God Makes a Way

We have been having the book of Exodus show us ways that God is at work in our lives. We began with a focus on God saving us through looking at him saving the life of Moses. Last week we saw that God is sometimes behind the scenes and other times is out front where we can easily see that he is the one at work as he prepares the way.

This week we look at how he can make a way for us. Our scripture comes from Exodus 12:1-14 The words will be on the screen.

12 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb t for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover. 12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. 14 “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.

Please pray with me…

God has intervened into a situation that has been ongoing for the Israelites. They are in captivity and being mistreated. God saw their hurt and responded when they cried out to him. He has a man through named Moses lead them to this point in our story.

We have moved a ways forward into the book of Exodus. Last week our Scripture was about Moses receiving his calling from the Lord and how God had prepared him for that calling. Since then, a LOT has taken place.

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Moses had presented himself before Pharaoh and asked him to set the Israelites free and Pharaoh refused. God has intervened through nine different plagues that he brought forth against Egypt. These plagues attacked the water supply, the crops and even the people. But after each one Moses again asked Pharaoh to set the people free and each time Pharaoh refused.

This leads us to today’s scripture and the plague that will lead to Pharaoh giving up and letting the Israelites leave. Everything else hadn’t worked which led to God offering a way out but the Israelites must follow God’s plan in order for them to be saved..

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God might be able to make a way without us having to do anything, but there may be times that he wants us to have to do something in order for him to make a way. God may want us to show our faith through our actions in order for a way to be made.

When we look at today’s scripture there had to be trust and faith involved. The previous plagues had led the people to believe that God could do what he said he was going to do. But the people still had a choice.

Some or all of the people could have chosen to not follow through with these actions given to Moses by God. What I would expect would have happened for those households that didn’t follow through is that they would have faced the same fate as the Egyptians.

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God can end up placing us in similar situations. He can give us a job to do and how we are to go about doing it. The choice we make will determine the outcome that we receive. We can be seen as different by choosing to follow the will of God, or we can decide to do nothing and end up in the same circumstances as everyone else.

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It is possible that our lack of action can lead to what God wants done not being done in the timing that God wanted it done. God may still find another way, but our free will can prevent God from accomplishing something in the way or time that he wanted to accomplish it.

It is during these times that trusting God is needed in order for him to make the way for us. We may need to step out in faith and be willing to do something that may not make any sense to us. We have to trust that what God wants us to do will be best for us and those around us.

In the case of the Israelites, they had to cook, eat, and put blood on their door posts. They had to follow God’s plan in order to be saved so that God could make a way for them to escape. God had made a way, but they would have to listen to Moses’ words from God and respond in order for them to become free.

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Before we go any further let’s spend some time talking about something that we often just pass by and ignore within the church. Those times when God does something that we can find hard to accept. Those times when God acts in a way that we may struggle to understand why he would make that choice.

In this case, God announces that in order for the Israelites to be set free he is going to commit genocide. He is going to kill “all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast.” Many of these individuals may have not done anything against the Israelites, but that isn’t going to matter. Pharaohs refusal to let the Israelites be set free has led to this plague.

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Theology is the study of God. It is what you as an individual believe regarding God. When we have an event such as this one occur, within scripture we have a decision to make. We need to decide what we think of it, and can we accept it.

The reason why this is important is because those that have left the church and some that have never stepped into a church know about these scriptures. Sometimes these are the things that they bring up to explain why they could never choose to follow God.

When we read scriptures like these, we need to figure out how we feel about them. Do we ignore them and act like they don’t exist? Do we accept by faith that although we disagree with them there must be some background that we are missing? Or do we find a way that through our theology, our personal understanding of God, we can accept a God that would do something like this.

I believe the best way for us to try to deal with these scriptures is to find a way theologically to deal with them. And if we can’t, we then can make the decision to accept through faith that what is occurring was for a reason.

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In this case, I accept what God does on the basis that in the Old Testament his focus was on keeping his chosen people alive and serving him. This meant that at times things had to occur that I would not agree with.

I can reach this decision because we don’t find events like this occurring in the New Testament. We don’t find events like this taking place after Jesus died on the cross for all people. After all people truly became God’s people. This is my way of accepting it. You need to discover your own way.

