SPEAKER_00: This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01: Father, that's a bold request.
SPEAKER_01: We ask that your presence would fill the atmosphere.
SPEAKER_01: It means that we are asking that it fills all of us.
SPEAKER_01: When we say show us your glory, we're asking your glory to come to bear on everything that we encounter, every responsibility we have, everything we do.
SPEAKER_01: And it will change the way that we parent, it will change the way that we do our job.
SPEAKER_01: It will change the way that we relate to our parents.
SPEAKER_01: It will change the way that we relate to unbelievers.
SPEAKER_01: Saying, God, bring your glory and your presence to bear on my life.
SPEAKER_01: Changes the way that we see the life in which we live.
SPEAKER_01: It changes the way that we see things that happen, like happened this week in Charleston.
SPEAKER_01: As we cry with them and we grieve with them and we pray with them.
SPEAKER_01: More than that, we ask for your presence and your glory to land on that place.
SPEAKER_01: And Father, we say that we know that you are a speaking God.
SPEAKER_01: And we say that we're listening.
SPEAKER_01: And we trust you.
SPEAKER_01: And we praise things your name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You can have a seat.
SPEAKER_01: Well, my name is Wade Collier, and I'm the missions and outreach pastor here at Grand Parkway.
SPEAKER_01: Normally, our lead pastor Neil McClendon is up here teaching from God's Word, but this week he is uh doing a youth camp.
SPEAKER_01: If you have been here for any amount of time, you know that Neil used to do that quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01: I remember my first year here, um, I think he had something like 10 camps that summer.
SPEAKER_01: Um and so now he is down to one.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you've been around Neil when he gets in summer camp mode, um I'll just say this pray for the children that are getting all of his angst and compression in one week.
SPEAKER_01: Um But no, we we're praying for him and um and praying that God uses him in big ways as he is at camp this week.
SPEAKER_01: Um we are continuing on this morning um in the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: So if you have your Bible, let me uh ask you to turn with me to Exodus 2.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a Bible, if you look to your left and your right, you'll probably see a hardcover pew Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Uh feel free to use that.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a Bible, if you came here today and you don't have one, take that Bible with you as a gift from us.
SPEAKER_01: We want you to have that.
SPEAKER_01: Um we are walking through the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: Last week Neil left us um Exodus 2, verse 10 is where he finished.
SPEAKER_01: So this morning um we'll pick up in verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus 2, verse 11 says this.
SPEAKER_01: One day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and he looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.
SPEAKER_01: He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian, and he hid him in the sand.
SPEAKER_01: When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together.
SPEAKER_01: And he said to the man in the wrong, Why do you strike your compan your companion?
SPEAKER_01: And he answered, Who made you prince and judge over us?
SPEAKER_01: Do you mean to kill me as you killed that Egyptian?
SPEAKER_01: Then Moses was afraid, and he thought, Surely this thing is known.
SPEAKER_01: And when Pharaoh heard of it he sought to kill Moses.
SPEAKER_01: But Moses fled from Pharaoh, and he stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.
SPEAKER_01: Now the priests of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and they drew water, and they filled the troughs to water their father's flock.
SPEAKER_01: And the shepherds came and they drove them away, but Moses stood up and he saved them, and he watered their flock.
SPEAKER_01: And when they came home to their father Raoul, he said to them, How is it that you have come home so soon today?
SPEAKER_01: They said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and he even drew water for us, and he watered the flock.
SPEAKER_01: And so he said to his daughters, Then where is he?
SPEAKER_01: Why have you left the man?
SPEAKER_01: Call him, that he may eat bread.
SPEAKER_01: And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah, and she gave birth to a son, and he called him Goshom, for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: And during those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery, and they cried out for help.
SPEAKER_01: Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: God saw the people of Israel, and God knew.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is my second opportunity in three years to get to preach on Father's Day, and it is interesting in God's sovereignty how he ties his word together, um pointing to him as Father.
SPEAKER_01: A couple years ago, we were going through a series of parables, and I got to preach the parable of the prodigal son.
SPEAKER_01: And today I have this opportunity to preach this passage that is this great representation of one, our Heavenly Father, and two, what our posture should be before the Heavenly Father, what it can be, what it should be.
SPEAKER_01: And so this morning, we're gonna look at just that in this sermon titled Posture Before Your Father.
SPEAKER_01: Posture before your father.
SPEAKER_01: You hear that word posture, and your immediate thoughts maybe go to, hey, sit up straight, don't slouch.
SPEAKER_01: Um obviously posture.
