Crossing Your Red Sea

I have two questions as I begin here this morning. They're not difficult ones. What is the most important event of the New Testament? The most important event of the New Testament, would you think? This is the interactive part of the sermon. We have to have that token part there. What have we just celebrated a week ago? Passover. And this week, would you say that I could vent you? The most significant event of the New Testament is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some of you are nodding.

I think that we would assume that. If you go to the Old Testament, what is the most significant event in the Old Testament? Is it the challenge of the spies that Mr. Turgeon talked about in his sermon at? Is it the founding of Israel?

Is it creation? The flood? What is the most significant event you would think of the Old Testament? I think we can hands down say the resurrection, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central theme of the New Testament. You might be surprised if you were to do a search. I think you would find that there's one event that is mentioned and repeated more times in the Old Testament than anything else. The creation, the flood, and that is God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt. The deliverance of Israel bringing them out of Egypt.

You will find that referenced time and time again throughout the first five books of the Bible, throughout the histories of Israel. It seems, and through many of the prophets, that God reminds the people when he invokes obedience, when he tells them what they should do or repent or return, how they should treat each other, how they should treat other nations, other peoples, he says, Remember you were a slave in Egypt and I brought you out.

More than any one event in the Old Testament, you will find that that is what is mentioned, God bringing Israel out of Egypt. And that coincides with this particular, obviously, this Holy Day period, the Days of Unleavened Bread. And if there's one event of that exodus, we heard on the theme of the offertory music from the movie Exodus, and seems to capture people's attention more than anything else, it is that passage through the Red Sea. I mean, that was the signature event of the movie The Ten Commandments, how they did that.

And for years and years, it was part of the, out in Hollywood at Universal Studios, if you went there, you got your own passage through the Red Sea. We actually did that one time. It was pretty hokey. I had it built up in my mind to be much bigger than what it was, and it was neat, but it wasn't the real thing. It was a backlot contrivance of what must have been a significant event. That passage through the Red Sea, when God brought them out, which tradition has it, took place on the last day of Unleavened Bread.

And yet, that whole deliverance of God bringing Israel out of slavery, out of Egypt, into their land, is continually referenced throughout the Scriptures, in the Old Testament, as a significant event, it seems, that was the beginning of their story and what they should remember. And it's very interesting to think about that in regard to the meaning of these days of Unleavened Bread, as God brings us out of our spiritual sin, of our spiritual slavery, to sin, which is the biggest lesson for us to learn.

As I look back at that story and have over the years of Israel's deliverance, I've marveled at it as well, and I thought Mr. Turgeon was going to go right to this particular story when he opened up with the questions that he had in his sermonette in terms of what would we have done. So I'll ask, I'll borrow his phrase, but I'll apply it to a different story.

What would you have done? Had you been at that sea with the challenges in front and the challenges at the rear? Pharaoh's army at the rear and a vast expanse, seemingly unpassable in front, and problems and challenges. What would have been your reaction? I've thought about that over the years and wondered, would I have challenged Moses?

Would I have complained? Or would I have had faith? What would I have done? You look at their story and you think, you know, people who had stood in their doorway and seen the sun darkened at midday, or watched water be turned to blood, or had seen other miracles of the land fill up with dead frogs and the stench go out throughout the land and seep into the homes.

And even in the most recent hours, as they heard the wails of their neighbors with the death of the firstborn and witnessed the miracles that they had over those recent days, you would think they would have had a stronger confidence and faith that God was going to deliver them at that particular moment as they stood on the shore of the Red Sea. You'd think. But we know the story and we know that they doubted and they had problems, not just there, but throughout all of that. How would you have reacted to that dilemma? Let's turn back to Exodus 14.

It's a good question for us all to ask as we come to the end of the Holy Days and think about ourselves, what we have learned, what we have experienced during this time.

In Exodus 14, it begins in verse 1 as they make that journey out. And they were to camp before by the sea in verse 2. And it was a setup in one sense.

God was preparing and planning all of this along. It was told to the king of Egypt in verse 5 that the people had fled in the heart of the Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people. And they said, Why have we done this? We've let Israel go from serving us. And so he made his chariot and took his people, 600 choice chariots and the chariots of Egypt with captains over every one of them. God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he pursued the children of Israel, and the children of Israel went out with boldness. And so the Egyptians pursued them.

