Pastor Mark Carter: Hey, what up?
Pastor Mark Carter: It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.
Pastor Mark Carter: Welcome to our podcast.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Pastor Mark Carter: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Pastor Mark Carter: Enjoy the message.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, so today I want to talk to you about the road out.
Pastor Mark Carter: We all know what it's like.
Pastor Mark Carter: Probably you've got circumstances, you've had situations in your life where you have felt trapped, you have felt forgotten.
Pastor Mark Carter: Maybe you or friends all got married and you were the last one or the one who never got married and they all do married things now And you kind of feel like you're.
Pastor Mark Carter: they never include me.
Pastor Mark Carter: Or your friends all have kids and you don't have kids and they all do.
Pastor Mark Carter: You know family kid events and you know you don't necessarily feel a part of that.
Pastor Mark Carter: Maybe at your work group it seems like you've been passed up again and again and again for promotion.
Pastor Mark Carter: It seems like other people move forward.
Pastor Mark Carter: You don't particularly move forward.
Pastor Mark Carter: Maybe you feel when you're at school you feel like I just don't know why I can't connect with people.
Pastor Mark Carter: Some people feel like it looks like they do, but I don't feel like I do.
Pastor Mark Carter: Maybe you're a little bit older and you're looking at the ones coming up after you and they're so tech savvy They always seem to know what to do with all the gadgets and you're looking at yourself and you're thinking about your career.
Pastor Mark Carter: You made decisions 20 years ago and you're like, am I trapped now?
Pastor Mark Carter: Like am I just going to put me out to pasture?
Pastor Mark Carter: Maybe you're a little bit older and you've got a lot of wisdom, but you're like it doesn't seem like people notice.
Pastor Mark Carter: It doesn't seem like people seek me out for my wisdom.
Pastor Mark Carter: I feel forgotten.
Pastor Mark Carter: If you've ever felt any of those ways or something similar, this is the series for you.
Pastor Mark Carter: The Road Out Exodus is the book that we're going to be studying for the next several months of the summer.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to take breaks here and there doing different stuff, but the word Exodus is a Greek word that means literally the road out.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to be coming out of some things together.
Pastor Mark Carter: This begins with a story of a family of people that likely felt very forgotten, likely felt very trapped.
Pastor Mark Carter: See, they were a family nation.
Pastor Mark Carter: They weren't just a nation.
Pastor Mark Carter: They were a nation that came from one set of parents.
Pastor Mark Carter: They're all related and they had a promise.
Pastor Mark Carter: This promise was about at this point in time, 320 years earlier.
Pastor Mark Carter: There was this promise made to Abraham.
Pastor Mark Carter: Abraham didn't have any kids, but God told Abraham hey, man, i'm going to give you lots of kids, and when I do, here's what he says Genesis 17, 6,.
Pastor Mark Carter: I will make you extremely fruitful.
Pastor Mark Carter: Your descendants will become many nations and kings will be among them.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'll confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation.
Pastor Mark Carter: This is an everlasting covenant.
Pastor Mark Carter: I will always be your God and the God of the descendants after you, and I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants.
Pastor Mark Carter: It will be their possession forever and I will be their God.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, that was a long time ago, though now.
Pastor Mark Carter: Now, 320 years has gone by and they're a much bigger family, but there's no land.
Pastor Mark Carter: And it's not only just that there's no land In the place that was once a source of deliverance for them.
Pastor Mark Carter: They have become captives, they've become slaves, they've become the unpaid workforce for the Egyptians, and they're being very, very mistreated, and so they're beginning to wonder was that promise anything?
Pastor Mark Carter: They got to forget.
Pastor Mark Carter: We feel so trapped now It seems like that was a big deal and the people came to pass, but not the land.
Pastor Mark Carter: As we talk about the road out, we're going to see some things in the book of Exodus, some larger level themes.
Pastor Mark Carter: First of all, just like the Israelites that's the name of the family just like they're in bondage, figuratively speaking.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're all in bondage.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're all in bondage to the taskmaster of sin, and we're going to see as God uses Moses to lead the people out of slavery and into a greater promised land.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to see a pattern of how God likes to lead his people.
Pastor Mark Carter: He likes to deliver them.
Pastor Mark Carter: He likes to say you need to face this moving, because we're not staying here, we're moving forward.
Pastor Mark Carter: God's always bringing us into greater and greater lands.
Pastor Mark Carter: But there's also a sense of sometimes we're just feeling like I got into an unfair situation that I didn't cause, but here I am And I feel like I can't get out of it.
Pastor Mark Carter: Have you ever had that feeling?
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to see just the way.
