Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: So, hey, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us folks online.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we get to talk about one final message for a little while.
Speaker 1: We're gonna come back to it.
Speaker 1: But we spent all summer on this the Road Out series and we're picking a great place to kind of have like a climax.
Speaker 1: If this was, this probably at least be a two-movie series, okay.
Speaker 1: If these were movies, we'd be at the end of the first movie, okay.
Speaker 1: So this is a great like cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: But if you're just joining us, you may not know what's going on and, to be honest, there's so much that's going on that I'm gonna try to help you pick it up as we go.
Speaker 1: But the best thing you could do is go to our YouTube page, our YouTube channel, and there's an entire like little line of featured vids and that is all about the Road Out.
Speaker 1: So you can just go back and you can watch all of them and you'll get the big picture.
Speaker 1: But here we are.
Speaker 1: We're at the end of these plagues.
Speaker 1: Okay, pharaoh's been taken on God, moses has been speaking for God and there's all kinds of things are now falling apart.
Speaker 1: Whereas at first it was kind of falling apart for Moses, now it's falling apart for Pharaoh, and it was just so hard for Moses at first.
Speaker 1: You remember it was about mid-July we were talking about just how hard it was for Moses.
Speaker 1: Andy Dufresne, in one of the greatest movies of all time, shawshank Redemption how many know that's true.
Speaker 1: You can say amen, that's true.
Speaker 1: It's one of the greatest movies of all time.
Speaker 1: Andy Dufresne, he spent do you know how many years he spent in jail in this story?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might not know, you have to Google it.
Speaker 1: It's 19 years.
Speaker 1: He spent 19 years.
Speaker 1: I don't think they even say that ever, they just go by the years they're in the movie.
Speaker 1: But he spent 19 years in prison.
Speaker 1: And it's so amazing to me when you think about that character, not just that like he persevered and like chopped through the wall spoiler alert but he, just, he just kept hoping for 19 years.
Speaker 1: He kept persevering, believing someday I will get through this.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the challenges I want to talk to you about today is the long term.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to keep pushing, I'm just going to keep persevering, I'm just going to keep obeying as best I can in the same direction and I'm going to see not only the blessing of God finally break through.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're going to see an actual reversal, like it seems like everything's going bad, and then we're going to see the glory of God and suddenly everything starts to break loose and go good.
Speaker 1: Here's what Thomas Edison said.
Speaker 1: He said many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Speaker 1: And I would just wonder if today some of us are not.
Speaker 1: Man, you're, you're so close right now.
Speaker 1: You're so close and your spiritual foe is trying to talk you into backing down and stepping back and saying, well, you know what, it's just not going to work anyway, and what you and I need to do, we need to decide nope, I'm going to press through, I'm going to get this thing, I'm going to win, I'm going to push through and I'm going to make it.
Speaker 1: We forget that obedience is worth it.
Speaker 1: We forget that's what Moses almost forgot, but he didn't forget and he's going to experience the rewards.
Speaker 1: That we forget.
Speaker 1: But when it's really hard is when we're called to do something, like Moses was, but we don't even totally understand why or how this is supposed to work.
Speaker 1: Like, why am I in this?
Speaker 1: Why am I pushing so hard?
Speaker 1: This is hard.
Speaker 1: I don't know why God has asked me to do this, and it's very basic stuff, okay.
Speaker 1: So maybe you're wondering sometimes about you know, I don't understand God's sexual ethic.
Speaker 1: Like why in this way?
Speaker 1: Why within the bounds of marriage?
Speaker 1: Like why is that a thing I'm wrestling with?
Speaker 1: The world doesn't seem like they care about that.
Speaker 1: Why is that a thing that I need to be worried about?
Speaker 1: Maybe for you it is about why do I need to be generous?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's my money.
Speaker 1: Why does God care?
Speaker 1: Isn't it?
Speaker 1: Doesn't God own the universe?
Speaker 1: Why does he need me to be?
Speaker 1: And we just ask the question why?
Speaker 1: The why is getting in the way.
Speaker 1: This is hard to, because I don't understand the why.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've been a part of a marriage and you're looking at this dude and you're like you know it just be.
Speaker 1: Just as he just sends you out with the trash this week, you just you just go and sit there by the, by the edge of the driveway.
Speaker 1: They'll pick you up and you can just go, because you're so tired of it.
Speaker 1: And you're like why, god, why am I still in this?
Speaker 1: Why are you asking me to stay when this has been so bad so long?
Speaker 1: Maybe you're somebody and you've got a real opinion about a lot of stuff and you're used to sharing your opinions and, as time goes by, you keep getting prompted.
