GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF HIS OWN

This Present Crisis

We are, without question, argument, or debate at the precipice of a potential disaster of prophetic and apocalyptic proportions. A precipice is a very steep rock face or cliff, especially a tall one, while an apocalypse is an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale. I don’t mean to alarm you but, the truth of the matter is that we really are faced with a serious crisis.

The world has been in crisis every since our first parents made the decision to disobey the voice and the revealed will of God; Therefore we it ought not be a big surprise that humanity goes from crisis to crisis. The early 19th Century abolitionist and poet James Russell Lowell penned these immortal words:

Truth forever on the scaffold.

Wrong forever on the throne—

Yet that scaffold sways the future,

And, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow,

Keeping watch above his own.

The poem was written in 1844, and the crisis of that time was slavery. The idea is that crisis moments occur across history, and it’s important to choose the side of truth. Although truth may seem to be losing, God is in control and truth will ultimately win.

That’s really what the Lord wants to get us to see today that No matter what the situation, He will always take care of his own.

Pharoah Resists God

If you remember your bible stories, you will recall that the book of Genesis closes with Jacob and the family moving to Egypt in order to be near Joseph and fertile pastures in the time of famine in Caanan. In the process of time Joseph died, along with all of those in generation. The Bible says, that there arose another Pharoah who did not know Joseph, and who was afraid that the rapidly multiplying people might potentially become an enemy, so he made them slaves.

As they continued to multiply, Pharaoh treated them all the more harsh and cruel, in hopes that it would crush their hopes and break their spirits. He even went as far as commanding the midwives to murder the Hebrew baby boys as they came forth from the womb, but, he failed to take into account that God still had some people who stay on his side. it was into this context that Moses was born.

Can I park here for a moment to say parenthetically that “sometimes the crisis lasts a long time.” The text reveals to us that the children of Isreal were in this crisis long before Moses was born; then they had to wait for him to come to maturity (40 yrs old) for him to recognize what they were enduring, and then then they had to wait another 40 years before God gave him his assignment on the backside of the desert. In sum total this crisis for Israel lasted 430 years. I wonder today, if not this present crisis were to tarry, who would be able to stand?

The text says that the Egyptians mistreated the Israelites in a very bad way; but,they were unaware that they had a weapon called prayer and more than that they had a God who both hears and answers. When God called Moses he validated it. See Ex 3:7-9

Exodus 3:7–9 NASB95

The Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. “So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. “Now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.

God sends Moses to Pharoah with his Word

Although Moses was reluctant to take on this great responsibility, he nevertheless yielded to the will of God. He arrived in Egypt and stood before Pharoah and said what God said: Let my people go! Let them go because 1) you don’t know how to treat them. You have unrighteously enslaved them, when I created all men to be free 2) You have unjustly exploited them for your own advancement and personal profit, and 3) You have wickedly afflicted them with inhumane atrocities that no individual bearing the image of God should suffer. Let them go!

Let my people go, because they don’t belong to you; they are mine, exclusively mine!

.I can hear that Lord saying, you have unrighteously enslaved them, but I made them. You have unjustly exploited them for your own advancement and personal profit, but I am the one who determines their worth, You have wickedly afflicted them with inhumane atrocities that no individual bearing the image of God should suffer, but I am the one who heals and restores them. Let them go, because they don;t belong to you , they are “MY PEOPLE.” See Mal. 3:17

Malachi 3:17 ESV

“They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.

The text before us today, discloses that this arrogant man had the unmitigated gall and audacity to refuse not a request, but a command from God. Not One, not two, but three times he stubbornly refused to comply to the divine command. And so God begin to show his power: Rod becomes a snake and swallows the magicians rods, Nile River turned to blood, frog infestation through out the land. These they mistook as cheap parlor tricks that any magician could perform; But when the gnats showed up and the magicians could not duplicate the phenomenon the Lord said to Moses: “go tell him again!” See Ex 8:20

Exodus 8:20 ESV

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh, as he goes out to the water, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Let my people go, that they may serve me.

God attaches an ultimatum

This cavalier attitude that Pharoah was taking prompted another ultimatum by the Lord; you would think that by now Pharoah would realize that this was not idle threat: “God will do what he says he will do”. When God says, if you don’t… that should make get in a hurry to obey his will.

I think that somebody watching and listening ought to take a note at this point and quit playing with God. Make up your mind: either you do or you don’t; You either will or you won’t…The choice is yours. See Ex 8:21

Exodus 8:21 ESV

Or else, if you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people, and into your houses. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies, and also the ground on which they stand.

God Protects His People

It is in times like these that tests the realness of the people of God. Everyone who says that they belong to God are not, in fact, telling the truth. One thing that the Bible teaches us is that the Lord knows who are his and he knows how to separate the light from darkness, the water from the dry land, the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tare, and the righteous from the wicked.

The Lord says to Pharoah, that I’m going to fill the whole land where you and your people are with a plague of nasty flies; but I’m going to make a difference between your people and my people. He says they have already gone through enough so I’m going to shelter them from this crisis. See Ex 8:22

Exodus 8:22 ESV

But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth.

The LORD is in the midst of the earth.

The lesson that many of us still need to learn is that oppression, exploitation, affliction and inhumanity, are still present among us and is, in fact, the reason that we find ourselves in our current situation. The Bible is right, and God is real. We are under the attack of powers, principalities, the rulers of the darkness, and spiritual wickedness in high places. But, I rose to tell somebody who may really be paying attention today that the LORD is in the midst of the earth. He his here because he came here and tabernacled for 33 years. He defeated them when he died on Calvary. See Col.2:15

Colossians 2:15 ESV

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

He victoriously went back to his exalted place at the right hand of the Father, but he sent us his Holy Spirit. I said the LORD is in the midst of the earth.

Trouble may not last always; but, it can last a long time

The Lord told Pharoah that he was going to make a difference. I just want to encourage somebody today to come over to the Lord’s side. If you know you have not really asked the Lord to save you, you ought to do that today and ask him to fill you with his Holy Spirit because truly that is the acid test. Are you going to be a part of what the Lord is doing in the earth. Romans 8:9 says,

Romans 8:9 ESV

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

God will take care of his own

See Psalm 46:1-2

Psalm 46:1–2 ESV

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,

See Ps 27:5

Psalm 27:5 ESV

For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.

Psalm 138:7 ESV

Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your right hand delivers me.

I have a Savoir who I can tell my Trouble to!

He Keeps the Ship on Course

A ship was caught in the teeth of a storm at sea. The passengers were terrified, thinking that there was no hope for survival. Then one of the passengers went up on the bridge. He regained his peace and calm, for he saw the captain. His face was beaten by the wind and rain, but his hands firmly held the helm. Holding the ship on its course, he had a smile on his face.

So may God’s people maintain their peace. God is in control, the master of wind and wave. And there is a smile on His face!