Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] While the band was back there. Sorry, guys. They were getting to hear me.
[00:00:11] I was singing my heart out. It's a miracle they stayed on tune after they got to hear me all that time. That's pretty great.
[00:00:19] Thankful for the sound guys back there. They're laughing at me. They're like, yes, we got you. So we're in Exodus, and we're gonna be in Exodus chapter 15. We're gonna cover the very end of that. But I just wanted to say happy Mother's Day.
[00:00:34] Mother's Day is oftentimes the second highest attended Sunday next to Easter. And we know that that's because our mom said, you need to go to church. Right?
[00:00:45] Mama tried, right? And there's many stories of just people coming to faith because they saw it modeled in their mom, their mom shared it with them. They saw their mom praying for them. Their mom never gave up praying for them, even when they had walked away.
[00:01:01] That moms oftentimes are just an anchor of the faith that encourage us to know the Lord and to walk with the Lord and to trust the Lord and to obey him and to experience the blessings of that. And so, happy Mother's Day. We are thankful for you. And this is a day that we just get to honor you as moms in our text in Exodus. I wanted to just catch us up. You know, if you're used to streaming some shows, then the next show happens. It just automatically and it's like. Previously on. Right. So previously in the Book of Exodus, what we've seen starting all the way back in the book of Genesis, then at the end of the Book of Genesis, God has formed a people. It's a really small people.
[00:01:46] There's about 70 of them.
[00:01:49] And he has moved. God has moved them into Egypt in order that they might be taken care of, because there was a famine. And so this group of 70 has moved into Egypt.
[00:02:00] They find themselves there, and God has made three promises to them.
[00:02:05] He has promised that he is going to grow them into a great nation.
[00:02:09] He has promised that he is going to give them a land that they will possess. And he has promised that they will be a blessing to many nations.
[00:02:18] And so he's given these three promises. We open up the Book of Exodus, and we find that this place that God had moved them in, Egypt, turns out to not be a great blessing in their life because they now are slaves. They're captives in Egypt, and so they're under harsh slavery. God raises up a leader, Moses.
[00:02:41] He tells Moses that he's to go to Pharaoh, the most Powerful man on the present world.
[00:02:48] And he's supposed to tell Pharaoh to let God's people, his firstborn son is what he would call the people Israel. Let my people go a three days journey into the wilderness that they might worship me.
[00:03:01] Pharaoh goes, yeah, right.
[00:03:04] Favor's response actually is this. Who is the Lord that I should obey him?
[00:03:10] That's his response. Who is this Yahweh? Who is this God? This I am as he says, who is he that I should obey him and let all these people go?
[00:03:20] And so God has multiplied this group of people in a miraculous way that they continue to grow in number.
[00:03:28] And now they're in this place where God wants them to come into the wilderness to worship him. But there is an obstacle which is stopping them from that. And so God begins to show Pharaoh just who he is. He begins to answer Pharaoh's question, who am I?
[00:03:45] Well, I'm the sovereign creator of the universe. I'm the one who has control over all things. Whether it's from the weather with hailstorms, or it's the bugs with gnats and flies, or it's the water that would be turned into blood in the Nile. Over all things. God has sovereign control that he spoke them into existence. And when he speaks, they obey.
[00:04:08] And so he begins to show Pharaoh who he is.
[00:04:12] Pharaoh after each one of these then kind of gets uncomfortable because of the circumstances and so then says, okay, you can go. And then changes his mind. We get to the last plague where God is showing Pharaoh who he is. And it's the plague where they would give the firstborn son. Unless there is blood on the doorway from an unblemished lamb, unless the lamb had paid the price. Then the angel of death would claim the firstborn son.
[00:04:41] Pharaoh then expels Israel. He kicks them out. They cannot stay. He says, you must leave. They leave and go into a place where God again is leading them. He's leading them by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. And he leads them to this very precarious place. He takes them this long way, that the long way is the right way. And he's taking them this certain way. And they end up in this place where they've got the Red Sea behind them, they've got a mountain range, and then they've got the onslaught of the Egyptian army who has changed his mind yet again. Pharaoh has and said, I'm going to capture them. They're wandering around in the desert like they're lost.