Pastor Mark Carter: The Israelites were in an unfair situation.
Pastor Mark Carter: They didn't cause it, but they needed God to get them out.
Pastor Mark Carter: And then, maybe one of the greatest things we're going to see.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to see a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a picture of the great announcement that God himself comes to save.
Pastor Mark Carter: Because that's what's happening with these, the slave family, the Israelites.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's absolutely nothing they can do.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's nothing they're going to do to get out of the situation.
Pastor Mark Carter: It must be God who reaches in and causes them to inherit all that he has for them.
Pastor Mark Carter: And as we look at this, we're going to see.
Pastor Mark Carter: Here's the way God rolls.
Pastor Mark Carter: He does things in his own time, he does things in his own way And he does things by his own power.
Pastor Mark Carter: See, god is the main character of this story.
Pastor Mark Carter: He is the one in charge And he's going to show us just what great lengths he will go to to deliver his people.
Pastor Mark Carter: Nothing can hold him back, nothing can stop him.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to see that, just as this family has a place in God's story, you and I have a place in God's story.
Pastor Mark Carter: In fact, if you've trusted Christ, it sounds weird, but in the Bible, in the New Testament, it teaches that you're actually the spiritual offspring of Abraham.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to pack that in another message, But Exodus is also an argument.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's making a case.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's saying here's why you should worship this all powerful God?
Pastor Mark Carter: because he is doggone, awesome and ain't nobody like him.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's going to be the argument to the whole book.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, that's what we're going to learn.
Pastor Mark Carter: I want you to remember as we go into this Is God is a God who remembers the covenants he makes, the deals he makes.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's a one.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's a God who remembers and he's a God who rewards.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's a God who remembers, no matter what's what's happened.
Pastor Mark Carter: He remembers and he's got.
Pastor Mark Carter: Who rewards.
Pastor Mark Carter: So let's start Exodus 1, verse one.
Pastor Mark Carter: Let's let's talk about the family real quick.
Pastor Mark Carter: These are the names of the sons of Israel, that is, jacob, the Israelites, the family we've been talking about, who moved Egypt with their father, each With his family.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, so one day they moved with Almost youngest brother, joseph.
Pastor Mark Carter: Joseph was betrayed by his brothers.
Pastor Mark Carter: He was sold into slavery, all but just stuff happened.
Pastor Mark Carter: God raises up this slave guy who's been recused of rape, all he goes.
Pastor Mark Carter: They're all kinds of hell, but he raises up as the prime minister of Egypt.
Pastor Mark Carter: He rescues his family from famine.
Pastor Mark Carter: He brings them in, he forgives them.
Pastor Mark Carter: They all get in this great space where there's lots of room and you know They're not persecuted in any way.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's what happens.
Pastor Mark Carter: They moved to Egypt with their father, each with his family Ruben, simeon, levi, judah, isacar, zebulin, benjamin, dan, naftali, gad and Asher.
Pastor Mark Carter: In all, jacob had 70 descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already there In time.
Pastor Mark Carter: Joseph and all of his brothers died, ending that entire generation, but their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren.
Pastor Mark Carter: In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.
Pastor Mark Carter: Here's something you can't see in the English version of this When it talks about they multiplied and and they were increasing and becoming extremely powerful.
Pastor Mark Carter: This is actually referencing back to the book of Genesis, at the very beginning.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's there's a lot of beginnings, just like in Genesis.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's patterned after Genesis.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's beginnings happening here in Exodus And he's saying remember when God told our first parents I want you to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.
Pastor Mark Carter: What Moses is telling us in this passage is that's what was happening.
Pastor Mark Carter: These Israelites.
Pastor Mark Carter: They were being fruitful, they were Swarming, they were overtaking, They were doing it right.
Pastor Mark Carter: They were.
Pastor Mark Carter: They were doing what God wanted them to do.
Pastor Mark Carter: They were fulfilling God's will.
Pastor Mark Carter: This is a chosen family that is doing what God wants.
Pastor Mark Carter: But why?
Pastor Mark Carter: Why does God include all these names, like why we've taken our time talking about these people.
Pastor Mark Carter: Well, it's because let's think about when people are reading this.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, this isn't being written.
Pastor Mark Carter: As it happens, this is being written by Moses on his way with the Israelites to the promise land.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's writing stuff down.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's like, okay, they're gonna have to remember this.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's really important things I want them to remember and I need them to remember who they came from.
Pastor Mark Carter: Not just that God made them, but they came from this family of people that believed God Against all odds.
Pastor Mark Carter: They came from this family.
Pastor Mark Carter: See, when we recognize where we came from, sometimes that Tremendously strengthens us when we think about who came before us.