SPEAKER_01: Um this week as I tried to think of the best and most tangible illustration for posture.
SPEAKER_01: I kept striving and trying to be a creative pastor and think of something, some, some neat and innovative way to talk about posture, and then it landed on my lap this Friday.
SPEAKER_01: Uh went to the woodlands, took my kids with me, um, and we ended up going to a pool there.
SPEAKER_01: And my daughter, my oldest, wanted to ride the big slide.
SPEAKER_01: And so for the first time in her life, she had to go pass a swim test.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so um I said, You want me to go with you to take the swim test?
SPEAKER_01: If you met my daughter, this will be no surprise to you.
SPEAKER_01: She said, No, I got it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm six years old, I'm taking on the world, so she's marched off without me.
SPEAKER_01: Um, with two little companions behind her and followed the lifeguard and went to take the swim test.
SPEAKER_01: Um, in about five minutes, they returned, and I didn't even have to ask how it went.
SPEAKER_01: Um, my daughter came walking, barely touching the ground, so full of joy and confidence.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and the two girls behind her crying their eyes out.
SPEAKER_01: Um, without even asking a question, I could tell by their posture that my daughter had passed the swim test and the other girls had not.
SPEAKER_01: Um I share that because uh I believe in the same way our posture before our Heavenly Father is not only telling, but it's also representative of if we trust him and as well as how we see ourselves as his children.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we continue on in Exodus this morning, we see three postures that most of us can relate to today.
SPEAKER_01: Whether we are in one, we are coming out of one, we're trying to figure out where we are.
SPEAKER_01: The first one we see in this text is the posture of running.
SPEAKER_01: Is the posture of running.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean by a running posture?
SPEAKER_01: Look back to the beginning of our passage in verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: I want to read this again with the theme of the posture of running.
SPEAKER_01: It says, One day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and he looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.
SPEAKER_01: He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian, and he hid him in the sand.
SPEAKER_01: And when he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together.
SPEAKER_01: And he said to the man in the wrong, Why do you strike your companion?
SPEAKER_01: He answered, Who made you prince and judge over us?
SPEAKER_01: Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?
SPEAKER_01: Then Moses was afraid, and he thought, Surely the thing is known.
SPEAKER_01: When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses.
SPEAKER_01: But Moses fled from Pharaoh, and he stayed in the land of Midian.
SPEAKER_01: For many of us in here, if we have taken the posture of running, if we are in this season of where we are trying to run from God, most of us it's because we've decided that we're just burnt out on being good.
SPEAKER_01: We're burnt out on doing the right thing.
SPEAKER_01: We're burnt out on listening to God.
SPEAKER_01: And Moses felt this way.
SPEAKER_01: How do we know?
SPEAKER_01: Because instead of waiting for God to make him prince over his people, which he would, instead of waiting for God's timing to make him judge over their affairs, which he would, he took it into his own hands.
SPEAKER_01: It says when he grew up, he went outside, he sees this Egyptian beating an Israelite.
SPEAKER_01: He says he looks left and right, he takes the Egyptian, he strikes him down, he kills him, and he buries him in a shallow grave.
SPEAKER_01: And you might be thinking, what's the big deal?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: He saw injustice, he acted.
SPEAKER_01: Don't turn there, it's going to be on the screens behind me, but Stephen represents this in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_01: This is Acts chapter 7, verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: It'll be on the screens behind me.
SPEAKER_01: It says this When he was forty years old, it came into his heart, Moses, to visit his brothers, the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And seeing one of them being wrong, he defended the oppressed man and he avenged him by striking down the Egyptian.
SPEAKER_01: Hear this.
SPEAKER_01: He supposed that his brothers would have understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand.
SPEAKER_01: Did you hear that?
SPEAKER_01: Salvation by his hand.
SPEAKER_01: Moses decided that it was his.
SPEAKER_01: It's not the killing of the Egyptian.
SPEAKER_01: And know that theologians for years and will continue for years to debate whether or not this was sin and Moses was wrong for killing the Egyptian.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that act of doing it.
SPEAKER_01: It's Moses' posture of deciding that his justice and his wisdom is right.
SPEAKER_01: And it trumps that of his heavenly father.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what begins this posture of running that we're looking at.
SPEAKER_01: And so the question is, how else do you identify your posture of running?
SPEAKER_01: We talked about the fact that maybe you are just tired of being good.
SPEAKER_01: You've been good, you've done the right thing your whole life, and you're just done.
SPEAKER_01: You've been burnt.