And they came and they drew near. Verse 11, they said to Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us to bring us out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we told you, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we would die in the wilderness. And so they come to this point. They doubt. They fear. They are afraid.

Again, I ask, How would you and I have reacted at this event, which is really at the centerpiece of this whole Exodus, this bringing out of a people from slavery in Egypt to make a nation out of them, which God continually comes back and reminds them of, time and time again, throughout the remainder of their history? Remember, you were slaves. Remember, I brought you out.

I made you a people. That was to be at the centerpiece of everything they did, everything they lived for, their whole history from that point on. It just continually is brought back to mind. And there are many reasons for that. Many, many reasons. Many lessons for us to take.

As we look at it, we look back at what they would have done, we can ask, we can challenge them, we could say, Well, you know, I would have had more faith. I wouldn't have murmured. Maybe we wouldn't. Some of us wouldn't have. Maybe some of us would have. Maybe we would have lost courage as well. We weren't there. We wouldn't know how we've reacted. But we don't need to look back, in one sense, judge them like people who weren't there. That's one of the great problems of a modern mind, to look back on any situation or any thing of the past and try to make a judgment. First of all, you weren't there. First of all, you're not in their shoes. In certain ways, things are different. But one of the things I've learned as I've thought about this question over the years, time and time again, is to come back to how I react in my own life, to the trials, the problems, the challenges that come into my life. How do I react to what is before me? How do you react to your trials? To your setbacks? Look at that. Look at how you and I react to our problems and we will gain some insight into how we would have acted or reacted at the time of the exodus and standing on the shore of the Red Sea. This very moment, this particular period. Look at the way you reacted and do react. Is there fear? Fear of the unknown? Fear of what lies in the future?

Fear of making the wrong decision? Fear of having made the wrong decision when it may become evident that we have? To whatever challenge might be there? Or was there confidence? Was there courage?

A decision or wrong decision? Look at the biggest challenge that has ever hit your life and how you dealt with it. Then you might begin to get some insight into how you would have reacted had you been among this multitude standing on the shore of the Red Sea with the armies of the Feral at the back and the insurmountable obstacle of the Red Sea in front not knowing exactly how you were going to go through. Because you would think you were in an impossible situation. Walk into the ocean?

This had never been done before. Fight the armies of Feral with what? These were people that had come out of slavery. They didn't have armory. They didn't have anything to defend themselves with. They left in haste. The biggest thing they gathered was the possessions of the Israelites and some bread. And it wasn't even leavened. So they didn't have much. What does God ask of you and I?

We put our life into God's hands, you and I, when we're baptized, when we become a part of the body of Jesus Christ, we put our life in God's hands. A total commitment to follow God wherever we're asked to go and to do whatever He may ask us to do. We're kind of like Naomi's, the mother-in-law of Ruth in the book of Ruth, where she said to Ruth, wherever you go, I will not leave you.

I will not turn back from following you. Your God will be my God. Your people will be my people.

And it says nothing but death would separate us. That's kind of the attitude we take on when we're baptized, when we come into the church. And so with that, we never know exactly what is going to be in the future, what challenges will be there. But looking at this story of the Exodus, it's encouraging if we can look at what the people were told, because there are certain elements and keys that we should always keep in our mind as we meet the challenges that are continually in front of us.

If you go back here to Exodus, verse 13, where we left off, Moses said to the people, do not be afraid. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians, whom you see today, you will see again no more forever. Verse 14, the Lord will fight for you and you shall hold your peace. As I said, this story becomes the defining story of Israel's history, this moment on the shore of the Red Sea.

God gives through Moses really three keys that we can look at and understand as we pass through our own Red Sea in life. As we come up to the challenges, the obstacles, the trials, the difficulties that confront us presently and at any point in the future, whatever that might be.

