is there. To understand God's holiness
is the primary and profound aspect of God's character. He is holy. He is holy. Scripture says the
sun, the moon, and the stars are not pure in his sight, much
less man that is born a woman, born a liar, a dunghill denizen
whose carnal heart is in enmity with God. History tells us that
the people of God rarely spoke His name, rarely said His name,
for fear of offending. The book of Esther does not have
the name God in it, so before it was read by the Hebrew priests,
they would spit and cast it on the ground. Then they would pick
it up and read it, but because it did not have the name of God
in it, they would not read it before they did that. The Hebrew
name for the Lord is made up of four letters. It is Y-H-W-H. There are no vowels, only consonants. People over the years have added
vowels and transliterated the letters to read as Yahweh or
Jehovah. But historians suggest that the
four-letter name of God was uttered more like an exhale or a sigh
as it is He who holds the breath of every creature in His hand God will later in this book describe
himself to Moses as he who will in no wise clear the guilty. That's how he described himself
in Exodus chapter 33 and 34. I am the Lord, he says, and I
will in no wise clear the guilty. So if you are guilty, you can't
stand before God, you are not cleared. The only way a person
is cleared of guilt is for Christ to have died in his place in
his room being holy, God must punish sin. There's no question
of that, and the punishment for sin is not a spanking. It's not taking you into a place
where you have to stand in a corner. It's not a time out. When God
punishes sin, the punishment is death. The soul that sinneth,
it shall die. The wages of sin is death or
the payment that you receive, the wages you receive for your
life is death. God's law must be fulfilled and
His justice must be satisfied and it is utterly reasonable
that Moses hid his face when God showed up in that burning
bush. It is the only reasonable response
to being confronted to the with the thrice holy God. Moses stands
on holy ground and in silence he awaits the word of the Lord.
In the epistle of Ephesians in the first chapter, as the Lord
defines the means and the manner of the salvation of the elect,
He gives a single reason for their salvation. Though they
are the happy and fortunate recipients of His predestinated purposeful
and perfect salvation they are not the cause or the reason for
their salvation. God proclaims that their salvation
happened and He accomplished it by Him, His Son, and His Spirit
and the purpose was to extol the glory of His grace. That is why He did it. In fact,
here is the reason for everything that exists in this vast universe
right now. It is for His glory, and essentially
it is for the glory of His grace. For when He said what His glory
was to Moses, we will find in Exodus 33, He said four things. He said, I will make my goodness
pass before you, I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will be gracious
unto whom I will be gracious. This is God's glory. It is all
about Him revealing Himself in salvation. So here as Moses stands
on holy ground hearing the Holy God speaking from a bramble bush
burning with fire not consumed, The first words that proceed
from the voice are words that go so well with the concept of
God's holiness. He speaks words of grace. God
is holy. We know that. And thank God He
is gracious. His grace is holy grace. In verses 7 and 8, He says, And
the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people
which are in Egypt, And I have heard their cry by reason of
their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. And I am come
down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to
bring them up out of that land unto the good land, and large
unto a land flowing with milk and honey, unto a place of the
Canaanites, and the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites,
the Hibbites, and the Jebusites. Now the intricacies of his providence
that fill the vast many chapters of Genesis have reached a point
of culmination. The first part of the promise
to Abraham of his lineage being held captive for four centuries
has been fulfilled. We've reached that point in Providence.
Now the second part of that promise is about to start to take place.
And that second part was, And also that nation whom they shall
serve will I judge, God said, and afterwards shall they come
out with great abundance." That is the second part of that promise.
The first part has pretty much been fulfilled because now he
calls upon Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh. He tells Moses that
he has seen the affliction of his people in Egypt. He has seen
because his eyes have been upon them. This is not a surprise
to God. It is something that occurred
and surprised him. He did not learn this. He has
known this all along because it is part of His plan and part
of His purpose. But His eyes are always upon
His people. Over in the Psalms, there are
several verses that say especially that. In Psalm 34 and verse 15,
it says, The eyes of the Lord are
upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their
cry. They are open to their cry. In
Isaiah Chapter 66, in verse 7, it says this, He ruleth by his
power forever. His eyes behold the nations.
Let not the rebellious exalt themselves. Selah, or pause,
and pay attention. In Psalm 91, in verse 8, it says this, Only with
thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked."
The Lord's eyes are upon His creation and they are especially
upon His people. He said, I have heard their cry
by reason of their taskmasters. This phrase, by reason of their
taskmasters, is not strange to this context. This was their
taskmasters. This was their taskmasters. Castmasters'
predestinated course. This is where they were supposed
to be. Remember, he said they're going into slavery for 400 years
and be cruelly treated. That was spoken in Genesis 15.
these taskmasters are doing their job. I have said many times there
is no unemployment in God's economy. There is zero unemployment. Everybody
has a job. Everybody has a purpose and everybody
is going to fulfill that purpose. Everybody. These taskmasters
have a purpose and they fulfill it. This was their predetermined
course to be the instrument of providence employed to bring
the people of God to ultimately cry to God for relief. This is always the reason for
a trial and a testing of God's people is to ultimately bring
them to the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. God told Moses,
I know their sorrows. I know their sorrows and that
word know is a particular particular word and it has to do with knowing
something not by mere knowledge but knowing it by acquaintance
with it. by acquaintance. He is touched
with the feeling of our infirmities, Scripture says. He is acquainted
with our grief and his people without hope and without help
must be saved or they will perish. This is their condition. They
are in a bad shape. The Taskmasters are hard upon
them and they are not as hard as they are going to be as we
will see as we go on into this book. Verse 8 begins with the
word AND. It says this, He said, I have
heard their cry, I have heard of their affliction, I know their
sorrows, AND, AND. What does that mean? That suggests
that what follows is a matter of this course. We are not changing
horses in the middle of the strain. Intimating that as the slavery
was ordained, so is the deliverance. Both were part of the ordination
of God. The Lord says, I am come down. Who does that sound like? Who
came down from Heaven? to deliver His people. We know
this is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and it is Christ
speaking from this bush. And sweeter words cannot be found.
Here is the condescension of God to come down from His lofty
plains of glory to save His people, to save His people. Scripture
says, Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the
flesh. He has not come down to make
something possible. He did not say that. He's not
come down to offer deliverance if the sorrowful, afflicted,
weeping slaves steeped in hellitary are inclined to decide to take
it. He's not done that. He has not come down to put forth
some simple plan of salvation. He said, Moses, I've heard their
cry. I've seen their afflictions.
I know their sorrows. And I'm come down. And I'm come
down to deliver them. out of the hand of the Egyptians. I have come down. The grip of
the enemy must be broken for the Lord to free his people,
else why salvation means nothing whatsoever, nor does deliverance. That is not all. He says He will
deliver them in order to bring them to the promised land. He
is not just going to set them free. He has got a plan for them
because He said to Abraham, they will come out with much wealth
and much good, and they did when they were going to the promised
land. In Deuteronomy chapter 6, Moses uses the same language. Now, Deuteronomy means second
law, and what it is talking about is the law that was going to
be expressed in the promised land. The whole book of Deuteronomy
took place in 30 days. From the first to the last chapter,
it took place in 30 days. it was the thirty days, the one
month prior to them going in and crossing the Jordan and going
to the Promised Land. Now we know Moses didn't go,
but Joshua and Caleb led them into the Promised Land, but when
Moses was talking about this deliverance from Pharaoh over
in Deuteronomy chapter six, he says, One of these days your
children are going to ask you about why you're here in this
place. How did you get to the promised
land? How did you get here? They're going to ask you that.