SPEAKER_01: You haven't been rewarded like you think you should be rewarded for doing the right thing.
SPEAKER_01: And so then, either subconsciously or consciously, you take on this posture of running.
SPEAKER_01: You find yourself always hiding or having to make excuses for what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean by hiding or making excuses?
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 12 again.
SPEAKER_01: It says, He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and he hid him in the sand.
SPEAKER_01: If what you're doing is okay and your posture is right with God, why do you have to hide it?
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk to this side.
SPEAKER_01: If your posture is right and what you're doing is correct and honoring to God, then why do you have to hide it?
SPEAKER_01: But yet we see Moses in this posture of running.
SPEAKER_01: And why?
SPEAKER_01: Way back in the dawn of creation, when Adam and Eve lived life in the garden, they had a pretty sweet deal, right?
SPEAKER_01: Until until that was a good accent.
SPEAKER_01: Until they they began to make mistakes and begin to think that they knew better than God.
SPEAKER_01: But before that happened, if you read in Genesis 2.25, it says that they felt no shame.
SPEAKER_01: Remember that?
SPEAKER_01: It says they were naked and they felt no shame.
SPEAKER_01: But look how the tables turn once they be think they once they begin to think that they are in control.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis 3.8, it says, Toward the evening they heard the Lord God walking about in the garden, so they hid themselves among the trees.
SPEAKER_01: Basically, God's coming.
SPEAKER_01: Quick, go hide in the trees.
SPEAKER_01: I remember even as a really young believer, one of the first things I was ever asked to teach was Genesis 3.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember teaching Genesis 3, and it was ludicrous 20 years ago, and it is ludicrous today that you could actually convince yourself that you could hide from God.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Quick, go run in the trees and hide from omnipresent, all-seeing, all-knowing God.
SPEAKER_01: But the sad thing is, is this incident begins and it marks the beginning of humankind's tendency to try to hide from God.
SPEAKER_01: We're still trying to hide from God today.
SPEAKER_01: What we have to remember, church, is that whatever is done in secret is not really secret at all.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say that again.
SPEAKER_01: We have to remember that what is done in secret is not really secret at all.
SPEAKER_01: If you look left and you look right and no one's looking, and you bury your sins in a shallow grave, it's not secret at all.
SPEAKER_01: Even if we've been able to fool our family and our friends, which some of us have become really good at, God is not fooled.
SPEAKER_01: It says in Job 34 that he carefully watches the way people live, he sees everything they do.
SPEAKER_01: So what you have to realize in this posture of running is our attempts to hide our sin amount to nothing more than trying to hide among the trees.
SPEAKER_01: I was having coffee with a friend of mine uh this week whose name rhymes with Neil McClendon, and he said something to the effect of if I was preaching this passage, I would ask how many people have buried some sins in the sand, and now we fooled ourselves into thinking we could run from them.
SPEAKER_01: I spared you my Neil McClendon impression.
SPEAKER_01: You're welcome.
SPEAKER_01: So, in honor of Father's Day, if you really want to know if you're running, fathers, let me challenge you to do this.
SPEAKER_01: Ask your family some questions.
SPEAKER_01: And you're thinking, dude, it's Father's Day.
SPEAKER_01: All right, give me a three-point sermon about how fatherhood is hard.
SPEAKER_01: Convince my family how awesome I am.
SPEAKER_01: Let me go home and get my tie and golf balls, get free lunch and a nap.
SPEAKER_01: I guarantee you I'm gonna go home and get some sweet swag.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna get a nap, and I'm gonna convince my family I'm so awesome they should take me to Rudy's.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: But at dinner, here's the questions I I'm gonna promise you that I that I want to ask my family, and I and I want to encourage you to do the same.
SPEAKER_01: Fathers, mothers.
SPEAKER_01: Um if you want an odd if you want an honest answer, ask the people that spend the most time with you.
SPEAKER_01: Ask this.
SPEAKER_01: What's most important to me?
SPEAKER_01: And here's the deal, here's the rules on these.
SPEAKER_01: You can't frame the question, you can't manipulate them and try to I love you so much.
SPEAKER_01: What's most important to me?
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is so good to us.
SPEAKER_01: What's most important?
SPEAKER_01: You can't do any of that.
SPEAKER_01: Just what is most important to me?
SPEAKER_01: God?
SPEAKER_01: Money?
SPEAKER_01: Stuff?
SPEAKER_01: Food?
SPEAKER_01: Alcohol?
SPEAKER_01: Sports?