Pastor Mark Carter: So let me just think about this for a minute.
Pastor Mark Carter: If you find out that you were related like a direct descendant to George Washington, probably there'd be something in your mind that would just start to identify yourself as well.
Pastor Mark Carter: You know, i'm a.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's in my blood to be a person of courage.
Pastor Mark Carter: I It's in my blood, you know.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's like, hey, man, we're gonna stick it to the man and we're gonna overcome and we're gonna do this.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's nothing impossible for my family line.
Pastor Mark Carter: Or if you're a direct descendant of someone like Frederick Douglass, who was a slave, former slave that became an abolitionist.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's really dope.
Pastor Mark Carter: If you haven't read a biography about him, i'd encourage you to do so.
Pastor Mark Carter: But there's probably something to you that is that's not gonna stand for injustice when other people are looking the other way.
Pastor Mark Carter: You're gonna be someone who's like, hey man, i don't care who's against me, we're going forward.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's gonna be in your blood And that's what Moses is trying to convince these people.
Pastor Mark Carter: Hey man, this should be in your blood.
Pastor Mark Carter: This is who you come from, so don't forget it.
Pastor Mark Carter: He said let this inform what you do.
Pastor Mark Carter: Understanding who you are Now something we're gonna see.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's a little sidelight, something we're gonna see as we go through this book.
Pastor Mark Carter: In particular, we're gonna see something called progressive revelation.
Pastor Mark Carter: Progressive revelation That means in the story of the Bible, god is gradually revealing stuff about his nature and his purpose and his heart and his desires.
Pastor Mark Carter: It doesn't happen all at once, so, in other words, the characters in this story know less about God than you and I do.
Pastor Mark Carter: It just wasn't revealed yet.
Pastor Mark Carter: God is slowly unraveling, he's revealing who he is.
Pastor Mark Carter: All they know so far they don't know much.
Pastor Mark Carter: They know he's God Almighty.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's the one that Abraham God was intentional with him and he's the one who made a covenant with Abraham.
Pastor Mark Carter: They don't know a ton more than that.
Pastor Mark Carter: Here's what happens with progressive revelation.
Pastor Mark Carter: It eventually leads down as we find more and more out about God and his character and his desires and his purposes Down through the centuries.
Pastor Mark Carter: We finally get to Jesus, and Jesus is the climax of progressive revelation.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's the final one.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's the one that says hey, i am the living image of the invisible God, but I make it all visible.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's who Jesus is, and we understand.
Pastor Mark Carter: at the end of revelation, progressive revelation stops.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, like we now know everything God wants us to know for the rest of the age that we're in.
Pastor Mark Carter: Jesus Christ was the last one.
Pastor Mark Carter: We don't add to scripture.
Pastor Mark Carter: Now we can.
Pastor Mark Carter: We believe as a church that there's still ways God communicates to us and we can discern some of that, but it's always imperfect.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's not like scripture.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's not we're learning new stuff about God.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're just trying our best to fall in line with the Holy Scriptures.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's what progressive revelation means.
Pastor Mark Carter: But what we need to understand, what the lesson is for us, is just like they didn't know everything about God.
Pastor Mark Carter: In the places where you and I are stuck, we feel forgotten.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's gonna be a ton of stuff we just don't know.
Pastor Mark Carter: You don't really know how God wants to get you out of this.
Pastor Mark Carter: You don't really know what it's gonna take.
Pastor Mark Carter: You don't really know where this thing is gonna lead.
Pastor Mark Carter: We don't know, because that's how God likes to operate.
Pastor Mark Carter: He likes us to operate by faith.
Pastor Mark Carter: He likes us to trust Him ahead of time, when we don't know what's going on.
Pastor Mark Carter: In this way, our life is kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, but we don't have the box top.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, progressive revelation was like that jigsaw puzzle.
Pastor Mark Carter: Slowly, god's putting in all the pieces and then finally we see Jesus.
Pastor Mark Carter: Our lives are like that too.
Pastor Mark Carter: God is putting in pieces and we're like what was that?
Pastor Mark Carter: I don't like this picture so far.
Pastor Mark Carter: But as time goes by, god is putting all the pieces together and one day we're gonna stand next to Jesus in heaven and we're like, oh my gosh, that was awesome.
Pastor Mark Carter: I didn't even know that was coming.
Pastor Mark Carter: What a beautiful picture.
Pastor Mark Carter: It was scary sometimes when I was there It was hard, but now I see what God was doing.
Pastor Mark Carter: We appreciate this because we like authors who do this.
Pastor Mark Carter: I mean, this is the kind of story you probably like.
Pastor Mark Carter: You know, when you see in a movie, and slowly they reveal something about the main characters or something about their past or something about their father, and then they finally get to like the last part and like, oh my gosh, now I understand the whole story, now you can go back and watch it again, you understand it even differently.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's what great authors do.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's what God does.
Pastor Mark Carter: He already understands the whole story, but he's revealing bit by bit, piece by piece to us.
Pastor Mark Carter: What's the application there for us?
Pastor Mark Carter: Just remember, when the world seems chaotic, when it seems disordered, there is an author who has a perfect order, things are not in chaos, and he's redonkulously in charge.
Pastor Mark Carter: Somebody say he's redonkulously in charge.
Pastor Mark Carter: He is redonkulously in charge.
Pastor Mark Carter: Well, just like in the book of Genesis, everything was great, everything was fine.
Pastor Mark Carter: There was this command to be fruitful and multiply.
Pastor Mark Carter: And then something happened A snake came in.
Pastor Mark Carter: In the same way, we see this happen again in Exodus, verse 8.
Pastor Mark Carter: Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done.
Pastor Mark Carter: He said to his people look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are.
Pastor Mark Carter: We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more If we don't and if war breaks out, they'll join our enemies and fight against us.
Pastor Mark Carter: Then they'll escape from the country.
Pastor Mark Carter: One of the things that's really cool.
Pastor Mark Carter: If you pay attention to it in the book of Exodus, you're going to be tempted to think that really, the battles between Moses and Pharaoh, that's the king, the bad king, moses and Pharaoh.
Pastor Mark Carter: But it's really not.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's really between God and Pharaoh.
Pastor Mark Carter: See, god is showing Pharaoh that he's everything Pharaoh wishes he was, but actually isn't.
Pastor Mark Carter: And you know, that's what God shows our spiritual foe, satan, as well.
Pastor Mark Carter: God's like hey, man, i'm everything you wish you were, but you're not.
Pastor Mark Carter: And now Pharaoh has this wicked plan to do the wrong thing to people that weren't doing anything wrong, people who are doing right, people who are doing exactly what they last understood they were supposed to do.
Pastor Mark Carter: But Pharaoh is going to try to bring them down.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's going to be cruel, he's going to try to destroy them, and there's a message for us in that too.
Pastor Mark Carter: And the message is sometimes the wrong thing happens to people that are doing right.
Pastor Mark Carter: We see this again and again in the Bible.
Pastor Mark Carter: We see this excuse me, job, he's just.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's like Job isn't doing anything wrong And he goes through this really difficult divine test.
Pastor Mark Carter: We saw this with Joseph.
Pastor Mark Carter: Joseph is just minding his own business.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's no evidence that he was really anything other than just a little brother that was interested in what his older brothers were doing.
Pastor Mark Carter: And yet he's sold And he gets accused of rape.
Pastor Mark Carter: Then he's in the dungeon.
Pastor Mark Carter: Often, when God is preparing us, wrong things happen to people that are trying to do right, and that is how God raises people up, and that's how he's raising up this special family.
Pastor Mark Carter: Pharaoh plans to be cruel and wear down and destroy.
Pastor Mark Carter: Now let me just jump to the sea.
Pastor Mark Carter: In the text, god told our first parents and these folks be fruitful and multiply and keep building up and keep going out and keep bringing life to new stages.
Pastor Mark Carter: And now Pharaoh says we're undoing that.
Pastor Mark Carter: This is the anti command of that.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to kill, we're going to shut down, we're going to stop them from progressing.
Pastor Mark Carter: So the Egyptians made these lights their slaves.
Pastor Mark Carter: They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down, and with crushing labor they forced them to build the cities of Python or Ramesses as supply centers for the king.
Pastor Mark Carter: But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread And the more alarmed the Egyptians became.
Pastor Mark Carter: How many of you can't stop the plan of God?
Pastor Mark Carter: Somebody write you can't stop the plan of God in the chat.
Pastor Mark Carter: Wherever you go are, whatever camera you're on, right in the chat, you can't stop the plan of God.
Pastor Mark Carter: So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy.
Pastor Mark Carter: They made their lives better, forcing them to make mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields.
Pastor Mark Carter: They were ruthless in all their demands.
Pastor Mark Carter: Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives Shif, shifah, shifrah and Pua When you help the Hebrew women as they give birth, watch as they deliver If the boy, if it's a boy, kill him.
Pastor Mark Carter: If it's a girl, let her live.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's like hey, man, no soldiers are going to rise up against us.
Pastor Mark Carter: If we just kill all the boys for a while, that'll really help thin the flock, thin the herd.
