Follow the Leader
Notes
Transcript
PRAY FOR ENNS FAMILY - JAKES BROTHER GEORGE PASSED AWAY 2 AM OUR TIME, 2 PM PHILIPPINE TIME WHERE HE LIVED
SCRIPTURE ANNOUNCEMENT
Exodus 23:20—33.
SCRIPTURE INTRODUCTION
We have been going through the book of Exodus…
Israel suffered as slaves…
God delivered them…
Reshaped their values…
Now, God reminds them of His promise to be with them.
RE-ANNOUNCE SCRIPTURE
Exodus 23:20—33.
SCRIPTURE READING
20 “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
21 Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.
22 “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
23 “When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out,
24 you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.
25 You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you.
26 None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.
27 I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.
28 And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you.
29 I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.
30 Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.
31 And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.
32 You shall make no covenant with them and their gods.
33 They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
INTRODUCTION
It was the championship game… it was tied 2-2… and there was only eight seconds left on the clock.
10 years old… called up… they needed a defenseman… got to play with best friend
Played well… made it to championship… because of our leader/captain Quincey
He was bigger than everyone else… faster than everyone else… and could shoot harder than anyone else.
This guy was terrifying!
The championship game was a really good game, and at the end of the 3rd period, with 8 seconds left, it was tied 2-2..
Faceoff our end… after timeout sent out best players… including our leader… Quincey.
All other d-man tired, cuz I got sent out… In between faceoff circle and goalie…
I looked at the scoreboard and saw the score 2-2 … 8 seconds left.
I can’t explain the feeling I had as I waited for the puck to drop, but I just knew Quincey was going to win the game.
I didn’t know how, I just knew he would.
Sure enough, at the drop of the puck he pushed it forward past the other teams centerman, blew past their defenseman, and barreling in on the goalie buried the game-winning shot.
It felt like a dream! As my brain came to, I realized I hadn’t even moved. I had just stood there and watched him.
Our captain, our leader had won the game and the championship for us!
TRANSITION
When it comes down to the wire in our lives… who do we trust? Where do we turn? Who do we follow?
We want to believe God can help us… but if we were honest, we don’t think that God can, or will redeem our broken situation.
It’s in these moments that we turn to other “gods” in our lives to get help and answers.
Rather than putting God first and bringing our needs to Him, we elevate other idols in our lives, looking to them for our fulfilment.
But as we are going to see in Exodus 23 this morning, God alone deserves to be first in our lives because of His great promises to those who trust and follow Him.
MAIN POINTS
We must follow Christ because of His promise to lead us
We must follow Christ because of His promise to lead us
In light of God’s promises to bring his people safely to the Promised Land, the Israelites are to put God first by obeying His Word.
20 “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
21 Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.
22 “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
EXPLANATION
EXPLANATION
God wants to give the Israelites confidence that He is going to bring them safely into the Promised Land, so he tells them His plan to send an angel before them.
Who is this angel?
The text does not tell us, and there has been much discussion about the identity of the angel.
A few possibilities are:
the angel is the pillar of cloud/fire that led the Israelites;
Moses;
the angel Michael or Gabriele;
the pre-incarnate Christ. (An appearance from Jesus before He came in the flesh.)
Two key details in this passage lead us to believe this is the pre-incarnate Christ. Look at verse 21 with me:
Exodus 23:21 “21 Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.”
Only God has the ability to pardon transgression.
God’s name is in him
These key details lead most to believe that this angel is actually Jesus, whom God had sent before them.
This angel (Jesus) was responsible to guard the Israelites and bring them safely to the Promised Land.
Based on this promise, God calls on them to follow the angel. Exodus 23:21 says…
21 Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.
What God is warning the Israelites here is that there are consequences for their disobedience.
He is not saying that He will never forgive their transgression.. what he is saying is that it will not go unpunished.
“If you willingly disobey, if you rebel against My angel, you will be disciplined, because my name is in him.”
“He bears my holiness, and therefore sin cannot be tolerated.”
SUMMARY
Since God promises to protect and lead His people to the place He has promised them by sending His angel before them, He calls on them to be faithful to listen to and follow His angel.
ILLUSTRATION
ILLUSTRATION
In a letter to his son, Eric, who was struggling as a young pastor, Eugene Peterson encouraged him to focus on being a follower of Christ rather than focusing on being a leader.
To make his point, he shared a story about Ray,
Ray was the tour guide who led them on their trip through Israel in 1999.
Each day Ray would lead the group out to explore different parts of Israel, but would share very little about what the agenda was.
The people in the group wanted more details, so they would ask Ray questions like:
“What are we going to do today Ray?”