Speaker 1: Don't share your opinion anymore.
Speaker 1: Hold that to yourself.
Speaker 1: I know you think you're right You're probably not, by the way, but I know you think you're right.
Speaker 1: But God, he just wants even if you are, he just wants you to just be quiet.
Speaker 1: And you're like why, though?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: I feel like it would go so good if I could just say something.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you're at a brand new life stage, maybe you're at retirement, and you're saying wow, I really thought by this age I was gonna be going this way, and I feel like I'm being pulled this direction, and I don't understand why.
Speaker 1: The why makes it harder sometimes.
Speaker 1: It's harder to obey when I don't understand why?
Speaker 1: But here's what we're gonna find out.
Speaker 1: Radical blessing and reversal of favor sometimes comes when we're persistently obedient, even when we don't understand why.
Speaker 1: Well, it's good anyway.
Speaker 1: In the middle of July, we were talking about Moses.
Speaker 1: The message was called a very bad day, and it was a very bad day for Moses.
Speaker 1: Everything was going wrong, pharaoh was against him, god had sent him and it was already like, are you sure?
Speaker 1: And then he goes, and at first it seems like the entire nation of the Hebrews, the Israelites, they're all with him.
Speaker 1: And then Pharaoh turns on him and so all of his, his family of Israelites, they turn on him, and it just seems like things are going from bad to worse.
Speaker 1: He keeps getting opposed.
Speaker 1: He had a very bad day and one of the things we talked about that during that message was there's no such thing as untested faith.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing.
Speaker 1: There is no such thing as untested faith.
Speaker 1: If it's not tested, then you haven't really had to believe very hard.
Speaker 1: But here's what we're gonna find out Matthew 11, 19,.
Speaker 1: This is Jesus speaking, and he was right.
Speaker 1: Wisdom is shown to be right by its results, by its results.
Speaker 1: See, at the end of the day, here's Moses, and it's beginning to pay off.
Speaker 1: Now let's check it out.
Speaker 1: We're gonna dive right in Exodus 11, one.
Speaker 1: Now the Lord had said to Moses I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt.
Speaker 1: After that he will let you go from here and when he does, he will drive you out completely.
Speaker 1: Tell the people that men and women alike are to ask their neighbors for articles of silver and gold, which is a humorous thing.
Speaker 1: To command Moses, I would be a little bit like, wow, that's strange.
Speaker 1: Verse three the Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh's officials and by the people.
Speaker 1: Oh, now he's highly regarded.
Speaker 1: At first he was hated by everybody and now even Pharaoh's servants are like not as dog.
Speaker 1: I mean, just watch out for him, he's awesome.
Speaker 1: You better respect him because stuff goes wrong, because livestock start dying, because flies and gnats and frogs are still bubbling up, because he talks to God and he's serious.
Speaker 1: And now they all respect him and he gives them this strange command already, go out and ask these people.
Speaker 1: You're going soon.
Speaker 1: Go ask these people.
Speaker 1: Hey, we need some stuff, we need some gold, we need some stuff because we're about to go and what they don't know is some of this very stuff that they're gonna be given.
Speaker 1: We're gonna find out later in the book of Exodus.
Speaker 1: They don't know it, but this is for the building of the tabernacle.
Speaker 1: This is a portable temple of God.
Speaker 1: Everyone's gonna get really ridiculously generous to build the tabernacle.
Speaker 1: They don't know that's coming, but often God asks us to do stuff and we don't know why.
Speaker 1: We don't know why we're doing this.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm in this season, and it guys say well, I know why, I know the whole story.
Speaker 1: You just see a little part right here.
Speaker 1: Just go ahead and trust me and it's all gonna be good.
Speaker 1: Obedience is often harder at first, but then it pays off nicely, just like it does for Moses here.
Speaker 1: Now, remember, it's been slow for Moses, hasn't it?
Speaker 1: That's been a long time, man and God seems slow A lot of the time.
Speaker 1: We're like God you are slow and he's not slow, but he knows just the right time.
Speaker 1: God knows just the right time to break through Some of it.
Speaker 1: I need a little bit more amens to know that you're really processing what I'm saying here.
Speaker 1: You're in the right place already.
Speaker 1: God's already positioned you where you're supposed to be Now.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter of waiting, because he knows how to reverse it at exactly the right time.
Speaker 1: I mean, baby Moses didn't have a friend in a half before, and now he's got all kinds of favor.
Speaker 1: That's because Proverbs 16, 7 is true when a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him, eventually, eventually.
Speaker 1: So you just keep on walking.