SPEAKER_01: Here's another fun question.
SPEAKER_01: You guys excited?
SPEAKER_01: I can tell.
SPEAKER_01: You guys are excited.
SPEAKER_01: Am I teachable?
SPEAKER_01: Do you experience me as teachable?
SPEAKER_01: Here's a follow-up question for that one.
SPEAKER_01: How do I handle instruction or rebuke?
SPEAKER_01: I'm just having it here.
SPEAKER_01: Did you feel that?
SPEAKER_01: That was good.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not gonna ask anybody any questions, let me let me just follow up on that one because I think there's there's a there's a reason that one lands heavy.
SPEAKER_01: You should have been in here in the first service.
SPEAKER_01: You could have cut it with a knife in here.
SPEAKER_01: Here's how you know that you're not very teachable.
SPEAKER_01: You are easily offended when uh those who are in leadership or used to be in leadership of you question what you do because you feel like you don't owe them any explanation.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you know you see, and you feel we felt it in here now, too.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you know you're not teachable.
SPEAKER_01: Here's a good question.
SPEAKER_01: When's the last time we prayed together?
SPEAKER_01: I offered myself on the altar in the first service, I'll do it in this one too.
SPEAKER_01: So my wife went out of town for a couple days and um doing the nighttime routine.
SPEAKER_01: I know I'm the only sinner parent in here that would do this.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was a late night, we've been going, going, going.
SPEAKER_01: And I had this thought and I acted on it.
SPEAKER_01: Reading to my daughter, and I thought, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I know mom will pray with her tomorrow when she gets home, so I'm just gonna go ahead and shut this thing down for the night.
SPEAKER_01: I know I'm the only sinner in here.
SPEAKER_01: You guys would never do such a thing.
SPEAKER_01: When was the last time we prayed together?
SPEAKER_01: Lastly, do you think I trust God and his word?
SPEAKER_01: Do you think I trust God and His Word?
SPEAKER_01: Because when we're running, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever the outcome, whatever, if you're running and you're done running, if you're coming out of a season of running, if you're like, that's me and I'm running, here's the reality you can live in, as you can give thanks to God that he allows you to see yourself for what you really are.
SPEAKER_01: Weak, prone to sin, and utterly dependent.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what you find at the end of the run.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what you also find at the same time, you can praise him for who he proves to be.
SPEAKER_01: He's your all-sufficient father.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what you're gonna find at the end of running.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna find an all-sufficient father when you recognize the fact that God is all-sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: And let me just take a minute, I want to insult your intelligence here, but let me unpack that all-sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: That means that God is good enough in everything.
SPEAKER_01: And he's good enough for everything.
SPEAKER_01: Being a father, all sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: Being a mother, all sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: Infertility, all sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: Running, all sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: When you recognize your father as an all-sufficient God, it causes the blinders to fall off and allows you to see that you're running and allows you to see your sin in perspective.
SPEAKER_01: And bigger than that, it allows you to see your sin in light of your father's grace.
SPEAKER_01: And here's why I bring up grace, because in this season of running, grace is it's it's it's not just simple leniency when you sinned.
SPEAKER_01: If it was, it would just be one more excuse.
SPEAKER_01: It'd be one more excuse to keep running.
SPEAKER_01: One more step in your posture of running.
SPEAKER_01: John Piper puts it this way he says, Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin.
SPEAKER_01: It's before the sin, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's the enabling gift of God not to sin.
SPEAKER_01: Grace is power, not just pardon.
SPEAKER_01: Which is why the next posture we see Moses take is not only possible, but it's necessary.
SPEAKER_01: And that's resting.
SPEAKER_01: We've looked at running and now resting.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of you in here know the story, know that soon after this, Moses is going to find himself returning back to Egypt, back to Pharaoh's court.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna have to face his posture, his past postures of running.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna have to face his bodies buried in shallow graves in the sand.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna have to face that his belief and his will and his effort trump that of his heavenly father.
SPEAKER_01: But before that, in preparation for that, God delivers him into this season and this posture of rest.
SPEAKER_01: It's in this posture of rest that if you trust God, you'll see that his grace isn't only amazing, but it's necessary.
SPEAKER_01: It's when you rest in the arms of your all-sufficient father that you realize that his grace isn't only amazing, but that it's necessary.
SPEAKER_01: Look back in verse 15 of Exodus 2, it says, But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.
SPEAKER_01: Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and they drew water, and they filled the troughs to water their father's flock.
SPEAKER_01: And the shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them and watered the flock.