There are three keys here that we can gain some insight from. It's what I've seen and looked at through the years, and they're good lessons for us to remember here on the last day of Unleavened Bread with whatever we have learned and experienced about ourselves as we have kept this period of time leading up to the Passover and the examination that we go through, the Days of Unleavened Bread themselves. Whatever we have learned, whatever God has shown to us, these three keys, I think, can help us moving forward. The first key is this in verse 13. He said, Do not be afraid. Israel had entered a crucible. A crucible is a place or a situation, an event, where there's concentrated forces that interact to cause or to influence change or development. A crucible is a place of severe testing and trial, a place of fiery trial, if you will. It can get quite hot in a crucible, a place where events and circumstances are intense, and there's pressure.

There's pressure. How many of us have been in those challenging situations? Israel was at this point here at this time. The first piece of advice or the first words that come out of Moses' mouth, do not be afraid. Do not fear. Yet, fear is pretty much a constant at times.

You want to fear. Sometimes we can kind of reach out and touch it and feel it and even taste it as we deal with challenges that may be in front of us. Not knowing if our job is going to hold, not knowing if we're going to pass through a particular health crisis, not knowing how an outcome might be of a particularly tense personal situation that might develop within our lives, within our family, within our extended family.

Fear can be a very, very real matter. Fear is something that God continually teaches and tests and instructs us on and gives us encouragement about. It seems to be something that fits at this time of year so much. Here at the time of the Exodus, as they were leaving Egypt, as they were facing this challenge, He says, don't be afraid. Now, that's easier said than done. I recognize for any one of us to think about it because the flight into fear is quite natural because of the unknown, because of feeling our own inadequacies. And yet, it is a very thing that Jesus Himself also said. You can keep your place here in Exodus.

Let's turn back to John 14. John 14, on the night of His death, the day of His death, the evening portion, His last words with the disciples. We read this on the Passover. This is something that He pointed to. And Christ had every reason to be fearful Himself. The disciples didn't know anything but fear at this particular point because the events of the days leading up to this night had been anything but what they had expected. Christ had come into town with Him. He had overturned the money changers tables in the temple. They thought they were going up to keep the Holy Days, keep the feast, a festive atmosphere. And once Jesus hit Jerusalem, He did things that they didn't expect as He challenged the authorities. He kept putting things right in front of them.

And then He started, on this very, very solemn evening, talking about events and things that they just didn't want to face. They thought they were just going up to keep the Holy Days.

Kind of like you and I go to the Dells to keep the feast, expecting a good time. And they were confronted with quite a challenge. And so in verse 27, He said, Peace. I leave with you. My peace I give you.

Again, events had not been too peaceful in this run-up to this evening, as they had witnessed firsthand. But He said, I'm going to leave peace with you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled. He knew their heart was troubled.

He knew there was uncertainty in their minds. He knew the extent that it would take.

In the hours after this, He knew how far they would go away from Him and how alone He would be.

They said, Neither let it be afraid. Let your heart not be troubled. Neither let it be afraid.

Don't fear. Be not afraid. Very simple words, but very, very profound words that harken back to the words of Moses there on the shore of the Red Sea. Do not be afraid.

And yet, fear is something that we find ourselves having to deal with on a regular basis.

In Isaiah chapter 26, Isaiah chapter 26, Isaiah chapter 26, Isaiah chapter 26, I don't know that I know how to tell you to banish all fear except through a relationship with God, through staying close to the Scriptures, through the power of God's Holy Spirit.

You know the many Scriptures. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind, Paul later wrote. You will notice, you trace this theme through the Scriptures, how many times God gives us encouragement to overcome fear. And I dare say that even the most cheerful, positive, and optimistic of us in the audience, deep down, have our places where fear resides. And we can mask it over with a smile, with good cheer, with confidence, and yet we all have to face it. And through the years, we, I think, make certain strides in dealing with it, coping with it, managing it. As God's Spirit begins to grow, and develop, and work within us, it helps us. It helps us. But God knew that it would be a factor and a force of life. That's why there's so much instruction regarding it in the Scriptures.

Here in Isaiah 26, and let's just look at verses 3 and 4, it says, You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind has stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Trust in the Lord forever, for in YAH the Lord is everlasting strength. Perfect peace for those whose mind is stayed on God, and trusts in God. The key, I think, is in that phrase of having our mind, in a sense, locked in on God, staying on God.

