Opportunities Along the Way

Well, yesterday, if you were here, I gave a sermon on the things that we could learn or maybe remember from this feast that are different than the usual things that we associate, Passover, the days of Unleavened Bread, night to be much observed, that we normally think of and that are kind of just etched in our minds. We know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. We know that He died for us. He died that our sins could be forgiven. We know that He resurrected during the Feast of Tabernacles because of His life, because of His resurrection.

We have the hope of forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life. We know all those things that are just part of us. It's the reason that we're here. We know that Jesus Christ is the reason that anything, anything in our future is there. Without Him, we are absolutely nothing. And yesterday we talked about some other things, just a few things yesterday about from this feast that maybe we could remember. And you might recall that I opened yesterday with Isaiah 30 where it says, you know, write this down on a scroll.

Keep a memory of it so that later on in times you can remember what was being said. And we talked about a couple things. First one of them was, you know, the word that could come out of this unleavened bread season that we might remember is the word exactly. And we talked about how Israel, as they, you know, as God progressed them through the plagues of Israel, when it came to Passover, they knew who God was and they obeyed Him exactly to the letter that He had commanded Moses to give them.

They kept that lamb on the same day. They elected that lamb exactly when they were told, killed it exactly what they were told, ate the meal exactly as they were told, roasted the lamb exactly as they were told. They did it exactly. And we talked about Jesus Christ, too, how He exactly filled all, fulfilled all the prophecies about the Messiah.

He asked God before that because it was daunting what was facing Him. If that cup could pass from Him, the answer was no, and He fulfilled it exactly as it is. The lesson for us is we must learn to obey God's law exactly as He said and not compromise it, not color it in any way. The other thing we talked about was Pharaoh. And Pharaoh, you know, there were nine plagues, ultimately the tenth plague in Egypt.

And in Exodus 10, you know, after the ninth plague or the ninth plague was coming up, God had Moses ask Pharaoh, how long? How long, Pharaoh, before you humble yourself? How many trials do I need to give you? How many plagues do I need to send before you realize and recognize and accept that I am God and there is no other and there is no God in Egypt, no conglomeration of gods, nothing is more powerful than me?

How long will it be before you humble yourself? And we could ask that question of ourselves as well as we examine ourselves. Are there things that we just resist doing what God said? How many trials must come on us before we ultimately will yield to God? If we have the same trial coming back on us over and over and over again, if we ever stop and think, God may be asking how long, how long before you recognize what you're doing because you need to humble yourself before me and do what I say.

If you are going to be in the kingdom, if you are going to be born again in the kingdom when Jesus Christ returns, then you have to become the person that God wants you to be. There is no other way, only His way. And then lastly, we talked about Judas. He was a figure there on the last Passover that Jesus was on earth and he was mentioned there. He was with the twelve as they sat down at the Passover meal and as Jesus during supper or after supper rose and washed feet, remember that he handed, he dipped bread into the dish of whatever it was, handed it to Judas and said and offered it to him.

We talked about how that was probably an act of friendship and an act of being kind, if you will, that's a better word than kind, offering Judas the hand of friendship. And Judas, as you recall, looked Christ in the eye.

He knew exactly that Christ knew exactly what he was about to do. He knew it. He knew what Jesus Christ was offering him. Jesus Christ knew what was going on at that moment and Judas made the decision, take the bread. And when the bread, when he ate the bread, Satan entered him and he went out and he betrayed man. And later on that night as Christ prayed that prayer in John 17, he told God, you know, none has been lost of what you've given me except the son of perdition.

And so John, Judas, you know, committed a sin that could not be repented of. And I don't know that I finished what I was saying here, not here yesterday, but as you listened to it yesterday. So I wanted to just finish the thoughts that I had on that section to remember. But Judas, you know, is one of those extreme cases. He sat there, he walked with Jesus Christ for three and a half years. For three and a half years he knew that Jesus Christ was righteous. He knew that everything, you know, he heard Jesus Christ talk about you can't worship God and mammon.

And yet he knew what he was doing. He had the treasury box and John in John 12 verse 6, you know, says Judas used to steal from the treasury box. He was never interested in what people were giving except that maybe what he could take and have for himself. He knew it was wrong. There was no question in his mind that what he was doing was the wrong thing to do.

But he never overcame it. And even though he was walking with Jesus Christ in there every single day with him along with the other 11, the words that cleansed them as Jesus Christ told them in John 15.3, never cleansed Judas, never reached down into his soul that he was doing something wrong and that he was going to end this addiction to money, this thing that would ultimately be the thing that would kill him, not just his physical life, but his eternal life when we understand what perdition is.

How could he have done that? How could he have sat there all those years and done that? And it's a lesson for us. It's a lesson for us because we can blind ourselves, too, to the sins that we have. We can block it out and say, that's not us. God doesn't care. We might justify in our minds, hey, we serve God this way, we serve God that way.

He's not going to, I'm not harming anyone by anything I do. Maybe Judas had some of those thoughts, hey, I deserve this, and taking the money is not harming anyone at all. We're not keeping anything from the poor. I don't know what went on in Judas' mind, but Judas never acknowledged his sin, never repented of it.

Even after he felt guilty and remorse for betraying the Savior, he never fully repented. His life ended that night, but his eternal life ended that night, too, because he looked Jesus Christ in the face and flat out, knowing what he was going to do, knowing that Jesus Christ knew what he would do, he rejected him. He said, no, what I want to do is more important than what you want me to do, Jesus Christ. And so his life ended. And you and I could have the same thing happen to us.

If we're not key on examining, we could blind ourselves, we could become hard-hearted, we could hear things and just, I don't want to hear that. I'll go a long way with God. I'll do this and this and this, but you know what? That's where I draw the line. I don't want to do that, and that's okay. No, no, no, we cannot do that. We have to ask God for a soft and a pliable heart so that when it can be reached and when we hear things that we may not want to do or may not even understand that we do it anyway because that's what God wants us to do and we will learn.

None of us want to become a Judas. None of us want to, as we read in Hebrews 10, and as you read maybe 26 through 39, we didn't get through all of it yesterday, we don't want to be ones who fall back to perdition, be walking with Jesus Christ and walking with God throughout our lives and then just fall back into perdition because we will not. And in one day, one day we will be faced and we too will look at Jesus Christ in the face.

And we will be, we will be, either we will yield to Him and repent or we will choose to do our own way and seal our fate. So those were the three things we talked about yesterday. There was one more that I was going to talk about. I didn't have time yesterday and I knew I wouldn't, that I want to talk about today to continue, to continue what we were talking about. Now, as I listened to Mr. Ginn yesterday, you know, as I talk, there's going to be some scriptures that sound very familiar for what he said yesterday.

And what he said, if you remember, his message was about a different way of thinking. And I'm going to look at some of those same scriptures in Exodus 13 to 17 because in the lesson of Israel leaving Egypt and their journey from the time they left Egypt until the time God took them into the Promised Land, there are some lessons along the way that we have to be very keenly aware of. And we have to, in that story of Israel that God says, I recorded all these things and preserved them for you in the Old Testament as examples to you, things that we can learn, and we can learn how God works because we need to understand how God works so that we can get the training and receive the training He wants to give us.

So there is a word I'm going to give you here in a minute. That's going to be our number four. Excuse me. That'll be our number four for this series to remember. It's a word you've heard from me several times in the past several months, and I have a feeling you're going to hear the word from me several more times in the years ahead.

Let's turn over to Exodus 13. No, let's start in Numbers. Numbers 33. Numbers 33 is one of those chapters when you're reading through the Bible, you get to, and you think, okay, I can read the words, but why do I need to know all these things? Because here in Numbers 33, God, verse 2 there, tells Moses, write down all the stopping points, all the stopping points for Israel as they left Egypt and as they finally arrived in the Promised Land 40 years later.

We may look at those cities, and they mean nothing at all to us, but probably, and definitely in several cases, we could look at those cities, and there were key things in Israel's development that God had happened in those cities. So for Israel, when they would read about Succoth, and they would read about Mara, and they would read about Maraba and the wilderness of sin, it would ring, oh, what did we learn?

What happened in those locations? Because in those locations, God taught them some significant things in how to please Him. And as we read through it, I'll just read through a few verses here. They departed, verse 3, they departed, number 33, they, Israel, departed from Ramses in the first month, in the fifteenth day of the first month, on the day, after the Passover, the children of Israel went out with boldness in the sight of the Egyptians. Verse 5, they moved from Ramses, and they cabbered at Succoth, went from Succoth on to Ethem, at the edge of the wilderness, moved from Ethem to Pahahirath. Remember Pahahirath? That's where their backs were against the Red Sea. They encamped near Big Dal, went from Ha-Hireth through the wilderness to Ethem. Verse 8, they went from Marah to Elam, etc., etc.

As Israel would read those places, thoughts would come to mind. It's very much like, write down, write down the things in your life. Where are the mileposts in your life where you learn something that changed the way you live forever? That should have happened with Israel and all these stopping points. Let's see if they did. Now we can turn back to Exodus 13. Exodus 13.

And we'll look at verse 17. Mr. Ginn looked at this as well yesterday. But remember, as Israel left Egypt, they had a ton of potential. They had no idea what their potential was.

They had been oppressed. They had been held down. They were slaves for centuries in Egypt.

And so God called them out, but they had no idea who they were. They had no idea what they were capable of. And God wanted them to become His people. He knew they had potential, but it had to be unleashed. And God had a training program in mind for them. He knew what their strengths were, very few, since they had been slaves. But He knew what their weaknesses were, and He knew what He needed to do in order to have them become the people that He wanted them to become. So in chapter 13, verse 17, it says, it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God didn't lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war and they return to Egypt. Well, God knew that that was what was going to happen. If He had led them that way, the Philistines would have come out in Israel. They proved God's point in the series of events that we see that come after this. All they did was complain, panic, you know, yell, scream, lose their minds over what was going on. So certainly they would have said, the first thing was said is, why did you bring us out here? Let's go back to Egypt. We don't want to be there anymore. That's kind of what human beings do. We have a new situation. We want to go back to the old. Even though they had seen God deliver them from the plagues, they never lifted their hands to be delivered out of Egypt. But they would come, and God knew this is what their reaction would be. There was no doubt that God could have conquered the Philistines. If he led them that way, and the Philistines came out against Israel, there's no doubt in anyone's mind God could have just zapped the Philistines in no time flat.

There wasn't any danger of Israel being defeated. That was not what this situation was here. God wasn't saying that. He was saying Israel's not ready for war. They're not ready. They are not mentally prepared to do this. They have to become mentally prepared for war. Because right now, if I put this challenge in front of them, they'll go running back. They have to get ready, though, because there will be challenges for them in all the time that lies ahead of them.

You know, it's the same for us. When God brings us out of the world, when we're baptized, when we repent, we're not ready for a lot that is going to face us. God doesn't hit us with something so major, like a war with the Philistines, on the very first thing. But He will prepare us.

And in His life, or in our lives, there's a program that God has in mind for us to get us ready for these things. Israel wasn't ready, but they would be ready. God knew what He wanted Israel to become. He said it many times, I want you to become, well, they were a very special people to Him. He wanted them to become a model nation that would follow His principles and be a light to the world around them of what living God's way of life would be. But they weren't that, as they left Egypt. They had to become that. You know, God, as He calls us, pretty much makes it clear what He wants you and me to be. You can keep your finger there in Exodus, but let's look at a few verses. So we're clear on what God expects of us, who He also calls His own special people.

People that are lights to the world. People that are to be showing an example, showing an example of the way of what God's life. So the people look at us and think that they would want to live that way. Let's look at John 15.

John 15, verse 16. And Jesus Christ, on that last Pass overnight, as He's talking to His disciples, He made several comments to them, as you know, chapters 14, 15, and 16. And in chapter 15, verse 16, He tells us what He expects. He said, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain. I called you because you can produce fruit. I'll give you all the tools to produce fruit. I called you to produce fruit. When you start your journey from baptism all the way to the kingdom of God, I expect there's going to be fruit developed along the way. And when that fruit develops, it remains. It doesn't just sort of fade and drop off the tree later on in life. It remains. You know, in Psalms, it tells us that even when we're old, we produce fruit. I called you to produce fruit. And we know what that fruit is. It's listed there in Galatians 5, 22. Agape, love, joy, peace, kindness, self-control, all nine of them that are listed there. That's what he called us to do. That's part of what the training program is from baptism all the way to the kingdom of God or to the return of Jesus Christ. And God has a plan in mind on how we developed that. You know, you can mark down Matthew 5, 48. You know that.

That verse says, become holy or become complete, become perfect. The New King James says, as your Father in heaven is perfect. So we become. God expects that from the day and on our journey from here to the kingdom of God, we are going to become spiritually complete. More each year, closer and closer, as it says in Ephesians 4, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That's what the plan is. That's the journey you and I are on. Nowhere does God say, you've reached this, your journey. Well, our journey ends at death or the return of Jesus Christ, right? So that's the journey. Always going forward, always marching forward, become ye complete, spiritually complete, mature, whatever you want to say, as your Father in heaven is perfect. And he tells us, if you have this hope and if we don't have the hope, why will we ever get baptized? Why would we ever ask God? Why would we ever repent? If we don't have the hope of eternal life, if we don't want what God has to offer, we would not do it. But if we have this hope, he says in 1 John 3, everyone who has this hope does what? Purifies himself. How do we purify ourselves? We talked about that last week. It's cleansed by the washing of the water of the word, knowing God's word, having his Holy Spirit in us, purging us with hyssop as we ask him to, as we examine ourselves. So there's goals along the way that we have. You know, God says, trust me, obey me, have faith in me, rely on me. Those are all good. Become perfect, excellent, great goal. Become like Jesus Christ, great goal. Purify yourself, great goal. But how do we do that?

How do we do that? Well, God shows us that there is a plan that he has for that. One of them is, it says in Romans 10, 17, how does faith come? Faith comes by hearing of the word. We have the God's plan. We have his will. We have his way of life sitting right here in front of us. Over the course of time, we learn to live. It's a progression by every word that comes from the mouth of God, okay? The Bible. We learn it. There's a lot of detail in there. We don't know it all. We learn a little bit more each time we go until we come to what we talked about yesterday. We can, we are keeping it exactly as Jesus Christ did, as the Israelites did at that Passover back then.

So we need to know the word of God. Faith comes by hearing of the word, reading, by hearing of the word. That means being in God's body, being where God wants us to be, where we hear his word.

And then there's this journey along the way. And along the way, God gives us the opportunities and there's your word to apply what he has taught us we need to do. He gives us the knowledge of what we need to do. He shows us the goal of what we need to do. But along the way and on our journey, he's going to give us the opportunities to apply what we learned. The key for us is, do we look for those opportunities? Are we aware they're even happening? How do we know what they are? What does God do? How does he do and how does he train us? Well, he does. He'll train us and he'll get us ready, just like he was going to get Israel ready for war and ready for the challenges that would face them. So as we go back to Exodus, if we go back to Exodus and look at the story of Israel, a very interesting story, when you look at where God took them and every opportunity along the way that he gave them to apply what he had told Moses and Moses told them. So go back to Exodus and this time let's go to Exodus 14. In chapter 13, God said, they're not ready for war. They're just going to want to turn around and run back to Egypt if that's what happens there.

But in Exodus 14, he leads them to a most unlikely place. He puts them day and night by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. If he was with them every step of the way, just like God says, I'll be with you. I'm very interested in the people that I call my special people, a treasure to me. I'll be with you every step of the way. I'll lead you. You just have to follow me. You just have to be aware of the opportunities. You have to kind of learn what I'm saying and look at these things in a way, understanding you are being prepared for war and for all the other things that will face us. God leads them right to where their backs are against the Red Sea, a most unlikely and a most hopefully place to be. And so Israel's, you know, they're kind of okay when they camp there, but then they look up and you know the story. They see Pharaoh's army coming down with them. Now, what do they do? They panic. You know, you can almost see it. Hands flailing in the air, screaming, crying. Why did you bring us out of here? Just bring us out of Egypt to slaughter us by the Red Sea. We want to go back to Egypt. We'd like to undo everything that's gotten done. Just a natural human reaction of panic when you're faced with something that you have no idea how to deal with and they know the situation well. It was hopeless where they were concerned. So as God gets them ready, He can see this is a place. This is something that's going to help them get ready for war. They're going to learn something here. They're going to learn something here that hopefully they will take with them. So the next time they're faced with war, maybe they can handle it a little bit differently. So we'll read just a few verses in here and everything. In verse 12, you can see that's what Israel was doing. Why are we here? Panicked, dismayed. And so Moses, as God gives words to the words to Moses, He says to the people, don't be afraid. I'm sure they thought, what? Don't be afraid. How can you be anything but?

We are just all dead men standing here. But how many times in the Old Testament does God say, don't be afraid? How many times did Jesus Christ say to His disciples, don't be afraid? Don't be dismayed. More times, the scholars that count these things say, Jesus Christ made that comment more than any other. Don't be afraid. And so that's the first thing Moses says here to the people. And he says, stand still. Stand still. Don't be running around like chickens with your heads off, right? I mean, that's the picture you have here. Stand still. See the salvation of the Lord.

Stand still. Stand still. Take a deep breath. You're different people. It's not up to you to win this battle. You can't win this battle. It is impossible for you to win this battle. The only way you can win this battle or come out of it alive is if you stand still and you see the salvation of God.

It was the only way they ever left Egypt. They were never leaving Egypt without the salvation of God. They were never getting out of this this situation without God either. It was only going to be by his hand. Stand still. See the salvation of the Lord, which he will accomplish for you today. Verse 14, God will fight for you. You're his special people. He wants you to live. He wants you to learn. He wants you to become and get to that promised land that he was leading Israel to. He wants you in the kingdom where he's leading us to. The Lord will fight for you. You hold your peace. Be calm.

Develop a set of confidence not in yourself. The Israelites were doing everything that you and I would do. Their minds were going, how can we battle these Egyptians? What weapons do we have here? Do I have any automatic rifles that we have hidden? Where's our... all these things that probably went through their mind, what do we do? The answer was there is no hope. It was only God, only God that was going to deliver them. And they were learning a lesson as they hopefully paid attention to this and saw that God opened the Red Sea. Who would ever in their minds think that the way out was the Red Sea would part and they would march through it and Pharaoh's armies would be drowned in it. Now the New Testament God says, eye hasn't seen, ear hasn't heard, hasn't even entered into the hearts of man the wonders that God has prepared for those that love him. Now Paul writes that and he's talking about the future, but applies to what happened here, right? There wasn't anyone there that day that thought that. Didn't even enter their mind. You know, what the Red Sea would open, that's how God will deliver us. It was a training point. There was an opportunity for them as they had their backs against the Red Sea to learn. Trust God. Change the reactions that we have. Got to come to the point where we have a challenge and our backs against the wall. Don't run back to Egypt. How did we do it the whole time that we were back in Egypt in our old lives? How does the world around us do it? The challenge is how would God have us do? We know the words. We've heard them from the time that we started coming to church. God gives us the opportunities. The opportunities are there so that we can become the people that think like Him, that act like Him, that react like Him, that trust Him, that rely on Him, that when times come we can follow what Jesus Christ said, don't be dismayed. He'll give us the opportunities that when much more difficult times than you and I have ever faced come that we wouldn't be dismayed because He will have given us and developed in us that character if we let Him, if we let Him, and as we're aware of what's going on, as we're aware of what's going on in this life that we live as He works with us.

Let's go forward to Isaiah 35 for a moment.

Is there a 35?

You'll remember this chapter, probably just about every Feast of Tabernacles. Someone will read at least the first several verses here of chapter 35 where it talks about the wilderness, the wasteland, deserts blooming, and the earth, earth being rejuvenated, if you will.

And in verse 3 and verse 4, God records something here that's also in the book of Hebrews, in Hebrews 12-12, and sometimes, you know, of course the whole Bible applies to us, but when we find it in the Old Testament and New Testament, we know it wasn't written just for the Israelites of the past. It was written for us as well. So in verse 3, He says, Strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees, say to those who are fearful-hearted, Be strong, don't fear, behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God, He will come and save you. Israel needed to learn that.

The words meant nothing to them, but now they had the opportunity to see it unfold before their eyes.

Now, perhaps, they would see, and later on we'll see them in another war. What about us?

Well, we have these challenges that face us. Not a war on our hands, not with our, well, maybe figuratively, with our backs up against the Red Sea in some situation. How do we react?

We know the words. Do we see the trials that we go through as an opportunity to develop what God has given us, the words He's given us? Do we see the trials and tests that come our way as opportunities to grow in the character that He wants us to have? Or do we, like the Israelites at the Red Sea and at the waters that we'll see here in a minute at Mara, do we just run around and think, got to go back to Egypt? The answer's there in Egypt. Got to go back to the world.

No, the lesson was, of Israel, God took them completely out of their world, completely out of it, and taught them every single thing you need I can provide. But they had, they heard it, but they had to apply those words and see them happen in their lives. They had the opportunities, God gives you and me the opportunities, too. Will He strengthen our hands? Will He firm up our feeble knees? Yes, He will. And when the times ahead come and danger lurks and we feel like we have our backs against the Red Sea, we'll know exactly where salvation comes from. It won't be in the weapons of war at warfare, it won't be in our own ingenuity, it won't be in the cleverness that we have or the weapons stash that we have or anything else. It'll be only, only by God.

So there's where Israel is, and they've learned this lesson at the Red Sea.

But let's go back to Exodus 16.

All right, I'm not Exodus 16. Exodus 14.

Wrapping up that chapter, God has Moses record. So God, so the Eternal, verse 30 of chapter 14, so the Eternal saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Following that, of course, they sang this great song, there was celebration. When they realized what God had done, they didn't lift their hands at all. Thus Israel saw the great work which the Eternal had done in Egypt. So the people feared him, the people feared him, and they believed him and his servant Moses.

Oh, they learned something. Should have learned it already, right? They saw the plagues in Egypt. Here they are. They marched out of Egypt just not too long before this. They had to learn the lesson again. But as you come through, as you come through, as they went on their journey in chapter 16, well, I keep bypassing in chapter 15. Chapter 15, verse 23, they come to the waters of Mara.

All right. Here's those waters. They're all excited. They're thirsty. Their livestock is thirsty. They taste the waters and they're bitter. What do they do? Do they stand still?

Do they see the salvation of God? Do they look to him and say, what do we do now? You brought us out. You're taking us on this journey. We believe you're taking us to the promised land. No, they didn't do that at all. They ran around. They complained. They were upset. They were loud. Their minds were anywhere but on God. They were blaming Moses. They were blaming God the whole nine yards. You see that in verse 24 here. And so Moses is a little upset, I guess, with the Israelites and their reaction. So he cries out to God. God chose him a tree. Verse 25. When Moses cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet. And there he made a statute and an ordinance for them.

And there he tested them. There he tested them. Well, it's already a test, right? I'm out here in the wilderness. We come to water. It's bitter. That's kind of a test. Well, he made the water sweet, but there he tested them. He gave them one opportunity to see how they will respond in a challenge that they had no physical way of solving. And then when he solves that problem for them, when he makes the water sweet, he sets out an ordinance for them to test them. You know, in our vocabulary, we might want to, when we have trials and tests, we might want to replace those words with opportunities. Because what God was giving Israel here in all these tests and trials that they went through in life, opportunities to grow, opportunities to become more like him, opportunities to trust in him, rely on him, opportunities to obey him, right?

Look at the tests. He gave them an ordinance, and there he tested them and said, verse 26, If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, if you give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I'll put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. I am the Lord who heals you. The Israelites were well aware of the diseases of Egypt, just like we're well aware of the diseases that plague this land today. Many of us have suffered from some of those diseases. Many of us are suffering from some of those diseases right now. We're well aware of it, just like Israel was when they were in Egypt. And God said, If you will obey me, if you will follow me in detail and explicitly, I'll put none of those diseases on you. And as you read for 40 years in Israel, or as they wandered in the wilderness, we don't read much about illness, but God did feed them with manna, the food that he created for them. It was complete with everything that they needed. They may have gotten a little tired of eating it every day we read about, but it had everything they needed to be healthy. Back in Egypt, they were eating other things that weren't so healthy, and we learned that those other things can create the problems that we have. God can heal those, but he says, If you do that, if you do that, if you diligently—and there's that word—as we grow in time, if we exactly heed the voice of the Lord your God, I'll put none of those diseases on you. And that was a test. That was a test for them. What was a test? That he gave them there. Kind of a test, an opportunity for them to learn. And as it turns out in chapter 16, they were going to learn exactly what it is that God was going to feed them in the wilderness.

As we come into chapter 16, we see them complaining about food. Look at verse 3. The children of Israel said to them, Same reaction, we're hungry. What do we do?

There's no stores around here. There's no gardens around here. Oh, if we had just died by the hand of the Lord and the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full, you brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Come on.

As God would say, how many times? How many times, Israel, am I going to have to do this? Before you begin to realize, I can do anything. I can provide anything. I'm not constrained by the physical limitations of your brain. I'm not constrained by the physical limitations of what humans can do. I can provide anything, anywhere, at any time. They'd already seen things that never entered their mind, never entered their heart or anyone's heart, and now they were going to learn something else. In verse 4, the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you, and the people will go out and gather a certain quota every day that I may test them. Ah, I'm going to give them what they're looking for, but it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity for them to become more like I want them to become. I'm going to give them what they need, and I'll have them gather a certain quota every day that I may test them. Now, keep your finger there in chapter 16. Let's go back to the book of James, because we learn again why does God test us? He doesn't test us to just taunt us or make us miserable or to make our lives unhappy.