Speaker 1: Here's what I figured out.
Speaker 1: It's true for you, it's true for me.
Speaker 1: God has a special obedience curriculum for every individual person.
Speaker 1: Wherever you are, there's a curriculum God is trying to take you through, and the way you pass this course is just to obey.
Speaker 1: Often, when you don't understand the why, I don't know why God would command people to do this.
Speaker 1: I don't know why.
Speaker 1: This is God's perspective about it.
Speaker 1: Does it matter?
Speaker 1: Sometimes he'll tell you and it's awesome, and he's a friend, and he'll do stuff like that, and sometimes it's like, no, that's part of the test, man, there is no faith.
Speaker 1: That's untested.
Speaker 1: And so here's the test.
Speaker 1: Will you just do it?
Speaker 1: Because I'm asking you to, instead of always need to know everything God is doing.
Speaker 1: And here's what's powerful If we will just keep on pushing forward, if we will just keep on pushing through with all the obedience you can muster, which means you're not gonna do perfect, you're not gonna make it through all the way perfectly, and yet if you just do the best you can when you don't understand what is going on, god's gonna bring that favor and that radical blessing and that reversal.
Speaker 1: So here's number one keep pushing forward in obedience.
Speaker 1: Keep pushing forward in obedience.
Speaker 1: And if I was dude, if I was watching online right now, or if I was in this auditorium, I would be like dancing on the seats.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'd be up shouting around.
Speaker 1: Maybe my life has just been way harder than some of y'all, but the idea that God has got a right time and if I just keep on pushing it's going to pay off is shouting news.
Speaker 1: So if you're comfortable with it, you just go ahead and shout.
Speaker 1: And what's awesome is, if we keep pushing forward at the sanctification level we're at, god will break through.
Speaker 1: That's really important.
Speaker 1: We're gonna see in a second that Moses is gonna do something a little bit wrong.
Speaker 1: That is ultimately gonna negatively pay off in his life ultimately, but he's still someone who's in the middle of his sanctification.
Speaker 1: That word sanctification.
Speaker 1: That just means the process of becoming more like Jesus.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we start, many of us, we come to know Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: We're forgiven of our sins.
Speaker 1: He fills us with his spirit.
Speaker 1: That gives us power now to be walking relationally with him, and we're slowly becoming more and more like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is, you're not really gonna be totally like Jesus until you're with him in heaven.
Speaker 1: So from here to there you're becoming more like it.
Speaker 1: But You're right in the middle right now.
Speaker 1: Everybody who you know, who is a Christ follower.
Speaker 1: They're in the middle of their sanctification, not at the end.
Speaker 1: That means there's gonna be obedience.
Speaker 1: As you don't get right because you're in the middle, you don't need to get it all right, you don't need to be perfect.
Speaker 1: You're in the middle of your sanctification.
Speaker 1: So just keep walking, knowing that you're gonna get it wrong.
Speaker 1: See, god is really a God of hearts.
Speaker 1: Man, he's looking at you know, is there a heart right?
Speaker 1: And what that means is dude, sometimes you just gotta forgive yourself and get over it.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's what your spiritual enemy wants.
Speaker 1: He just wants you to beat down for a month.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I feel man, I'm just pretty bad.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just I better just lay, I better just sit here and not do anything.
Speaker 1: No, get up.
Speaker 1: You're in the middle of your sanctification, so get up.
Speaker 1: No one expects you to be perfect and keep pushing forward in obedience.
Speaker 1: Here's what Albert Einstein said.
Speaker 1: It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
Speaker 1: Now, of course, that's not true he was so smart, but there's something smart right there he stays with problems longer.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's for the sake, maybe it's for the sake of your future, that you can just think well, I don't understand now, but I'd sure like a better future than I'm in right now.
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to obey when I don't understand Now.
Speaker 1: Here's what we gotta understand about obedience.
Speaker 1: It's rarely something that you feel like doing.
Speaker 1: If you're waiting for your feelings before you're ready to obey, oh, dear heart, you're gonna be waiting a long time.
Speaker 1: Okay, feelings are rarely a part of it, and occasionally you'll get this woo Zeal, I'm gonna obey, but a lot of the time you're working against feelings and you gotta keep pressing through.
Speaker 1: You know one of the most.
Speaker 1: It sounds weird.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people ask me what's your favorite part about being a pastor, and there's a lot of cool parts.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite parts is preaching, but one of the parts you might not suspect is when I'm sitting across from somebody, we're at coffee or we're in my office and I'm watching them process like I'm seeing it behind their eyes, and they're thinking through oh okay, I see this resolve come into their mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and obey, even though I don't like it, even though I don't feel like it and even though I don't understand it, because Jesus is worth it and the reward is worth it.