Staying on target is another way to put it. The target is God. One of the things this season reminds us of is how many distractions are continually in front of us that come under the idea of sin or leavening to cause us to be distracted, to keep our mind off of the things of God. This is kind of our holy week. We don't get into the good Friday, Easter Sunday, holy week type of thought. We do indeed have an entire week of holiness as we focus on putting sin out of our lives and becoming holy, which is the result of putting sin out of our lives. You take on a certain level of holiness. If we really focus on that, which we should, and then keep that going through our life, then we are going to be more attuned to the things about us that cause our mind to be distracted and off of God, off of God's promises, off of God's help, off of these things that are here throughout the Scripture that are designed to help us stay on target, having our mind on God, and therefore having a peace to be able to deal with and to combat the fear, the challenge that is going to be there with whatever comes up, and the fear of what's going to happen? Am I making the right decision? Will we get through this as an individual, as a family? Will this crisis be something that deepens our relationships or leaves us wanting?

All of the questions, all that is there, keeping our mind stayed on God is the key.

And that is one of the big lessons for us to learn during these days of Unleavened Bread, to put away the distractions. I don't have a list of those distractions to give you today. I know what they are for me. I think you know what they are for you that are going to cause you to stray off of obedience, the mind of God, the mind of Christ in us, all of these deep lessons that are important for us today, during these days, to learn, but are designed to give us courage, to give us confidence, to give us a sound mind, and to not be afraid. The second key, back in Exodus 14, is where He said to stand still.

Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Stand still and see God's salvation.

We know the Scriptures that tell us Israel was writing lessons of experience for us in this.

This is a history, but it is also a spiritual history. Scholars and historians and theologians and Bible experts will take this all apart, try to put it back together, and try to explain the Bible and the miracles of the Scriptures, the stories of the Old Testament. Archaeologists try to uncover the various scenes and sites of the Bible, whether it's in Egypt, the wilderness, throughout Israel, to prove that the Bible is true. It's a whole field of endeavor.

So much of what I've dabbled with over the years proves a great deal with what they have found.

I've not run across anything that has been any piece of solid physical evidence that has been unearthed in those areas that has disproven any major aspect of the Bible to date. The archaeology of the Bible lands is still in the preschool era of what they have uncovered and what they know. They've uncovered a lot, but nowhere near the story of that whole place and epic that we read about in the Scriptures. Yesterday, we were doing a little bit of channel surfing around midday and landed upon the History Channel. They had one of these stories about the battles of the Bible. I think this is on the History Channel. The battle that they were focusing on was this particular battle right here in Exodus 14 of Moses as a general, portraying him as a general, fighting Pharaoh's army and the tactics that he used. They were interviewing these Bible experts and military historians to show that how Moses let Israel out was going through tactics. He was acting like a military general. Of course, they had him coming up to receive reeds. It was a tidal motion that caused the dry land to appear, not a miracle.

About that time, after about 10 minutes of it, I said, I don't have time for this.

I've heard it before, read about it, but it was another attempt to look at the story from a purely physical, materialistic angle to explain it. Looking at Moses not as a spiritual leader, but as a general, and what he was doing was fainting and deceiving the Egyptians to explain the miracles. That's a whole cottage industry among historians and scholars to try to explain the Bible and look at all these stories this way. We don't look at it that way. You can look at those things and there are things that you can surmise from various matters, but it's far easier and it's even far more logical in some ways to accept the miracles for what they are, indeed, miracles, than some of the other concocted explanations that people come up with to try to explain the Scriptures. But we know the Scriptures tell us that we go far beyond that.

We read in Corinthians where Paul writes about these events in 1 Corinthians 10, and he says, these things are our examples. This going down into the Red Sea was a type of a baptism.

