Spiritual Legalism

I commented about the weather, the dreary weather, and it is cloudy outside. Last night it rained a little bit here. It's kind of real dark as we got down to sunset last night and began the Holy Day. Really, that's not a bad omen, or not an omen, but a bad setting for us to think about. Because when you read in the book of Exodus, Chapter 14, if you go ahead and turn over there, when Israel got to the Red Sea and had to make that crossing, it wasn't a sunshiny, bright day. It was actually a night crossing, and there was a great deal of darkness, wind, and clouds.

Verse 20 of Exodus, Chapter 14 brings that out. It says, The angel of the Lord came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and it was a cloud and darkness to the one, and it gave light and night by night to the other, so that they did not come near the other all that night. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night.

So it was a night crossing, took the entire evening, and it wasn't necessarily the best of weather conditions on top of the danger and the fear of the Egyptians at their back for the Israelites. So it's an interesting scene when you really look here in Chapter 14, and I was looking at it yesterday and just trying to imagine that for a moment, and again, the weather kind of helped me to do that for a minute, to get it in my mind's eye, that it was a dark crossing. And there was a great deal of wind and difficulty physically on top of the apparel that could have been there from the Egyptians as God set his hand to deliver Israel. But that's not necessarily what I want to dwell on. That sets the scene because, if you back up a few verses here in Chapter 14, in verse 10, we find that Pharaoh drew near, and the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. And they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.

And 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 up out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? Or it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness? I've read that many times. I've given many sermons on it. And every time I read it and speak on it, I always have the question, Why in the world did the Israelites want to go back to Egypt?

We all know that this is not the only time that they raised that question several times in the book of Exodus, on into the book of Numbers. They grumbled. They complained. They asked basically the same question. Why didn't you leave us in Egypt? We want to go back. Why did they do that?

I think I understand it a little better this year. So with your permission, I'd like to take another attempt to answer that question. Why did the Israelites want to return to Egypt? Let me explain it by first taking a digression. We all like escapism. What's your favorite form?

Is it a movie? Is it a walk in the park, woods, around your block? Is it a television? Is it a sport? Let me tell you about one of my favorite ways to escape. I like baseball. I like football.

Basketball? Come and go. I recognize that's heresy in Indiana. But they have to understand. I really didn't play that as a kid. I played football. And most of all, I played baseball when I was a kid.

And though I'm a Colts fan and will enjoy watching them on Sundays through the fall and into the winter, I always enjoy when spring comes along and baseball season starts again because that's what I played most of all in my years as a youth and what I've followed about the game. So when I want to escape, it's good to go to a game or turn on the television and watch the Cubs. I don't travel as much to Wrigley Field as we once did years ago. When I want to see a Major League ballgame, I'll just drop on down to Cincinnati. It's closer. It's cheaper. And it's a nice setting down there. How many of you have ever seen a Major League baseball game in a Major League park?

Quite a number of us. So we can relate to this. Baseball is a fascinating game. They call it the national pastime or at least they used to. And maybe some other sports like NASCAR has made a run on that, but whatever. But when you understand the game of baseball, there's some interesting features about it. You all know that there's very distinct lines, very sharp angles when you go into a stadium. We set as spectators and the bleachers are in the stands and we watch a group of people on the field called players.

And there's a right field line, there's a left field line. Anything hit within those lines is a fair ball and anything hit outside those lines it's a foul ball. Anything hit outside of the walls of the stadium is a home run. And there's triples and singles and doubles and double plays and pop-ups and foul balls and strikes and balls and everything that goes along because baseball is a very exact game.

There are nine innings in a regulation game. Each inning is defined by three outs. An out is either three strikes thrown across the plate within a very narrow zone or a hit by the batsman that is caught as a fly or on a grounder and thrown out at the base, any of the bases within the context, until you get an out.

Three of those outs constitute an inning. Both sides get one inning. One up offensively in the inning. You play nine innings and in most cases by the end of nine innings you have a score of three to two, four to five, six to seven, whatever it might be, and a team wins. And very rarely, well, it's often that you go into extra innings. The thing about baseball is there's always a conclusion.

You don't have a tie in baseball. And if you have to go 10 innings, 15 innings, 25 innings, or you have to postpone because it's 3 a.m. and the other team's got to get on a plane to go to another city, they'll resume that game at another date the next time the two teams come together. The game's rained out. That game will be played.

There will be a conclusion to the game. In my memory, there's only one game I can recall of baseball, the Major League level, that was not concluded. It was a few years ago, it was an all-star baseball game, and they ran out of pitchers. It went way into extra innings, and they ran out of pitchers, and they didn't have any more pitchers. What do we do? So the Commissioner of Baseball was sitting in the stands. They went over there, and he had a rendered decision, and he basically called it a tie.

And so, of all things, and there was this great uproar. Of all things, the all-star game and a baseball game ended in a tie, no conclusion. And I remember they made a big uproar about that, and that's the only one I can ever remember, because a baseball game has a conclusion. Now, when you watch the game, you know who's the home team by their uniform. You know who's the visiting team by their uniform. You know who the players are because they have numbers. And many of them have their name on there. And you know who the non-players are because they're all wearing black.

They're the umpires. We don't call them referees. They're umpires. And they're in black, and they're behind the plate, or at the positions on the field, calling the game. Now, when the game is over, that's just when it begins. If you know anything about baseball, you know that statistics rule in baseball. It is a whole other story because every bat, batsman, every pitch, everything is measured, recorded, and defined down to the third decimal in baseball. You bat 300, you bat 385, you have an ERA of point, one point whatever. And these statistics go on, and people talk about those for years and years and years in baseball.

It is a clearly defined game. There are winners and losers. You know who the players are. You know who the spectators are. It's really a good form of escapism. When I leave a game or when the game is over and the Cubs win or lose, or your favorite team in the World Series bombs out and they get thrown out in four games, you know what happens? Same thing happens when you walk out of your basketball game or your football game or your other movie or your form of escapism.

We have to go back to life. We have to go back to the job. We have to go back to our mate, our children. Reality. Monday morning always comes around.

And life in those areas is not quite as clearly defined.

You don't always know who's the home team, the visiting team.

People come into your lives that you may not have invited.

Situations happen. You get a curveball thrown at you Monday morning when you go back to work.

Layoffs are coming. Cutbacks.

The client decides they don't need your services, so you've got to go out and drum up some more business. Things happen in life, don't they? They're not always clear-cut and clearly explained in our life when we return to the normal world. For 36 years, I've worked with people's lives.

And one thing I have learned—I haven't learned too many things, but I have learned one—is that things are not exact. Precise, clear, ordered, down to the third decimal point. When it comes to life, people's situations, what rings up on the phone, what comes across in an email, what comes through in a letter, or what develops or happens over a period of several months within the congregation, within people's lives, within your own life.

You can explain God's laws and at best hope that people will learn and follow and prosper as a result. I learned that the other few months ago. My good friend and mentor, Vernon Hargrove, is retiring from the full-time ministry after, what, 46 or 7 years doing this job. He's going to retire here this summer. He was here back in November, and he stayed with us. We were talking as he was with us, and I said, well, Vernon, what have you learned in 47 years in this job?

And that's essentially what he said to me. He said, I've learned you can explain God's laws and at best hope that people will learn and follow and prosper as a result. He said, I've learned you don't make anyone change. You can't force change. You can't change yourself. You can't determine the outcome and expect that everybody will listen carefully to this well-prepared, crafted sermon or series of sermons or even after many, many hours of counseling or work. He said, you can explain, teach, pray, and hope that people will benefit over a period of time. That wasn't a negative conclusion. It was perhaps a realistic conclusion to a life in the ministry. It kind of sums things up because life is not always a science. Sometimes life is art and sometimes it's not, but it's definitely not science. The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that. It tells us a lot about how life works. It says, the race is not to the swift or the strong. It says, some walk while others ride. It says, kings walk while slaves will ride. It says, all is vanity. What is all this about as we toil under the sun? And it kind of makes this weaving, bending, arcing path through all the chapters of Ecclesiastes. And down at the end of chapter 12, Solomon says, fear God and keep the commandments for this is the whole duty of man. After he traces his whole experience about mirth and laughter and sadness and going to the house of death, it tells us a lot about how life works. It's not always clear at times. Now, for the Israelites, when we go back to this question and we go back to where they are standing here on the shore of the Red Sea, their escape was not the baseball. It hadn't been invented yet. Their escape wasn't to some other sport. We read, as we just did, that their escape from a difficulty was to go back to Egypt. That was their escape.

Why did they want to go back to Egypt? Why didn't they want to go to the promised land? Why didn't they want their freedom? Why would they want to go back into bondage? Why would they want to go back down into that land from which they had just been extracted and seen all the miracles of God and everything else? Well, let's explore for just a minute Egypt. Perhaps we can understand a little bit about it. It's not an Egyptology lesson here this morning, but Egypt, for all of its picture in the Bible as a sin and as bondage in slavery, just on the ground, from the physical level, in the streets, on the Egyptian street, it wasn't a bad life in some ways. It was a well-ordered life. Egypt was a well-ordered society. We tend to, at this time of year, focus on the bondage and slavery and Pharaoh and sin. It's all of that in terms of a type and a picture, but there's really more to consider. You see, in the Bible, Egypt is always a place where the people of God go, where the people God is working with, where they go and they want to go, it seems, for an escape.

It begins back in Genesis 12 with the story of Abraham. You remember when Abraham actually got into the land that God promised him? Abraham didn't stay there. He decided to take a vacation, keep going south, like we all like to do, we want to go south. So he went south into Egypt.

And what did he find when he got down there? You can sum up his experience in Egypt.

Deception, deception, deception. Because Pharaoh wanted his wife and Abraham lied about it. So, oh, she's my sister, not my wife. And then Pharaoh was warned by God in a dream and had to come back to Abraham and he got into deception. So Egypt's not a good thing in the Bible for the people of God. And just like Abraham, just like the Israelites, and there's others in the accounts in the Bible of people, God's people, who wound up in Egypt when they shouldn't have been down there.

It was there and people wanted to go there and the Israelites wanted to go back because when people get tired of living by faith, they tend to want to go to Egypt.

When you get tired of living by faith, you want to escape. And Egypt was a place to escape.

There's another account where Solomon made an alliance with Egypt. We read in the history of Israel because one of the first foreign wives that he married was an Egyptian wife. She was a daughter of Pharaoh. And he married her to make an alliance. It was a military alliance. It seemed like a good thing. It seemed like a prestigious thing. It seemed like a diplomatic, strategic move to make to guard his southern flank, to have an ally down there. And so he married an Egyptian Pharaoh's daughter. And in the story, you find that she brought along her gods, her way of life. And it began a long slide for Solomon and the nation and an escape from faith. When you look at Egypt, it's easy to understand why.

You see, Egypt was very, very clear geographically.

There's one central feature of the geography of Egypt that defines it. Do you know what that is?

Anybody know what that one geographic feature defines Egypt? What? The Nile. The Nile River.

Runs from the mountains down in the south of Egypt, empties out into the Mediterranean Sea.

The Nile rose every year, flooded the land, provided for the crops, subsided like clockwork.

Every year, the Nile rose and fell. If it didn't rise, there weren't going to be any crops.

But they could depend on that. And the Nile defined the life of Egypt. The only life, and virtually to this day, I mean, you go there today and you see, if you ever, when we were there a few years ago, we flew up the Nile to Karnak. And it was a bright morning. You could look out and you could see the Nile River because you fly up the Nile. And you can see on either side of the banks, green for maybe a mile. And then on either side, after a mile, it's desert. That's the way it was then. And essentially, that's the way it is today.

Because the Nile defined the life. But it was very, very clear. All life was ordered around the rise and the fall of the river. Egypt was also clear, very clear, architecturally. There were pyramids at the time of the Egyptians, or the Israelites there. The three great pyramids you still see today were there and they were old then. They were antiques in Moses' day.

They had a lot of other temples. They had other pyramids, even older than the ones that stood there near Cairo today. And those pyramids were exact, mathematically. They still do not, to this day, know how they built the great pyramid. They know that nobody could even replicate it on the scale if they wanted to. You can go down to Memphis and on the east bank of the Mississippi, you'll see a big pyramid over there. It doesn't compare to the pyramids. I mean, basically, they don't know how they did it and it couldn't be replicated today, but they did it multiple times. They had temples to all their gods that were exact, precise, mathematically. They were imposing and they were controlling because they defined Egypt.

Egypt was also, because of that, very clear and exact theologically.

The unseen, the spirit world, the gods and the goddesses, were all translated and they were all seen. They were translated into something physical that the people could see. And they had images, cats, hawks, bulls, hyenas, birds. All were representations of their gods.

So, there was nothing mystifying in Egypt about their theology. The spirit world in the Egyptian theology came alive and carved stone. You wanted a particular god that fit your particular need at the time or your emotion. If you were a woman or a man or old or young, you had a god for it. You had a god just for what you wanted to worship and to appeal to and to see, touch, feel, and hold.

And in that way, it was a theology of absolute control. Absolute control, clearly defined. Egypt was also clear socially. There was one man at the top, he was the Pharaoh.

And there were people at the bottom, they were the serfs and the slaves. There were various orders and casts in between, but you didn't move out of those.

Life in Egypt, if you were at the bottom, was very, very uncomplicated. If you were an 18-year-old son of a slave in Egypt, you didn't have to worry about taking the SAT, which college you were going to go to, what your profession was going to be. It was already defined for you.

Life was already laid out. If you were an artisan, your life was defined by that caste system. If you were royalty, your life was already defined. That's what it was going to be.

Nothing was going to change. Pretty uncomplicated life, isn't it?

Choices were kept to a minimum. That was life socially. Everybody's place was defined.

No complications, not much choice. And because there wasn't a lot of choice, there weren't a whole lot of consequences. Think about the consequences you make if you overstretch yourself trying to reach into a business or grow a business beyond your abilities, beyond your capital, beyond your market. We know what that usually means. It's bankruptcy, unless you can qualify for TARP funds today. But there are consequences. That wasn't the case in Egypt. And so a lot of things were different. This is what they wanted to go back to. Egypt, if you will, was the Wrigley Field of the ancient world. Clean boundaries, clear separation of the players, royalty at the top, slaves at the bottom.

Numbers and statistics were there to govern. They knew when the stars were going to come out, the moon through its phases, the river was going to rise. There were sharp lines, sharp angles, fair balls, and foul balls in Egypt. That was the life that the Israelites wanted to escape to. Why did they want to go back to it? Because they got tired of living by faith.

Because they got tired of living by the way God was calling them to. God, as we know in the story here, called Israel out of Egypt. God calls you and I out of the world. He calls us into His church.

That calling, then as it is now, is to a life of faith. We don't normally always think about the Israelites living a life of faith because we talk about the Old Covenant and all of it.

There were differences between them, then, and now. Yes, the covenant was different. But we're also told that the Old Covenant wasn't all that bad. The fault was with the people.

And the missing dimension was God's Spirit. But nonetheless, they were still called to faith.

They were called to a life of faith, just as we are. Now, faith, I don't want us to have the impression, is not something that is clear because there is much clarity about God's way and God's truth. God's laws, which He would give to Israel, which we still understand and observe today, God's laws give great clarity to life. They do define 10 cardinal points of living that are unmovable, unshakable, spiritual, and eternal. There's great clarity in knowing, do not sleep with your neighbor's wife. Do not lie. Worship only the true God.

Remember the Sabbath day, and don't get mixed up in covenant. All of those are great principles that give great clarity to life and are a lifetime for us in living. When you come to understand the Sabbath and the Holy Days, as we're here today on the last day of Unleavened Bread, and the meaning that they give us in the great plan of God, and we understand that from the beginning, from this festival, with the death of Christ, with Christ's life within us, and we move all the way through to the Holy Spirit, to the return of Christ, to the world becoming at one with God in the millennium, and the world beyond after the last great day, these days define very clearly God's plan for us. And when we understand what God is doing with us, we have a life of faith that does give us great, satisfying meaning. When you come to understand the purpose for life, that's deeply meaningful, deeply satisfying, encouraging, and again gives great clarity. We know why we are, why we were born. We know what happens after death. We understand the truth of the resurrection. That's great defined clarity for a life. The great truths that lead us to a deep faith, beyond that even, come from also a tangible personal experience. As you and I put God's law into effect, it's more than just knowing the law. You have to keep the Sabbath. You have to keep the Holy Days. You have to make a conscious decision not to lie, not to create an idol that separates us from God. And in doing so, as we learn about that in life, we create deep personal experience that really defines the faith. Because true faith, true godly faith, does not come from legalism, does not come from an institution. It comes from experience. As we live God's way of life, as we live His law, and we learn that God's way works as a former colleague, former colleague, and that's still a colleague, defined a few years ago for us. God's way works.

It is a life of faith. Faith defines a life within this world.

Sometimes a muddled world, and very often an unclear world. But isn't that what God has called us to? On the night of the Passover, we read through John 17, and toward the latter part of John 17, Christ said, I pray for them, but I don't pray that you take them out of the world, but you keep them in the world. You see, God calls us, offers us salvation, the sacrifice of Christ, but He doesn't take us out of the world. And that's where the muddled comes. That's where the unclear texture comes at times. That's where the problems come.

It's not just a baseball field with clearly defined lines and statistics.

As I said, I turn off the television or walk out of a baseball game, and I go right back into life and the issues of my life, your lives. And there's not always clear answers as to why, what's happening, or what's the choice to make in some cases. And we have to model through.

Life is right there with us. The key is to see God to banish fear and to stay with Him. Because we're called to a life of faith, but there are challenges and there are difficulties. We're called to a life of the vision of the Kingdom of God, a promised land, a new world to come. But in the meantime, until that world comes, we have to muddle through life. And at times, it's tempting to escape, to go back to Egypt, to escape into something that is a little bit more clearly defined, we think. Israel met many challenges. We read the first one here when they came up to the Red Sea. And every time they met a challenge, they wanted to return to the well-ordered life of Egypt. When you look through the story, you see what they complained about.

They complained about everyday things. Look in chapter 16 of Exodus. Verse 2.

The whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the children of Israel said, Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the pots of meat.

And we ate bread to the full. For you brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Food. Every day staple. Meat, bread, some nice cheese thrown in, some vegetables. On another occasion, they wanted to return to the leeks and the garlics and the onions. Never could figure that one out. Until I learned to like garlic. And leeks and onions, I recently discovered leeks in cooking, and they're very nice as well. So I understand those verses a little bit better now. But they got hung up over the everyday little things.

And life. That's what it all came down to.

It's not so much that they wanted to return to slavery. What they wanted was an easy life.

You go through every one of the challenges that they met, and it's an obstacle. No water later on.

You know, they got hung up over who was in charge at the time of Korah. And God opened up the ground and swallowed everybody up that was grumbling at that time.

But really, behind the question or the statement, why did we come out here? Why can't we go back? It's not so much that they wanted to go back into slavery. Because that wasn't always easy as well. Remember, early chapters of Exodus tell us that for generations, their groanings and their prayers went up to God. So it wasn't really a cushy life. It was just in some ways uncomplicated.

And they wanted out of that. And when God began to take them to something better, they ran into difficulties. They ran into problems. You know what they really wanted?

What? Chapter 16 and other accounts. Chapter 17 talks about grumbling about water. You know what they really wanted? They wanted bottled water. They wanted catered meals. All nicely apportioned.

Chicken bread. You ever wonder how they get those chicken breasts so clean, nicely apportioned as they do, where they grow those chickens?

They wanted catered meals. They didn't want to walk to the Promised Land. They wanted a luxury tour bus. We've got a group of fellow members over in Israel right now, during these days on Loving Bread, and they're going all over Israel on a tour, sponsored by the church. I've been there. Some of you have. Let me tell you, they're traveling in style.

Air-conditioned luxury buses with chilled water up front. A dollar a bottle. It's a bargain.

It's a bargain over there. You've got to have it because it gets hot, thirsty, you get out and somebody's tour stops. It's hot, and you gladly pay that tour guide a dollar for a 10-cent bottle of water.

And it's nice. It's not real. Tourism, wherever you go, isn't really real. You just see tourist spots. You don't see necessarily how everybody lives. But that's what Israel wanted. They wanted luxury tour buses to the Promised Land. They didn't want any difficulties. And when they got there, they wanted big homes on big lots with swimming pools. No movie stars.

But they did want Viking ranges inside, just like we do. Bigger home. When we're inside good enough, let's get another one.

They wanted perfect in-laws. Smart kids, good jobs. They wanted fully funded 401ks.

And so do we. So do we. That's what we want. No difficulties, no challenges. Kids that make the right decisions get good scholarships so we don't have to fund the bill. All of those things. That's what they wanted. That's what we wanted. We don't like upset. We don't like turmoil, stress, or difficulty. But that's not the way life is, is it? You see, life gets muddled. Life's not always straight lines and sharp angles with clearly defined statistics. It doesn't always end fairly. And life, unlike a baseball game, doesn't always end conclusively. It leaves you asking questions.

I've had friends die young before their time. I've had people see some suffer setbacks. And I've sat and I've asked with them and about them, why? Why? It's not fair. It's not fair. It's not fair. And someone else makes all kinds of bad decisions, bad choices, never learns, smokes cigars every day, and lives to 105.

I always like to kid Todd Carey about his grandfather. Smoked a stogie every day of his life and lived to well over 100 years of age. We laugh about it and the guy had a good life, but we all know that there are some people who don't have any vices and die at age 47.

All of those are parts of life because life is not a baseball game with clearly defined segments and a conclusion. We don't always see the curves ahead. In the book of Numbers, Chapter 14, to just jump to another famous episode where they grumbled, this is where they got up to the threshold of the land of Canaan. The spies came back with a report that there are giants.

Verse 33 of Chapter 13, they said there are giants there. We're like grasshoppers.

We can't go up against that team. They're Nephilim. When I was in Ambassador College, the first year I was there, they had a senior basketball teams by class. Freshman class had a team, sophomore class. The senior class that year had the tallest group of guys you could ever want. Three or four guys were like over six. We call them the Nephilim because they just dominated the courts and the boards at that time. The Israelites here saw that they couldn't defeat this team.

They wept. Their voices cried in verse 1, Chapter 14. They wept all night. And they said again, if only we died in the land of Egypt or only we died in this wilderness, you brought us here to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims. Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt? So they said to one another, let's select a leader and return to Egypt. They wavered. What are your giants? We all have giants, challenges, setbacks, difficulties, tests of our faith. We all have our giants. And we either meet them, overcome them, work through them, or we'll be like the Israelites, doomed to just walk around in circles for a generation, essentially a lifetime, which is what they did. They couldn't face these giants and deal with them. And they had to wander around in circles until another generation came on the scene. Well, we have the advantage of looking at a story like this and learning lessons that we have our giants. We've got to face them in a different way, stop walking around in the circles of our own spiritual wilderness that we create for ourselves and learn to walk by faith. You see, the tribes were moving forward to a new life, just as we are. But they ran into obstacles, just as we do. The obstacles called life.

God promises us the kingdom of God, an eternal life in the end. That's the great vision that we have. He also promises us a measure of peace and contentment and a way of life that does work.

Despite my mistakes, the mistakes I may encounter and seek to help people come through, I've never wavered in my belief in God's way that it is a good quality way of life. It is better than anything out there on the market, and it does work.

And the times when it doesn't work, there are many things that we can explain as to the cause. Sometimes it's not all that difficult, but many cases we can.

As I've worked it through in my mind and over these 35-plus years, I've had to realize that God just never really promised us a thorn-free life. He promises us the kingdom, but then we have to come face to face with the challenges of life that are there. Because He doesn't promise to remove all of those. We do have to walk through a wilderness. It's where the faith that God gives us invades that wilderness and helps us to deal with it. But it doesn't eliminate the wilderness because faith is a very personal matter, and it doesn't deal with someone else in our sphere. It only deals with us. The fruits of the Holy Spirit ripen slowly at times in our lives, and the life that's committed to God. There are struggles with highs and lows, but that I've come to understand is the way. Too often we may want to return to Egypt and escape the muddle of the wilderness to go back to security, where everything is ordered.

Just like I will escape into a baseball game, or even a football game, or some other entertainment device, a movie. I'm getting to the point where I guess it's just a symptom of my age, but the older movies are better. I used to visit a lady up in Fort Wayne who had a whole collection of all these classic movies from the golden age of Hollywood. She had them all copied and purchased.

Many of them I'd never seen, and she was shut in, and she spent a lot of time watching those movies.

I never quite fully understood her fascination with all those, I guess. Now, 25 years later, I understand it a little bit better. I have my list of top 10 movies, and I've started purchasing them on DVD, so I've got my own collection. Pretty soon I will need Netflix. I'll just have 10 movies or whatever to watch through, and maybe I'll add a few more to them.

They're none of the current crop. They go back, in some cases, a few years. Not back to the 30s or 40s or even the 50s, but we all have our areas where we escape to. Maybe it's an activity. We don't like to watch movies. We don't like to read books. Maybe it's an activity.

We find our coping mechanism. We find what it is that we get into, and as long as it's certainly within the confines of God's law and way of life, that's fine. Life is to be lived and enjoyed. Our challenge always is in the decisions we make, and living it according to God's way, and in a way that draws us closer to God in the end. But we move through those.

Anything but the committed way of God's life isn't going to work.

Anything that does not build up faith and the security of faith within this way of life, anything that wants to take us back into anything that resembles Egypt, we have to be careful for. That's why we have the Days of Unleavened Bread every year to come around, to walk us through this story once again, and teach us various things that we didn't learn the year before, and that we are only really ready and prepared to learn today. Because I think there is somewhere within each of us something that we kind of hold out in there some secret spot.

Debbie and I were talking about that this morning. I asked her the question. Is there a... what is your secret thought, place to which you would escape if your whole life was turned upside down? If you left the faith, you wanted to...

what is your Egypt that you would go back to?

If you made that choice, and you walked away from the camp of Israel and started to head south, back to Egypt. What is that? You think about that, and understand yourself and your motives why we might even harbor that. You know, I've had my particular thought about Egypt over the years, where in a sense I would reboot, where I would regroup, where I would go back to one sense.

But then I realized, well, it worked. I'm not the same person. It's not the same place.

Things have changed. Life's moved on. Things are different. And the bottom line difference is God's calling, God's Spirit, and the offer of salvation. You see, the problem with Egypt, the problem with the past, the problem with anything that we put up there as Christians that can alter our movement toward the Kingdom of God in a life of faith, the problem with that is its legalism. It's legalism. It is something physical, some attraction, some place, some person, some event, something that we conjure and we create, our life revolves around that fills that need other than faith, other than God.

And it's legalism because it lasts only as long as the next meeting, the next sermon, even, if I can even use a sermon, if we only hang on a sermon by that most inspiring of ministers, that favorite of ours, who we just love to hear, whoever it might be.

And we just hang on that person or that sermon that we heard here and there. You know how long that lasts?

Sometimes not very long because we need another sermon. Not that a sermon is bad.

The point I'm making is if we're looking toward a meeting, toward an occasion, toward something physical, some person, some event, some activity, some ballgame, some book, some favorite spot that is our place to escape. If that's what Boises encourages, inspires, if it's that conversation, how long does it last?

It can last and it can provide its benefit, but if it doesn't, then translate within us to faith, to faith, to conviction, to belief, so that we can endure on our own with God within the context of the church and His way of life and move forward. It's only as good as the next meeting, the next conversation, the next high. Because if we rely on any of those, we can be let down.

We're looking to something that is ordered, something that is physical, and when the physical is over, when the feast is over, we talk about the post-feast letdown. Whatever we learn from the good things of God has to be translated into faith. If the other things, the escapisms, the trivia, the entertainment pursuits, that's going to get tarnished. That's physical. That's going to be over. The new toy gets broken.

The batteries wear out. The shine comes off. The new car, the new home, the new whatever.

And we have to find something else when the game is over.

At times, we've got to be reminded of what Paul told the people in Ephesians 2.

He said, you don't have to turn there, but he said, basically, you walked only in the paths. When we walked only in the paths of the world, we were dead man walking. But God made us alive through our calling. Ephesians 2, verses 1 and 2. When we only walked in those paths, and the games, the entertainment, the people, the pursuits, the goals, the dreams of Egypt, were all that we had. We were dead men walking. But God made us alive to something different.

Faith is the ability to muddle along in the wilderness with a clear vision of God in His guiding hand, to keep an eye on the kingdom of God, to recognize the challenges that we have to confront, the difficulties that we confront in our faith, but keep our eyes firmly fixed on the kingdom, motivated and moved by that concept of faith that is built through the clarities of God's way, God's plan, God's law, and the experiences we build with God through His Spirit in our lives as Christians in that pursuit of that kingdom. That's what gives us the ability to meet the challenges, the temptations, the difficult moments, the red seas, the lack of water, the no-manna, the giants of our life, what we come up against and what we face. Why did Israel want to go back to Egypt? Why did they go back?

And why did they desire that? I guess the answer I've come to this year, what I've tried to explain to us this morning, they went back because they could not learn to live by faith. And the answer was right in front of them in Exodus 12, given at the very beginning of their journey.

I should say Exodus 14. In verse 13, when Moses said to the people, do not be afraid. What did Christ say to His disciples on the evening of His death? Don't be afraid. I will be with you.

Stand still. Compose yourself. Stand still.

Get your bearings and orientation. Don't be afraid. You will see the salvation of the Lord, which He'll accomplish for you today. The Lord will fight for you at verse 14, and you will hold your peace. That's a solution. We spend a lifetime learning it. They didn't learn it. Why didn't they learn it? As I said at the beginning, we're told in one other location in the Scriptures that the fault wasn't with the covenant, the fault was with the people. What was the key difference between them and us that we need to learn in our walk of faith? Turn back to the book of Ephesians, chapter 3. My congregations are going to get tired of me turning to it during this period. They're going to be glad to move on to it. But I like Ephesians 3 and what we learn in verse 17.

Israel wanted to go back to Egypt because they could not learn to live and walk by faith. And there was a deficiency. It was God's Spirit. But we cannot use that excuse. You see, you and I have God's Spirit. We have what we are told here in verse 17. Verse 16, it says, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit and the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you may be rooted and grounded in love, that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. That's the key. That's the missing ingredient. That's why they wanted to return to Egypt. And this is why we can't because Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. That's why we can't go back. And that, rather, is what these days of Unleavened Bread are all about.