Speaker 1: That's like the coolest moment of pastoring ever.
Speaker 1: When you see people do that, you just wanna like jump up and start.
Speaker 1: You start away, but nobody joins you.
Speaker 1: But it's one of the coolest parts.
Speaker 1: And, my friends, that's the payoff day for Jesus and he's gonna send us a payoff day if we keep on going.
Speaker 1: So, yes, keep on pushing forward.
Speaker 1: Yet the time comes when it's too late.
Speaker 1: The time comes when it's too late.
Speaker 1: See, now Moses goes and he gives Pharaoh a stone cold warning he's had all this time and Moses has brought all these kinds of warnings.
Speaker 1: But now he walks in and he essentially comes up to Pharaoh.
Speaker 1: He says, hey, pharaoh, verse four.
Speaker 1: He says something's gonna happen at midnight and it's gonna be bad.
Speaker 1: The angel of death is going to come and he's going to kill all the firstborn of the Egyptians and you're gonna hear a cry and a sorrow like has never been heard before in Egypt in the middle of the night, because all of these firstborns are going to die.
Speaker 1: And check it out, pharaoh, just like before, the Hebrews are going to be protected.
Speaker 1: It's not going to happen to them.
Speaker 1: Verse eight, all these officials this is how he kind of ends it all these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying go, you and all your people who follow you.
Speaker 1: After that I will leave.
Speaker 1: Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.
Speaker 1: So whoa, that's gonna be bad, but there's a little hint right there.
Speaker 1: Moses, hot with anger.
Speaker 1: Do you know that 40 years from here, moses is unable to enter the promised land that he spent all this time bringing these Israelites to because of his anger?
Speaker 1: Because that's his one little place that he did not allow to be taken control of by the Holy Spirit, or somehow it slipped from him.
Speaker 1: And we all have that stuff.
Speaker 1: We've all got stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm not doing perfect, but I keep moving forward, keep pushing through with what you know to do.
Speaker 1: Keep pushing through with what you know to do, even when you get it wrong, even when you have a hot flare of anger, even when you say the wrong thing, even when you put your foot in your mouth, even when you feel like a dope, even when that happens.
Speaker 1: Keep pushing through with what you know to do, but remember you don't have forever.
Speaker 1: Remember you don't have forever.
Speaker 1: This is what Pharaoh found out.
Speaker 1: So many of you know that when Apple Computer Company was founded, there was Steve Jobs, steve Wozniak, but there was a third guy who was part of the founding of Apple.
Speaker 1: You probably haven't heard of him because after 12 days, he sold all of his shares for $800.
Speaker 1: His name's Ron Wayne.
Speaker 1: 12 days in to Apple sells all of his shares Today and I checked yesterday what this would be worth.
Speaker 1: 986.67 billion is what that would be worth today.
Speaker 1: Bro, you gave up too early Like, wow, $800 compared to all that Dude, star Wars was only four billion.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a lot of dog gone money, but now it's too late.
Speaker 1: There's nothing you do about it now.
Speaker 1: He missed the opportunity.
Speaker 1: You know there's stuff that a little from now it's gonna be too late to do.
Speaker 1: If you're a young person, there's gonna come a time where, okay, now it's too late to go to youth group.
Speaker 1: Whatever God wanted to do there, now he can't do Cause that's over, and I think I was not still with you.
Speaker 1: I thought that he might not still do awesome stuff.
Speaker 1: He'll take it from where you are, but he can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: There's gonna come a time for some of us.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, now you know, dude, I know you were busy, I know you had a lot to do, but now you know people aren't gonna really be asking you to mentor them quite as much because you were just never around and you know you said no in kind of the season when they needed it.
Speaker 1: Now they just they're not looking to you in the same way.
Speaker 1: There might be a time where it's kind of okay, well, it's not that you can't be a spiritual leader, but you didn't start down here Like you didn't wanna just carry the chair, you didn't wanna just help out, you know, with what needed then, what we needed then.
Speaker 1: And so now God's like well, I mean, dude, it's not that I'll start wherever you are, but there's things you missed, because now is I was telling you to obey back then and you're like no, god, no, I'll get to it.
Speaker 1: I'll get to it later.
Speaker 1: Years go by, years go by, years go by.
Speaker 1: There comes a time when it's too late.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know this, even with your health, right, you can start eating healthier at any age.
Speaker 1: But there's a time when it's like, well, this doesn't gonna undo anything though, okay, it'll make it a little bit better for the rest of the time.