[00:05:20] And so he comes to capture them once again.
[00:05:24] Israel Finds itself in a place where they can't escape it. They can't control it and they can't fix it.
[00:05:31] They are desperately dependent on God to show up. And God offers salvation. You guys know the story. He parts the Red Sea, Israel walks through. We're talking about 600,000 men of fighting age. This is probably close to a million to 3 million people walk through on dry ground.
[00:05:54] Once they walk through, God brings the water back over the top of the Egyptians.
[00:05:59] God rescued his people, not of anything that they did.
[00:06:07] And then at the end of that, we get. Last week, they began to sing because that's what saved people do. They sing that the rescue had happened and their heart just sang.
[00:06:23] And so we pick up there in verse 22 of chapter 15.
[00:06:30] You can still probably hear the tune. And it says, then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days into the wilderness. And we're thinking, like, they're going three days into the wilderness. They're going to do what they were created to do. They're going to worship.
[00:06:52] They went three days in the wilderness and they found no water.
[00:06:56] Now just imagine this. I mean, this is incredible. Don't.
[00:06:59] Like, day one, they're walking out of there and they're singing and that. Like, they got some pep in their step. All of their water jugs are full.
[00:07:08] And then they're going a little ways, going a little ways. Day two, their water jugs are about half empty.
[00:07:15] They're like, okay, we're still good. We're rescued. We've been saved. Like, can you, like, you remember what that was like? Like, God worked. Day three, they're still traveling by this point in time. You know, they had kids with them because all their water's gone and all their snacks, right? That's what kids will do to you when you go on a hike. They drink all your water, they eat all your snacks.
[00:07:35] Like, day three, they're like, we're in the desert.
[00:07:41] Like, the wilderness that it says there is not, like, wilderness here where huge trees, like, it's a desert.
[00:07:47] They're in the desert wilderness.
[00:07:50] No water.
[00:07:52] You can imagine what they're thinking.
[00:07:56] I mean, it happened here in Shreveport, right? Like, we had some water mains go down and people were like, freaked out.
[00:08:02] We don't have water. Big ice storm couple years ago. People are like, melting snow, no water.
[00:08:10] They're like, we have to have water.
[00:08:13] And so look at what they begin to do.
[00:08:16] When they came to Marah, they could not Drink the water at Marah because it was bitter. Therefore they named it Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses. So they get to this place where they're like three days, they're starting to think we got to have water. They come up to this pool and they start filling up these jugs. Somebody probably scoops down just to take a.
[00:08:39] Tastes like Lacroix.
[00:08:44] That's not drinkable.
[00:08:48] That's terrible.
[00:08:50] It's bitter.
[00:08:52] They can't drink this water.
[00:08:55] Like so much hope, excitement, expectation. Crushed our livelihood.
[00:09:06] Like we're gonna die.
[00:09:10] All these people out here need water and there's no drinkable water.
[00:09:18] The name Mara may sound familiar to you. In the Book of Ruth, it's actually the name that Naomi, when she returns having suffered greatly and she returns back to Israel, she says, don't call me Naomi, which means pleasant. She says, call me Mara, call me bitter, because life has made me bitter.
[00:09:42] It's undrinkable.
[00:09:45] The people then begin to grumble against Moses.
[00:09:49] They're saying, what shall we drink? Like, you're the leader. You brought us here. We're following this pillar that you're leading us and you brought us to this place that there's no water.
[00:10:01] They begin to grumble and complain.
[00:10:04] There's so many leadership lessons. It's not the main point in here. But you see that the people began to grumble to Moses. But Moses, verse 25, he turns to the Lord, he turns to the Lord, he cries to the Lord. The people didn't cry to the Lord. They cried to Moses, Moses cried to the Lord.
