Speaker 1: That is quite a barren but a beautiful place, and I want to thank all of you for being in this beautiful place.
Speaker 1: I also want to greet all of our online viewers, and especially men by the name of Donald Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Donald lives in all the way in Michigan and through connections here he watches us, I'm told most weeks of Donald.
Speaker 1: Thank you and everyone else there for viewing.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll engage with the monitor if we can help you in any way and send you any information that might be helpful.
Speaker 1: If you're in this area and you do not have a place to call your church family, we'd love to have you come be in person, because it's great being able to tune in, but it's quite another thing and another level of development and blessing to be in the room too.
Speaker 1: Take a second in light of our theme for today and just go to the Lord in prayer right where you are, and then take a second and pray for the person to your left and to your right and just ask for the Holy Spirit to do what he intends to do in your life.
Speaker 1: First.
Speaker 1: I know the world is broken, but unless the people of God are in revival and renewal, it doesn't reallywe're not going to be available to help change this world.
Speaker 1: And so then, pray for your brother and your sister to your right, for the same purposes.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's do that, and all God's people said amen.
Speaker 1: Apologize for my scratchy, deeper voice.
Speaker 1: As usual, I am fine, fit as a fiddle, not contagious.
Speaker 1: This is called college football.
Speaker 1: So turn to Exodus, chapter 19, please, continuing part three today of our series called Mountain Men.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to go to what is now northern Egypt for our setting.
Speaker 1: Years and years ago I think it was in the late 1950s that HG Wells wrote a novel, had written a novel that turned into a blockbuster movie called, you know, war of the Worlds.
Speaker 1: Right, it was redone a few years ago.
Speaker 1: I think Tom Cruise was in the starring role there.
Speaker 1: But the interesting phenomena is, as aliens come and join us here on earth, the people are deeply fearful, but they're also curious.
Speaker 1: In the opening scenes, especially when they see this huge form of a creature they've never seen before, they run in fear.
Speaker 1: But then they come back and they get closer and closer because they're curious.
Speaker 1: But then, when, of course, the heat ray comes on and starts incinerating everybody, then they run for fear again, the point being, we're still that way too.
Speaker 1: Some of the scariest, most mysterious things in our world together.
Speaker 1: There's something in us that is drawn by curiosity.
Speaker 1: Now, if in War of the Worlds they somehow could have communicated with these foreign things, then there may have been a better understanding and at least they would have known to never go there Out of curiosity in the first place.
Speaker 1: Many times it's like that with God.
Speaker 1: Many of you, maybe myself, have feared the very person who loves us the most and we shrink back from what should be the opposite of that, because we fear the future he has planned for us, or we fear the difficulty or the discomfort that will come, and, quite frankly, we spend a lot of our lives not knowing how to communicate with this great one.
Speaker 1: And so today, the connection is simply this what I want to try to say through the Scripture, three or four different ways, is if there is no consecration, there is no communication.
Speaker 1: And verse 10, where he's speaking to Moses and says go and consecrate them.
Speaker 1: Today, we'll explain that in a minute and we'll also explain, if you're not real super aware of it, what consecration really means, because it is a true statement.
Speaker 1: If we're not controlling that first word, which we can control the consecration, then our communication will be vague and distant, many times non-existent, and we will have the wrong kind of fear toward God rather than the healthy, reverential fear of God.
Speaker 1: So that's where we're going.
Speaker 1: It's a great idea, I think, to read all of chapter 19.
Speaker 1: We won't do that today because of time, but maybe this afternoon or this week, as part of your devotion, I always give you a little bit of Scripture that might help as good follow-ups to our talk today, and that would be a good one.
Speaker 1: This takes place in what is now northern Egypt and if you'llSelene, if you'll put that picture back up there you saw a little bit of it in the video just ahead.
Speaker 1: That is what is believed.
Speaker 1: This is Jadu Boodle, which is believed to be probably the peak where Moses ascended to meet with God, and you see how stark and how majestic and how steep that mountain is and everything this takes place.
Speaker 1: Chapter 19 takes place only three months after they crossed the Red Sea.
Speaker 1: It's still really early in their adventure, but it's not read that much.
Speaker 1: But here's the importance of Exodus 19.
Speaker 1: If Exodus 19 is not executed right and obedience by the people, I don't believe there's ever an Exodus 20 and you say, well, what's the deal about Exodus 20?
Speaker 1: If you read it, that's where we get the Ten Commandments and some other laws that are still in vote today, and so this is tremendously important as a preparation time for that.
Speaker 1: You're going to see the number three pop up several times and we'll walk through that as we go to deeply symbolic number in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Speaker 1: So let's, just as we normally do, let's read through a few verses, we'll comment on it, and then we'll use the Scripture to devise how we are supposed to be better Christ followers today, and then at the end we'll have an invitation time, like we always do.
Speaker 1: This is your invitation to come forward and express a desire, a prayer request or a celebration that you may have.
Speaker 1: We've just been able to celebrate a couple of times already.
Speaker 1: Today.
Speaker 1: We will at 10.30.
Speaker 1: Praise the Lord, we'll be at baptism at Pinewood also today also, so we get to do that.
Speaker 1: So you're there.
Speaker 1: You're there at Exodus 19.
Speaker 1: Thanks for bringing your Bible.
Speaker 1: So I've kind of set the stage for you.
Speaker 1: Let's kick in with verses four through six, because this consecration, that's good, but what in the world?
Speaker 1: How in the world can I do this.
Speaker 1: The first point I would like to make is we need to review our past in order to receive our future calling, and God helps us do that.
Speaker 1: We all have that past.
Speaker 1: So how about starting at verse four?
Speaker 1: You yourselves, as God's speaking, have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.
Speaker 1: You've seen what I did to Egypt, oh man, if you know the story, you know the plagues, you know the death angel, you know all of that.
Speaker 1: You know the release of all the Hebrews out of Egypt who were enslaved for 400 years, you can imagine how that would have decimated the entire economy of the most powerful nation in the world at that time and humbled the most powerful king and brought him to his knees, as it personally affected his life forever.
Speaker 1: And he says I carried you as if on eagle's wings up to this point and I brought you to myself.
Speaker 1: That's very important.
Speaker 1: I brought you to myself.
Speaker 1: Abraham was introduced to a covenant.
Speaker 1: He's referring back to that too.
Speaker 1: He's going to the past.
Speaker 1: Remember your past, but also let me remind you of my past with you, through your father, abraham is I brought you out of all the countries, the ethnic groups who exist.
Speaker 1: I chose you to be my lighthouse, and that's called a covenant.
Speaker 1: Later on in the Old Testament, we see it in a book called Kensman Redeemer.
Speaker 1: It was a law in their day.
Speaker 1: It's based on, though, the covenant of God, where, if there was someone who was a relative of like a widow, or someone who had lost their spouse, he was obligated to marry this lady.
Speaker 1: Also, if he could, and if he could not to pass that opportunity on why?
Speaker 1: To take care of her and to keep her in a healthy place in the family, and that's the analogy here.
Speaker 1: I brought you in.
Speaker 1: My job, god says, is to keep you in a healthy place in my family.
Speaker 1: If that happens, that's more up to us than that is to God.
Speaker 1: So let's look at five and six Now.
Speaker 1: If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession.
Speaker 1: Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Speaker 1: There are thethese are the words you speak.
Speaker 1: You are to speak to the Israelites, talking to Moses.
Speaker 1: Moses come up to them out and he's telling them to go back and give them this message, so treasured possession.
Speaker 1: They were slaves, a race of slaves, for 400 years, and he's reminding them.
Speaker 1: But I see you as my treasure.
Speaker 1: And he says this is really important too, y'all, in verse 5.
Speaker 1: The whole earth is mine.
Speaker 1: The Hebrews are surrounded by a bunch of ethnic groups who were polytheistic.
Speaker 1: They believed in many, many gods.
Speaker 1: They had been 400 years in Egypt, which was tremendously polytheistic.
Speaker 1: It had a God or goddess.
Speaker 1: For everything God announces for the first time through His words in the Bible, there's only one, and that one is me, and I'll prove it by telling you I made all this, I made all of you and I made all of this.
Speaker 1: So you are to worship me and me only.
Speaker 1: Next chapter, of course.
Speaker 1: First commandment is you can't have any other gods.
Speaker 1: So verse 6, he says you're going to be a kingdom priest A bunch of slaves are called now priests and a holy nation.
Speaker 1: Later, peter in 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 9, I think he's paraphrasing this verse when he says almost the same thing hey, you are a royal, you're a holy priest, you're a royal nation, a people called to God for His usage there.
Speaker 1: It is an amazing statement that he makes.
Speaker 1: What is a priest, a priest in those days was someone who stood between heaven and earth and mediated.
Speaker 1: He was a mediator of God's words to the people and the people's desires to God.
Speaker 1: Atonement came through that mediator in those days.
Speaker 1: The forgiveness of sins, the revelation of God came through, and that's what Moses is being put into the role of here.
Speaker 1: Later Aaron does and others in his line, but it was a very important position.
Speaker 1: And then the next chapter we'll see it developed through a specific family.
Speaker 1: We all have a past.
Speaker 1: Some of our pasts are worse than others.
Speaker 1: The reason that wethe only reason that there's any value in looking back is to go forward.
Speaker 1: The danger is to review our past without the power and the presence and the calling of God.
Speaker 1: Because you've all heard the voice that I hear occasionally, and that's not God's voice.
Speaker 1: It's another voice that tells you men, you're not good enough.
Speaker 1: Ladies, you're not capable, you're too evil, you're too sinful, you're too broken.
Speaker 1: You might as well stay like you are or go back into what you used to be and what you used to do.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is the voice, without the calling to the future, will tell you there's no usefulness for you on this earth, and that has defeated many a good people who do not take the next step and review just long enough to see their future.
Speaker 1: God has a future for everybody.
Speaker 1: God knows the past better than we do.
Speaker 1: But God is the overcomer, the redeemer, the renewal from the past.
Speaker 1: Y'all agree with that.
Speaker 1: There's a quote.
Speaker 1: Many of you've heard it, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Satan's always out to remind us of our past.
Speaker 1: Our job is to remind him of his.
Speaker 1: What Future?
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 1: He's got a future too, and it ain't good.
Speaker 1: We have a future if you're a Christ follower, and it is really good.
Speaker 1: But what we do in the gap is what I'm interested in as a pastor right now, for myself and my family and for you.
Speaker 1: How we make the best use of the gap between the past and the future is so important, and there's a lot of other people hanging in the balance.
Speaker 1: Not that we have any power, but the presence of God really does, because this I can say with certainty I don't know the specifics of what he's getting most of y'all in prepared for, but I do know this One purpose he has for all of us is to stand up as this shining testimony to the rest of the world around us, testimony not to ourselves, but to Jesus Christ, because Jesus himself said do these good works be you know, shine your light into the darkness.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: So that people will see your good works?
Speaker 1: Why so that they will praise my Father in heaven.
Speaker 1: That's why we exist and that's what we have to do.
Speaker 1: So, to wrap up this first point, which is tremendously important, I think, as a starting point, how do you do what I'll call and there's an old hymn that basically, I think was called this how do you press on?
Speaker 1: How do you keep going?
Speaker 1: How do you persevere?
Speaker 1: How do you overcome setbacks?
Speaker 1: How do you overcome and walk away from your past?
Speaker 1: We can't really do that alone, can we?
Speaker 1: We've got to be informed and influenced by one greater than us.
Speaker 1: This is where I'll ask you to write down another piece of Scripture.
Speaker 1: How about John 14, 13 and 14?
Speaker 1: In John 14, 13 and 14, jesus is speaking and he says I will do whatever you ask in my name so the Son may bring glory to the Father.
Speaker 1: You may ask the Lord for anything in my name and I will do it.
Speaker 1: Do you all?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I do.
Speaker 1: Do you understand the magnitude of that statement?
Speaker 1: The Son of God, the Holy One of Israel, the Lord and Savior, is saying to you and me if you'll ask by my authority, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: Whatever you ask, in my authority, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: So what's got to go?
Speaker 1: That just sounds too good to be true.
Speaker 1: What's got to go along with that?
Speaker 1: A consecrated relationship does what's consecrated?
Speaker 1: Going to explain it a little bit more in the next point.
Speaker 1: It's being set aside from a holy God for a holy God.
Speaker 1: You got it.
Speaker 1: It means there's something got to be different about us.
Speaker 1: There's a place that we occupy that other people, the rest of the world, does not occupy, not out of our arrogance, but out of our calling from God to know Him through Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: That's when he starts saying whatever you ask, I'll give it to you.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because we're going to ask for what His Spirit's already told us to ask for, and that's just an agreement thing.
Speaker 1: So let's transition.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to read 7 through 9.
Speaker 1: So Moses does that.
Speaker 1: He's got a message.
Speaker 1: He goes down.
Speaker 1: Poor old Moses, before this chapter is over, he has gone up and down that mountain.
Speaker 1: You just saw three times, and it's not over, because then it the close of this chapter.
Speaker 1: He says now here's what I want you to do Go back down and bring Aaron, your brother, up here.
Speaker 1: So Moses finds out oh man, that'll be number four.
Speaker 1: He is quite a hiker by the time.
Speaker 1: This is all over, and that's just the trips that we do know, anyway.
Speaker 1: So Moses goes down, he gives them the message and what do the people say In verse 8, they say oh, of course we will do everything that God tells us to do.
Speaker 1: And I just picture this, not in Scripture.
Speaker 1: I picture when they say that Moses rolls his eyes.
Speaker 1: He's like oh yeah, because he knows these people, he knows how obstinate and stiff-neck they are.
Speaker 1: And I picture this when he goes back up the mountain and God says well, what did they say?
Speaker 1: Moses says hey, lord, check this out.
Speaker 1: They said we'll do everything, just like we always do.
Speaker 1: And God goes.
Speaker 1: I think God laughs out loud.
Speaker 1: Only when he laughs out loud, it sounds like the worst thunderstorm in the world is boom, boom, like that, because we know how ridiculous that statement is.
Speaker 1: I guess their heart was good, though they still didn't understand yet what we're saying.
Speaker 1: If there's no consecration, there's no communication.
Speaker 1: So let'sthe second thing we need to check out is reverence will prepare us for revelation.
Speaker 1: Reverence will prepare us for a deeper revelation, or maybe even a basic.
Speaker 1: So now we're ready to read verse 10 through 12.
Speaker 1: Verse 10, and the Lord said to Moses go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Have them wash their clothes.
Speaker 1: Why wash their clothes?
Speaker 1: I thought this was an internal thing.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 1: They're physicallyspiritually I'm sorry supposed to separate themselves out to God.
Speaker 1: The evidence of that, or the symbol of that, is the washing of their clothes.
Speaker 1: How did theythey're in the desert?
Speaker 1: How does a whole race of people come up with enough water to wash their clothes?
Speaker 1: Well, go back to chapter 17.
Speaker 1: I won't take time to read it.
Speaker 1: But in chapter 17, they're allthey're already starting to whine and complain and all you know, we're thirsty, we don't have any water.
Speaker 1: And God said strike that rock and out of it water will come.
Speaker 1: And it was enough to slay the thirst of all of them.
Speaker 1: We believe it poured into, probably too big, like basins, geographic basins, or pool like things, and they're still close enough to access that.
Speaker 1: So that's where they got thethat's where they got the water from.
Speaker 1: But verse 11, be ready by the third day.
Speaker 1: There's the number again, because on that day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
Speaker 1: He says I'm showing up on the third day.
Speaker 1: Why wait three days?
Speaker 1: Because it probably is going to take that many people three days to wash that many pieces of clothing in two locations.
Speaker 1: Right Verse 10, put limits on the people.
Speaker 1: That means set a barrier, a system of barriers up or something, or signs around the mountain, and tell them be careful that you do not come up to the mountain.
Speaker 1: He's going to say that three times too.
Speaker 1: God is adamant and urgent and aggressively saying don't let anybody get near enough to touch the mountain.
Speaker 1: It will not go well for them if they do and they'll blow up what we plan to do here.
Speaker 1: Do notthree times he says that, and once he's talking about reverence in God.
Speaker 1: God is to be reverenced even to this day Now, not the fear that shrinks back from Him, but the fear that reverences Him and says oh, you are holy, you are pure, you are the Almighty.
Speaker 1: This is not aboutat this point, this is not about good and evil.
Speaker 1: This is about operating in the world or in the spirit, and that's still our process today, if we are absorbed too much into the world and the philosophies and the ideologies of the world.
Speaker 1: We cannot be set apart for God.
Speaker 1: So we have to operate, of course, in this, but we are to be separate people.
Speaker 1: It's about the spirit, because only when I am detached mentally and emotionally, and at times for a little while, physically enough, from the rest of the world can I be spirit-filled, because that's an ongoing battle.
Speaker 1: Because you are a Christ follower does not mean that you are spirit-filled every single day.
Speaker 1: That is our task to work on and to yield to on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: So it's not so much about just keeping the law, it's about the internal.
Speaker 1: It's about what's going on in my gut and your spirit.
Speaker 1: Also, at this point, the people are going to realize what Moses has been told on the mountain.
Speaker 1: We need a mediator here, and God places Moses, for now, in that role.
Speaker 1: Now, later, we know there is another mediator that will arrive on the scene, and you know who that is.
Speaker 1: That mediator is talked about in Hebrews, chapter 11.
Speaker 1: That's another good passage to read later this week.
Speaker 1: Hebrews chapter 11 actually goes back and talks about this incident and then compared it to his culture in that day.
Speaker 1: Let me just read a sample of it in chapter 12 of Hebrews, verse 22.
Speaker 1: It says Now but you have come to Mount Zion, symbolically, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.
Speaker 1: You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly Now listen to verse 23,.
Speaker 1: To the church of the firstborn, that means the church of Christ.
Speaker 1: That's us, that's us today Whose names are written in heaven.
Speaker 1: You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the sprinkled blood that speaks to a better world than to the blood of a better world in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: The new covenant fulfilled the old covenant and a lot of you know this.
Speaker 1: So can I tell you where a dividing part is for a lot of folks, good people, otherwise, we get to a point where we start to realize this and we realize there's something more to this relationship with Jesus than our thought there was.
Speaker 1: And then we were back to the fear issue and we vote not to go fully.
Speaker 1: We like to kind of like can I just mix in some of Jesus with what I'm doing and what I enjoy doing, and we'll be okay here?
Speaker 1: No, you can't, because that is called in today's culture leveling down.
Speaker 1: You've heard that, henry.
Speaker 1: When we level down, we accept a life and a value and a purpose of our life that is less than what we were created for and there's nothing but dissatisfaction in that.
Speaker 1: There is no feeling of fulfillment or accomplishment in that.
Speaker 1: So when we choose to do it as God says we are to do it, we level up and the value and the purpose and the meaning of our life goes up.
Speaker 1: Now it comes with a price that we have to pay, but in my experience and I think the Scripture teaches this If you're going to follow the promises of God, that will always be greater than whatever pain comes out of it.
Speaker 1: There's just no comparison, because without consecration there's no real good communication with God.
Speaker 1: So what specifics, I guess, before I move on, what specifics in your life and my life need to be addressed.
Speaker 1: What license do I take?
Speaker 1: What liberties do I take?
Speaker 1: What maybe, as Paul said, legal but not helpful?
Speaker 1: What's in me that is in that category?
Speaker 1: What's not truthful, what's not loving, what's not compassionate, what's not kind, what is destructive and not instructive, that I need to deal with?
Speaker 1: We all have two or three of those things, and that's part of the confrontation he has with these people for three whole days.
Speaker 1: I know what some of you are thinking.
Speaker 1: I'm not real comfortable with all this.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: I spend half my life not comfortable.
Speaker 1: He's not a comfortable God.
Speaker 1: Y'all In that movie, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe remember the famous line, the beaver he's talking to beaver, you know, and the little girl says is he safe?
Speaker 1: Talking about Asylum?
Speaker 1: The lion, who represents Jesus?
Speaker 1: He's fearful, is he safe?
Speaker 1: And the beaver says is he safe?
Speaker 1: Who said anything about being safe?
Speaker 1: No, he's not safe, but he's good and he's the king.
Speaker 1: I tell you, he is the king and there's a part of him.
Speaker 1: Y'all, that's just faith.
Speaker 1: That's fearful, but if you belong to him and you're separated out for his purposes, you don't have to be afraid.
Speaker 1: You just have to be obedient and you just have to be willing to be consecrated for him, because with that comes the communication.
Speaker 1: So now, real quick, let's look at verse 16 through 20.
Speaker 1: So, moses, again, you know he's the messenger of the mediator.
Speaker 1: He goes now and tells them wash ups, third day we're going to seehe's basically saying better, get ready, because in three days you're going to see and hear something you have never seen before.
Speaker 1: So verse 16,.
Speaker 1: On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain and a verynot a loud trumpet, a very loud trumpet blast.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the camp trembled.
Speaker 1: Now Hebrews 12 that I did not read said even Moses is trembling.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen somebody so scared?
Speaker 1: In their trembling they look like they're dancing.
Speaker 1: I think I picture all these people standing down in that valley and it is so overwhelming that that's exactly what they are doing here.
Speaker 1: And here's my other question.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, a trumpet starts blowing.
Speaker 1: Now let me remind you, moses is down on the valley.
Speaker 1: All the people are down in the valley.
Speaker 1: Nobody's on the mountain except God.
Speaker 1: Who's blowing the trumpet?
Speaker 1: It's coming from the mountain.
Speaker 1: This is not a human occurrence.
Speaker 1: 17, then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God and they stood at the foot of the mountain.
Speaker 1: Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it with fire.
Speaker 1: The smoke billowed up fromlike smoke from a furnace.
Speaker 1: The whole mountain trembled violently.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine A force so great that that mountain we just saw is shaking like Jello?
Speaker 1: A lot of commentators have said because there was fire and smoke and all this was a volcanic mountain?
Speaker 1: I don't believe so, and they've not been able to find any extinct volcanoes in that area.
Speaker 1: I don't think God needed a volcano to help him out.
Speaker 1: I think God is God and I think if he decided to put on a show, he's going to put on a show, and if he decided to prove to them once and for all who he was and what he was capable of, he did it, and so it looked like a furnace.
Speaker 1: Verse 20, the Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and he called Moses to the top of the mountain.
Speaker 1: So Moses goes up.
Speaker 1: Here we go again.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful picture God descends to earth and Moses usins to meet God on a high place.
Speaker 1: Hence he is now a mountain man and he is in the presence of the living holy God.
Speaker 1: And this is a moment like unlike any other.
Speaker 1: Until maybe you get to the Mount of Transfiguration in the New Testament, until maybe you read Matthew 28, 2, where it says On another hill called Golgotha, a man hangs on a cross and there's a violent earthquake that shakes the whole city so bad that the curtains are torn down in the temple and there's damage to Herod's temple like never before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that type of effect.
Speaker 1: If you're walking with God, you're going to be that testimony that you're called to be.
Speaker 1: You're going to hear some revelations from God.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are what we call general.
Speaker 1: They apply to all of us.
Speaker 1: We pray and read the Scripture.
Speaker 1: Some of them are specific.
Speaker 1: This is just for you.
Speaker 1: And if you're not, if you're not hearing those, there is a barrier.
Speaker 1: That barrier will be torn down by love, allowing Him to love you.
Speaker 1: And again, an honest assessment do I love Him enough?
Speaker 1: Can I be very frank with you?
Speaker 1: If you're still using the reason for not following Jesus fully I'm too busy, I'm too tired at night, I don't know enough, yet I'm so distracted I've got so many other people to think about.
Speaker 1: Those are not reasons, those are excuses.
Speaker 1: And the bottom line of all of that is you're basically saying to the Lord I just don't love you enough.
Speaker 1: I like you and I like your benefits, but I don't love you enough.
Speaker 1: Here's some good news.
Speaker 1: God always works through broken people.
Speaker 1: Everybody you're going to find in the Scripture are broken people.
Speaker 1: Everybody in the modern day that he uses for His work are broken people.
Speaker 1: He prepares us even through a broken past.
Speaker 1: Moses ends up out in the wilderness because he murdered somebody.
Speaker 1: But when he stops walking he is put into the family of a priest, a Midianite priest, who somehow knows what he will know later.
Speaker 1: There's one God, his name is Jehovah Yahweh God, and I'm going to introduce you to Him.
Speaker 1: That's no coincidence.
Speaker 1: There's no coincidence that he has a daughter who Moses ends up marrying and they spend 40 years together.
Speaker 1: His father-in-law is a priest and when the time comes, that revelation, he's able to do it.
Speaker 1: He doesn't think he can do it, but he's been prepared to do it.
Speaker 1: So why can't I just add Him to my list of stuff that is not of God?
Speaker 1: I'm not killing anybody, I'm not hurting other people necessarily.
Speaker 1: I'm just adding Him to some vices and stuff I love to do, because 1 Peter 1.16 is the reminder be holy, because I am holy.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean perfect.
Speaker 1: We can't get there.
Speaker 1: We're all broken.
Speaker 1: What it means is set apart, be different, be a little bit off-center there.
Speaker 1: That's what we're called to do.
Speaker 1: Give me real quickly, give you some advantages to yourself If you decide, I'm in for this, being set apart today.
Speaker 1: If I'm not today, I'm going to reorder my life.
Speaker 1: I'm going to confess, repent.
Speaker 1: I want to be set apart for God's glory.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do the uncomfortable things.
Speaker 1: There's some advantages just to you to do it.
Speaker 1: We're doing it for God, but man he always blesses.
Speaker 1: One is obedience.
Speaker 1: It means your obedience will be a lot easier.
Speaker 1: You can do the hard things that you didn't think you could do.
Speaker 1: There is fellowship with God.
Speaker 1: You'll never be closer to God than you are after that never.
Speaker 1: Also, you'll know yourself better.
Speaker 1: The best way to know yourself is to know God.
Speaker 1: The best way to know your wife or your husband is to know God, because God created him or her, and so there's a lot of reasons that do it, and that's why I say if you are willing to do that, the promises of God are always going to be greater than the pain that comes with that.
Speaker 1: And there will be some.
Speaker 1: I'm going to shoot straight with you.
Speaker 1: There too, there will be some.
Speaker 1: So if you turn a page in your Bible, there is chapter 20 staring at us.
Speaker 1: Chapter 20 will not happen unless chapter 19 is honored and obeyed and respected.
Speaker 1: This takes three trips up and down that mountain, three days of purification and consecration.
Speaker 1: Three times.
Speaker 1: God says don't let them touch this mountain, you get the idea that there's something significant to three.
Speaker 1: There is A couple of thousand years.
Speaker 1: After this, a man is killed and he's buried, and on the third day he is resurrected oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: And let me close with one more little bit of Hebrews 12.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you you need to read Hebrews 12, especially here in 2023.
Speaker 1: Check this out.
Speaker 1: Verses 26 through 29.
Speaker 1: At that time, his voice shook.
Speaker 1: That's God's voice, remember.
Speaker 1: He's going back.
Speaker 1: He's describing and explaining Exodus 19.
Speaker 1: At that time, his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens For them.
Speaker 1: That was definitely futuristic for us.
Speaker 1: We may be living it.
Speaker 1: It may some of it's futuristic also, I'm sure, but I'm going to shake the earth and also everything around the earth.
Speaker 1: 27,.
Speaker 1: The words once more indicate the removing of what can be shaken.
Speaker 1: It is all the created things, so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Verse 28, therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and worship God acceptably, with reverence and awe.
Speaker 1: Here we are back.
Speaker 1: We've completed the loop.
Speaker 1: We're reverencing God by worshiping Him as set-apart people, because we're after the one thing that this world will not see shaken, which is the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: Guess who that is?
Speaker 1: That's me and you.
Speaker 1: And then he closes it out with a simple statement that you've heard, for our God is a consuming fire.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: He's to be loved and he's to be adored, but he's also to be reverenced, because when Jesus comes the second time, there'll be a lot of fire going on.
Speaker 1: And so thank you, thank you for being serious about your faith, and thank you, many of you, for being able to relate to my statement.
Speaker 1: I've already said a couple of times is I'm willing to follow the promises of God because that's so much greater than whatever pain I'm going to endure.
Speaker 1: That's always the greatest plan.
Speaker 1: Watchman Neil, a long time ago, says with consecration there is perfect peace.
Speaker 1: You don't have that perfect peace today.
Speaker 1: As Eddie comes forward to lead us, you can know that perfect peace and we can help you down front.
Speaker 1: Love to pray for whatever you're, whoever you have on your mind.
Speaker 1: Love to celebrate If you need a church home, you need to be baptized, something like that, and this is where God has led you to the Spirit.
Speaker 1: Love to talk about that also.
Speaker 1: So why don't you stand and let me pray for you?
Speaker 1: Father, thank you for your love, thank you for yourthank you that you are so other.
Speaker 1: We do not want a weak, flawed, ineffectual God.
Speaker 1: We want the one, true God and Lord, our pursuit make us people who just want you.
Speaker 1: We love your benefits, but we just want you because if we have you, we have the one thing that this world will never see shaken.
Speaker 1: And so we know Jesus is responsible.
Speaker 1: Amen.