Speaker 1: But there's a time when it's time to obey, and what I'm trying to say is there's a procrastination.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're just like, well, it doesn't matter when I obey.
Speaker 1: No, it matters, it's specific with God when he's dealing with you about it.
Speaker 1: It's then.
Speaker 1: So now Moses is gonna give some these Israelites the notes for the trip.
Speaker 1: He's gonna say, okay, guys, this is it.
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna go, I'm gonna tell you what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: And he's even telling them stuff they're gonna commemorate and do again in the future, kind of on the anniversary of this Passover.
Speaker 1: But here's how he starts, verse one of Exodus 12.
Speaker 1: The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt this month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.
Speaker 1: He says, hey, moses and Aaron, as you go, I just want you to understand.
Speaker 1: This is now the marker.
Speaker 1: This is how I want you to understand your reality.
Speaker 1: Everything started with me bringing you out.
Speaker 1: Everything now points back to this or points forward to this in the year.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be the thing in the year that always the year is returning to or coming from, and we know how this goes right, like we have probably for many of us.
Speaker 1: Like that's Christmas, you're always thinking about what is this month in relation to Christmas.
Speaker 1: Like Christmas is just like a marker of the year, and then we keep going and God is telling them this is so important.
Speaker 1: You've never done anything like this that I want you to think about yourselves as you were birthed in this moment, and that's a lot like coming to know Jesus Christ or being born again.
Speaker 1: For some of us, that kind of happens gradually over time.
Speaker 1: For me, it happened very suddenly.
Speaker 1: Okay, I was raised in a religious home and we understood some things, but we didn't understand everything about personal relationship with Jesus, and so when I was 18, I came to know him in a much more personal way and I began to understand my life of.
Speaker 1: This was everything before I knew Christ, and this is everything that has happened since I knew Christ.
Speaker 1: But that one marker, dude, that was the explosion that changed everything.
Speaker 1: That's when the fire started and that's a little bit what's happening with Moses and Aaron about the Hebrew future calendar right now.
Speaker 1: And then he gets super specific about some really confusing stuff that they're gonna do with a lamb.
Speaker 1: So verses three through five.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna run you through them very quickly.
Speaker 1: First he says okay, I want you to tell the whole community, every one of you is to take a lamb and bring it into your house, bring it in for your family.
Speaker 1: And, really important, it's gotta be a lamb without defect.
Speaker 1: That's really important because one of the things he's talking about right now he's talking about them, but he's also talking about the lamb, jesus Christ, the lamb.
Speaker 1: It's a lamb without defect.
Speaker 1: That's why Pilate could say about Jesus in Luke 23, I find nothing wrong with this man, because there was nothing wrong with him, because he was without defect.
Speaker 1: He was without sin.
Speaker 1: That's why, hundreds of years earlier, isaiah could prophesy about Jesus.
Speaker 1: He had done no wrong and never deceived anyone.
Speaker 1: But he was buried like a criminal.
Speaker 1: He was put in a rich man's grave.
Speaker 1: But it was the Lord's good plan to crush him and cause him grief.
Speaker 1: Yet when his life has made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants.
Speaker 1: That's everyone who trusts in his name.
Speaker 1: So you're all families.
Speaker 1: You're gonna take a lamb.
Speaker 1: You're going to then slaughter and emit twilight this is this perfect, without blemish lamb and then verse seven to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where you're gonna eat that lamb within the house You're going to we're gonna come back to this in a little bit You're going to ingest this lamb entirely.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: So, hebrew families, get in your houses, put this blood on the door.
Speaker 1: You're gonna eat this lamb and you're gonna eat everything and it's really specific and you're gonna get ready to go.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be ready to leave.
Speaker 1: Suddenly, like you're going on a trip.
Speaker 1: This is what's gonna happen, and I know this sounds strange because, hebrews, you've never been anywhere for 400 years and now you need to eat like you're moving.
Speaker 1: You ever had an experience where, like, there's a difference between everyone's kind of like sitting around the table and like, oh yeah, you know, cool, calm night and everyone's like flying out the door and grabbing a pop tart.
Speaker 1: This is much more like the latter.
Speaker 1: Okay, like dude, get your stuff on, get ready, here we go.
Speaker 1: Verse 11,.
Speaker 1: This is how you are to eat it with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand.
Speaker 1: Eat it in haste.
Speaker 1: It is the Lord's Passover.
Speaker 1: We're gonna understand that in a couple minutes.
Speaker 1: On that same night, I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn, of both people and animals.
Speaker 1: That will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.