[00:10:26] Before we go any further, I just as we get this set up, I'd just like to ask the Lord to maybe guide our time this morning. Maybe you find yourself in a place of bitterness and you're like man. I know, Mara.
[00:10:40] I know that destination.
[00:10:42] I'd just like to ask the Lord maybe to minister to our heart, to make them soft, that we might hear what the rest of the text has to say. Would you pray with me, Lord? We come to you needy, Lord, needy for you to speak to us.
[00:11:02] That we might have ears that could hear, Lord. That we might have a heart that could believe, Lord, that we might see you and have hope, Lord, that you would encourage us that. That following your ways and doing your will leads to blessing.
[00:11:23] And so, Lord, would you guide us in our time today, Lord, that we might meet with you this morning? We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:11:35] Let me just recapture this a minute. Just as we unfold these scenes, really in Old Testament narratives, it's maybe sometimes helpful to see these unfolding as scenes rather than just trying to pull out these little nuggets of. Of spiritual gold, right? And so let's just unfold these scenes in such a way that then we can learn these lessons and we can relate to these people, okay? And so we see scene one, this journey that they're going on. And as they go on this journey, then we can relate to what it feels like that what these people were experiencing of going, God, I'm trying to follow you.
[00:12:16] They're coming off of a high, of having just experienced incredible blessing from God, salvation from God.
[00:12:24] And now, just a short time later, God, did you save me from that? Just that I would experience this.
[00:12:33] God, don't you know what I'm going through?
[00:12:39] Maybe you can relate to the fear into the complaints. Maybe you can relate to the anger or to the doubt that these trials that we face, what they actually do is they pull back the curtain of our heart, right? That we praise God when we see the C part, but what comes out of our mouth when the water is bitter?
[00:13:13] See, we oftentimes begin to question God, God, what were you doing?
[00:13:19] God, where are you?
[00:13:22] God, did I mess up somewhere?
[00:13:25] We begin to question him.
[00:13:27] But the problem for the people of Israel was not just their thirst.
[00:13:34] The problem for the people of Israel was their unbelief.
[00:13:38] Like, what if we rewrote this story a little differently? What if as they're journeying, they get to a place where they go, hey, our water's running low. Let's pray and ask God.
[00:13:49] God can do all things.
[00:13:51] Why don't we seek him and ask him?
[00:13:55] What if, instead of grumbling to Moses, they went to the Lord and said, lord, you know our needs before we ever express them.
[00:14:04] God, you know that you've promised us a land and a people and a blessing. And so we're clinging to that promise in faith.
[00:14:12] Lord, guide us and lead us rather than grumbling.
[00:14:19] But see, these trials, oftentimes we think that it's a misstep by the Lord. And yet we're seeing in the book of Exodus that God is intentionally taking his people on these various different journeys in order that they might know him, in order that they might see what's really in their heart. The whole book of Exodus. Actually, several commentators point to this, that this next section of Exodus, we're going to get this story on repeat, that the people grumble and complain. The people grumble and complain. The people grumble and complain.
[00:14:51] I honestly thought about preaching it all together, because it's going to get a little bit repetitive.
[00:14:56] But the whole point is you almost as a reader, get to a place where you're like, seriously, how can they continue in that?
[00:15:06] And it points us to the fact that they need a new heart, that they have a heart problem.
[00:15:13] A heart problem that's set on discontent, that's set on anger, that's set on self, that's set on comfort, rather than set on the Lord.
[00:15:24] And so these trials, they expose their heart in order that they might turn to the Lord.
[00:15:35] Before I go any further and we get into this next section, I think it's just helpful. I grew up out in the country.
[00:15:40] We go down these country roads. And the thing with the country road is oftentimes they're narrow and they have ditches on both sides.
[00:15:50] Theologically, we're going to stay on a narrow road and there's ditches on both sides. Theologically, that on one side you've got a ditch of prosperity.