They teach us spiritual matters. For us, the key is to know and understand God's promise of deliverance. To look at this story, any other story, as a promise which applies to us in our calling today. And God said, stand still. Moses said it, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. For us to see God's hand and expect it and to see Him working in our life, sometimes we must come to a point where we indeed stand still or stand. Reminds me of the concluding part of the section in Ephesians 6 where it talks about the armor of God and the various components of the armor of God, the shield, the helmet, the breastplate. And after all those things are put on, he says, you stand. After you have put on all these things, then stand. We get ourselves ready for battle spiritually, but the one action that we're told to take there by Paul is to, in a sense, stand. And Moses says to stand still, which doesn't mean we don't have actions, responsibilities, decisions to make ourselves. But to see truly the salvation of God, we've got to look up and we have got to, in a sense, stand at a point and wait as we've done all that we can do, whether it's putting on a shield of faith or a helmet of salvation or whatever else we are required to do in a situation.

And then we come to a point where we stand and then understand that God is going to be the one to save us. Save us from a time and then ultimately save us into His family with eternal life in His Kingdom. But we have to stand in a sense like little children.

In 2 Chronicles chapter 20 is another one of those wonderful stories that can at least give us a reference point. 2 Chronicles chapter 20 is during the reign of King Jehoshaphat of Judah.

And it's a touching story because of the scene you can imagine. Judah, a very small nation at a point of vulnerability surrounding nations have come against them as they often would.

And at this point they had a king who feared God, verse 3 of 2 Chronicles 20, named Jehoshaphat, a man who feared God and set himself to seek God. And he proclaimed a fast during this time of trial throughout all the land of Judah. And he began to pray. He gathered together the people to ask the help of the Lord in verse 4 from the cities of Judah. And they stood in the assembly of Judah, Jerusalem, and the house of the Lord before the new court. And he began to offer up a prayer in verse 6 to God. And then down in verse 13, he says, all Judah with their little ones, their wives and their children stood before the Lord.

You can see this scene, imagine this scene, of a people gathered with their leader in the court and all of them standing before God. Hearing encouragement, hearing a prayer in the preceding verses of God's promises and all that is there, of God's promise to save, verse 9 is mentioned, where he says, you will hear and you will save. As they recount words of the Bible or the scriptures, words of past prophets, that promised God's ability to intervene and to save.

Just as we at UNI would read a story like this, read the story from Exodus 14, or read some subsequent story of faith and encouragement to help us be able to stand in confidence, in hope, in righteousness at a particular point that we would need in our life. And they did that.

And God gave them the victory. As you go on down through the story here, they had their leaders in front of them. They were admonished to listen to the words of the prophets, then go out and do what they had to do. Verse 21 says, he had consulted with the people and he appointed those who should sing to the Lord and who should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army and were saying, praise the Lord for his mercy endures forever. They sang songs to encourage.

How many times have you ever found yourself singing a song, one of the hymns, at a particular point of discouragement or just being a bit down? I mean, Paul talked about singing Psalms.

Those Psalms, and to the degree we have put them to music to encourage and to help to lift our spirits, they do a great job for that. I think whenever a song leader says at a gathering like we have here today with all of us here and our voices and putting it up on the screen does allow us to kind of, instead of looking down at our hymnal, we're looking up and I think we're a louder group. Not that we're having a problem making noise in our sessions, but it's a bit louder.

And it just fills you more. And singing the Psalms, the songs of hymns, encourage. And they help.

And these do. And they did. Right out in front of the people as they were going out on this particular situation. And so the leadership of Jehoshaphat in this story, in a sense, bringing all the children, the little ones, and the people together creates quite a touching scene of people who are looking to God, just as the Israelites must have sheltered together, came together, looked to Moses, looked at the chariots of the Egyptians, looked at the sea, saw this pillar of fire and cloud, and we're amazed and wondrous and not knowing exactly how it's all going to turn out. And they were told, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. This is what we should do. This is what we have to do as well with whatever comes our way, whatever challenges us in our own lives. These stories were meant to draw us back to God, to put our minds upon God, freed from the distractions that come about in our life. The third point that he mentions, back in Exodus 14, Moses said to the people, the Lord shall fight for you and you shall hold your peace. God will fight for you. Now, again, I mentioned they didn't come out with a big armory of weapons. They were slaves.

They didn't have that. They didn't have chariots. They didn't have arrows and bows so much. They, indeed, were at a point where they had to rely on God.

Faith is believing that God will fight our battles for us. Believing it and then putting it into practice is a big job. We can know it in an academic sense. We can know it in a scriptural reading sense. Putting it into practice in our life is another sense.

That's where we sometimes have to step out in faith. Make sure that we have done all of our homework, whether it's a big decision, whether it's a reaction to something that comes up upon us.

And then have confidence that we're standing on solid ground.

Because there will be plenty of doubt and fear to cause us to think, well, am I making the right decision? Am I on the right side on this issue? Am I acting correctly at any given point in time? Am I making the right decision? I think, as I've thought this through at times, we have to come to the point where we realize that internally you and I have done our best to live up to the scriptural teaching of God's way of life that we have come to learn. We're responsible for ourselves, in that one sense, to do that. Having a clean conscience is a big aid when you come to those challenges. To be able to know and to have confidence that God will fight for you as you hold your peace. Having a clean conscience in what you are as a person, what you have done, how you live your life, goes a long way toward having that confidence.

I'm not making any comment on the Israelites. I can't do that. All I can do is kind of look at you and I today and help us to understand how we are going to face the challenges that we have.

There's another wonderful story of Moses in Numbers 12, where when he was challenged in his position by his own siblings, you know the story in Numbers 12.

This is one of those great authority passages or stories where they challenged Moses because of whom he had married. In verse 2, Miriam and Aaron said, well, God's spoken through us, hasn't he?

Not just you. So this is one of those scriptures that we come out with when authority is being challenged in one sense. Though there is a lesson for us on that point here, what's really the most important thing I think to learn from this is the reaction Moses had. When you come down to verse 13, remember Miriam turned leprous during this challenge. And Aaron then backtracked and said, oh, please don't let this sin be upon us. We've acted foolishly. The Lord be as a dead person.

And so in verse 13, Moses cried out to the Lord saying, please heal her. Oh, God, I pray.

Please heal her. Moses could have said, she got, Aaron, she's got what she deserves.

She was always that way when we were kids, remember?

He could have thought, all right, I knew I was going to catch up to you one of these days, Miriam.

And he just said to God, heal her, God, I pray. He didn't strike back. He didn't strike back.

Moses is said to have been a meek man.

Meekness, we don't have time to go into all of what meekness means.

But meekness is control of great authority or great power. It is the ability to control the use and the application of power, if you will. It's one way to understand meekness. And Moses is doing it in a classic sense here in that he didn't try to get revenge, didn't ask for more to be piled on, Miriam. He said heal her. I bring this out because when I said about conscience, as we face our challenges and trials, it's important that we have a clean conscience to be able to deal with, confidence, encourage the challenges that we have so that we don't try to take revenge ourselves, so that we don't try to return evil for evil.

As Romans 12 brings out, we won't turn there, but where Paul said, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. If you're going to be hungry, give him something to eat. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink.

Know how you're going to react. Know how you should act in a situation like that. In recent months, because of the movie I saw back in December, the movie Invictus, which told the story of Nelson Mandela, I gave a sermon for the congregations here and then wrote an article that was in World News and Prophecy about that period of time in South African history back in the mid-90s when Nelson Mandela came out of prison after more than 25 years and averted a bloodshed because he did not seek vengeance upon the white minority rulers of South Africa as black majority rule came into play. When I wrote the article, I knew I'd get a little bit of feedback, especially from some of our friends in South Africa, and I did. I got this long letter from a white member in South Africa saying, well, you don't know the story. You don't know what happened and on and on exactly as I expected. So I wrote back and I said, well, I do understand a little bit. I said, because he didn't think I'd ever been to South Africa. I said, well, yes, I've been to South Africa. I spent about a month in your country a few years ago, and I talked to a lot of people. And I said, I even felt the fear of people on the streets one night when the home where I was staying was being attacked. And I felt the fear that people live with day by day down there because of a high crime rate. So when I wrote all that back to him, he wrote me back and says, oh, I see you do understand a little bit. And you can have different points of view. And I said, look, I didn't try to make Nelson Mandela to be a saint, and I don't try to whitewash the problems of South Africa today. But it did avert a bloodshed for a moment in that period of time.

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal this morning, and there was another biography of Mandela that's come out, and it looks interesting. But as I was reading the review this morning, it brought out, again, certain qualities of the man and something that I'd not really focused on. And it said that Nelson Mandela has had and has a sense of justice, and it brought out all the problems of the man and the warts that he has as well. But it said that one of the things he learned when he was sentenced in the dock years ago was he had a sense of justice. That no white group nor any black group should ever treat anybody else unjustly in a right society. And that was one principle that was magnified through his years of incarceration and is still with him to this day. A sense of justice, that things would be made right. That's not right, regardless of who's in charge, white or black, Republican, Democrat, left or right, conservative, liberal, whatever.

It doesn't matter. Justice knows no color. Justice knows no politics. Justice knows no ideology.

Justice is justice. Right is right. This is a quality that this author was bringing out that Mandela seemed to have of a sense of justice. And if you and I can learn that from any individual or whatever other principle of righteousness, right living, we learn, we will be the better for it.

We can learn it from flawed individuals. We can certainly learn it from the perfect example of Jesus Christ. But that struck me as I was reading it this morning. Justice. And I happened to think, you know, that's a key component that I think we have always wanted within the Church of God.

That when we see something that's not right, we can correct it. That it can be dealt with, made right. Whatever situation it might be. And that there can be justice in our relationships, in the reality of how we conduct ourselves as the people of God. I think that is one of the, that is one of the true justices at the heart of God's purpose and plan. When we come to the time of the last great day, on that last holy day, you learn the lesson of justice when you understand how just God is to be able to resurrect all of the dead who have ever lived, all who've ever lived, and give them the chance for salvation. That is true justice.

That is when all peoples will experience justice at the hand of God as only He can give it.

We can only strive for it, but we should. And I think that within the United Church of God, that is one of the founding principles that I can remember 15 years ago, whether it was articulated that way or not, in every way or whatever, but it seemed to be at the heart of what we wanted to do.

Doctrine and righteousness, true, were at the heart of our coming together to preserve a way of life and a truth, the truth that we love. But that truth, that doctrine, has to lead us to righteousness, righteous behavior. And as I was looking at it this morning and thinking about that little, that point, justice, righteousness, making things right, dealing with people rightly, seems to be at the heart of everything we have wanted to do. And if something wasn't right, then we could try with a policy, with a process, whatever it might be, to make it right.

It's a work in progress. It's a work in progress. And I was reminded of the verse in Micah chapter 6.

Micah chapter 6.

And like me, you'll have to search quickly for it. Page through to find Micah.

Micah chapter 6 and verse 8. Well-known scripture.

This is a scripture for me coming out of the Holy Days this year, that seems to be a banner scripture for me. He has shown you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you to do justly? To love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

God requires us to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with Him.

If we can learn that, all the other scriptures we've read, focused on, meditated on, during this period of time, can come to the fore.

And to the degree we have put Christ within us, throughout the symbolic form of eating unleavened bread during this period of time, and focused upon Christ's life within us, which is what these seven days picture.

Hopefully we have come to a point where we love justice, love righteousness and mercy, and are humbled by what God has done and can do with us.

When we go back to Exodus 14, after these three points, God said to Moses, tell the children of Israel, verse 15, tell the children of Israel to go forward. And they did.

The sea parted, and they went down into the sea, and they crossed over. But in a sense, we should leave the story right here as they go into the sea, because in a sense, that's kind of where we are today, symbolically.

The church walks on dry ground through the nations.

We see the dangers on either side of us, before us and behind us, but we have no choice. We can't go back. We can only go forward. And it's forward that we must go.

God brought Israel out of Egypt. They were not a people, because no people should be slaves to another people, especially those whom God was working with.

And that was a lesson that He reminded them time and time again, that no one should be a slave to you. Remember, I brought you out of Egypt.

We look back on that event with an understanding today that no person should be a slave to sin.

This is what Paul brings out so well in Romans 6.

We should not be slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness.

Christ's sacrifice frees us to become slaves of righteousness.

And if we can learn that lesson, learn the lessons of not fearing, standing still, understanding God's process of salvation and how He works with us, then we can go forward. We can face our challenges. We can face our red seas.

And we can learn the lessons, and we can go forward with God's help toward His kingdom.