SPEAKER_01: And when they came home to their father Raoul, he said to them, How is it that you have come home so soon today?
SPEAKER_01: And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and even drew water for us and watered the flock.
SPEAKER_01: And he said to his daughters, Then where is he?
SPEAKER_01: Why have you left the man?
SPEAKER_01: Call him, that he may eat bread.
SPEAKER_01: And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah.
SPEAKER_01: And she gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gorshom, for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: And I think what God does is he gives us this passage and he shows us what rest can be and the benefits of it.
SPEAKER_01: But before that, I think we also have the opportunity to look at some obstacles, and for the sake of time, I just want to look at two of each.
SPEAKER_01: I want to look at two obstacles and two benefits that come from this posture of rest.
SPEAKER_01: The first obstacle that we see from Moses' example, the obstacle for us for embracing rest, as Neil says time and time again to us sitting down on the inside, is we misunderstand the posture of rest.
SPEAKER_01: We misunderstand the posture of rest.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I mean by that.
SPEAKER_01: If we're not careful, we take this opportunity to rest.
SPEAKER_01: And instead of just leaning in to what God has as he is calling us to rest, what we do is we just tack it on to our posture of running.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I mean by that.
SPEAKER_01: Look at Moses in verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Moses fled from Pharaoh and he stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.
SPEAKER_01: Moses wasn't resting, he just ran out of gas.
SPEAKER_01: He was just tired and he crashed.
SPEAKER_01: That's not resting.
SPEAKER_01: For many of us, when we hear verses like Psalm 62, we have no frame of reference.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 62, where David says, Truly my soul finds rest in God.
SPEAKER_01: My salvation comes from him.
SPEAKER_01: Truly he is my rock and my salvation.
SPEAKER_01: He is my fortress.
SPEAKER_01: I will never be shaken.
SPEAKER_01: Or we hear Jesus' words in Matthew 11, 28, where he says this, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_01: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and um and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
SPEAKER_01: We read these and we can't relate.
SPEAKER_01: We can't relate because we're not resting.
SPEAKER_01: We're just sucking air from all of our running, and we want God to come alongside us and deliver us, deliver for us on demand just because we're gassed.
SPEAKER_01: I was preparing for this and I was reminded of about 10 years ago when Sally and I were first married, we went on a ski trip with some college friends.
SPEAKER_01: And there was about 10 of us, and we caravanned up in three cars.
SPEAKER_01: And we were taking off for this trip.
SPEAKER_01: A giant blizzard was blowing in from the northeast, which promised great snow, but made our drive up and the prospects of the drive-up a little bit tricky.
SPEAKER_01: And so we started heading north, got to about Dallas, and we started seeing signs that they were closing roads.
SPEAKER_01: And I had a buddy of mine who was an army pilot, and I knew he was sitting in front of a radar up in Colorado Springs, and so he was uh we were just kept talking on the cell phone.
SPEAKER_01: He'd go, Okay, you can go north now, run west.
SPEAKER_01: And so then we take off and we go west and try to avoid the storm, and he'd find us a path north.
SPEAKER_01: And as the hours went on, it became very clear that we needed to just shut.
SPEAKER_01: This thing down and not try to keep going north.
SPEAKER_01: And so, as the leader of the group, always reasonable and sensible, as we pulled up to a road that had some construction barriers in front of it, as as the responsible leader, I thought, man, those those barriers are optional.
SPEAKER_01: Those are for people who don't feel confident driving on a country road covered in ice with no shoulders.
SPEAKER_01: I feel confident.
SPEAKER_01: And so I led my friends in three cars, and we kept going, and I'm running out of gas, and I can see it I'm past the E, and now I'm past the red on the E, and we keep thinking, next town.
SPEAKER_01: Well, they weren't really towns, and then we find ourselves completely out of gas with a blizzard bearing down on us.
SPEAKER_01: Cars spun out into pastures.
SPEAKER_01: And so we hiked over and found a pig farmer and uh begged him to siphon out some gas out of his truck into my truck.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and he did, and we found our way back and ended up spending the night in a Red Cross shelter that had been set up in an elementary school in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
SPEAKER_01: Let me repeat that.
SPEAKER_01: Las Vegas, New Mexico.
SPEAKER_01: No flashing lights in buffets, my friends, in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
SPEAKER_01: And we woke up in the morning, the roads were clear, and we were on our way.
SPEAKER_01: And it was this great reminder of just giving up, of just letting it go.