[00:16:01] The ditch of prosperity would say that if you just use enough faith, if you just obey rightly, then everything will go well in your life. And so if you're experiencing any pain, any suffering, any, any hardships, any sickness, then it's because of a lack of faith or obedience.
[00:16:18] And that's not true.
[00:16:20] That's not what the scripture holds out. I'll just give you one test example. Jesus Christ lived perfectly, exercised, perfect faith. You know what it got him?
[00:16:30] It got him ridiculed, it got him spit upon, it got him beaten, it got him betrayed, and it got him hung on a cross.
[00:16:37] That's what perfect faith and obedience to God got him.
[00:16:42] In this life, now in the life to come, he sits at the right hand of the Father, and he has prepared a place for those who are his.
[00:16:54] That we do have a hope and we do have assure a promise that he will wipe away every tear, that righteousness will dwell, that there will be no more pain, suffering, and hurt in heaven for eternity. But in this life, there's a ditch of the prosperity gospel that we've got to stay out of. But then we got a ditch on the other side. This is a ditch that I think a lot of people fall into. And it's the ditch of legalism.
[00:17:20] It's the ditch that. That I have to obey in order to be accepted by God. And the better I obey. And the more I obey, the more accepted and loved I am by God. And that's just not true either.
[00:17:33] It's really interesting in this text.
[00:17:36] Israel did nothing to achieve Their salvation.
[00:17:43] God rescued them.
[00:17:45] They didn't do anything. They didn't pick up buckets and try to bail water.
[00:17:49] They didn't do anything.
[00:17:51] They just simply watched God work.
[00:17:56] That's actually what he even said. He said, you only need to stand there and watch.
[00:18:02] That's the truth about salvation. We don't earn it. We don't do anything to achieve it. It's not by our obedience, it's not by our efforts. It's nothing that we do that earns us salvation. God doesn't love you anymore because you obey. He loves you because you're created in his image and because he set his affection upon you. And it doesn't make sense to us. And that's the scandal of the gospel, is that he loves us that much that he would send his son for us.
[00:18:30] We gotta stay out of the ditch of legalism.
[00:18:33] We gotta stay out of the ditch of the prosperity gospel. But let's look at what happens next. After these people begin to grumble and complain, after they're in a place where there is no water, they still have a problem that needs fixed, they begin to cry out to Moses. Moses then cries out to the Lord and look at what happens. Verse 25.
[00:18:50] And the Lord showed him a log, like, great, really helpful.
[00:18:59] I gotta give water to a million people to drink. And there's a log.
[00:19:04] Catch this.
[00:19:07] And that word showed or instructed is where your Bible may translate that. That the Lord instructed him is actually the same root word. This is where we can go deeper in this. It's actually the same root word yana that is used for Torah.
[00:19:24] That God's laws, God's instructions, God's ways, that God gave them a way. He instructed them concerning this log. And so Moses threw it into the water. And then he says, okay, now drink it. And it became sweet.
[00:19:39] That God's instructions are sweet.
[00:19:44] The psalmist actually picks up on this where he talks about God's word being like honey, sweet to our lips.
[00:19:55] That God gave him a way in which to provide. All he had to do was obey. Now you can just imagine there was probably some people there that's like, Moses has lost it.
[00:20:07] This water is bitter. And he just threw a log in it.
[00:20:12] What's he doing? He says, taste it.
[00:20:15] God said, he'll make it sweet.
[00:20:17] Taste it. And they began to drink it.
[00:20:21] That following God's instruction.
[00:20:25] Obeying God's instruction leads to experiencing God's provision.
[00:20:33] Let me tell you again.
[00:20:35] Obeying God's instruction leads to experiencing God's provisions.
[00:20:44] The water became Sweet.
[00:20:47] But then, look, we get a little bit of commentary as to this whole setting as we move into this next aspect. We saw that God took them on a journey into the wilderness. We saw that provision came through obedience.
[00:21:03] And then this third scene in verse 26 and 27, we see this.
[00:21:08] There's blessings in obedience. Look at this.
[00:21:12] There the Lord made for them a statue and a rule, and there he tested them.
[00:21:18] Now, I know that school's about over, but that word tested often is a negatively connotated word.
[00:21:28] I don't know of a whole lot of people that are like, I love a good test, right? Teachers, maybe, but students, nobody.
[00:21:36] Why? Because we feel pressured to a test. We feel like, oh, I've got to earn, I've got to achieve. I've got to prove I'm good.
[00:21:46] What if we had a different connotation to this test? What if testing just revealed knowing, hey, you're going to have this test just to see what you know so that you can have confidence that you know the Lord, that you know he'll provide.
[00:22:05] See, one of the things with suffering that it often does for those who have walked through trials and suffering, they reach a point on the other side of that, of having walked through where they go.
[00:22:20] I know that the Lord is with me.
[00:22:25] I remember sitting and talking with Sweet lady, and through the trials of her life, she said, I can look at my future and know that I know that God will be with me no matter what comes and that he will get me through it. Because when I look at what he's gotten me through, I know he can do it.
[00:22:50] But that's what testing does. It proves that we know.
[00:22:57] And so the Lord tests them.
[00:23:00] But the other side of the test is if you don't know and you assume, if you think that it will, but it won't, then you're even in worse shape.
[00:23:11] It's better to know than to go out and find out that it didn't hold.
[00:23:18] Look at what he says.
[00:23:20] Here's the test.
[00:23:22] He says, if. Now that again is an important word. That's the first conditional clause that we've seen here.
[00:23:28] Now, this if again, it's important to stay out of the ditch. This if is not connected to their salvation.
[00:23:34] They are already rescued.
[00:23:36] This if is connected to their experiencing the provisions of God. If this is conditional. And then listen, there's going to be four verbs.
[00:23:45] If you will diligently listen to my voice, the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep his statutes. There should be no confusion. Confusion. This is all about action, that God has spoken and you've got to listen to it and you've got to obey it.
[00:24:12] And if you do that, then let's see what happens.
[00:24:17] If you do that, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians.
[00:24:24] Now wait a minute.
[00:24:26] What are the diseases that were on the Egyptians? They came through those plagues.
[00:24:31] And you know why all of those came?
[00:24:33] Because Pharaoh refused to listen to the voice of God. He refused to obey that if Pharaoh would have let Israel go into the wilderness to worship, then none of the plagues would have happened. There was an avoidance of all of the discipline, which got Pharaoh to a point of obedience.
[00:24:51] Because obedience is always right with the Lord.
[00:24:55] And so God tells them, if you will hear my voice, if you will do that which is right, if you will listen to my commandments and if you will keep my statutes, then you can avoid all of the negative consequences of discipline.
[00:25:13] You can avoid those. But then he goes one step further, because this is what I love. God knows us, and he knows that the very things we're told to do, we often don't do. And so then he says, for I am the Lord, your healer. This is another covenant name of God.
[00:25:30] Think sometimes we miss out on this, but this is Yahweh, Rapha.
[00:25:36] That's what it is. He's the healer. God, I am the Lord, the healer.
[00:25:43] So when you mess up on this and you experience the disciplines of the Lord, he can heal that he is the healer, that he's the one who heals.
[00:25:55] Now, again, we gotta stay out of the ditches, right?
[00:26:00] That there's theological ditches here. And the rest of the scripture fills this out and helps us stay in the right lane. But God specifically here to the people of Israel, he's saying, this is not salvation. This is about you experiencing the provisions and the blessings of God which comes through obedience.
[00:26:21] These trials test us to see are we trusting in God because of the blessing, or are we trusting in God because of the circumstances?
[00:26:34] And yet, remember, God was the one leading them all these places. And yet we have in God's word that he says, blessings come in line with obedience.
[00:26:48] It's important for us to obey his commands, are not burdensome, they're sweet and they're life.