Pastor Mark Carter: But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king's orders.
Pastor Mark Carter: They allowed the boys to live too.
Pastor Mark Carter: So the king of Egypt called for the midwives.
Pastor Mark Carter: Why have you done this, he demanded.
Pastor Mark Carter: Why have you allowed the boys to live?
Pastor Mark Carter: I mean, i like they're just like, i don't know what to say here, here they go.
Pastor Mark Carter: Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women.
Pastor Mark Carter: The midwives replied.
Pastor Mark Carter: They're more vigorous.
Pastor Mark Carter: They have babies so quickly.
Pastor Mark Carter: They're just like they just come right out, can't get there in time.
Pastor Mark Carter: I don't know what to tell you, king.
Pastor Mark Carter: Now they're taking their lives into their own hands, a little bit Like they're prioritizing God's family over their own safety.
Pastor Mark Carter: And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
Pastor Mark Carter: Then Pharaoh gave this order to all the people throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River.
Pastor Mark Carter: But you may let the girls live.
Pastor Mark Carter: Two truths when you feel forgotten.
Pastor Mark Carter: Two truths when you feel forgotten, maybe like this Israelite family did.
Pastor Mark Carter: Number one God remembers you even if no one else does.
Pastor Mark Carter: God remembers you even if no one else does, even if everybody's abandoned you, even if everybody's taken off, even if nobody even remembers your name.
Pastor Mark Carter: God remembers everything And he remembers it about you.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're going to see in chapter two God makes a point of this, verse 24,.
Pastor Mark Carter: God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant promise to Abraham, isaac and Jacob.
Pastor Mark Carter: He looked down on the people of Israel and knew it was time to act.
Pastor Mark Carter: God knows when it's time.
Pastor Mark Carter: He knows when it's time to act, but don't you be fooled into thinking he doesn't remember.
Pastor Mark Carter: God remembers his promises, he remembers his covenant, he remembers everything to do with you.
Pastor Mark Carter: He remembers what's supposed to happen.
Pastor Mark Carter: Even if you feel lost, even if you feel confused about what's going on in life right now, even if you feel like I'm even kind of mad at God, i'm kind of like ignoring him or I'm shaking my fist at him, he still remembers all the ways he promised to be good to you.
Pastor Mark Carter: Even if you're hiding from him, he knows where you are.
Pastor Mark Carter: He remembers all of it.
Pastor Mark Carter: He remembers his covenant, his plan to bless you if you are in Christ, to rescue you, to save you, to lead you back to himself.
Pastor Mark Carter: He remembers, god remembers and he sees you and he's going to keep his commitments.
Pastor Mark Carter: I read a story this week of a man in 1997 who parked his car in a parking garage.
Pastor Mark Carter: Then he left and came back later that day and he couldn't find the car.
Pastor Mark Carter: They kept looking, kept looking, filled out a police report.
Pastor Mark Carter: The police started looking and they couldn't find it.
Pastor Mark Carter: Twenty years later, in 2017, a demolition crew is coming to tear down this parking garage and they find a car.
Pastor Mark Carter: I don't know what this is.
Pastor Mark Carter: They go to the police.
Pastor Mark Carter: Hey, there's this car.
Pastor Mark Carter: They find the police report.
Pastor Mark Carter: They phone the guy.
Pastor Mark Carter: The guy is now in his 70s.
Pastor Mark Carter: He comes down and of course it doesn't start.
Pastor Mark Carter: But he found it.
Pastor Mark Carter: Well, god knew where it was the whole time.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's things that you and I have forgotten even exist.
Pastor Mark Carter: We forgot that happened.
Pastor Mark Carter: We forgot that interaction even took place.
Pastor Mark Carter: But God remembers.
Pastor Mark Carter: God remembers all of it.
Pastor Mark Carter: He never forgets.
Pastor Mark Carter: He knows what to do.
Pastor Mark Carter: Listen to Psalm 56-8.
Pastor Mark Carter: You keep track of all my sorrows.
Pastor Mark Carter: You've collected all my tears in your bottle.
Pastor Mark Carter: You've recorded each one in your book.
Pastor Mark Carter: God is paying attention.
Pastor Mark Carter: Don't you believe for one second that God doesn't care.
Pastor Mark Carter: Don't believe it.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's just a lie from hell.
Pastor Mark Carter: God knows and God cares, and God has a timing and God has a method and God is all powerful and God will get you where you're supposed to be at the right time.
Pastor Mark Carter: What we need to do is keep remembering to believe that and say that and confess that God sees me, god knows me, god knows the right time.
Pastor Mark Carter: God remembers all the things.
Pastor Mark Carter: I don't even have to really remind him because he already knows Now, when you're in.
Pastor Mark Carter: That, though, here's a little bit of a profitable exercise.
Pastor Mark Carter: You only really get to know God, really to a certain degree, when you're alone.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, so, when I was in my early 20s, many of you know, i was sick for four and a half years and it was bad.
Pastor Mark Carter: It was to the point where everything had to shut down.
Pastor Mark Carter: I had to decide hey, man, make sure you don't eat anything but rice or apples today, or you're going to the hospital again tonight.
Pastor Mark Carter: That was my life, that was my everyday.
Pastor Mark Carter: I was sick.
Pastor Mark Carter: Well, during that time, you know what I learned to do.
Pastor Mark Carter: I mean, i got lonely.
Pastor Mark Carter: There wasn't a lot of company, just me in the apartment.
Pastor Mark Carter: My little girl, my wife, had to go to work, which was humbling for me.
Pastor Mark Carter: But you know what I got to do.
Pastor Mark Carter: I got to spend a lot of time with this God I claimed to know, this God I claimed to follow, and I got to pass off some of my dreams and be like.
Pastor Mark Carter: You know, maybe this isn't so important, maybe I'm not the man, maybe this isn't all that I thought it was.
Pastor Mark Carter: Maybe I can just trust you to remember the right things and do them in the right season, and you know, you only get that when you're alone.
Pastor Mark Carter: So if you're maybe in a season where you're alone or you feel trapped, you feel forgotten.
Pastor Mark Carter: It might be so.
Pastor Mark Carter: You definitely need people, man.
Pastor Mark Carter: You need accountability, you need people to speak into you, to speak, live, to encourage you.
Pastor Mark Carter: But sometimes, occasionally, it doesn't matter what you do, you can't seem to get around people, and it might be like God wants to use that season to train your heart to need Him more.
Pastor Mark Carter: We need regular time with God.
Pastor Mark Carter: One of the things we talk about is hey, man, you need time with God every day, even if it's only five minutes.
Pastor Mark Carter: Going into the New Testament that's the latter fourth of the Bible and just meditating on stuff, jesus, we need that every day.
Pastor Mark Carter: But sometimes we need an extended season, and the smartest thing we can do when we're in that and there's nothing we can do to get out of it, is to say God, i know you see me, i know that you remember and I know that you'll get me out of this when it's the right time.
Pastor Mark Carter: But until then, let's grow our friendship, let's be closer.
Pastor Mark Carter: Let me not waste this season, let me not see it end and then realize, oh, i could have gotten so much closer to God during that very difficult time.
Pastor Mark Carter: So two truths when you feel forgotten.
Pastor Mark Carter: Number one God remembers even if no one else does.
Pastor Mark Carter: Number two God rewards even simple obedience.
Pastor Mark Carter: Isn't that cool.
Pastor Mark Carter: God rewards even simple obedience.
Pastor Mark Carter: Sometimes we're like, oh, i got to do everything right.
Pastor Mark Carter: Listen, baby, god sees you, he knows you and He's going to reward, even if it's all you know.
Pastor Mark Carter: You're like, hey man, i don't know what to do.
Pastor Mark Carter: I don't know what to do next.
Pastor Mark Carter: Just do what you know to do and God will reward and bless that and it'll lead you to the next thing.
Pastor Mark Carter: These midwives they didn't know much, as we said at the beginning.
Pastor Mark Carter: They didn't have the law.
Pastor Mark Carter: Moses writes that later.
Pastor Mark Carter: These are just people.
Pastor Mark Carter: All they know is protect and preserve the spiritual family, and so that's what they do.
Pastor Mark Carter: They have varied little light.
Pastor Mark Carter: But even in the face of danger, even in the face of like I don't know what's going to happen if I do this, they decide to obey and God blesses them, he rewards them.
Pastor Mark Carter: And it wasn't immediate, it didn't happen just like that.
Pastor Mark Carter: I mean they had, they had families, but I mean I think that takes at least nine months to start that.
Pastor Mark Carter: You know, that's my theory anyway.
Pastor Mark Carter: I think that's how we got these five kids, but it takes a while.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's not always like the reward is just like that.
Pastor Mark Carter: Sometimes it takes nine months.
Pastor Mark Carter: Sometimes it takes another 80 years, which is when Moses is finally going to be sent back to Egypt.
Pastor Mark Carter: Sometimes it takes a long time, but God is going to find a way.
Pastor Mark Carter: God is not going to forget.
Pastor Mark Carter: God is going to remember to reward.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's how he does it.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's how he rolls.
