Impossible

Impossible Tasks

I’m sure you can all look back on scenarios that looked impossible...

Moving away from home for the first time

Assuming a new leadership position

Significant change in life situation

Cubs winning another World Series within 100 years...

Seriously, we’ve all hit difficult points…Points where we have no idea how we’re going to get through something...

Backstory

Exodus 33:12–13 NIV

Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”

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The New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. Print.

God has delivered Israel out of Egypt

They’ve been chased down by the Egyptian Army and God has parted the waters

Mt. Sanai…Idolatry with the golden calf

God gets angry

And now…Moses is looking at taking this grumbling, unhappy, unfaithful people into the wilderness

Question: Do you think Moses, or even the people of Israel, at this point felt like they deserved God’s blessing?

How often do we see life as impossible because we assume that God is against us s a result of our failures?

God’s Favor

Malachi 3:6 NIV

“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.

Romans 33:12

James 1:17 NIV

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

J1mes 1:17

Numbers 23:19 NIV

God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

Moses’ fear, and our fear, is very often that God changes his commitment to us, based on our sins, our frailties, and our weakness.

But Scripture is clear. GOD DOES NOT CHANGE!

What God has declared is permanent.

Exodus 5:8 NIV

But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’

Exodus 6:8 NIV

And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’ ”

Judges 2:1 NIV

The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you,

Moses is afraid, but God has already made the promise...

God’s New Covenant

Matthew 26:28 NIV

This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

In Jesus, we have been promised something even greater than a Promised Land.

We have a promised salvation

The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Verified from the Original Sources II. Intercession

Christ however made full satisfaction not only for actual sins, but also for the temporal and eternal punishments due our sins: 1. According to the nature of a perpetual relation, when the guilt is removed, the debt of punishment belonging to the guilt is also removed

Application

Like the Israelites, we can march into the wilderness of life with confidence that no matter what, we win!

No matter the good, the bad, or the ugly, those who have received Jesus Christ in faith, can be assured that God’s got ‘em.