Speaker 1: I am the Lord.
Speaker 1: The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.
Speaker 1: No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
Speaker 1: And then there's a terrible cry Verse 29,.
Speaker 1: At midnight, the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of the livestock as well.
Speaker 1: Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night and there was a loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.
Speaker 1: During the night, pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said up, leave my people.
Speaker 1: You in the Israelites, go worship the Lord, as you have requested, take your flocks and herds, as you've said, and go and bless me.
Speaker 1: Also, the Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country, for otherwise, they said, we will all die.
Speaker 1: They're freaked out now.
Speaker 1: And here's, my friends, where Jesus is pointing to when he says in John 5, 46, if you really believed Moses, you would believe in me, because he wrote about me.
Speaker 1: When I see the blood, I will pass over you.
Speaker 1: When I see the blood, not when I see what a good person you are.
Speaker 1: Not when I see how you stood up for other people's rights.
Speaker 1: Not when I see how you helped the homeless.
Speaker 1: Not when I see how you helped the elderly, not when I see how much better you were than the people around you.
Speaker 1: Only when I see the blood.
Speaker 1: That means Hebrews, you've got a choice you can be out of the house that night.
Speaker 1: That's up to you.
Speaker 1: Up till this point, god has done everything on his own, and now he's giving them a decision.
Speaker 1: He says but only if you're within the house.
Speaker 1: When I see the blood, I will pass over you, meaning you are not protected from the judgment of God unless you are under the blood.
Speaker 1: This lamb is a substitute, somehow that brings satisfaction to God, so that the penalty that is due soon no longer has to come on the people under the blood.
Speaker 1: And you remember what the scripture said?
Speaker 1: It said in every house there wasn't a house or someone wasn't dead.
Speaker 1: That was true even in the Hebrew houses.
Speaker 1: It was just that the lamb was dead.
Speaker 1: In their houses the lamb was dead, ok.
Speaker 1: And you might say, oh gosh, you know what, dude, that's just absurd.
Speaker 1: I don't understand that.
Speaker 1: Why does the blood of the lamb make so much difference?
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can believe that.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what man put yourself in their shoes.
Speaker 1: Because not only did the Israelites believe it, but the Egyptians believed man.
Speaker 1: They'd seen all these plagues, they'd seen their friends die, they'd seen all of their crops go away, they'd seen the Nile turn to blood.
Speaker 1: They're like oh yeah, dude, I don't care how absurd it sounds, we believe this God.
Speaker 1: Now we believe him.
Speaker 1: And here's what's really true.
Speaker 1: They were saved because they were under the blood.
Speaker 1: But even before that, in a different kind of way, they were saved because they believed the words of God about the necessity of being under the blood.
Speaker 1: They believed it and acted on it.
Speaker 1: They heard it, they said true, I'm going to go ahead and do that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and get under the blood, because it's none of my business how or why God does stuff.
Speaker 1: I just know here is safety If I'm under this blood.
Speaker 1: And so what do we do?
Speaker 1: Not only do we keep pushing forward in obedience here's so awesome but we appropriate Jesus' obedience.
Speaker 1: We keep pushing forward in the obedience we understand, but then we also appropriate the obedience of Jesus.
Speaker 1: First and always, we hide under the blood.
Speaker 1: Here's the irony about a message on obedience we're talking about obedience and yet we've got so much unobedience that it doesn't matter how much obedience we have.
Speaker 1: We need the obedience of another.
Speaker 1: In order to be saved from the judgment, in order for us to be safe under the blood, we need the blood of someone more righteous than us.
Speaker 1: I want to show you this.
Speaker 1: We talked about this in a little thing called the boom that we do right before church.
Speaker 1: This is for everybody who serves in the church.
Speaker 1: On a Sunday morning, we come in, we have a little rally with the volunteers, called the boom.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago we talked about this and it was such a hit that I wanted to talk about it right here in church and it's really it's one of the most important things we'll ever talk about.
Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and put up this image on the screen.
Speaker 1: There's a difference between the active righteousness that we have and the passive righteousness that we have in Christ.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the active righteousness this is where we're doing things that emulate what God would want us to do.
Speaker 1: We're behaving and thinking in ways that God would say, yep, that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: And when you hear scriptures like be holy, for I am holy, or clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside will also be clean, this is commands.
Speaker 1: Yes, do this thing.
Speaker 1: That is obedience and that's good.
Speaker 1: But we always need the outer covering of the blood, which is the passive righteousness that we get in Christ.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther, the great reformer, talked about these two that are always happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yes, we always want to have kind of an active righteousness, but just know that is not the same thing as being under the blood.
