Exodus chapter 2:23 through 25.
During those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people
of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.
Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning.
And God remembered this covenant with Abraham,
with Isaac, and with Jacob.
God saw the people of Israel, and God knew.
Their way.
Good morning and welcome to CCC.
So glad you're here.
Thanks for coming.
We are all ready for the kids camp, which will start tomorrow. And
holy cow.
What?
The work that's been done in the atrium
and all around the building is just amazing.
I just want to take,
just a second and thank those of you who volunteered to do all that.
And I want to thank those 400 plus volunteers who will be starting on Monday.
And my last count was we have 997 kids signed up for kids camp.
Yeah.
And we are going to
find three more kids somewhere,
right?
But thanks.
I love, the way we care for kids here.
It makes me wish I was a kid in this church, and that's good.
All right.
This is the final message of our ten week series in the Old Testament.
We've been looking at the life of Abraham.
We've called this series Promises Made, Promises Kept.
The story of Abraham begins in Genesis chapter 12.
And it begins with a promise.
And this is the promise God makes to Abraham.
God says, and I will make you of you a great nation.
I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse,
and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
Here's the
promise of Abraham, our promise of God to Abraham,
our lives, Abraham's life on earth by a long shot.
God's promises to you
will outlive your time on earth by a long shot.
The verses we had read from Exodus chapter two
really are about a approximately 400 years
after God makes this promise.
And it says that God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant.
That's another word for a promise to Abraham.
So that's the way this starts, right?
There's a lot that happens in those 400 years between Genesis chapter
22, where which is where we left off last week in Exodus chapter two.
Let me kind of fill in the blanks.
So last week in Exodus chapter 22, God tells Abraham
to take his son Isaac up to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him there.
And then God intervenes and provides a substitute sacrifice, and Isaac is spared.
But let me let me stop right there, because a lot of people have trouble
with that story, because it's easy to just think, man, what kind of monster is God?
To tell Abraham to take his son and sacrifice his son?
But let me just try to give you a different perspective.
The most dangerous thing for any human being
is to put something other than God in the place of God.
It's the most dangerous thing for you.
It's the most dangerous thing for me.
And the thing that we usually put in the place of God is not a bad thing.
It's usually a really good thing.
It's just not meant to be the ultimate thing.
It's not hard to imagine that for Abraham.
Isaac was starting to creep into that spot.
And for any parent who makes a child in the position of God,
it will destroy the child and destroy the parent.
So God intervenes
to make sure that Abraham keeps him
in his rightful place, and in doing so, he spares both Abraham and Isaac.
I just wanted you to see that from a different perspective.
All right.
But he spares Isaac.
Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau.
Jacob then has 12 sons.
And then the promise to Abraham,
to make of him a great nation really takes off.
In fact, God changes the name of Jacob to the name Israel,
which is the way we refer to that nation today.
And one of those 12 sons of Jacob was named Joseph.
And the family is super dysfunctional.
And that dysfunction,
common traits in Joseph's brothers
actually selling him into slavery, which is just wild, right?
But the dysfunction of Joseph's family
does not derail God's plan for Joseph,
even though there were times where Joseph probably thought it had.
Which means that if you grew up in a dysfunctional family
or you're in the midst of dysfunction now,
that does not derail God's plan for you.
But Joseph's story begins in Genesis chapter
37 and goes all the way to the end of Genesis chapter 50.
And it starts with him being sold into slavery.
And then he rises to have tremendous success
overseeing the household of man named Potiphar.
Then he gets wrongly accused of a crime, gets thrown in prison for a few years.
Then he gets
pulled out of prison to interpret a couple of weird dreams for Pharaoh.
And then Pharaoh decides to make him the most powerful man
in all of Egypt, second only to himself.
Now, during this time, there's a famine that hits the whole region.
Joseph reconnects with his brothers, which is a a story in and of itself.
But the result of the famine is that the entire clan moves
down into Egypt, which sounds like a lot, but
it was about 70 people at the time.
Now, when they arrive in Egypt, they have favored status
because of Joseph's position, and they flourish for a while.
We don't know how long they flourished,
but by the time we get to Exodus chapter two, things have changed.
And to say they no longer had favorable status is an understatement.
Because now, even though they number in the hundreds of thousands, these
after being there for 400 years,
they are oppressed and enslaved.
And that brings us to the verses that we had read to us.
And it's only three verses.
So let me read it again that I'll give you my three points.
It says this during those many days, the King of Egypt died, and the people
of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.
Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.
And God heard their groaning.
And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew.
All right,
here are the three points that I want to use to guide our time.
I want to talk about what the people feel,
what the people feel, what God sees and what God does.
Just that what the people feel, what God sees, what God does first,
what the people feel.
So they are in Egypt for 400 years.
That's a long time.
Like our country is going to celebrate
our 250th anniversary next year.
So that means they were in the Egypt 150 years longer
than the United States of America has existed as a country.
Right?
And when they first started, it must have been amazing, because
when Pharaoh welcomes them, he says, the best of Egypt is at your disposal.
It's yours.
And no one but Pharaoh was more powerful
than Joseph, and few, if any, had more wealth than Joseph.
By the time Joseph dies.
He is generational wealth, right?
And we don't know how long the prosperity lasted.
We don't know whether the people were obedient or disobedient,
because the text doesn't tell us, but we can be pretty sure they didn't cry out
because human beings don't cry out when things are going well,
when things are going well in my life, I don't cry out to God.
I still pray, I'm thankful.
I'm hoping the streak continues,
but I don't.
I don't cry out.
Right.
Prosperity, particularly health and wealth,
has the ability to kind of,
give you a false sense of security.
Like I exercise,
I try to stay physically fit, and I'm a person of routine.
So building exercise into my routine was pretty easy.
And I've done it for a long time.
But, about, I don't know, a month and a half ago,
I reached awkwardly for something and I felt something pop in my back.
First time I've ever thrown my back out and my,
you know, confidence in my physical fitness evaporated
and I found myself incapacitated
for a couple of days, and I felt really fragile.
But feeling
fragile is much closer to reality
than feeling super fit and invincible.
Hey, the people of Israel had had a bunch
of winning seasons in a row,
but now things had changed
radically and now they felt trapped.
They felt hurt.
They felt abandoned.
They felt hopeless.
They felt helpless.
And they had tried everything
that they knew to try to try avoid that slow slide into slavery.
Undoubtedly, there have been rebellions and attempts to get free,
but by Exodus chapter two, they're out of bullets.
And so all they could do is cry out.
It doesn't even say they cried out for God.
They just cried out because they knew.
They knew they needed somebody, anybody, because they could not help themselves.
That's what the people feel.
That brings about a second point.
What God sees.
So the people who are in in Israel for for 400 years,
I it's like, how many generations is that?
Right? That's a ton.
Right.
It it's you know, I, I was thinking my father was born in 1933.
My grandfather born in 1901.
His father was, I think, born in the 1870s.
Father before him was born sometime in the 1850s.
He's my great, great, great
grandfather was born like 200 years ago,
but for 400 years,
was there anybody who remember the promise?
Right.
And my point is that, you know, when when they cry out, they don't say,
oh, God, remember your promise to Abraham.
They don't cry out like that. And my point is this it.
God is the one who makes promises,
and God is the one who remembers promises,
even when we don't,
even when we don't.
Right?
But the text says that he heard their groans,
and that means that he.
I was thinking he he had to be close.
You got to be close to hear somebody groan, right?
Last year I had my knee replaced and,
I if you've been coming for any length of time, then you know that
because I've mentioned it.
But and also, I mean, everybody who has ever
had a joint replacement in this church has come up and talk to me,
feel like we could start our own service, just the joint replacement people.
Right.
But when you get your joint replaced, there's physical therapy.
And my physical therapist, he and he knows who he is.
He actually goes to this church.
I think at times he was trying to make me groan.
Right. And he succeeded.
But you still had to be close.
You had to be close to hear me.
Right.
And and I thought, it's so amazing
that God would be close enough to any of us
to hear his groan.
But then verse 25
actually says something else.
It says that God saw
and God knew.
And that struck me because it it takes it to a different level,
because there have been times when I'm walking around even,
you know, in the church,
in the hallways of the church, and I see somebody and I can tell something's wrong,
but I don't know what to do.
I don't know if they want me to ask.
I don't know
if they want to be left alone out of they want somebody to sit with them
because I don't know what's going on.
But here
it says that God sees
and God knows.
That means he knew that they were afraid.
He knew they were hurting.
He knew they felt trapped.
He knew they were hopeless and helpless.
And that, of course, means that
God knows what you're feeling
right here, right now.
That God hears our groans
even when we don't make a sound.
And he sees
and he knows.
But then it says that God also
remembered his promise.
And I've talked.
I've already mentioned that 400 years,
no one remembered the promise.
But God remembers, right?
But the other thing is what the people were experiencing
as a crisis God saw as an opportunity.
And this is what I mean.
God saw them suffering, right?
But I don't think God, I know God doesn't experience crises
the way we experience and think about crises.
So when God sees what's going on,
then it's an opportunity for him to show his power and his grace.
Because when the people have run out of options
and they've done everything they could do, that's God's time.
That's true.
With with anyway, it's I think it's his favorite time
because it's the only
opportunity he has to show grace.
Because I think human beings by nature,
I don't think we're seekers of grace.
I think it's too embarrassing
that when I figure that out, and I've used this illustration before.
I was a young man living in Florida, and I got a van stuck in my backyard
because my backyard was all sand and I didn't live near the beach.
It was just that I didn't have enough money to sod my backyard.
I could only sod my front yard.
And the whole state of Florida is a big sandbox if you don't sod.
But I got my van stuck in the backyard and I tried everything
and it was just getting worse and worse.
I was covered with sweat, sand.
My neighbor come out and he was watching me for a little bit,
and then he yelled over and he said, you need some help.
And I was like, no thanks. I got it.
I didn't got it.
But I was so embarrassed,
you know, because I would have to say, yeah,
I can't do this.
I, I don't know what to do right now.
Fortunately, he came over anyway, otherwise that van would still be there.
Right?
But the problem is that we're not seekers of grace.
But grace is what we need.
Grace not just to forgive sins.
Which absolutely I need that.
But I'm convinced that grace is the great elixir of the human soul.
That's the only thing that has the power
to change me from the man I am into.
The man that I want to be, could be, should be that one that God made me to be.
And that's the same with you.
There is nothing that has the power of grace
to come into your soul and heal.
What's
what's wrong,
what's wounded,
what's hard,
right?
So that means every crisis I've ever experienced, every crisis I ever
will experience, every crisis you experience is like a
a crack.
Like where God can pour in grace to your soul.
That would not happen without the crisis.
And all we need to do is cry out for that grace,
I told you at the last time I spoke that God is a multitasker,
and here he is doing all kinds of the people are suffering.
He hears.
He sees, he knows, and he decides to deliver them.
He's going to have a display of his power.
He's going to fulfill a promise he made 400 years ago.
Their crisis is like a dark sky
that's about to be lit up with the glory of God.
And that brings me to my third point
what God does, what God does.
So the people are suffering.
The people are in crisis.
They've tried everything.
God hears.
God sees.
God knows.
God decides that he's going to save them
with his power.
And that results in the famous ten plagues.
The last of those plagues was referred to as the Passover.
And every time before every play, God would telegraph what was going to happen.
But for the last plague, he told them, listen,
judgment is coming for everyone.
Everyone
Jew and Egyptian alike.
In every household, someone is going to die.
But then to the
to the Israelites, he said, you can avoid the wrath of God.
The angel of death. You have to take a lamb
and you slaughter the
lamb, and you take the blood of the lamb.
You put it at the top of your door and on the two sides and the top,
and on the two sides,
and then whoever would take refuge under the blood of the lamb,
then the wrath of God, the angel of death, would pass
over those people.
1500 years later, a man named John
the Baptist would point at Jesus and cry out, behold
the Lamb of God!
The night Jesus has betrayed,
he sat with his disciples
at a Passover meal, and he took bread, and he broke it.
And he said, this is my body
broken for you.
And then he took a cup of wine,
and he said, this cup is the covenant.
It's the promise for the
forgiveness of your sins, because is my blood poured out for you?
Listen,
everything in the Bible points to Jesus.
Every single thing, and maybe nothing.
No story more clearly than the story that begins in Exodus two,
because the people are enslaved, they're trapped.
They're helpless.
They're hopeless. They've tried everything.
They're in desperate need for a savior,
and God decides to save them
with the blood of a lamb.
So in every crisis you go through,
every crisis you are in
is an opportunity for God
to fulfill his promise to you.
Because every crisis, when you have done everything
that you know to do, that becomes God's time.
And God sent a Savior not because we deserve it,
precisely because we don't deserve it.
And then his grace
and grace is what you need.
Grace greater than all our sin?
Absolutely. Yes.
But grace so powerful
that whoever you are,
it can give you the life that you are longing to have.
Which is why Jesus in John chapter ten
says, I came that you might have life
and have it to the full.
That's Jesus promise.
Promises made and promises kept.
Would you pray with me,
father in heaven, we come to you
and I pray for every person here that,
whatever crises are going on that it would become an opportunity,
a crack in their souls where you can pour grace into them.
Because grace is what we need.
You know that.
Grace is what I need
to be.
What you have created me to be.
Father, thank you
for, what you did through Abraham.
That was the beginning of your plan of salvation for all of us.
That you would bless the entire world.
And you have blessed us the coming of Jesus.
Thank you for giving us such a wonderful Savior, and we pray this in his name.
Amen.