And it says in verse 20 of chapter 6 of Deuteronomy, And when the
Son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean these testimonies
and these statues that God has given them? and the judgment
which the Lord our God hath commanded you? What does all this mean?
Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen
in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty
hand, and the Lord showed signs and wonders great and sore upon
Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household before our
eyes. And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us
in. He brought us out to bring us
in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers. Then we go back to our text in
verse 9 and 10. He says, Now therefore, now what
he's doing, what he's going to say here has to do with what
he's already said because he used the word therefore. Now
therefore behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come
unto me. And I've also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians
oppressed them. Come now, therefore, and I will
send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people,
the children of Israel. These verses redound with the
doctrine of God's grace. Grace flies in the face of human
reason. Human reasoning may well consider
that if God has come down to deliver, that deliverance will
occur by the same reasoning those people usually discount that
God will employ human means to do it. The whole primitive Baptist
movement is basically that preaching has nothing to do with the salvation
of God's people. Men don't have anything to do
with that, and they don't with the actual salvation, but they
are a means by which God's elect are informed, and it's important
to understand that. Human reason says, well, God
don't need men. No, He doesn't. Not a matter
of need. fella told me the other day,
you don't need an AR-15. I said, I know, but I want one. I like one, I'd like to have
one. God doesn't need men. God doesn't need me to stand
here and He doesn't need you. But He chose to use you. Why? Grace. That's the reason. It's all of grace. God tells Moses to behold, to
see, to perceive and understand that he's heard the cry of his
people, he's seen how his people are being oppressed, and he's
coming down to save them. Then he says to Moses, you go
deliver them. What a thing! If you read the
book of Deuteronomy, many times the Lord said to his people,
especially one time in Deuteronomy chapter 9, He said, you've won
the battles. but it was he who fought for
them and won all the battles. But he gave credit to them. They
didn't win any battles. He won all the battles for them.
Now God says, I'm coming down and I'm going to deliver them.
Now you go do it. You go do it. What madness is
this? God doesn't need Moses. He doesn't
need anything or anyone. But you see, everything is for
the glory of what? His grace. It is all about grace. What is grace? It is unmerited
favor. What better manifestation of
His grace than to employ an unworthy and incapable and powerless man
to go and deliver His people? Because no matter what you think
about Moses, a close look at Him and the frailty of His human
flesh and His age and His weakness you'll know this, He can't deliver
nobody. But God sent Him to deliver this
people. The only reasonable explanation,
the only explanation is that it must be accomplished by grace. Those who have misinterpreted
the sovereignty of God often discount the preacher and the
preaching of the gospel as unnecessary in the salvation of the elect.
But God has chosen to employ, He says, the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. Why'd he do that? So the preacher
can't be blamed and the preacher can't get credit. He's going
to use preaching. We stand up here and we study
the Bible and we try to say what's right and things concerning God,
but I'd hate for any of my messages to be put on a scale of right
and wrong and sin and not sin. I'm kind of like old Scott Richardson
said, I just hope nobody finds out what a fraud I am. life because
that is what I feel like every time I get in this pulpit. When I get around preachers,
I go around preachers and I am kind of in awe of all of them.
I have been preaching longer than most of them have, but I
am still in awe of them. This is one of God's preachers.
I do not feel like I belong at all. I am not part of that group. I never feel like I am part of
that group. It is a wondrous thing. Why does God use the foolishness
of preaching to save them to believe? He does it to show that
salvation has to be by grace. It can't be by the instruments
that He has set up. Scripture says the elect believe
after they hear the Word of Truth. Who are they going to hear it
from? A preacher. How are they going
to preach? If God sends them. That's how
they're going to do it. He says to Moses, He says, Come
now, therefore, and I will send thee to Pharaoh, that thou mayest
bring forth My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. This is the way God deals with
human wisdom. Because men think that by human
wisdom they can reach God. They think by human wisdom they
can create a merit that God will accept. But their human wisdom
is doomed. In 1 Corinthians 1, our Lord
says that. In verse 21 of 1 Corinthians
1, He says, For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom you not got
support of god's wise plan and purpose was that the world having
exercise all it's wisdom and we got some wisdom going on it's
diminishing by the hour the act is dropping by the dropping by
the minute i'll tell you that but nonetheless this will have
some great wisdom my daughter the worst kind of leukemia you
could have they did things that When I was a boy, you was a goner
if you got that. You was a goner for sure. They took my son's blood out
of his arm and separated the cells microscopically and put
those cells in her after they drained all of her, all of that,
they killed all of her cells and they give him, and she survived
and now has his DNA and his blood type. And she's better. The world has some wisdom. And
I'm thankful for it. Thankful for doctors. Thankful
for them. Thankful that I can drive a car
and not have to ride a donkey. I'm glad for that. I'm glad that
I can remember my grandma using a washboard and how joyous she
was when she got a Maytag out on the back porch with a wringer
washer. I'm glad for those things. The world's wisdom is great and
magnificent, but the world, by its wisdom, all of its wisdom
singularly or combined collectively cannot know God. Why? Because God made it that way.
That's what it says. For after that in the wisdom
of God the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. World of Wizards said, that does
not make no sense to me, that is foolish. That he would raise
up some fellow and have him stay at some old center, he is saved
by grace, he is taken out of the mire of clay and set on a
solid rock, some center, he is raised up as a maggot from a
dung hill to sit among princes, and he gets that fellow to stand
up and tell people about Christ, and God uses that word to make
people alive and come to him, that is just crazy talk. That
is what people think. He said, the Jews require a sign.
Religious people require you to show them something. The Greeks
seek after wisdom. They're truthers. They want truth.
Show me the truth. That was my truth and your truth.
He said, but we preach Christ. Crucified. Under the Jews, they
trip all over it. It's a stumbling block. Under
the Greek, they think it's just goofy. It's foolishness. But
under them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
is the power of God and the wisdom of God because the foolishness
of God if there could be such a thing is wiser than men is
wiser than men and the weakness of God if there could be such
a thing is stronger than men for you see your calling here's
the explicit setting forth of grace for you see your calling
brethren How that not many wise men after the flesh, not many
mighty, not many noble are called, but God has chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise. He's done it that way
so the wise will be scratching their heads. See that doesn't
make any sense. God has chosen the weak things
of the world to confound the mighty, the strong. He shows
the base things, the worst of the lot, the off-scouring of
the universe, the scraping of the bottom of the barrel, the
base things of the world, and things which are despised and
hated hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, which are
nothings, to bring to naught things that
are something. Why? That no flesh should glory
in His presence, but of God Are you in Christ Jesus, who of God
is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,
that according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory
in the Lord. It is all for the purpose of
his grace. Men will look at the instrument
employed and see his weakness and frailty and discount him
as having anything to do with God's salvation. And that is
by design. That is by intent. so if me and
praise god appraise him for his own race and his own because
there ain't no here whatsoever come now therefore he said i
was indeed a payroll without mayest bring forth my people
israel out of egypt one man a lot of people in israel There's a
whole 12 tribes in Egypt. One man, Moses. That's the way
God's always done it. One man. I remember a fellow
down in Georgia one time said, I believe in the plurality of
elders. I believe the church ought to have a whole lot of
pastors. I said, well, how many you got?
He said, we got nine. I said, how many people you got
in your church? He said, 12. and i've remembered something
here may have seen us into my seven let me tell you this five
million around the world one of the whole range god's always
use one man in history check it out abel no jacob joseph the Lord Jesus Christ, one man
to do his bidding. One man employed for the praise
and the glory of God's grace and the deliverance of his people. Paul told Timothy, God has saved
us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our
own works, but according to his purpose and grace. which was
given us in Jesus Christ before the world began. Father, bless
us through our understanding, we pray in Christ's name, Amen.