[0:00] If you are here for the first time, or you haven't been here for a while, my name is Tobin, and I'm one of the pastors here at Watermark. We'll welcome you here on this Chinese New Year. I love being a pastor, and it's amazing to see what God teaches in me as we do that, as we lead the people of Watermark and wherever God has us.
[0:22] I love being a dad, and I just continue to be humbled by what God does to me and teaches me as a dad. And so I'm very teachable always, and you can always pray for me and give me books that you find that are good.
[0:39] So last night, KK, which we shared about last week, you know, KK prayed to invite Christ into her life, that she could come into the family of God. And so last night, she came in, and she was so excited because today was the first day she got to take communion.
[0:55] And she just could not go to sleep. She was just thinking about this all this time, and she was so excited, and I'm so excited, and we're talking. And it was just, it's like one of those moments you want, you know, a Kodak moment or however you call it nowadays.
[1:06] It's like one of those moments that you want to bottle up and just keep forever. And then she looks at me, and she says, what are you doing? What are you reading? What are we teaching tomorrow? And I said, well, we're teaching this passage in the book of Exodus.
[1:18] And she goes, oh. I said, let me read you some. So I started reading it to her, and I read verse 21, and Moses called the elders, and he said, go and take yourselves the lamb according to your family and kill the Passover lamb.
[1:32] Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in blood and put it in the basin and apply some to the blood of the basins and the lentils and the doorposts. And don't go outside at the door of the house until morning, for the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians.
[1:44] But when he sees the blood, he will halt. He will hover. He will stop at your door. And as I was reading this, KK just got really sad. It was her continence.
[1:56] It was amazing. Her continence just got really sad. It changed. And I looked at her, and I'm like, okay. So a teachable moment as a parent. Engage as a dad. I said, why are you so sad?
[2:06] And she said, because the sheep had to die. Because the people disobeyed. And I said, yeah, that is, that's not good.
[2:16] That is sad, isn't it? I said, what about us? I said to her, who had to die because of our disobedience? And she looked at me, and she said, Jesus.
[2:29] I said, how does that make you feel? And she looked at me, and she said, makes me feel sad. And I looked at her, and I said, KK, I love you so much.
[2:42] But you know that God loves you so much more than me. God loves you so much that he would gladly give his son so that you could come into the family.
[2:56] Even if you're disobeying him, he loves you so much. She smiled. I looked at her and said, how does that make you feel? She goes, wow, that makes me feel happy, fortunate.
[3:12] So I thought, well, I asked her, so what should we do about this? And she said, well, I think we should just thank God. I think I should thank God. I should just thank him for everything he's done. I said, wow, that's right.
[3:23] We need to be thankful. And you can remind your dad because sometimes your dad isn't very thankful and he gets grumpy. And you can just say, Dad, be thankful for what God has done. And I looked at her and I said, anything else?
[3:34] And she said, well, I guess I need to obey. I guess I need to obey God. And in my mind, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this stuff works.
[3:48] God's word is true. And you say it and he does it. And it's incredible. But part of me as a dad is like, okay, should I add in there? You need to obey your parents also. But I didn't because I just thought, wow, just obeying God, that's good enough.
[4:03] That's what this passage is about. That's what God calls us to do. And that's what we are looking at in the passage today. We're looking at the things that KK has been learning in her last week. She's looking. We're looking at the things of sin and just what does it cost us?
[4:15] What does sin really cost us? We're looking at this idea of obedience and what does it mean for us to obey and how do we obey and why do we obey? And we're looking at this idea of God's love. What does God's love mean to us?
[4:27] These are all things that KK is learning, but these are all things that this passage teaches us. We're in this story called God's story and our story. And we've been looking at this idea of God's story, which is his story.
[4:38] It's all his story. And we learn from the very beginning that he creates this world and this place and this land. And he establishes his rule by his word. And he makes man so that he can come to them and have a relationship with them and love them and bless them and encourage them.