“Where are we going?”
“When are we going to have lunch?”
“Why are we going up this trail?”
But Ray wouldn’t answer… he would just ignore their questions.
But every once in a while he would say something like,
“Listen, I know where I’m going. Trust me. If I tell you ahead of time what we’re doing, where we’re going, you start forming ideas in your mind that will be wrong—walking by faith involves an openness to seeing, hearing what you don’t know, and can’t anticipate.”
Ray continued…
“Follow the rabbi, let the rabbi do it his way, with his sense of timing. Trust him to make the right decisions along the way and get you where he wants you to go.”
Eugene goes on to say that
when we have an “obsession with knowing where we are going, our aptitude for following atrophies.”
Atrophy is when a part of our body wastes away or decreases in size because of lack of use.
Those who have had a broken bone and had to wear a cast know what this is like.
As your arm/leg/whatever sits in the cast, the muscles shrink… you have to build them back up.
What Peterson is saying is that when we are obsessed with knowing all the details, we forget that we are followers.
We forget to follow, because we think we are in control.
APPLICATION
APPLICATION
In our world it is easy to be addicted to getting the answers.
When we don’t know answer… google!
Who needs God?
We can “get all the answers”, and feel pressure to “have all answers.”
But what if God doesn’t want us to have all the answers… details… what roads He will lead us down?
The Israelites knew destination… not route.
And that’s exactly where God wanted them to be!
As followers of Christ, we don’t know that much about what is ahead, so we must learn to follow our leader, Jesus.
We know destination… but not what God will bring along the way.
And that’s exactly where God wants us!
God’s primary concern isn’t that we have all the answers, but that we learn to trust and follow Him because HE has promised to be with us and lead us.
After commanding His disciples to made disciples of all nations, Jesus said in Matthew 28:20…
Matthew 28:20 (ESV)
20 And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
We must follow and trust Christ, because He promises to be with us to the end!
BUT… What does it look like to follow Christ?
Eugene Peterson says it this way…
We get out of bed each morning and pray, "Lord Jesus Christ, I follow you. I deny myself, I take up my cross, and I follow you." Our basic identity is not leader but follower. Jesus never tells us to lead; he invites us to follow.
Then, throughout day as we face challenges, disappointment, and temptation, we don’t look to the world, or our phone for the answers…
We look to Christ!
We follow His Word for our lives.
We pray for wisdom and guidance to be obedient to His Word.
Our trust in Him, comes from our confidence in His ability to safely lead us to the place He has prepared for us.
Next, we see that…
We must follow Christ because of His promise to give us victory
We must follow Christ because of His promise to give us victory
When God led the Israelites out of Egypt, He led them out with a strong and mighty arm, soundly defeating their enemies.
Even when the Egyptian army chased after them, God destroyed every last one of them in the Red Sea.
Now, God promises that when He brings them into the place He has prepared for them, He will defeat their enemies.
22 “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
23 “When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out,
24 you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.
EXPLANATION
EXPLANATION
God promises to give the Israelites victory over their enemies.
He is going to bring them into the Promised Land, and defeat the nations that are currently occupying the land.
This is a fulfilment of the promise God gave to Abraham in Gen 15:18-21
18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
God is now reminding the Israelites that He is going to make good on that promise.
He tells them in our passage that His angel is going to blot out these enemy nations and give them the land.
This begs the question…
WOULDN’T IT BE UNJUST FOR GOD TO DESTROY OTHER NATIONS SO THAT HIS PEOPLE CAN HAVE THE LAND? NO!
We have to understand that God is a God of justice, and when He punishes sin, He is being just.
In the book of Leviticus God gives His people more detailed instruction of how they are to be holy.
In chapter 18, God gives the Israelites a list of sins they are to avoid.
We learn that these very sins were the reason God was going to remove the wicked nations from the Promised Land.
24 “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, 25 and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you
27 (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), 28 lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.
God is going to drive out nations because of their sin.
Since God alone is holy and righteous, He alone can judge and punish sin.
In the same way that God is going to remove the inhabitants of the land for their sin, God will remove Israel from the land if they commit those same sins.
God is holy, and therefore just to punish sin.
Since God is going to give the Israelites victory over their enemies, and bring them into the Promised Land, they are commanded to be faithful to God.
24 you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.
God knew that after experiencing victory, the Israelites would be tempted to serve and worship other gods…
So he reminds them to completely remove them from the land…
He desires that His people remain faithful to follow Him because of His promise to give them victory.
ILLUSTRATION
ILLUSTRATION
Later on, in the book of Joshua, the Israelites enter the Promised Land, and God does indeed give them victory over their enemies.
They begin to slowly take over almost all of the land.
God fulfills His promise to His people!
At the end of the book, before Joshua dies, he calls on the people to remember God’s faithfulness to them, and serve Him alone.
But shortly after his death, we read this in Judges 2:12
12 And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger.
Even though God was faithful to His promise to bring them into the land and give them victory over their enemies, the Israelites did not remain faithful to follow God.
They gave in to the norms of culture around them, and began worshiping many gods.
APPLICATION
APPLICATION
What God is teaching us in this passage is that He is the only true God, and therefore the only one worthy of our worship and obedience!
There is no room for worship of any other so-called “gods”.
He is to be our exclusive Saviour!
In the Israelites’ day, worshiping many gods was normal.
So for God to call them to worship Him alone was to go against the current of the day.
This is true of our day as well.
Our world does not believe in absolute truth, and so they believe the lie that all paths of religion lead to the same place.
“There’s some good in all of it.”
THAT’S NOT TRUE!!!
There is only one Creator who rules over the earth.
There is only one Judge who every person will stand before.
There is only one God who deserves to be followed and worshipped.
When we think of the sort of idol worship we see in this passage, we think of statues made of wood, metal or stone that people bow down to.
But idolatry is alive and well in our day… even in our own lives… it’s only more subtle.
We worship at the altar of money — trying to get a little bit more to be satisfied.
We worship at the altar of fame and reputation — trying to exalt ourselves and be more successful than others.
We worship at the altar of beauty — trying to find acceptance and praise from others.
We say we worship God, but we actually chase after and worship the idols of the world!
Bob Kaulfin, in his book “Worship Matters” says…
We profess to love the true God but actually love false idols.
This may sound harsh and uncomfortable, but we all struggle with this!
Here’s how we know it’s true… we worship what we love.
Bob Kauflin goes on to say…
How do I know what I love the most? By looking at my life outside of Sunday morning. What do I enjoy the most? What do I spend the most of my time doing? Where does my mind drift to when I don’t have anything to do? What am I passionate about? What do I spend my money on?
What makes me angry when I don’t get it? What do I feel depressed without? What do I fear losing the most? Our answers to those questions will lead us straight to the God or gods we love and worship.
God knew that after the Israelites experienced victory and success in the Promised Land, they were going to be tempted to worship false idols.
In the same way, we are blinded by success, or the idea that everything is going good and we are in control.
We “don’t really need God”, but then we try to find joy/satisfaction from worldly things.
God has redeemed us through Christ… and therefore needs to become first in our lives!
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
Praise God for His great mercy!
Because He has shown such great love toward us in breaking our chains of bondage to sin,
let us not bow down to the gods of this world…
let us not follow the sinful ideas of those who do not follow Christ…
Rather…
let us utterly overthrow those idols in our lives, and break them in pieces!
What things in your life are you putting before God?
What are you choosing to worship with your time, money, and energy?
God has been so rich in mercy and grace toward us, and wants us to experience the fullness of His blessing…
This is another reason we must…
We must follow Christ because of the fullness of His promise
We must follow Christ because of the fullness of His promise
God doesn’t just want to give us victory over our enemies, He wants us to experience His blessing over every area of our lives!
We can see the fullness of God’s promise by noting three areas of our lives God promises to bless if we will wholeheartedly follow Him:
The first area of promise is:
His promise to take care of us
His promise to take care of us
25 You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. 26 None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.
God was bringing His people into a new land that they were not familiar with, but God is assuring them that He is going to take care of them.
He is going to provide food and water for them.
He is going to give them health.
He is going to give them descendants.
God desires to bless His people with good things in this life when they trust and follow Him.
The next area of promise is:
His promise to defeat our enemies
His promise to defeat our enemies
27 I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28 And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. 29 I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.
We already talked about God promising to defeat their enemies, but here we see God’s care in how He defeats their enemies…
through a slow, gradual process.
The land He is giving them is so big, that if He were too immediately drive all the nations out, it would become barren and overrun with wild beasts.
So God is careful not to give them more than they can handle.
This also serves as a test to see if they will remain committed and dependant on God.
But we see that God desires to bless His people through defeating their enemies.
The pinnacle of the fullness of God’s promise is:
His promise to give us an inheritance
His promise to give us an inheritance
31 And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.
God is going to give His people a land they can call their own.
They have been slaves in Egypt for 400 years, but they are finally going to have a land where they can build homes, cities, and build roots.
SUMMARY
God wants to bless every area of their lives.
Based on the fullness of His promises, God calls the Israelites to be fully committed to HIm by putting Him first.
32 You shall make no covenant with them and their gods.
33 They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”
Because of God’s promise to bless every area of their lives, He calls on them to remain fully committed to Him, and completely remove them from the land so that they are not tempted to worship them.
Though God’s promise is to bless every area of their lives, He does not promise to do it immediately, but slowly over time.
This will require the Israelites to continually put their trust in God over time, as they follow His Word and wait for His victory.
There will be many struggles along the way, but as long as they wait for God they will experience the fullness of His blessing.
ILLUSTRATION
ILLUSTRATION
Young William Wilberforce was discouraged one night in the early 1790s.
He had been tirelessly fighting to end the slave trade going on in England for 10 years, and after yet another defeat, he was ready to give up.
Tired and frustrated, he opened his Bible and began to leaf through it.
A small piece of paper fell out and fluttered to the floor.
It was a letter written by John Wesley shortly before his death.
Wilberforce read it again:
"Unless the divine power has raised you up... I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that (abominable practice of slavery), which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature.
Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh, be not weary of well-doing. Go on in the name of God, and in the power of His might."
Our Daily Bread, June 16, 1989.
This was the reminder WIlberforce needed to continue fighting.
It would take about 40 more years, but William Wilberforce continued to battle until finally the British Parliament signed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.
His dedication and hard work, trusting in God working through him enabled Him to endure to the end.
APPLICATION
APPLICATION
Oftentimes in our lives we give up too easily.
When the going gets tough, we just stop.
Our culture around us doesn’t help… constantly selling us a product/service that will make our lives easy!
God never intends our lives to be easy!
No! Rather:
we will have trouble…
we will be hated…
we will be slandered…
we will be fighting an uphill battle…
It will not be easy, but God has promised:
To be with us…
To give us victory… and
To give us the fullness of His blessing.
Do you know why Jesus faced greater temptation than we will ever face in our lives?
Because He didn’t give in!
Because of this, Satan had to come back with greater and greater tactics to try and get Him to fall… but Jesus remained committed to obedience to God.
We will never face that level of temptation, because we too often give in right away!
Maybe we don’t give in at the first sign of temptation, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of convincing.
We must learn to love God more than we love our sin!
God told the Israelites that He wasn’t going to immediately give them victory… but slowly over time.
When God brought them into the Promised Land, they ended up settling for not driving out all the nations because they were tired of fighting.
We struggle with the same thing!
We don’t want to do the hard work required to change, so we just give in.
In what area of your life have you become content with your sin?
Where have you stopped fighting for holiness and righteousness?
You feel like it will never change, so you have just given up.
You need to fight!
God has promised to be with you and to give you victory over your enemies!
So fight in that strength to receive the blessings that God has for you!
CONCLUSION
Imagine six-year-old Kevin, whose parents have enrolled him in music lessons.
Forced to practice while friends play outside.
That’s discipline without direction. It’s drudgery.
Now suppose Kevin is visited by an Angel one afternoon during guitar practice. In a vision, he's transported to Carnegie Hall.
He's shown a guitar virtuoso giving a concert. Usually bored by classical music, Kevin is astonished by what he sees and hears.
The musicians fingers dance on the strings with fluidity and grace.
Kevin thinks of how stupid and clunky his own hands feel when they halt and filter over the chords.
The virtuoso blends clean, soaring notes into a musical aroma that wafts from his guitar.
Kevin remembers the toneless, irritating discord that comes stumbling out of his.
But Kevin is in chanted. His head tilts to one side as he listens.
He drinks in everything. He never imagine that anyone could play the guitar like this.
What do you think, Kevin? Ask the angel.
The answer is a soft, slow, six year olds “w - o - w!
The vision vanishes, and the angel is again standing in front of Kevin in his living room,
"Kevin," says the angel, "the wonderful musician you saw is you in a few years."
Then pointing at the guitar, the angel declares, "But you must practice!"
Suddenly the angel disappears and Kevin finds himself alone with his guitar.
Do you think his attitude toward practice will become different now?
As long as he remembers what he's going to become, Kevins discipline will have a direction, a goal that will pull him into the future.
Yes, effort will be involved, but you could hardly call it drudgery.
Closing Application
Paul, writing the Corinthian church, which was a church that struggled… a lot!
Toward the end of his letter encouraged them with these words.
50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
We have victory through Christ’s sacrifice!
He showed His love through His death on the cross.
And we have the promise that one day we will be clothed in righteousness and immortality, experiencing the fullness of God’s blessing.
But God wants us to begin to enjoy these blessings here and now, as we build His kingdom.
In light of His promises to us, would we willingly trust and follow our gracious King!