Speaker 1: That's just good stuff that you do.
Speaker 1: But when you're under the blood, yes, be holy, for I am holy, but also know there's therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ.
Speaker 1: Yes, clean the inside of the cup, but know that unless I wash you, you won't belong to me.
Speaker 1: Jesus says the passive righteousness of God is always true.
Speaker 1: If you've trusted Jesus Christ, even after you just disobeyed, you're still under the passive righteousness, perfect obedience, of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: You're under the Lamb's blood.
Speaker 1: It doesn't wash off.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, I feel bad, feel bad maybe, but then get back under like walk again.
Speaker 1: In the reality I am under the passive righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: It is mine, I have appropriated it in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: It's for whoever will get under the blood.
Speaker 1: It's free and it's forever and you can have it.
Speaker 1: And so if you find yourself kind of frustrated with religion and kind of frustrated with like, well, you know, I gotta obey the rules and I gotta get it right, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: You're not understanding right.
Speaker 1: No, that's your own active righteousness and baby, that's great.
Speaker 1: But that ain't gonna work.
Speaker 1: That ain't gonna work.
Speaker 1: You're gonna need the passive righteousness that comes from the perfect righteousness that Jesus Christ bought and gave to you because you positioned yourself under the blood.
Speaker 1: Here's a way to understand it.
Speaker 1: When we come to Jesus Christ, my friends, it's kind of like we're marrying him, okay, meaning everything that he has we now have.
Speaker 1: When my wife, kenzie, and I got married, everything that one of us had, we now both had because we had one another.
Speaker 1: Check this out, jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: When you come to him and get under the blood, he doesn't like email you the righteousness.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like send it via Amazon.
Speaker 1: He's like enjoy the righteousness.
Speaker 1: Now he says you have me, therefore, whatever I have you have.
Speaker 1: There's a difference there.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want just Kenzie's stuff, I want her.
Speaker 1: The stuff comes with her.
Speaker 1: You don't just need Jesus as righteousness, you need Jesus.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, don't focus less on just what you legally have and focus on who you have.
Speaker 1: You have Christ himself.
Speaker 1: He's given himself to you as your bridegroom.
Speaker 1: God gone, this is awesome and good.
Speaker 1: Here's another way to think about it.
Speaker 1: Your act of righteousness is training.
Speaker 1: Your passive righteousness is trusting.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: So you know, around the house, my wife and I, we mentor the kids in different things.
Speaker 1: She might be mentoring them in how to cook something, or I might be mentoring them in.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's how we do a budget and that would be good.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're working on the budget and they're training for an hour.
Speaker 1: And if we trained for an hour every day, they'd get better.
Speaker 1: They'd appear more like their dad when they did it.
Speaker 1: But none of that training will ever make them my child.
Speaker 1: They're my child, whether they train or not.
Speaker 1: The passive righteousness of Christ is yours when you trust.
Speaker 1: Your active righteousness is yours for training to become more like Christ.
Speaker 1: But they're very different things.
Speaker 1: I like to invite the worship team to come on back up.
Speaker 1: So what do we say?
Speaker 1: We say we appropriate it by faith.
Speaker 1: Jesus is our spiritual covering.
Speaker 1: He's the blood that we need to be over us.
Speaker 1: But it's not only that.
Speaker 1: When the angel of death came, he freed by killing the Egyptian firstborn.
Speaker 1: He freed the Israelites.
Speaker 1: They were free to go.
Speaker 1: Right, that's what Pharaoh said You're free to go.
Speaker 1: So he got them free.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until they took the Passover lamb into them that they were identified.
Speaker 1: He says they were free, but not his.
Speaker 1: And Jesus isn't just satisfied with free.
Speaker 1: He wants free, but mine.
Speaker 1: That's why there's this identification with him through the Passover lamb, through taking him completely into us.
Speaker 1: And here's what we mean.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, my friends, we look at Jesus and we're like well, jesus, you can have this part of me and this part of me.
Speaker 1: But you can't have this part of me or this part of me and Jesus says no.
Speaker 1: I want you to eat the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Eat all of me.
Speaker 1: I want to be the entire Jesus to you.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be your buddy Jesus.
Speaker 1: I don't want to just be gentle Jesus.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be the Jesus that gives his opinion about this stuff but shuts up about this stuff.
Speaker 1: I want to be the whole Jesus.
Speaker 1: Take the whole thing into your inner being and let Jesus have his way inside, just the way those Israelites took the whole lamb inside.
Speaker 1: And I want you to have a new objective.