[4:54] But we learned a couple weeks ago that really quickly sin entered into God's perfect creation. And it just corrupted everything. It tainted everything. All of our relationships are broken.
[5:04] There's no longer perfection. We're all living in the shadows. We're all wandering around. And we saw this passage in the last four or five weeks that mankind's been kind of spiraling. We've been spiraling downward away from God. But we've been heading east.
[5:16] And we've been trying to do things on our own. And we're messing it up. And what we've seen throughout these series so far is that God just keeps coming in. And he brings grace. And he brings grace. And he brings grace from creation to Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel to Noah to Babel.
[5:28] We deviate more and more. And God brings grace. Last week we looked at this man named Abram. And we talked about how God chose Abram. He decides to continue this idea of blessing his creation and his people and fixing what was broken in the garden.
[5:45] And he chooses this one man, Abram. And we're told that Abram was far away. He was worshiping an upland far away. He was worshiping other gods. He wasn't a follower of God. But we see in the passage that God loved him.
[5:56] And God went to him. And God had mercy on him. God just poured out grace onto his life. And we see last week that God started this covenant with him. It was this unilateral agreement.
[6:08] It was one way. And in this covenant, this relationship that God came to Abraham, he promised him things. He promised him a land. And he promised him a great name. And he promised him a blessing. And he promised him offspring and many nations coming out of them.
[6:21] And it was amazing. I mean, this is the story. This is your or my story. This is our story. We're just like Abraham. We're wandering far away. And God comes and he grabs us and he opens our eyes.
[6:31] And he pours these blessings on us of the gospel. And he pours this life that he wants to give us. And he pours this fruitfulness. But so we struggle with this self-centeredness.
[6:43] And we saw that even though God gave Abraham all these things, that he actually messed up sometimes. He actually messed up a lot of times. But we saw in the passage last week that God just continues to pursue Abraham.
[6:54] He pursued him and he pursued him in this covenant because he wanted to bless him and he wanted creation to be blessed by him. And Abraham comes into this promised land. It's the first time in the Bible's history where people go west.
[7:05] They come back to God. And he enters into Palestine, Canaan. And he comes down from the north. And wherever he goes from the north to the south, we read that he built an altar. And he told people about God.
[7:16] And he worshiped God. And he shared his faith, whatever his faith would look like back in that time. It's the four spiritual laws of Abraham. Think about that for a second. He talked about God's faithfulness and his character.
[7:28] But again, we saw that Abraham made all these mistakes. And even in the midst of all these mistakes and all these things that he was doing, we saw that God remained true. We learned that God's faithfulness is not based on our performances as people.
[7:41] Remember that? That God's faithfulness isn't based on our performances as people because we mess up. But his faithfulness is always true. It's always there. It's based on him. It's based on his character. It's based on his love.
[7:53] It's the things I want to keep teaching KK because these things never change. Even when we change, they don't change. From last week to this week, there's hundreds of years that have gone by and things have changed.
[8:04] And I encourage you to go back and read your Bible. Remember, we're just kind of flowing through this scripture and grabbing some threads of it and this idea of who God is and what he's called us to do. But if you were to go back, you'd read that Abraham, he continues in his brokenness.
[8:20] I mean, he lies repeatedly. He uses his wife for financial gain. He's almost like a pimp. It's pretty amazing. It's like you read it and you're like, whoa, can you talk about those things in the Bible?
[8:31] But he does. He has sex with his maid because Sarah is barren and Sarah doesn't trust that God's going to give her a child like God said he's going to give her a child. And so he has sex with Hagar. They have a kid. And then eventually Sarah gets pregnant and they have Isaac.
[8:43] And these two boys are always at conflict with each other. And because of their disobedience, we still have this thing today called the Arab and Jew conflict. And it's because of this unfaithfulness.