[00:26:57] That's what he's telling the people of Israel. And so as we go forward in the book of Exodus, this is a really important time because we're going to see in their life that as they disobey God, they experience discipline, they experience the sicknesses, they experience these things. And as they repent and turn back to the Lord and start walking in obedience, the Lord heals their land and he's sweet for them.
[00:27:30] The encouragement for us through this is that oftentimes we think suffering is wasted.
[00:27:42] If I could recommend a book to you, it's by a lady named Elizabeth Elliot.
[00:27:46] It's the title Suffering is Never For Nothing.
[00:27:50] You might know the name in that she lost her husband, Jim Elliot, as a missionary. God, I thought you took us to this land to take the gospel to these people who had never heard the name of Jesus.
[00:28:03] God, you know that I have.
[00:28:05] We have a young family.
[00:28:08] God, you know all these things and yet you let us here. And then my husband would be killed, leaving me widowed with a young family in a totally different country.
[00:28:22] Listen. That suffering was not wasted.
[00:28:26] She talks about that. She points to many different other things she pulls from other people in these sufferings that, that she encourages. And she says this.
[00:28:35] She says, I have discovered that there is no consolation to suffering, to trials, to pain. That there is no consolation like obedience.
[00:28:51] What is the Lord telling me to do? What is he commanded and how do I obey it? There's no consolation like obedience. That God is working, that it's interesting that Marah wasn't the destination. Look at this, how it ends at the end of 15, verse 27. And then they came to Elim where there were 12 springs of water and 70 palm trees. And they encamped there by the water.
[00:29:26] Listen. God brought them from Marah to Elim.
[00:29:31] They couldn't see Elam when they were in Marah, but Marah was not the destination.
[00:29:38] Elam was where God was taking them. A place of abundance. And that's what the text says, that 12 springs, 70 palm trees. That this is a picture of paradise. It's a picture of abundance.
[00:29:53] But God took them through Marah to see. Do they just praise me when it's good?
[00:30:02] Or do they walk with me?
[00:30:04] Do they trust me? Will they follow me?
[00:30:08] Will they obey my commands?
[00:30:10] Listen, you may be in Mara and I just want to encourage you that that's not the destination.
[00:30:19] The Lord takes us there for our own good, but he doesn't intend to leave us there.
[00:30:25] And so when you're in Morrow, what do you do?
[00:30:29] You turn to the Lord.
[00:30:31] You trust him. I want to end with this poem.
[00:30:37] I don't often give three points in a poem, but today you get it. That's a Preacher Rhetoric this is a poem by Grant Toller.
[00:30:50] It says this My life is but a weaving between the Lord and me.
[00:30:56] I do not choose the colors.
[00:30:58] He worketh steadily ofttimes. He weaveth sorrow and I in foolish pride forget. He sees the upper and I the underside.
[00:31:11] Not till the loom is silent and the shuttle ceases to fly shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why the dark threads are as needful in the weaver's skillful hand as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern he has planned.
[00:31:29] Listen. God has a plan.
[00:31:32] Even in our suffering, even in our trials, God is weaving a beautiful tapestry of our faith that would be so rock solid on knowing Him.
[00:31:47] If we'll just focus on hearing his voice and obeying his commands, we'll experience his blessing. Would you pray with me, God? Would you help us in the midst of trials, in the midst of unmet expectations, in the midst of unanswered prayers, in the midst of discouragement and frustration and weariness, in the midst of grief and sorrow and pain and suffering, Lord, in the midst of all of that, Lord, would you help us to hear your voice?
[00:32:25] Would you help us to keep your commands?
[00:32:30] Would you help us to rest in your sovereign love and protection and care for us, Lord? Would you help us to cling to your promises that you will never abandon or forsake us, that you do have life and blessing in store for us, that you have gone to prepare a place for us, that you intercede on our behalf, that you lean in to hear our cries, that you are with us every step of the way and that you are doing something beautiful even in the suffering, Lord, Would you help us to walk by faith and experience your blessings? In Jesus name, amen.