He tests us for a very good reason. He's very, very interested and intimately involved in all of our lives. He wants us in His kingdom. He has a plan to not only show us the Word of God, but to give us the opportunities to apply the Word of God so that our character is developed. And so when times get tougher than they are now, we would react and respond exactly the way He would have us do.

Like children of God. So in James 1, verse 2, James says a very unlikely thing, my brethren, count it all joy. Count it all joy when you fall into various trials. You might say, what? Count it all joy? No! I can't stand these trials. When God sends a trial to me my way, all I want to do is run around and say, how do I get rid of it? What does the world say? What can I do? What's the solution that I used to use for this? What would the world say? How can I get rid of it? Rather than standing still, seeing the salvation of the Lord, responding to it quietly, confidently in God, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience or hooponomony, as the Greek says. Let patience have its perfect work. That you may be perfect or complete or mature or whatever you want to put in there. That you may grow to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

But let patience have its perfect work that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.

Know the Word. Hear the Word. I'll give you the opportunities to apply the Word so that it all fits together and so that you become like God. You become like Jesus Christ. Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1 and verse 4, just won the next book over, as he talks about trials. The apostles learned and learned what these trials and how valuable they are. In verse 4, breaking into the middle of the sentence there, it says, you know, he has called us to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that doesn't fade away. Eternity. It's not just for a short time. What God has called us to is for eternity. He's called us to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that doesn't fade away, reserved in heaven for you, every single one of you, and me, and everyone listening, and everyone that God calls reserved for you. He's very interested in you and developing you into the potential that he knows we have, but only if we follow him.

To you, verse 5, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. It's a mouthful in those words. Reserved for you, who are kept by the power of God, not by our own brains and our own might and our own ideas and our own cleverness, reserved, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you've been greeted by various trials that the genuineness of your faith, oh, God is looking to perfect faith in us. Without faith, it's impossible to please him, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. You're on a journey from the day you're baptized all the way till the time that Jesus Christ returns, or we die, whichever comes first, but that'll be the time that Jesus Christ returns as well if we're resurrected at that time. That's the journey we're on. That's the goal God has for us.

Ever marching toward that goal, all the things along the way, hearing the word, taking the opportunities, growing, can't develop without taking the opportunities, being aware of the opportunities, and choosing God every time, but learning to choose God every single time when those opportunities present themselves. So let's go back to chapter 16. God gives Israel manna. We're hungry. He not only gives him manna, but in this chapter he also gives him meat. You know, okay, okay, you want, here's what you have, but I'm going to test you, verse 4, whether they will walk in my law or not.

Isn't that interesting that God would say that? I'm okay. I'm going to give them manna. I'm going to give them food. They will never be hungry. They'll have what they want, but I'm going to test them whether they will walk in my law or not.

I want to pause for a moment, and for those who listen to the Bible studies, this may seem a little redundant because we talked about walk and what it means in the last couple Bible studies, and I want to repeat it here so that we, when we read the word walk in the Bible, we begin to see it in a different light than what we might think of when we walk. You know, at the evening we may take a pleasant walk with our spouse around the neighborhood. It's kind of a nice leisurely thing, pleasant to be out in the open air and everything like that. Over and over in the Bible, it talks about walking with Christ. The apostles walked with Christ. Paul, in the book of Ephesians, four times, in chapters 4 and 5 says, walk, walk with Christ, walk in love, all these things, right?

We talked, well, let's turn to Ephesians 5.

So it'll tie back to an earlier point as well in Ephesians 5.

Ephesians 5 and verse 15 turned here yesterday, but it says, see that you walk circumspectly. And yesterday we talked about circumspectly, talked about it on the Bible study as well. There'll come a time when we're, what we're talking about in the Bible studies, it's just going to be there and it'll be up up up to us to find those things, right? See that you walk circumspectly. The Greek word circumspectly, better translated exactly or accurately. See that you walk accurately. That's what that means. Now you look at the Greek word walk there. It better translated progress. See that you progress exactly. See that you progress accurately, right? Because when we're walking, not like around the neighborhood where we don't have any goal except to walk for 30 minutes, 60 minutes. When we're walking with Christ, we're walking to a journey. When the Israelites were walking out of Egypt, they were walking toward the destination of the Promised Land. You and I are, when we walk with God, walk with Christ, we have a journey, we have an end point in mind that he has in mind. And along that way, we become who he wants us to become. The journey is physical, but it's also spiritual as we progress. So walk there, progress. The other thing that walk means, when you look at the Greek, is make due use of opportunities. Making due use of opportunities.

You know, so when Paul says, see that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, he has said, a mouthful there. Progress wisely, progress accurately, progress exactly. Make due use of the opportunities that come along your way. That's what he's saying there. We have the opportunities to do that. When God uses the word walk in Exodus 16, in the Septuagint, it's tied directly to that word walk in Ephesians 5 and Ephesians 4 and 5. So when we look here in Exodus 16, if we go back there, when God says walk, it wasn't just a leisurely walk, follow me, Israel, take your time. All we're doing is wasting time here, you know, spending time, you know, just walking. No, there was a purpose to every place and everything that God led Israel to. So in 16.4, we go back there, I'm going to give them bread. You know, even though they've been loud and they've been complaining, I'm going to give them bread so I can test them to see whether they will walk in my law or not. Will they progress in my law? Will they take the opportunity to learn to obey me? Is what he's saying. And so I think we know the story there, but let's look down through chapter 16. You know, when God gave Israel manna, we're aware of what the parameters around it was. Every morning when you wake up, the manna will be there. You, Israel, you take enough for your family. Don't go out there and say, I'm gonna, you know, it's like a free-for-all. I'm gonna take as much as I can possibly get. I don't care what the other people had. Just take enough for that day, God said, because it will be there every day.

On the sixth day, though, I want you to take double, because on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there's not going to be any there. Pretty clear what God had said. In one way, I'm sure Israel looked at it and said, well, that doesn't make sense. I mean, if it's there, why wouldn't I just take all I can't? Then I won't have to go out on the second day. I'll gather enough for two days, and I don't have to run to publics the second day if I have enough for the first day, right, or whatever. But other than what God did, he gave them things that he wanted them to follow exactly.

But true to form, Israel didn't. Exodus 16, verse 19, Moses said, let no one leave any of it till morning. Notwithstanding, they didn't listen to Moses.

Surprise, surprise. He said it. Notwithstanding, they didn't heed Moses. But some of them left part of it until morning, and it bread warmed worms and stank. And Moses was rightfully angry with them. He might have said, what's wrong with you? Didn't God clearly say, don't leave it till morning? What can be so vague about that? No confusion in that, and yet they did it anyway.

Well, they paid the price. And so, you know, they went on, and then it says in verse 22, it was on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one.

And so, verse 23, Moses said, you know, tomorrow's the Sabbath. Verse 24, so they laid it up until the morning as Moses commanded, and it didn't stink. They might have been a little, you know, cautious, like, whoa, you know, we did this early in the week, and I don't think it was just kind of like a mild odor, right? It's probably something that you really knew in your house, you didn't obey God. It was made obvious, you didn't obey God with the odor that was coming out from that man, if you gathered up too much in one day. So they might have been a little tenuous about gathering twice as much and leaving it over till the morning on the sixth day, but God said, do it, and they did it. They laid it up till morning as Moses commanded, it didn't stink, and there weren't any worms in it. And Moses said, eat that, eat that today. Okay, verse 27, not everyone paid attention. It happened that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, but they found none. And this time God says to Moses, how long do you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? What is it going to take, Israel? How many times do you have to have the opportunity to learn to obey me? How many times do you have to hear it, and you just keep ignoring it? What's wrong with you, he would say? Haven't you learned through everything that you've done that I do what I say? I am the God. I can provide every need you have. You don't have to think about anything except have your trust in me. And I give you these tests. I tell you, do this this way. And then you run off and do it another way. I'm testing you. I'm testing you with this. Here was a Sabbath test. You know, God tests us. We have the opportunity every single seventh day to choose to obey God or do something different. Every single Sabbath, the command is the same. The command isn't, hey, just come and join us for Sabbath services and a holy convocation once in a while when it feels when you feel like it. Maybe you read that in the Bible. I don't.

And we know that not everyone is following God's law exactly.

Well, we will learn. We will learn what it is. He says what to do on the holy days. There's a holy convocation. There's seven days of unleavened bread. There's seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles. There's an eighth day. He says what to do on those, but not everyone does them. And yet they probably pat themselves on the back, maybe blind themselves a little bit and say, oh, I'm doing God's will. Like Judas thought, oh, I'm doing God's will. I have to be unblind, unblind and have our eyes wide open. There's other opportunities that God gives us. Do we obey them? Do we think about what we're telling God? It's crystal clear what you read through these. When Israel did these things, God was irritated with them. How long when we make decisions, when we make choices, do we ever stop and think, what are we telling God by the what the choices we make? It's more important to me to do this rather than what you say, because that is exactly what we're telling God when we make a choice different than what he clearly commands us. Okay, so go back to Exodus 16 here.

And, you know, so here's an opportunity for them to learn to obey and to listen to the words exactly as they are spoken. Something that none of us yet do year by year, year by year, little by little. God will get us to the point where we are truly living by every word of God. Okay, let's move forward to chapter 17. Chapter 17, we have the congregation of Israel coming to Miraba, and here's water again. Now, they've already faced a water dilemma once before, and they're facing a water dilemma here again. First time there was water, but it was bitter. This time, they're thirsty, and there's no water. So does Israel think, oh, we've already learned this lesson. God gave us the opportunity back at Mara to trust him that he can provide the water.

Now, when we read in 17 and verse 3, the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, why did you bring us up out of Egypt? Why did you bring us here to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? So Moses cried out to God, what will I do with this people? They're almost ready to stone me. And so they went before that, and they, of all things, struck a rock, and water came out of it. I hasn't seen, here hasn't heard, hadn't entered into the hearts of any man there, that water could come from a rock.

But there's no bounds for God. There's no bounds for God. But how did Israel react?

They were dismayed. They were afraid. They complained. They were loud.

Turn back to Exodus, not Exodus, Isaiah, Isaiah 30, and see how God wants us to respond to these situations, these trials, these opportunities that He gives us.

Isaiah 30 and verse 15.

Thus says the Lord God, verse 15, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.

Not confidence in self, confidence in God. Trust in God. Jeremiah 17.5 says, if we trust in man, we're going to be very sorry people. In returning and rest you will be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength. But, He says of His people, you would not. When trouble came, as you read onto the verses, they flee on horses and do all those things. But, you know, what God told Moses back at the Red Sea, stand still, take a deep breath, see the salvation of God, turn to Him, rely on Him, listen closely to what it is you may be told, and do it exactly the way that He says. Go back and look at one more thing here in Exodus, also in chapter 17.

Chapter 17, verse 8. Come to a place called Rephidim. And here Amalek comes out to attack Israel. Now we know Amalek, they're a fierce people, not warriors you ever want to fight with. They've been enemies of Israel down through the ages. At the conclusion of this chapter, God says Amalek will be completely destroyed. They are just a terrible, terrible people.

In verse 8, Israel's faced with war. Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua, Choose some men, go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I'll stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.

Joshua did, as Moses said to him, fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron and her, went up to the top of the hill, and it was, as it was, when Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed.

And when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. And when Moses' hands became heavy, the people helped keep his hands up.

Moses knew, Joshua knew, go out and do it, but it'll be God fighting for us. And when that hand was raised, it was God fighting for them, giving them the power and strength to do that. What did they learn? Or maybe what did they learn, at least in this instance?

One thing we don't read in chapter or verse 8 is that when Amalek came out to fight them, they didn't panic. They didn't run around and scream, take us back to Egypt. We don't want to fight Amalek. We can't fight Amalek. They're going to kill us. You just brought us out here, Moses. You just brought us out here, God, to kill us? No. God brought them out to give them life in the Promised Land. God brought us out to give us eternal life. But we have to become strong in God. He will give us the words. He'll give us the commands. He'll give us the opportunities to apply those things in our life. We have to have our eyes wide open. And when problems come, and they will come, in the last year, a couple years, we've faced some of them. We had this coronavirus thing all over the place. What did we do? Did we panic? Did we run back to the world? Did we say, God? God can deal with this? Turn to Him? We have a war going on with Russia for the first time in our lives. What do we see going on? We see specters of war that we haven't seen in real life. And we know that the Bible talks about four horsemen who are going to be galloping across the world in years to come. It's not going to be mild coronaviruses and wars that are, you know, so far away they're not going to touch us. God never says that those four horsemen are not going to affect us. You know, we have false prophets who are very cunning and clever and who can twist the word of God to make it sound just the way we want it to. But those who will not take the mark of the beast are the ones who know God's word, who have learned it, who have studied it, who have taken the opportunities to apply it into their lives, and they will not be fooled by that. They won't be dismayed and they won't fall because through the course of their lives and the opportunities that God's given them, they've developed strength of arm. They no longer have feeble knees that will cave at the first challenge. We have a president who's talked about food shortages. Famine will come on the land. Inflation's already here. Who knows where it will end? What are we going to do? Are we going to run around saying, what are you doing? God, we didn't expect this. God doesn't say He's going to take His people away from the fourth horseman.

What about pestilence when the next one comes? What do we do? Run and hide from God? Or run back? Or do we trust what He said in Exodus 15, 26 there? He can provide everything. He can heal everything. He can shield us because He is very interested in us and that we will be in His Kingdom.

And every single opportunity He gives that we may look at as a test and a trial when we change the way we're thinking gives us that opportunity to become more like the more like Him that we can stand in those days ahead. Now, I'll stop here in a minute. You know, in Israel, they wandered through the desert for 40 years. Somewhere in the midst of that, God was ready to send them into the Promised Land. They had been through many, many tests and trials, many, many opportunities to know God, trust God, rely on Him, not to panic and realize that no matter what lies in front of me, He can deliver. That's where salvation is. And yet, when they came to the boundaries of the Promised Land and God sent 12 scouts into the Promised Land, what did they do?

Ten of them came back. They were dismayed. They were afraid. They said, we can't do it.

God has fooled us. There's no way we can take that land. Shame on them. They had the opportunities. Two of them took the opportunities and two of them, Joshua and Caleb, said, oh, our God is more than capable of delivering us into that Promised Land. But all of Israel sided with the ten who were, well, we're afraid. We can't do it. I don't know why God brought us out here. What happened to all of those men? They all died in the wilderness. They all died in the wilderness. They never saw the Promised Land. None of us, I hope none of us, would fall into the category that we would die without ever seeing the Promised Land after we've followed God for the time that we have.

If we do, it'll be because we have our eyes closed. We blind ourselves to what God is clearly showing us to test the opportunities to develop faith, courage, trust, reliance, obedience, accurate and exact obedience, humility that we have to have that we trust in Him and realize everything that comes from Him. So as we leave, we've already left the days of Unleavened Bread, but here we are in the Sabbath that immediately follows. Don't forget the lessons of the days of Unleavened Bread.

March forward on our journey from here until the time of Jesus Christ's return, following Him exactly and taking advantage of every opportunity to become more like Him.