[8:56] And what we see in Abraham is that the family is dysfunctional. The family of God is dysfunctional. And I don't need to tell you that because you can just look at your own heart and your own family and you can see how dysfunctional you are.
[9:08] And if you're not dysfunctional, come over to our house one day and you'll just watch us and you'll see how dysfunctional we are. And it'll scare you. But then we see in this passage in Genesis 22 that God eventually called Abraham.
[9:20] And God called Abraham for this test. And in this test, he asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah. He says this is a sin offering.
[9:31] This is offering for the sin of your family. And Abraham doesn't even add an eye because he realizes that he's sinful and he's broken. And so Abraham trusts the Lord and he takes Isaac up to Mount Moriah.
[9:44] And you remember the scene because there's the fire and there's the wood on the back of Isaac. And there's this knife. And Isaac looks at his dad and says, well, we have the wood and we have the fire and we have the knife. But where's the lamb? Where's the sacrifice?
[9:54] And God says, hey, you know, God's going to, I mean, Moses says God will prepare. God will provide the lamb. God will provide the sacrifice. And it's in Genesis 22.
[10:05] And he does. And Isaac is spared. And God relents. And God provides a sacrifice. He provides a lamb, a perfect lamb, an unblemished lamb. It's Genesis 22.
[10:16] And what we see throughout scriptures is that God always provides a way for his people. God always provides a sacrifice for his people. But we see the family of God just gets dysfunctional.
[10:28] And Isaac has problems. And Jacob has problems. And it's almost like God has to do this massive intervention. God says, you guys are just going so far. And there's actually people in the family of God who are leaving the family of God because they're just following pagans and all these things.
[10:39] And it's an amazing story. You need to go back and read it. But eventually God does this massive family intervention. And he takes all of the people of God. And he moves them away. And he puts them into Egypt. It's almost like he's having to fix all the things that were messed up in them.
[10:53] And he takes them all away. And there's this huge famine. And everybody we know dies. And that's the end of Genesis. Does that make sense? So now the family of God, they're stuck down in Egypt.
[11:03] And God is working in their life. And we start with this book of Exodus. And we see in the very first chapter of Exodus that we see the people are being fruitful. And they're multiplying. It's just what God told them to do from the very beginning.
[11:14] From the very beginning. He told Adam. And he told Noah. And he told Abraham. Be fruitful and multiply. But now the people of God, they're doing that. But it's not under blessing. It's under a curse. Because they're in bondage. And it's slavery.
[11:25] And it's just incredibly hard. And their life is difficult. But we see that God's covenant is true. And we're reminded over and over that they're prospering. But you prosper today because God's hand is in your life.
[11:38] It's not because of what you're doing. It's because God is there. And they were prospering because God was in their life. In Exodus 1.8, we see that the big problem is that there's this king who comes.
[11:49] And he doesn't know the Lord. He doesn't remember Joseph or Jacob. He doesn't remember any of these things. And they get afraid of these people. The people of God that they're growing in. So he tries everything he can do to stop their growth.
[12:03] He puts hard labor on them. He cuts their rations in half. He actually kills all their male babies. He throws them in the water. Some historians say that when you were to walk through Egypt in the Nile, there would just be little babies floating around.
[12:15] There was never a time where there weren't Hebrew boys floating in the water. They're dead because Pharaoh was trying to stop them. But God's word says it all along. God's multiplying them.
[12:26] And his hand is on them. And they keep multiplying. And then God saves this one baby. This baby's name is Moses. And he grows up into Pharaoh's court. And then through a series of circumstances, God gets him into an encounter.
[12:38] And Moses comes back after meeting the Lord. And he comes back to save God's covenant people. And that's where we are today.
[12:49] We're in this middle of this power conflict. It's just where the superpower of Egypt, the most powerful nation of the time, with all their gods and all these things. And you have Moses and you have Yahweh.
[13:00] And they come in there. And you remember the story? Your kids sing it all the time. You know, Moses comes in. And he says, let my people go. And what does Pharaoh say? Oh, come on. Pharaoh says, no.
[13:11] Right? Let my people go. No. Okay, you don't have three or four-year-olds, obviously. Because that's all we learned for about six months. Let my people go. No. Okay, so let's go to another story.
[13:22] But he does that. And then Pharaoh says, you know, who is your God? I don't even know your God. He's not my God. And so what we see in this Exodus passage, starting in Exodus 6 to 12 and beyond it, is that God does these series of ten miracles, these incredible interventions into the life of Pharaoh and to his people.
[13:41] And in your bulletin on Exodus 6, 6, that's probably the most important passage in the Old Testament. And it shadows the most important passages in the New Testament.
[13:54] And God says to them, and you heard it read, I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt. I'll deliver you from the bondage. I will redeem you with my outstretched arms, and I will cause these great judgments. I will make you my people, and I will be your God.
[14:06] And you will know that I am your Lord. I brought you out from the burdens of Egypt. And so he comes before there, and he does this amazing thing. And I just want to look in our remaining time at three things that stick out to me because they've been sticking out to KK on her journey, and they've been sticking out to me as we look at this passage.
[14:22] And again, I just want to look at sin. I know we don't like to talk about sin because we're modern and we don't sin. We just have misunderstandings and things like that. But I want to look at sin and what its consequences are and what it costs us, but more importantly, what it costs God.
[14:38] I want to look at obedience. What does it mean to be obedient, and how do we show our obedience to God? Because KK is wrestling with that. She's asking me these questions right now. What does it mean for me to obey God?
[14:48] And then I want to look at God. What do we learn about him? What do we learn about his character? You got it? So sin, obedience, and God. And so the first thing that we see really clearly in this passage and throughout Exodus and throughout the whole Bible, and it's kind of hinted at here in certain little passages, is just this idea of sin.
[15:07] We see it in verse 9 that when Moses comes there, the people of God, they don't obey. They don't listen to God's word. They just don't want to do it. We see it in verse 23 because they're instructed that every house has a lamb slain over it.
[15:19] Every house has blood on it. There's not a house in Egypt that doesn't have blood on it. We're told at the end of this story that either there was a dead body in the house or there was a dead lamb's blood painted on every house.
[15:34] And so we see that every house has to have blood painted over it. And in verse 22, we're given this warning that we're not to go out. That we're not to go out because if we go out in the midst of this thing happening, if we take ourselves out from underneath the covering of the blood in the house, that this destroyer's gonna come in and he's gonna destroy us.
[15:53] And what we see here in this time in Egypt, there's no one, there's no one in Egypt that stood guiltless before the Lord. There's none of us in here at Watermark that still stand guiltless before the Lord.
[16:07] Even though they were Jews, even though they were slaves, even though they were treated horribly, even though they were God's people, they still were tainted. They were tainted with disobedience and sin and brokenness before a holy God.
[16:21] I mean, we're gonna read later on that when they leave Egypt, Joshua has to keep coming back to them over and over again and saying, get rid of your idols, get rid of your idols, get rid of your idols. Because we realize that the people, they had actually gathered the same gods that the Egyptians had.
[16:33] And they were worshiping somewhat like what we do here. We come into this world and we find the things that the people around us worship and we start to worship those things. And so Joshua's always reminding them to get rid of them and we see really clearly that everybody, everybody deserved to be met by the destroyer that night because there was no one who was guiltless before the holy God.
[16:55] And this sin debt, remember, we've been talking about it over and over. It's massive because when sin comes in, it just destroys everything. It destroys our relationships. It destroys our lives.
[17:07] It corrupts us. It destroys the way God meant for things to function and they don't function like they're supposed to function anymore. And sin puts this barrier between us and the Lord. And it's everywhere.
[17:21] And what we're going to see because we're flying through, but we're going to come back to it and we'll talk about it a little later on today, is that the Old Testament says from this point on, right after Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac, from this point on, because of God's people's sinfulness, every firstborn male son, every firstborn cattle, every firstborn thing that came forth, they were all forfeited.
[17:44] Because of the sin of the people, every one of these things had God's hand of judgment on them. They were forfeited. And the only way that you could get them back, the only way you can get your first son back if you had a first son was you ransomed him.
[17:58] You went to the temple and you paid an offering. And if you were really poor and you couldn't do that, some people would actually give their kids to the temple and they would be raised up as priests. And that was their offering because their sin caused them to forfeit that kid.
[18:13] Because God is holy and he's just. And he demands sin to be paid for. And our sins mean more to God than they mean to us.
[18:27] Again, again, and again, we see in this passage that God, the God of the covenant, he keeps coming back. I mean, he keeps coming back, he keeps loving us. He keeps coming to having a relationship with us.
[18:38] He keeps coming to try to free us from bondage. He keeps coming to set us free from sin. And in verse 21, we're told that he gives this perfect substitute, a spotless lamb.
[18:51] And this lamb's blood is shed. And some of the authors have said that this night there were over 100,000 sheeps killed. Can you imagine what that would have sounded like? At three o'clock, and just blood.
[19:05] Can you imagine what that would have smelled like? And what the people would have been aware of is that sin is really bad. Sin is costly. Sin is not good. And they would have had it all over them and the blood would have been pouring through the streets and the noises and all these things.
[19:22] In the passage, we read at the end that when this angel of death, this destroyer, it was actually God. God comes in and he comes to this door and he sees this blood spread out. What he realized was that in this house which deserved wrath, every one of us deserved his wrath, in this house which deserved wrath, somebody had died.
[19:41] Because there was blood everywhere. And so when this destroyer came to that house, it stopped. Because it realized that there was a substitute paid. It realized that the sin debt was paid.
[19:54] It didn't have to go in and exact the sin debt of the people. The people's lives in that house weren't forfeited because somebody else's life was forfeited.
[20:06] A spotless lamb. Verse 26 goes on and it tells me, and this to me is amazing. He says, hey, remind your kiddos. Dad, when you're doing this, your kids are going to ask you why you do what you do, why you come to church, why you serve, why you take communion, why you worship together, why you praise the Lord, why you talk, remind your kiddos why you do these things.
[20:28] Can you imagine that? I mean, before days, before the Passover, you get this perfect lamb. Let's just call him Fluffy. And so Fluffy comes into your life and you have to take care of him because he has to be perfect.
[20:39] He can't have any kind of spot. He can't have any stain. Fluffy has to live with you. Fluffy sleeps with you. Fluffy eats your food because everything is depending upon Fluffy. And your kids are playing with Fluffy and it's an amazing time and Fluffy's playing and you're having fun and all of a sudden, four days later, at three o'clock, dad takes Fluffy and he pulls up his head and he goes, and there's blood splurging out everywhere and people go, what happened to Fluffy?
[21:04] And your dad has to explain. He said, hey, Fluffy paid for our sin. If it wasn't for Fluffy, then the destroyer would have to come in because God is righteous.
[21:17] God demands justice. Sin demands payment and sin is costly. And we're going to do this because we're going to trust the Lord because he said to do this and we've never experienced this before but we're going to do it and for some reason, we believe because God said it that this blood on this lamb door is going to protect us and it's going to help us be free from our sin.
[21:39] Do you understand that? I mean, it's really hard for us to understand, I think today, because most of us, we don't like to talk about sin, do we? I mean, we think of sin as something that modern men don't deal with.
[21:54] We think of sins as something small in our lives. We think of sins that don't affect me. We think of sins that I can do or I can lie but it's only going to affect me. It's not going to affect anybody else.
[22:05] But the Bible says that's not true. The Bible says that our sins affect everything. So what do you think of sin?
[22:19] I mean, when you think of this idea, what comes to your mind? Is sin costly? I remember when we started this church, we had this, one of our elders, two elders had to leave about within the first six months because it got moved to London.
[22:35] And one of the elders is a really good friend of ours, Harry Turner. And of course, he's Australian and he's working in this Aussie bank and the language was so bad on his floor, so bad that he put this swear jar because he's trying to stop the language.
[22:51] And he was the boss and he said, okay, every time somebody swears, you got to put money in the jar. We're going to pay for our swearing. We're going to stop swearing. So every time somebody swears, you got to put money in the jar. And I'll tell you what, whenever I swear, I'll put double the money in.
[23:05] And so he went through this story and every time I would see him, I'd ask him questions like, well, how's the swear jar going? And he's like, ah, it's getting filled up right now. But he's trying to get this idea of stopping people from sinning, stopping people from sinning to show how bad it is and show how terrible it is.
[23:23] What if we lived in this day and age where we had had this sin jar, but it was called a sheep pen? And you had a direct line to the guy who's a sheep herder. Hey, you need to come up today. Yeah, we have a lot of stuff going on in the trading floor right now.
[23:35] We're going to need a lot of sheep. Just keep them coming. Yeah, every time we sin, we got to slay one. So just keep them coming, keep them coming, keep them coming because there's a huge debt here at Macquarie and we just really need those sheep.
[23:50] And the sheep come up and you say something and the sheep come up and they go, I mean, what would you think about sin then? I mean, after a while, it'd get really costly, right? But what if your husband comes home and he says, I really blew it today.
[24:04] God demands the sacrifice of our son unless we can afford to pay for him.
[24:18] I don't think I understand sin the way God does and the way Kiki does. But in this passage, what we see is that sin is a massive deal and it stops everything.
[24:37] The second thing this passage shows us is it shows us a lot about obedience and what it shows us about obedience is in verse 28. And you got to mark 28 because 28 is like one of these verses that's the first time ever in the Bible.
[24:47] Verse 28, it's the first time ever that all of God's people obeyed God perfectly. I don't think you're going to ever find another time in a Bible where God's people obeyed God perfectly. But in verse 28, they all obeyed God.
[25:00] They had obedience. The passage says they did it by faith. It wasn't a feeling. They just did it. And I wonder, can you imagine being there at night and the destroyer's coming and you hear the screams and it says it was screaming and wailing like never before and never again.
[25:17] Can you imagine the people cloistered in their house and the dad's wondering, did I put the blood up? Did I make sure the blood up was a good sacrifice? I hope it was a good sacrifice. I hope it pleases the Lord.
[25:28] I hope that the destroyer passes by. Can you imagine if the people wondered if they were next? Did we obey him? Did we do what he wanted us to do, right?
[25:40] And we're told here that these people just, they just did it. Can I ask you a question? What would happen if someone didn't obey the instructions?
[25:52] I mean, what if the person said, you know, like we say today, I believe, I believe, I'm a Christian, but you know, I just, this God thing, I just don't know about that very much.
[26:04] I believe, but I just don't want to paint my door blood red right now because I just finished all the woodwork and I hate to just spoil that look. I just don't want to do that.
[26:14] I believe, but I just don't want to give my best to God. Maybe I should sacrifice a dog. I mean, blood is blood and God won't really know, will he? Because sin's no big thing.
[26:27] I believe, but maybe I'll just give some sheep that aren't my best. I'll give a tainted offering kind of like Cain did. We talked about him a couple weeks ago.
[26:39] What do you think would happen to those people? What do you think? The passage says that the people had faith and this real faith was a trust in God and his word and this faith always ended in obedience.
[26:54] Even if it doesn't make sense, faith in the Lord, even if we don't feel like it, faith in the Lord almost always comes to an action. It comes to a response to God's love for us. We can't be loved by somebody and not respond by it.
[27:07] And so what is that obedience? What is happening in their lives? And for them, it was sacrificing these sheep and trusting the Lord. What about us? What kind of issues is Tobin struggling with in obedience?
[27:33] I mean, God says to forgive somebody even if they really, really hurt you. Do we obey? Do we obey? Or do we keep the pain?
[27:46] Do we keep the hurt? God says tell the truth. Even though a lie, or just about right now, man, it's gonna really help me out with my wife or my spouse or my work.
[27:57] If I can really lie, tell this perfect lie, it's gonna get me out of trouble. God says to be generous to give them our best. Do we?
[28:09] God says to stay pure. I mean, even when we say, you know, just one look won't really hurt that much, will it?
[28:20] And by the way, all my peers are bothering me and they say I'm an idiot and I'm old-fashioned and I need to catch up to these days and age. Oh, by the way, I really love that person.
[28:32] God says to stay pure. Can we trust him? Do we believe that he has our best in store?
[28:49] God says to act with integrity even though no one else in the office is doing it. Can I in obedience trust him in that? God says to trust me even when I don't feel like it.
[29:05] The people in verse nine, that's what they felt like. God's word came to them and they said, well, we don't even want to hear it because we're in so much pain and so much trouble. We don't even want to trust the Lord. We can't do that. But what we see here always is that whenever God's people obey him, God does amazing things in their life.
[29:24] Whenever God's people obey him, they trust him. They put their faith in him. Whenever we do that, the scripture says that God always does amazing things in our life.
[29:45] Sin, what is it? Is it? How do I see it? How does God see it? What does it cost God? What does it cost me? Obedience.
[29:56] What does it mean for me to obey? What does it mean for me to follow the Lord? And finally, and we're going to close up here, is just this idea of God. What do we learn about God in this passage?
[30:08] And what is Exodus in this passage teaching us about the Lord? Because we've already talked about that all of these stories here, all of this Exodus 6 and 12, all of these things are a shadow and they're pointing to this last supper that we celebrated.
[30:22] it's pointing to this crucifixion, it's pointing to something that's going to happen 1400 years later and the question is what do we learn about God? Look at verse 6 again.
[30:35] Thus say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will deliver you from your bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched harm with great judgments.
[30:51] I will take you from my people and I will be your God and you shall know that I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out from the burdens of the Egyptians. I'm going to bring you into this land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and I'm going to make it yours.
[31:07] And what we see in this passage is the God of the covenant, Yahweh, the creator of the universe, continues and he continues to pursue us.
[31:20] He continues and continues to come towards us even when we're sinful, even when we're broken, even when we're running away from him. He always approaches us. He always comes after us. He's the one who wants to relieve us from our bondage.
[31:33] He's the one that is pursuing us. He's the one who wants to redeem us. He's the one who wants to free us. He's the one who wants to deliver us. He's the one who wants to bring us out of darkness. He's the one who wants to fix our brokenness.
[31:43] God is always there pursuing you as his children do you know that? he can't not but do that because that's his character and in the Exodus passage he loves you so much that he takes this perfect lamb and he kills it and now instead of being slaves to Egypt the people are slaves to God and they go on this amazing journey with him now in the Old Testament in the New Testament we have this last supper we have this crucifixion we have this resurrection and God loves us so much that he purchases you with his son Jesus the death of a perfect lamb Jesus died for us God loves us so much and now instead of being slaves to sin instead of being slaves to death we're slaves to God and God promises to take us on this amazing journey to this promised land and the question is will we follow him?
[32:43] will we trust him? the Exodus and all the scripture that we have studied so far if you don't see it you should see one thing clearly and it's that God loves his people so much that he desires to have this relationship covenant with them and he's going to sacrifice his only son the son that he required the people to do before because of this debt that they owed him he's going to take his only son to satisfy that sin debt that we owe him so that we can come into him he's going to take his firstborn son so that you and I can be called his people so the question is how do you feel about that?
[33:27] when you hear the gospel how do you feel? one author says that we struggle with this idea of gospel amnesia that we become so busy in our lives and we become so busy doing and thinking that we forget that there's God and he's pursuing us the passage says that sometimes we forget because we think sin is so small it doesn't mean anything the passage says sometimes we forget because we think God is so small and God can't do anything he can't remember his promises he can't keep his covenant what the Bible continues to point us to at the core the center of it is that Christianity is about a God who loves us so much that he sacrifices his son so that we can come back to him because we have no other way of approaching him because he's holy and we are not so how do you feel are you in burden the passage says that God has come to take away those burdens are you in bondage and I know a lot of us in here struggle with a lot of different things because I do the passage in here says that God is the deliverer of us from that bondage will we trust him are we out from underneath the blood the passage says that God killed his son and painted us and covers us with this blood so that he might redeem us and we might be called his people over and over and over the passage says that God wants us to be his people he wants us to trust him he wants us to follow him and the question is will we do that will we accept the lamb will we accept the sacrifice how we doing do we understand sin what it means what it costs do we understand obedience do we struggle with it
[35:50] I mean it's okay to struggle with it we're not called to be perfect right and God continues just to pour grace and pour grace but the question is do we see Christ so beautiful and so perfect and so lovely that we will only give our lives to him that's the message of Exodus the message is that God pursues us will we allow him to take us Father we thank you for this day we thank you for your goodness and your mercy in our lives we thank you as we read these passages of men long ago that the story continues and as we look at it we see just a shadow of what it meant to be but now we can see it fully we can see your son and we can see him on a cross and we can see him gone before us as a sheep before the shearers we can see that he's given up everything that he was perfect and spotless and blameless and through his blood you and I are redeemed
[36:59] Father I pray for KK I pray that you would have mercy and grace on our life I pray that she would always struggle with sin what does it mean and what does it mean to be obedient there would never be a time that she doesn't think about those things but more importantly Lord I pray that there would never be a time where she doesn't fall in awe and wonder how good you are to us Father I pray for the other children in our church I pray for each one of these little kids that you've entrusted with us I pray that each one of them sees your son and they go through those same struggles of sin and obedience and grace I pray they would come to know you at an early age and they would do mighty things for your kingdom Father I pray for my brothers and sisters in here who aren't on this journey yet they're still stuck in Egypt they're still living and worshiping and doing things that will bring them or they think that will bring them satisfaction
[38:01] I pray that you would open their eyes to the truth of this sin and this debt and the holiness that you are that the only way they can atone for those things is through your son I pray that they're sitting here right now that they would ask questions and come to me or people who brought them that you would open their eyes and their hearts to your son Jesus Father I pray for the rest of us here we're the family we're covered in blood but still we sometimes still we often we run back to Egypt we run back to bondage we run back to shame we run back to things that are not things that we should be dealing with and we forget who you are and we forget whose we are so Lord I pray for us may we be a people who understand repentance often and true may we understand that you are the
[39:06] God of second chances you're always there you're always pursuing you're always redeeming you're always fixing since the fall there's never a time that you don't rest because you're moving after your people and you're opening their eyes and you're taking care of them you're the God of the covenant you're not going to let go help us to realize that help us to love you help us to embrace your son Jesus Lord I pray for this part of Hong Kong Island on this western side I pray that as we go out as your people that we would be different that maybe this week we would obey and we'd walk with integrity in our office maybe this week we wouldn't put so many dollar bills into the swear jar maybe this week we would love and be truthful to our friends and to our spouses maybe this week that we would point people to the only hope that they can truly ever really have even though we live in this world that presents all these other different hopes and all these different gods just like in Egypt it's the hope of your son well I pray that watermark would make a difference
[40:16] I pray more importantly that you'd make a difference in us that our lives would be changed as we love you we love you we need you desperately we pray all these things in your son Jesus name amen thank me you thank you are stagnant there oh Ty yes he is left are the h maybe and yes we hold on again to win the large