Pastor Mark Carter: Now, one of the things we see with these two.
Pastor Mark Carter: Of course, there are other midwives in the land.
Pastor Mark Carter: These are just the two that we know who decided to obey.
Pastor Mark Carter: They decided to take their own life in their hands and say we want to honor God.
Pastor Mark Carter: Let's not just kill these boys.
Pastor Mark Carter: God wants us to grow and increase and multiply, and this seems like we're shutting down the promise if we just start killing these guys.
Pastor Mark Carter: So they didn't do it.
Pastor Mark Carter: But there's an irony that you're going to see in the book of Exodus, in the road out.
Pastor Mark Carter: You're gonna see a lot of ironies, and the reason you're gonna see them is because, believe it or not, god loves.
Pastor Mark Carter: Irony is all over the Bible.
Pastor Mark Carter: So here's the irony These two are named like these two midwives.
Pastor Mark Carter: They're so important.
Pastor Mark Carter: They're named in the Bible, forever recorded.
Pastor Mark Carter: The Pharaoh isn't even.
Pastor Mark Carter: We don't even know his name.
Pastor Mark Carter: That wasn't even written down.
Pastor Mark Carter: These people who are the least important, these are slave midwives.
Pastor Mark Carter: They're exalted.
Pastor Mark Carter: And the person who is the king, nobody remembers his name, nobody cares, because God's into irony.
Pastor Mark Carter: God is always exalting that which was down.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna give some other examples, though, because it happens all the time.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, so the Pharaoh commands okay, i want you to.
Pastor Mark Carter: If we can't kill him right out of the womb, hey, man, just go throw him in the river.
Pastor Mark Carter: So here's this command go kill the people by the river.
Pastor Mark Carter: And yet what does God do?
Pastor Mark Carter: He's like okay, can you imagine?
Pastor Mark Carter: he's up in heaven.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's like Charlie, come here, come here, look at this, look at this.
Pastor Mark Carter: This moron thinks that he can outsmart God.
Pastor Mark Carter: Watch this, i'm gonna send a baby down the river.
Pastor Mark Carter: He just talked about the river.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna send a baby down the river and it's gonna go to his house.
Pastor Mark Carter: So in Pharaoh's house, he's the one.
Pastor Mark Carter: Yeah, you can clap for that.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's pretty doggone, awesome.
Pastor Mark Carter: Pharaoh, from his house, issues the decree of murder.
Pastor Mark Carter: Okay, and yet God's like Charlie, watch this again.
Pastor Mark Carter: He said murder, super eyes called super.
Pastor Mark Carter: You know not compassion, i'm gonna lead this little baby to his very own daughter And, by compassion, i'm gonna raise the one Hebrew boy, the one that he was trying to kill.
Pastor Mark Carter: All these ones And the one that he misses is gonna be the one that I raise up.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna have Pharaoh pay for it.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna have Pharaoh pay for his education.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna have Pharaoh, you know, feed him.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's gonna be part of this rich, rich family.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's what God does, cause God is a little bit ironic And sometimes God's a little ironic with us.
Pastor Mark Carter: Sometimes something happens in one season and we look back and we're like I don't know how God did it, but he completely reversed the whole thing And the point is not try to figure it out, it's just to trust that that happens.
Pastor Mark Carter: Baby, don't get down yet.
Pastor Mark Carter: Let's not give a negative report yet, cause you don't know what God's gonna do.
Pastor Mark Carter: I know it seems bad, but it usually seems bad, so God can flip it and make it look so good.
Pastor Mark Carter: Are we hearing that?
Pastor Mark Carter: That's how God rolls, that's his modus operandi, that's the Latin phrase, that just means how God rolls, it's how God does it, it's his system, it's his mode of operation, and God is an ironic God.
Pastor Mark Carter: So when you're feeling threatened, when you feel like I feel like I'm about to go down.
Pastor Mark Carter: Just wait a minute, let God work on the problem for a little while.
Pastor Mark Carter: You might find that he's gonna use that very thing to come and save you.
Pastor Mark Carter: God will come and save you When you're trapped, when you're alone and confused and everything's falling apart.
Pastor Mark Carter: Don't you believe it?
Pastor Mark Carter: This is it for me.
Pastor Mark Carter: Now you put your hope in God, you'd be like those little Hebrew midwives who knew next to nothing and are the lowest, on the lowest rung of the ladder, and yet they still trusted.
Pastor Mark Carter: And God gave them families, rewarded them and then exalted, put their names in the Bible.
Pastor Mark Carter: If you're in a dark time, there is grace for you there to obey what you know, even if you don't know a lot.
Pastor Mark Carter: There's grace for you there to obey what you know, even if you don't know a lot.
Pastor Mark Carter: I remember when I was first getting interested in the things of God.
Pastor Mark Carter: I didn't know what to do, i didn't know a lot.
Pastor Mark Carter: I just went to this first meeting, this little campus little meeting, these little God dorks.
Pastor Mark Carter: I called them.
Pastor Mark Carter: You know they were super not cool.
Pastor Mark Carter: I was cool, but they weren't cool.
Pastor Mark Carter: And I went to the meeting.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm like I don't know, let's see what this is.
Pastor Mark Carter: God captured my heart with the scriptures.
Pastor Mark Carter: I never heard Jesus talk like that.
Pastor Mark Carter: I never really explored it for myself.
Pastor Mark Carter: I didn't know everything, i just knew the next thing.
Pastor Mark Carter: Come back, hey, don't like wig yourself out by trying to get everything clear before you take a step.
Pastor Mark Carter: If you know one step, take the step.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's all you need.
Pastor Mark Carter: Just trust him that he'll be there.
Pastor Mark Carter: He knows what to do, and sometimes that involves the family of God.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's what it was for these gals.
Pastor Mark Carter: It was about the family of God.
Pastor Mark Carter: When you bless the family of God, god will reward you When you accept them.
Pastor Mark Carter: That's what the New Testament things that say do this one another, accept one another, love one another, forgive one another, encourage one another, teach one another.
Pastor Mark Carter: God is very much into his spiritual family.
Pastor Mark Carter: Still He says I will reward you if you make my family a priority, no matter how much light you don't have.
Pastor Mark Carter: When you do it when it's not easy, when you do it when you don't feel anybody's affection, when you do it when you're not even sure anyone's ever gonna know, it's that moment that's the most worshipful.
Pastor Mark Carter: When you just do it in a hidden way.
Pastor Mark Carter: God sees And God won't forget.
Pastor Mark Carter: We were in a really hard time, my wife and I.
Pastor Mark Carter: I was selling Kirby vacuums and I didn't even sell one.
Pastor Mark Carter: We're living in the ghetto, man.
Pastor Mark Carter: I mean it was hard.
Pastor Mark Carter: We had next to nothing.
Pastor Mark Carter: All I could do.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm out trying to sell these vacuums, kenzie's at home with the baby and the dog And she's like I don't know what we're gonna do.
Pastor Mark Carter: And she decides something comes over her, she gets lit and she puts this song on It's All Things Are Possible by Darlene Chek.
Pastor Mark Carter: Do you wanna hear a little bit?
Pastor Mark Carter: All Things Are Possible.
Pastor Mark Carter: In our little kitchen.
Pastor Mark Carter: She breaks out, she says I'm gonna worship him now.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna worship him before he does all the things.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna worship him before he gets us out And I'm gonna declare this is who he is, doesn't matter what's going on around me, this is who he is.
Pastor Mark Carter: He's the God of the impossible.
Pastor Mark Carter: And she began to praise.
Pastor Mark Carter: I really believe that turns something around for us as a family That she stood in the gap and she said I ain't waiting until it's good.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna pretend it's good.
Pastor Mark Carter: Praise God now.
Pastor Mark Carter: When you feel forgotten.
Pastor Mark Carter: God remembers you even if nobody else does, and God rewards even simple obedience.
Pastor Mark Carter: As we go into this song, i wanna encourage you.
Pastor Mark Carter: if you're in one of those dark places, one of those difficult, confined, forgotten places, now is the time to focus on who God is.
Pastor Mark Carter: Now is the time to declare it.
Pastor Mark Carter: Let everybody know I am part of the family of God And this is what we do.
Pastor Mark Carter: We trust that God's gonna flip it around at some point, but I ain't waiting to worship him till then.
Pastor Mark Carter: I'm gonna do it now.
Pastor Mark Carter: Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.
Pastor Mark Carter: If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out Fierce Church.
Pastor Mark Carter: We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.
Pastor Mark Carter: Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the Fierce Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from.
Pastor Mark Carter: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
Pastor Mark Carter: It's because of you that this is possible.
Pastor Mark Carter: You can click on the link in the description to give now or visit Fierce Church for more information.
Pastor Mark Carter: If you enjoy this podcast.
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Pastor Mark Carter: Whatever challenges you're facing, i know you can make it.
Pastor Mark Carter: Don't give up.
Pastor Mark Carter: Hang on to Jesus.
Pastor Mark Carter: He won't let go of you.
Pastor Mark Carter: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Pastor Mark Carter: I hope someday we get to meet in person.
Pastor Mark Carter: Thanks again for listening.