Speaker 1: I want you to eat like you're leaving.
Speaker 1: I want you to eat like I'm not just here to get my earthly dreams fulfilled.
Speaker 1: I'm not taking Jesus so I can have, you know, jesus and all the other stuff.
Speaker 1: No, I'm eating and taking Jesus into me because Jesus and I are on the way out.
Speaker 1: We're leaving.
Speaker 1: We're going somewhere else.
Speaker 1: We're going to heaven.
Speaker 1: That's where we're going.
Speaker 1: That's where my inheritance is.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting all this religion just to have religious stuff and crappy books on the shelf.
Speaker 1: I want Jesus Christ, and my home is now in heaven, in a mansion with him.
Speaker 1: That's where I'm going and that's what he's saying Eat like you're leaving.
Speaker 1: So, man, eat, eat, but eat like this is not your home anymore.
Speaker 1: Now you're from the culture of another place and all it remains for us to do is appropriate it.
Speaker 1: How do we do it?
Speaker 1: Well, peter was asked the same question.
Speaker 1: He said this in Acts 2.38.
Speaker 1: Answered them repent.
Speaker 1: I love the amplified version.
Speaker 1: He says repent.
Speaker 1: Change your views and purpose to accept the will of God in your inner selves instead of rejecting it.
Speaker 1: Eat the whole of Jesus and be baptized to every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, or forgiveness and of, and release from your sins.
Speaker 1: I love that part.
Speaker 1: And release from your sins.
Speaker 1: You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: Just like God left it up to the Israelites that night, he hadn't really involved them before, but then he said okay, you get to decide if you're inside under the blood or not.
Speaker 1: He invites every one of us.
Speaker 1: He said baby, it doesn't matter that you're from a family of people that claim the name of God.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter that you're near somebody or you did some of the stuff the Hebrews once did.
Speaker 1: What matters is that you are under the blood.
Speaker 1: Here's what God says to us prophetically through Isaiah 30, 18,.
Speaker 1: And yet the Lord is waiting to be merciful to you.
Speaker 1: He's ready to take pity on you, because he always does what is right.
Speaker 1: Happier are those who put the trust in him.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that he's waiting for you?
Speaker 1: He's waited this whole time.
Speaker 1: He's like hey, come under the blood, it's safe, it's protected.
Speaker 1: I have you.
Speaker 1: That will give you my passive righteousness and you'll have it forever, because we'll be married forever.
Speaker 1: And it's for you.
Speaker 1: He's waited all this time.
Speaker 1: So a couple of applications from this message, depending who you are.
Speaker 1: For some of us, it might be you've been obeying.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: Don't stop here, keep going.
Speaker 1: For others, it might be you know you get it, but you need to more often rejoice in the passive righteousness of the Lamb, not just work yourself to death, because lovers will outwork workers every day of the week.
Speaker 1: Just focus on the fact that you are loved by Christ and others of us it might be you need to race for the blood dude.
Speaker 1: Get under the blood, get in here.
Speaker 1: It's safe in here.
Speaker 1: I don't know which one.
Speaker 1: It is for you, but we're going to pray for all three of us right now.
Speaker 1: Let's bow our heads Because some of us are just we're having a hard time believing that this is real and that if we just keep pushing in obedience it'll pay off.
Speaker 1: Would you download Faith Into Us right now, wherever it is that people need an extra to keep going, got to pray for faith that obedience is rewarded in sometimes leads to great reversals.
Speaker 1: Now, for every one of us that we know that you love us, jesus, but we don't really focus much on the fact that we have your passive righteousness, would you teach us to do life with you in a different way, where?
Speaker 1: That's the place we're coming from?
Speaker 1: And for those of us now we've done a lot of religious stuff, but we really just we've never placed ourselves in your care under the blood, trusting you.
Speaker 1: Happier all those who trust in you.
Speaker 1: So, god, we come to you by faith.
Speaker 1: Right now, we say Jesus Christ, you died for me.
Speaker 1: I believe that not only did you die on the cross and you were my lamb of God, but you rose from the dead and now you live forever to be my perfect passive righteousness before the Father, and I thank you that you invite me and welcome me into your family.
Speaker 1: God, would you make me a brand new creature that lives from the place of walking toward my true home in heaven?
Speaker 1: Would you help me to live for you, to know you, to love you and to make your name great while I'm here?
Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
Speaker 1: It's because of you that this is possible.
Speaker 1: You can click on the link in the description to give now or visit Fierce Church for more information.
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Speaker 1: Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: Hang on to Jesus.
Speaker 1: He won't let go of you.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we get to meet in person.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening.