Walk with God

Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Sabbath to all of you. It's good to be with you here, like it is every week. Just need to get the technology working here for a moment.

We've been fighting our own battles with the flu in our house over the course of the week.

Stephen came down with it last Saturday morning, and now he's still coughing. I actually missed most of the week of classes, and then Madeline came down with it starting yesterday evening.

So hopefully it's going to end at that point in the house and not work its way through the rest of the house. Time will tell. Well, as Dave Howson mentioned in the sermonette, we're entering that time of year with the Passover approaching. And for those who haven't attended with our church for a long time, I think most people are generally aware of the Passover. But one of the things that we do, as David mentioned in the sermonette when he turned to 2 Corinthians 13, is we view it as a time that we re-examine ourselves. We think about the commitment that we've made to God. We think back to the time that we were baptized, that we accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior. And we look back at our lives. We consider the things that have been going on in our lives. We think about our dedication, our commitment to walking God's way of life. And we look, broadly speaking, at our lives as a way of recommitting ourselves at this time of year to God.

And so in the spirit of that, I'd like to talk a little bit today. I find often it's helpful in life to have frameworks to attach things to. And what I'd like to suggest today is a framework that we can use as we're looking at our lives through the different dimensions of it as we start coming towards the Passover. And the framework that I'd like to use today is one that is weaved through the Bible. Now, as I've talked to you about before and some of the other messages, I'm always fascinated by the things I see in the Bible, especially as we see certain themes and ways of expressing things that move through the Bible from beginning to end.

And I'd like to use one of those today as the framework to suggest to everyone.

Turn with me, if you would, to Genesis 3, verse 8. Genesis 3, verse 8.

Genesis 3 is talking about what life was like in the Garden of Eden shortly after the time that God created mankind, and he was there with Adam and Eve a simple time before all of the complexities of the world started to come in. Genesis 3, verse 8. And something that God apparently did habitually during that time before Eve ate of the fruit and sin entered into the picture. In Genesis 3, verse 8, it says, God in the Garden of Eden was walking with Adam in the cool of the evening. He was there walking with him. So it implies a very close relationship, and I think there's a lot of association that comes with the idea of walking together, which we'll talk more about as we go through today's message. Turn with me to Revelation 3.

Revelation 3. We'll go all the way to the opposite end of the Bible.

Revelation 3 and verse 4. This section of Revelation, as many of you might be aware, talks about different churches. There were originally seven churches that sat on a mail route in the ancient empire. And this letter here is addressed. There is a series of letters addressed to these different churches that lie on the mail route. This is one of those churches that it's being talked to in Revelation 3 and verse 4. And by extension, we look at these things that are written to these churches as also being written to Christians throughout the ages who have different characteristics, just as these different churches have their own individual characteristics. Revelation 3 verse 4 here says, you have a few names even in Sardis, this was the name of the city that was being addressed, who have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. And in each one of these different cities that's being addressed, it talks about different things that will come as a reward.

And in this case, the reward and what's going to come in the future is the ability to walk with God in white. We see this theme of walking, walking with God from Genesis to Revelation.

We don't have to turn there, but in Genesis 6 verse 9, it talks about Noah, Genesis 6 verse 9, and the description of Noah is that Noah walked with God. And if you turn through other parts of the Bible and you look for it, perhaps you get out of concordance, you do a Google search just for that expression, walk with God, you'll see that it's applied to a lot of different people through the course of the Bible. There are other ways that people are described as walking in the Bible as well, but for example, the righteous kings of Israel and Judah are talked about as people who walked with God. So what I'd like to do today is really just spend my sermon talking about three words. Walk with God. Let's think first about the idea of walking. Now, walking is a really interesting analogy or allegory to use. It's a really basic thing, isn't it? So basic that we generally take it for granted. Yet at the same time, it's a very intricate and very complex motion. So what's our day-to-day experience with walking and what's it like? We learned to walk initially with a lot of help from our parents, don't we? I think those of us who have had children can remember what it's like if we had nieces and nephews and what it was like to watch them as they learn to walk. And the motions happen a little bit at a time as a young child builds up their muscles. They learn to sit up at first and then they kind of get into a crawling position.

They start sort of rocking back and forth. They try to get the coordination going between the feet and the hands, and pretty much they're scooting all over. And eventually, what happens?

They just walk. They just get up and walk, right? Well, of course they don't. It takes time. I remember watching our kids, and you know, first they'd hold on to the edge of something, right?

And they would just sort of hang on, and their legs would wobble, and they'd kind of be leaning back and forth, and they'd try to hold on to whatever it is, often a tabletop or a coffee table. And they just hold it and kind of get steady on their feet, and then they'd plop back down on their rear end, and they'd try it all over again. Just keep trying and trying and trying. And of course, parents and grandparents are watching it, or they're encouraging them and clapping and seeing how great it is. Look, they're standing on their feet, right? They're getting ready to walk. And then what do they do next? They start to cruise, a lot of people call it, right? Where they hold on to things, and as they're holding on to things, they start moving around. And so they're kind of starting to move their legs, grabbing their balance on that tabletop, and moving around a bit.

And then eventually, they get brave enough, and they let go of that table, and they walk. And often, it's to the arms of a parent, isn't it? Those of us who have had kids, I'm sure, can remember somewhat emotionally, holding your arms out to that little child, right? As they take those stumbling first steps towards you, and you're there to catch them when they're about to fall down, or sometimes you miss them and they fall down anyways. Okay, that's the kind of paradigm I was. And that's part of life, right? They get their legs, they kind of start moving, and they walk slowly at first, and then it starts to pick up speed. And as time goes on, they continue to move forward and walk more and more, and pretty soon after a while, they're running. And it's a process. It's a process that takes time. We know it takes time. And as parents, as grandparents, as aunts and uncles, as others, watching this process going, always standing by the side, right? Clapping, encouraging, watching it happen, and encouraging it to keep happening. Now, in the end, walking is just a complex physics problem. We were at the IMAX theater, I guess maybe a month and a half, two months ago at the Science Center when some friends were in town. And we watched a whole movie that they did there about robots, and it was really intriguing because the physics of trying to create a walking motion for a machine is absolutely incredible. And so the whole movie was about this experiment or a competition that was happening, and the different teams who had built different models of robots, as they're trying to get robots who actually look like human beings to some extent, and how they would go about walking, and you could see how they would have the mechanical motion of walking and get that going. And from an engineering standpoint, that alone was very complicated to do. But then, as part of this exercise, as part of this competition, you then have to start dealing with obstacles that are in the way. How does this robot start to walk when there's an unevenness in the ground? Right? Or when something gives way unexpectedly, how does it catch itself? And they showed the different designs that there were for robots in order to try to enable it to do that. And even the best robot compared to the human motion of walking looked really clumsy in terms of doing it. And things, again, that we would take for granted for a five-year-old, a six-year-old that's running around in rambunctious, easy motions in dealing with things for a robot, especially as things, you know, were moving around, a floor was swaying, there was an obstacle in the way. It was a very difficult thing to do.

We think of walking as a pretty natural thing until the ability to do it might go away. There's actually endless articles written. I was kind of having fun browsing on the internet as I was preparing this message because there are a lot of science magazines and other things. I was reading some of the articles that they wrote about walking. One of them had something in the title to the effect of, you have to run before you walk. And it was making the argument using a person who had lost his mobility for a period of time, like a year or year and a half because of sickness, and went through the experience that he was having as he was trying to get back and learn how to walk again and how difficult it was to do that. And he said what his doctor told him actually was, don't try to walk, try to run. And why is that? Because walking, in the end, they say, is like this series of falling. You're falling forward and you put a foot out in order to catch yourself. And you shift your weight and you're falling forward again and you set that next foot out. And if you watch babies, and I thought of this after I read the article, often babies, when they try to walk, will first do a very hurried walk, right? Because they're kind of falling, they'll just kind of keep putting one foot out in front of the other until, you know, they do a face plant.

They just nosedive because they can't, you know, they don't know how to move, how fast to move the legs versus how fast the body is moving and everything. And so this guy said in his case, he found it easier actually to run first because that falling motion, getting ahead of the falling motion, then he found the slower motion of trying to walk and to get his balance. It went on to talk about experiments they did after that as they were looking at women in Africa. Actually, this was a different article, and it was talking about comparing the walking motion to a pendulum, and the fact that most of the walking motion follows the fluid motion of a pendulum until you get to a certain point in your walk. And at that point, it becomes very inefficient physically the way that we walk as we lift our feet and then put the next one down heavily on the ground.

And they started to study women in Africa who would carry 70-pound loads on their head. You've probably seen pictures of this, you've seen it in movies. You know, people in outlying villages, and they don't carry things in their hands or in their arms. They stack them up on their head. They're going from a watering hole back to their village, for example. They'll put these large jugs of water or other loads, and they'll put them up on their head up to 70 pounds or so. And they studied the walking motion of these women and found that it did not have the same abnormality or inefficiency in the motion that we have in the motion of walking, but they couldn't figure out how they learned it. And then they did another experiment of trying to load up a hat with weights on it and trying to just get regular people off the street to walk.

And the best they could do was about 10 pounds, they said, in loading up somebody's hat with a 10-pound weight on the head. And once they got over about 10 pounds, people who just learned to walk normally and never really learned to carry weight on their head couldn't do it anymore.

So a very complex motion. There's a lot involved, both physically and scientifically, in the idea of walking. And then there's the whole idea of relearning how to walk. I know Lois is experiencing that a lot with her husband right now, who's been going through a very difficult time. I had a friend back in Minnesota, and her mother had hip replacement surgery, very different situation. But in her situation, she had to go and get physical therapy in order to walk. And in her case, for whatever reason, psychologically or whatever, she didn't feel like pushing herself to go through her physical therapy. And she actually, I think she was probably in her 70s when this happened, she actually became bedridden and had to rely on a wheelchair because she still had both of her legs, she had her hip replaced. But she took so long in that time period between the hip replacement and when she was willing to do any of the therapy, that she wasn't able to walk again. And it was simply because she atrophied. She didn't have the time, she didn't take the time to go through the therapy, the pain of the therapy, and the difficulty, and ended up not being able to walk again. And we take it for granted that it should be second nature and easy to do, but when that ability is lost, in order to get it back, especially at an older age, beyond five years old or three years old, we don't learn as quickly. We don't have the patience with ourselves. We're not willing to put up with the pain, perhaps. I know I'm certainly not willing to fall the way a two-year-old falls routinely every day when learning how to walk, and most of us probably aren't. We need helmets and padding in order to survive that, I think.

We also create and draw a lot of impressions based on how people walk. I had a professor in college once who walked like this. And it was interesting because one of my friends looked at him and he said, that guy has got to be from Texas. And it was a friend who grew up in Texas. He said, because, you know, the people who walk like that are ranchers who are wearing cowboy boots. And he kind of scuffs the heel as they go along. So my friend was really intrigued by it. So he went up after class one day and he said, are you from Texas? He said, why'd you ask me that? Well, because of the way you walk. And he said, you know, it's funny you say that because I've got a really good friend who is from Texas and he's a guy I admire and I kind of walk like him. I just kind of took on that characteristic and he was right. And what other impressions do we draw from people from the way we walk? If you see somebody who's walking around with their head held high, so I've got a guy I work with and he walks around the office like this.

Okay, so immediately, right, everyone draws an impression based on the way they see somebody walk. And until you get to know the person, you don't realize he's actually a very nice guy.

He's not stuck up, but you would think of that right away, right? In the authoritarian air, kind of being stuck up, we draw impressions immediately in terms of how people walk.

So we're supposed to walk with God and we're talking about the walking part of it, and I've kind of belabored the point, maybe, but for a reason. The spiritual parallels are extremely strong. Turn with me to Proverbs 3. Just thinking about the walk part of the equation of walk with God. Proverbs 3 verses 11 and 12. You know, when I was thinking about this, and when we think back to the example, whether it's our children, whether it's children we've known, whether it's people we've observed with their children, we have no doubt when we see a parent with a young child learning how to walk, that that parent wants that kid to walk, right? There's no doubt about it.

Proverbs 3 verses 11 and 12. My son, don't despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest his correction. For whom the Lord loves, he corrects. Just as a father, the son, in whom he delights. So one part of walking, as we're learning to do it, especially as kids, is that encouragement that we receive. And, you know, we all have had different experiences, especially in today's world. Not everyone has had a healthy experience with a father, with a mother, with a parent, being encouraging in the way that they should be. But this is something, as we look towards God, and we think through this analogy that's laid out, we think of ourselves as Christians just trying to learn how to walk. And I think if we look honestly at our own lives, we can see ourselves at somewhere in that progression of learning how to walk, depending on how long we've been walking with God. Some of us are kind of holding onto that tabletop still, right, with our legs wobbling. We're just trying to get our feet under us so we can take a step as a Christian.

Right? Others of us have begun to let go of the table. We're starting to walk a little bit. We're starting to make forward motion, actually being able to put a little bit of something together, right? We're all at different stages that way. But do we think about God, and what do we think about God in that process? I think what God wants us to think about is we think of this analogy of walking. As God is out there, He's chasing us. We all go through correction. We all go through trials in our lives. But how do we process those? How do we see those? Do we see that as that father who's there with his arms stretched out, saying to us, take one more step. Just take one more step. I'm going to catch you. Or do we see it as somebody who's out there punishing us or acting in some sort of just arbitrary way towards us? I think it's strong in this analogy, and God very much reveals Himself to us as a loving Father. Somebody who wants us to succeed wants to see us taking those steps forward. If they're shaky steps, that's fine. Do we blame a child because they can't run across a football field when they're a year old? Of course we don't. We don't expect that of that child. Now, we also expect them to improve and grow as time goes on. And as parents raising a child, we certainly try to do that. And that's the same attitude that God has towards us.

It's also an interesting element in terms of changing the way that we walk. Turn with me to Ephesians 5. We won't read through all of this section, but Ephesians 5. There's also, if you want to look at it, a similar section in Ephesians 2. And it uses walking as the way that we're living our lives, as it talks about in these passages. It talks about walking in the way of the flesh. It talks about walking in God's way. And we're supposed to change the way that we walk. And we joked around a little bit about how we gain impressions of people from the way that we walk.

They walk. We walked in times past, as it says in the Bible, in the ways of the flesh. We walked in a different way before we were called. Ephesians 5, we'll start in verse 8, says here, once you were in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord, walk as children of light.

And then skipping down to verse 15, see them that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. So we're supposed to think about how we walk, even though it might seem like an instinctive thing to do physically. The way that we live our lives, the things that we do from moment to moment, which is what walking really stands for, is something that we're supposed to examine carefully, and it's supposed to change.

And just like an adult who has to learn to walk after being bedridden for a period of time, it's not easy. And it's harder in a human situation, right, because when God calls us, our physical surroundings don't really change. We're still living in the same place. God doesn't call you and you leave Cleveland, Ohio, because you're now Christian, right? We're still living in the same surroundings. We have to deal with the same different things going on, but we have to walk differently. We have to live differently within those surroundings, within that context of life. And so we have to put in that effort, just like you would in physical therapy, in order to learn how to walk again. We have to put in that effort, relying on God, in that sense, as our physical therapist, our spiritual therapist in this case, in order to walk differently. It's something that has to be done intentionally. It has to be done with thought, like we heard in the sermonette. It has to be done with effort, and time has to be given to it. Additionally, as Christians, we're expected to grow in our walk, just like we expect a child to not just keep cruising on tables. It looked pretty strange, right, if there was a 40-year-old who was always kind of walking and holding on to one pew and then kind of jumping to the next pew and grabbing hold, so they could keep their balance and walk. And of course, certainly, people have physical disabilities and that causes difficulties. But in a regular developmental sense, once a person is a certain age, unless they have a physical disability, we expect that they're going to be able to walk.

They'll be able to walk a distance at a time, right? And we expect that to continue to move forward, and God is the same way with us. Turn with me, if you would, to John 15.

John 15, verses 5 and 8. Here, it's put in terms of the idea of bearing fruit, an analogy that we're also very familiar with. God expects growth. He expects things to come from us. He expects us to develop as part of having His Spirit. John 15, verse 5, I'm the vine and you are the branches.

He who abides in me and I in Him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

And in verse 8, it goes on to say, by this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, and so you will be my disciples. Of course, we know in other passages, for example, it tells us to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So God expects growth, change, development. Just as we learn to walk and that's a process, He knows it doesn't happen immediately and He knows it takes time and He has incredible patience with us, as a parent does with a child learning how to walk. So we wrap up this part of it in terms of walking. Let me just lay out a suggestion for a few things to consider as we're entering the Passover time period, some questions that we can ask ourselves. First of all, how has our walk changed as a result of God's calling? We read about the fact that we should walk differently now, that we know God, than we walked before. Do we fall back into our old stride, or are we walking with a new stride, with a different stride? To what extent do we walk, make our decisions, conduct our lives, kind of based on the old stimulus response, the old instinct of the way that we always were? Right? When somebody said a bad word to us, we turned around, we gave them some motion with our hands, or said some words to them. Is that the way that we still walk, or we change the way that we respond to situations?

Are we walking differently because of our calling? And secondly, how are we maturing? It's always good to stand back. You know, with kids, often we'll stand them up against the wall, right? And we'll put a little mark on the wall, and we'll put the year next to it, or the month next to it, to see how tall they are. A few months go by, six months go by, a year goes by, we'll stand them up against the same wall, we'll put the mark there, and we'll write the date on it. Because growth is sometimes imperceptible, and spiritual growth is the same way. When we don't sit back, we don't think about it, we don't consider ourselves in situations and how we're living in those situations differently today than we did a year ago or two years ago, we don't always consider the growth that's come.

Just like with a child, when we suddenly look against that wall where we've made the marks, we say, wow, what do we say? We always say, man, I didn't know you grew that much.

And that's something I would encourage all of us to do during this time, too, is sit back and look at it. Look at the ways that we have each of us have grown. Thank God for those things, and look at the ways that we need to continue to grow and continue to make the next strides as we examine our spiritual lives. Let's move on to the next word, with. With. As we think about walking with God. The key here is the idea that we don't walk alone. It's a lot more fun with two people, it's a lot less lonely, but walking with another party requires agreement, alignment.

Let's turn to Amos 3-3. This is a scripture many of us might have heard before. Amos 3-3, I think, puts it very, very well and very concisely. Amos 3-3. Here it puts forward the question, can two walk together unless they be agreed? Can two walk together unless they be agreed?

So, physically speaking, I think we've all experienced this in one way or another, right?

Destination. If you're going to walk together with somebody, you've got to have a common goal in mind.

When I was a college student, I took part in a tour, had a chance to go overseas for three weeks on a tour, and you'd get on this big bus, and in this case we were in Europe, and we had the opportunity to travel to a few different cities in Europe, and we had like 40 students on this bus. And I still remember the tour guide telling us, you know, my recommendation would be don't get in groups of more than three or four people to go around for the day, because if you get in bigger groups than that, you're going to spend half your time arguing about where you're going to go next. And it's true. And those of us who weren't going to listen to that ended up experiencing that ourselves, right? Because the more people you have, and you're dropped into a position, you have to think about what do we want to go see? Everyone's got an opinion. If you're going to walk with somebody, you have to end up finding agreement on where you're going to go.

What route are you going to take there? Are you in a hurry? Are you relaxing and strolling?

How is it going to be? I can remember when we were first married, we lived in Southern California, and we lived not too far from this area where there were a bunch of just incredibly beautiful homes. And we would, especially on Friday evenings, we would go and we would just go for walks there.

There were several homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a big architect and designed a lot of homes in Southern California. And we would just stroll down these streets. And it was a wonderful time. Newly married, spending that time together, having just being able to share what's going on, continue to get to know each other better, enjoy beautiful surroundings. But sometimes those walks would also get a little interesting because one of us might be feeling cooped up. You know, I've been at my desk all day. I really want to walk and get some exercise, right? And Karen might be feeling it's time to relax. It's the end of the week. And that gets challenging at that point, right? Because one person wants to take off and walk hard and work up a sweat, and the other one's just trying to relax.

In order to walk together, to walk with someone, you have to have some common interests. I think of my dad in this respect as well. I've mentioned before that he was kind of an eccentric engineer. What he loved to do more than anything else is fix stuff. Didn't really matter what it was. And he would drive my mom absolutely nuts if they went for a walk and it was garbage day. Right? So you're walking through a neighborhood on garbage day and people are putting out, you know, an old refrigerator that doesn't work, an old television, you know, who knows what else, you know, an old electric typewriter, which nobody uses. Who knows what an electric typewriter even is anymore, right? And so my dad would just love to go out on this day. So finally, my mom just said, I've had it. I'm not doing this anymore. My dad actually found a friend, another older guy in the neighborhood, and their pastime was to go out together on garbage day, nice and early in the morning before the garbage truck got there, and they could check out what everyone had put out on the curb. And at one point, I think my dad had like seven televisions. He'd be giving away televisions to everyone in church because he picked them up off the side of the road, loved fiddling around with them. He was retired, so he had endless time to fiddle around with them and fix them. And of course, he had nothing to do with them after that, except give them away to someone. But he and this friend had a great time there for a year and a half or so as they would do this. And they had this weekly ritual of going around, walking around, picking up other people's junk and fixing it. And they had a good time. So they were agreed, and they had a fun walking together. I won't go through stories about walking through shopping malls because I value my marriage. But that's probably one that most men who are married or have spent much time with a lady can also see as a place where misalignment might happen in walking together with someone. Of course, we know that God has invited us to walk with him, right? And maybe we need to say that again. God has invited us to walk with him. There's a lot more depth in that statement than we might think about the first time. God has invited us to walk with him.

Think about the children of Israel, who around this time of year that we think about in the spring holy days, came out of ancient Egypt. And God gave them a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, and he led them through the wilderness. And there were plenty of times where they didn't understand where in the world he was taking them or why. And they pitched a fit, and they tried to do different things, and he was merciful with them at times. He was firm with them at times. In the end, he told them, you get an extra 40 years of this because I don't think you got the idea yet. But God led them through the wilderness, and he led them on his path.

Turn with me, if you would, to Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6.

His path, as he invites us to walk with him. Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6.

Trust in the Lord, it says here, with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths. Makes it very clear, again, that he's inviting us to walk with him. Think also of Jesus Christ walking with his disciples, as they would have walked all over what we now call the Holy Land, ancient Israel at that time, and walked with them. The things they would have shared, the places they would have gone.

But they were walking with him. He was their leader. They were the disciples. They were learning, and they were following him across all of these places. I did a little bit of looking on the internet. I found an interesting passage on answers.yahoo.com to the question, how far did Jesus walk in his lifetime?

And the best answer it says here is it said that Jesus walked an average of 20 to 25 miles per day during his ministry. It goes on to say they don't know if that's absolutely true, but then gives a brief summary of the miles that you can verify from the Bible. And by the way, for sake of comparison, a moderately active person today walks about 7,500 steps a day, which is about three and three quarters miles.

So a good four or five times more than that Jesus Christ would have walked. So it points out here, every devout Jewish male went to Jerusalem three times a year to attend religious festivals. So it reckons the distance from Nazareth to go to Jerusalem and figured his round trips between ages five and thirty would have been about 18,000 miles.

And then it talks about at the start of his ministry, Jesus went to be baptized in the wilderness of Judea and then went to Galilee and was in Capernaum and Cana. This would have been a round trip of at least 240 miles. Then going from Galilee to Jerusalem and back to Galilee, another 240 miles, and goes on through all of these other trips that he made. So in the end, they figure that he put on 21,525 miles traveling in addition to just the walking around that he would have done as part of day-to-day life, which would have added up to a lot more than that.

And they figure that during his three-year public ministry, he walked about 3,125 miles. And so during those 3,000-plus miles, he would have had the disciples by his side walking with him. Turn with me to Isaiah 2, verses 2 and 3. The disciples followed in Jesus' path. They didn't make up the path.

They followed in his path. Isaiah 2, verses 2 and 3 is a passage that's a millennial passage. It talks about the time after Jesus Christ's return and what life will be like. Isaiah 2 and verse 2 says, It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house will be established on the top of the mountains, and it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will flow to it. Many people shall come and say, Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.

For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. So the key here that I want to think about is his paths. And the fact is that his paths go places that we would not humanly choose to go. If you turn to Psalm 23, we'll read Psalm 23 verse 4. Psalm 23 is the shepherd Psalm. It starts with the words, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. It talks about how God, as a loving shepherd, cares for us as a shepherd, cares for his sheep.

And Psalm 23 verse 4, to me, is always a telling verse and one that's filled with a lot more than we might look at initially when we just read through the verses. It says, Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. So what does that tell us? It tells us that God's path does not just walk through wide-open green pastures where there's lots of grass to munch on on every side.

Sometimes God's path leads through the valley of the shadow of death, but it's his path and it's him leading and he takes us through that way. So as we think about our lives, how much time do we spend trying to convince God to walk on our path with us?

God, I've got this figured out. I know this is the best job for me. I know this is the right decision for me. Just bless it so that I can move forward and do this. How much of our time do we spend trying to convince him to walk our path versus understanding or asking him to help us understand the path that he wants us to walk? Something to think about at this time of year.

One of the things that's a hallmark of God and the paths that he sets out is the wilderness experience. We won't turn to all these different passages, but I'll mention them to you in case you want to take a look at them. Joseph. We can think of Joseph. We think of him as the prime minister of Egypt, the one who opened the storehouses, had the foresight through the wisdom of God to bring in all of this grain during seven years of plenty, and then during the next seven years to support really everyone around there. And by the way, at the same time, appropriate all the lands that they had, he basically solidified the hold of the Egyptian empire on everything that was around it because of the food that he had the foresight to store up before then.

Now, this passage starts in Genesis 37. Now, if you read through the commentaries and different accounts, you'll find most people estimate that Joseph spent about 13 years either in servitude or in prison before that time came. Because remember, Joseph was the cocky kid who had the bright shiny jacket from his dad and couldn't stop rubbing his brother's nose in it and tell about all his crazy dreams, right? They threw him in the pit, just about killed him, gave him to some traitors coming by on the trade route and sold him into slavery in Egypt. And after that, he was falsely accused and thrown in prison. Thirteen years. We think of what the outcome was of that story, but God's path for Joseph included 13 years away from his family in servitude and in prison before anything really good, from an exterior point of view, happened for him. What about Moses? We think about Moses as a triumphant leader who led the children of Israel out of Egypt and all the great miracles that God did through Moses, standing there parting the Red Sea. So the greatest army in the world at that time was destroyed in the Red Sea. Where did God's path for Moses start? If you remember, he killed one of the Egyptians and then fled out into the wilderness. He lived in the wilderness of Midian. How many years was he out there? He was out there for 40 years. 40 years. You wonder what Moses was thinking even 10 years into that experience in terms of where his life was going to go and what God was going to do with him. And 10 years wasn't enough. It was four times that. 40 years he spent out in the wilderness before God then took him farther down the path that led back to what he was going to do with him. We think about Paul very often, don't we, and all the great work that God did through Paul. But if you look starting in Acts 9 at the story of Paul, you'll find that there was a large pause between the time that Paul was struck blind and then given his sight back and called by God and the time that he actually started functioning and working as an apostle of God. Again, estimates here, but 15 years is the estimate of how long that took. Some of that time in Arabia being taught directly, as we understand it, by Jesus Christ. Another time just going back to his city and apparently just working and being a part of his congregation or synagogue there and living relatively normal life. 15 years.

So God's paths lead in a lot of different ways. Let's think lastly in this example of Jonah.

I think we all know the story of Jonah and the fact that he was swallowed by the fish. Do we remember why? Remember God called Jonah in the time of ancient Israel and he was supposed to go deliver a message to Nineveh. Enemies of Israel. Jonah really wanted to see God destroy Nineveh.

He was supposed to preach a message of repentance, which if they listened to, God was going to spare them. Jonah wasn't so interested in God's path. So he found his own path on a ship and then the tempest came and he finally realized there's no hiding from God and told the folks on the ship, just throw me in the water. I know that I'm the one causing this. Of course, the fish came, disgorged him in the end on the shore and he came into Nineveh and did the job that he was called to do. So lessened in that sense about the fact that in the end we're going to walk God's path anyway.

It's like the old stereotypical disciplinary comment, right? You can do it the hard way or you can do it the easy way. Either way, you're going to have to do it, right? And the fact is, in the end, we are in God's hands if we're realistic about it. And the best thing that we can do is understand that we need to seek out God's will and understand the path that he wants us to take.

So as we wrap up this section, think about a couple of questions to think about as we're thinking towards the Passover.

How much are we focused on walking with God versus inviting God and trying to convince God to walk with us? It's a question I think we should all ask. And if we're honest about it, I know if I'm honest about it, I could tell you the ratio is not so good. And I'd probably spend a whole lot more time trying to convince God of why the things I'm thinking about are the right way to do things and convince him to come to my side than the opposite. And probably many of us are that way. It's something we should think about in the areas of our life that that applies. And secondly, how are we doing and walking down the path that God has laid before us? Are we, like Jonah, trying to jump off that path to blaze our own? Are we content to follow the path that God's put us on? Maybe we're only 10 years into that 40 years of wilderness experience, speaking metaphorically. Are we trying to jump off that path? Or are we asking God to show us the way to help us through it and lead us forward through it? Let's look at the third section now as we talk about walking with God, and let's look at God. Going back a little bit to the physical elements of walking, walking like we talked about is a very distinctive physical characteristic. It's interesting, you can recognize a lot about people from a long distance by watching them walk, even before you can see their faces. In fact, you can probably think of this, they're probably friends that you could recognize from hundreds of yards away just by the way that they walk without being able to see their face, even if they're 100% covered up. There's other things you can tell as well. So when I think about our neighborhood, in our neighborhood we have a number of people from different parts of Asia, and it's not unusual in our neighborhood to see a couple walking, and they won't be walking next to each other. The man will be walking three, four, five paces ahead of the lady. It tells us about something about them immediately, from very far away, culturally, about where they're from because of the way that they walk. They don't walk next to each other hand in hand, as we might culturally be used to doing. You'll see others who are groups power walking and out moving through the neighborhood, others leisurely with a stroller, pushing the stroller down the street. You can recognize so many things about people just from the way that they're walking as you're watching them.

And certainly, we've all seen situations where we see families, right? And you can see somebody you might never have met before, a child, and you see them walk. You say, I recognize that walk. I'll bet you're so-and-so's son, right? Or you see somebody walking with a mother or with a father, and they walk just like them. You can recognize those characteristics in them. Turn with me to John 14, verses 7 through 11. It's the same way for us, and the question really is, when people see us walk, when people see us conduct our day-to-day lives, do they see our Father? You say, I recognize that walk. That must be a Christian over there because of the way that person is living his or her life. John 14, verse 7. This is Jesus Christ, and he's talking about how he embodied the Father.

John 14, verse 7. If you'd known me, you would have known my Father also. And from now on, you know him and have seen him. And Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and that's going to be enough for us. And Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long? We walked 3,000 miles together already. And yet, you've not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.

So how can you say, show us the Father? Don't you believe that I'm in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you, I don't speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves. So what Jesus was saying in this situation was, he was like the Father. He was completely the embodiment of the Father. The way that he did everything was exactly like him. Metaphorically speaking, he walked like his dad. And if you watch Jesus Christ, his priorities, the way that he treated people, everything that he did in his life was a complete and pure reflection of God the Father. How is it for us in our lives? Turn with me to 1 John 2 verses 3 through 6.

1 John 2 verses 3 through 6.

1 John 2, starting in verse 3, 2 John 3 verses 3 through 6.

We won't turn there, but in Matthew 5 and the Sermon on the Mount, if you want to look later, it's in verses 13 through 16. There's also a section that talks about being salt and light.

If you're the salt of the world, if the salt is lost at savor, what's it good for? You're the light of the world. If a light is hidden under a basket, it can't light the way anymore. What I like is the punchline of that section, which underscores this same thing, which is, 1. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

So people should be seeing the way that we walk, the things that we do, and not say, hey, that is a great guy, or boy, isn't that lady wonderful. They should glorify God, glorify God in heaven when they see the way that we live, which means that they need to understand not only that we're trying to be good people, but that we have a deep and enduring faith in Jesus Christ that motivates the way that we walk in our lives. So as we look at this last section, think about things to reflect on as we go into the Passover period. A couple of questions just as suggestions to think about. First of all, when people observe you in your everyday walk, do they recognize you from a mile away as somebody who walks like his or her Father, as somebody who walks like God and like Jesus Christ? Do they look at the things that we do and say, wow, that's a Christian.

Nobody else would treat me in the way that that person did, for any other reason. Secondly, what are the characteristics of our old manner of walking that still needs to be rooted out?

Walking is an ingrained habit. We don't always think about it. And in what ways do we not walk like God, the Father, and like Jesus Christ, that we need to ask for his help so that we can get on the right path and root those things out of our lives. So, in conclusion, as we've talked about today, we're called to walk with God. As a loving Father, he helps us throughout our walk with the goal of creating growth. I love the visual of thinking about him, thinking about myself as a toddler, wobbling on the legs and falling down all the time, because let's face it, as Christians, that's what we do every day, more times a day than we'd like to admit. But we don't spank our little toddlers for falling when they try to walk. And God, in the same way as a loving Father, who holds his hands out to us, encourages us to get back up, to take the next step, and keep moving forward. We need to walk on his path. He's invited us to walk with him, and so we need to continue to search out his path to walk on it with him. And in the end, the way that we walk has to emulate him. So, as we go forward in this week, as we go forward in the upcoming weeks leading up to the Passover, I wish you all a blessed walk with God.