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Sometimes God will make a way, and we don’t have to do anything but get up and go. We don’t have to prepare; he just does the work for us. We can find this during our first reading. We do find that people were praying for Peter’s deliverance, so it was similar to the Exodus story with the difference being that the people were crying out to God on Peter’s behalf.

We have Peter in prison sleeping when God intervenes. The first thing we discover is that Peter is at peace with whatever the outcome of his time in prison will be. He could very easily end up being killed for talking about Jesus. He is at peace with what the world decides.

He is at peace because he knows that God is with him. It is similar to Shadrach, michach, and Abendego. They tell the king that they will not bow and that they will follow their God to their deaths if they are not saved.

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God has to shake Peter to wake him up. He is sleeping deeply in a prison surrounded by guards. God works in such a mysterious way that in this case that Peter doesn’t even believe it is real. He believes that it is a dream. That what is happening has to be in his imagination.

We have God helping Peter get passed three sets of guards and a locked gate before he wakes up and realizes that it wasn’t a dream. God had made a way for him to escape imprisonment and most likely death.

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We also have to be willing to believe that God can make a way when we pray. We have the people praying for Peter but then when he arrives at their door they don’t believe. We have a servant girl answer the door and she is in such disbelief that Peter is there that she leaves him to tell the others.

Can you imagine Peter running from the law standing outside of a house where he could be protected wondering when someone is going to let him in. This woman’s reaction could have led him right back to the prison cell God had helped him escape from.

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We also get the reaction of the rest of the people in the house. They don’t believe it. They say that she is out of her mind and that it is probably Peter’s angel. This to me is saying that they believe that Peter must be dead instead of believing that their prayers have saved him.

This leads me to the story of Zechariah, the father of who we know in the church as John the Baptist. We have him in the synagogue where he is lighting the altar of incense. We have an angel appear before him and tell him that his prayers have been answered. We have him doubt what the angel is saying.

We need to be praying with expectation. We need to be willing to risk the disappointment that our prayer does not end up being answered as we would desire. We have to pray with the belief that God does answer our prayers.

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When we return back to the story, we have Peter continuing to pound on the door trying to get in before they realize he is missing and go searching for him. Eventually they answer the door and are “astonished.” They can’t believe that their prayers have been answered in this way. It is at this point that Peter tells them how miraculous his freedom truly was.

What I have found in my life is that when doubts begin to creep in, I need to remember the times that God had responded. The times that God saved me or someone I was praying for from a situation or an illness.

This also helps us during those times that our prayers don’t seem to be answered the way that we would want. We still can have that reminding in the back of our minds that God is with us even if he didn’t do what we wanted done this time.

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Just like last week we need to focus on the greatest way that God made a way. That was through the death of Jesus on the cross. Humanity was separated from God. They became separated when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Through that one act everything changed for humanities relationship with God.

Can you imagine the disappointment that God felt regarding his creation? Can you imagine the hope to one day again be able to be in a relationship with his creation without the barrier of sin?

That possibility became a realization through his son and his actions on the cross. The Jewish people had used sacrifices as a way for them to atone for their sins. When he died on the cross, Jesus became the sacrifice for all of humanities’ sins.

For a brief moment there would have been no sin in the world. For a brief moment, things would have been as they were in that garden before the original sin. God made a way for each of us to be forgiven of our sin and to be able to be in an intimate relationship with our creator and our Lord and Savior. This is the ultimate example of God finding a way to change our relationship with him.

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So what are we going to do with this second chance? What can we do to show the world that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. First, we have to believe it ourselves. It goes back to our understanding of God that was mentioned earlier.

Do we truly believe that God made a way to change our lives through Jesus? If we do believe that then are we going to be willing to share that message with those around us? Our mission statement at The Church of the Good Shepherd is focused on building relationships with those around us.

It points out that we are going to be a church that is going to choose to love all people. We might not like everyone we meet, but we need to be willing both individually and as a church to be a place that welcomes all people in.

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What kind of person, what kind of church are we going to be? Let us choose to be people that are willing to share the story of Jesus with those around us. Let us be willing to share our Jesus story with those that we meet. Let us decide that we are going to be the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus to those around us.

Jesus has made a way for each of us that believe in him to be free from the power of sin. Let us be willing to share that message with those we meet.

Let us pray…