SPEAKER_01: Because taking every route I could put together and try to make it happen wasn't working.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't until I just gave up, put my hands up and gave up control.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to define, if you want to get one thing from this today, what is rest?
SPEAKER_01: Giving up control.
SPEAKER_01: We're an honest bunch in here.
SPEAKER_01: For some of us in here, we've just stopped.
SPEAKER_01: We've just checked out.
SPEAKER_01: We're like, all right, I'll see you at Father's Day lunch.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not giving up control.
SPEAKER_01: Hang that sermon.
SPEAKER_01: You can't find rest if you're in control.
SPEAKER_01: Because who's in control of the rest?
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say all sufficient Wade.
SPEAKER_01: All sufficient Ronnie.
SPEAKER_01: It says all sufficient God, right?
SPEAKER_01: So here's our other obstacle.
SPEAKER_01: We misrepresent rest, but we also misrepresent God and we misunderstand God.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean?
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: It said, Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah, and she gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gorshom, for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: Back in that Acts chapter 7 passage that I referenced earlier, Stephen tells us that Moses was in Midian for 40 years.
SPEAKER_01: So he ran, and for 40 years before God brought him back into Pharaoh's court, he spent 40 years in Midian, and during those forty years of God given rest, Moses marries Zipporah, and he has a son.
SPEAKER_01: But Moses so misunderstands God, and he so misunderstands rest and he must so misunderstands God and what he's doing that he names his son after his misunderstanding.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean?
SPEAKER_01: He names his son Gershom.
SPEAKER_01: Gershom literally means banished.
SPEAKER_01: He names his son banished.
SPEAKER_01: Moses has completely missed it.
SPEAKER_01: The Midians are followers of the one true God.
SPEAKER_01: They were worshipers of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: God had taken Moses out of this idolatrous Egyptian culture and put him in a community of God followers and given him a wife and given him a son and given him community and family.
SPEAKER_01: And what he has done in turn is he has then put his posture of running right onto his son.
SPEAKER_01: So much so he named his son after his running posture from God and names and banishment.
SPEAKER_01: So since it's Father's Day, I'll continue on with my happy clappy message and ask you a couple more questions.
SPEAKER_01: Dads, if you want to know why I asked you the questions before, is because God has given fathers this mantle of leadership to set the standard for what our posture towards God should be, what our wives' posture towards God should be, what our children's posture towards God should be.
SPEAKER_01: So, in light of that, here's a question just for my dads today.
SPEAKER_01: Where do you find rest?
SPEAKER_01: Where would your kids say you find rest?
SPEAKER_01: Where would your wife say you find rest?
SPEAKER_01: Is it in your recliner with a six-pack in Sports Center?
SPEAKER_01: Or is it in the hands of the all-sufficient God?
SPEAKER_01: Before you check out on me, I'm not saying that you can't have a beer.
SPEAKER_01: If you're of legal age, the Bible says, just says don't get drunk.
SPEAKER_01: It says, don't watch the fourth repeat of Sports Center.
SPEAKER_01: It says it right there in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It says, don't watch that fourth repeat to avoid intentionally engaging with your kids and your family.
SPEAKER_01: To then show them the posture of rest.
SPEAKER_01: Because if you truly seek to take the posture of the all-sufficient father, you're going to reap the benefits.
SPEAKER_01: Here are the benefits of rest.
SPEAKER_01: You still with me?
SPEAKER_01: You get to trust in God's provision.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I mean by that.
SPEAKER_01: Moses, he's sitting at the well.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, he's gassed.
SPEAKER_01: And the last time he got in trouble, the last time he saw injustice, he acted on his own.
SPEAKER_01: He decided he was prince, he decided he was judge, he was jury, and he killed a guy and buried him in a shallow grave.
SPEAKER_01: This time he sees injustice.
SPEAKER_01: And instead, he goes and he provides water for Jethro's daughters and their sheep in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that important?
SPEAKER_01: Why is that a big deal?
SPEAKER_01: Because it's oftentimes in these seasons of rest that God begins to build these patterns of trust in you.
SPEAKER_01: Because fast forward 15 chapters from here, and God is going to use Moses to provide water for his people.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to use God to provide, or he's going to use Moses, rather, to provide water for the animals and for the flocks.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that a big deal?
SPEAKER_01: Because God is building this pattern of trust in the fact that he is the provider and it's his provision.
SPEAKER_01: And that's found when we rest.
SPEAKER_01: It's not found when we're busy.
SPEAKER_01: It's not found when we're trying to fool everybody and make everybody think that we're we got it all together.
SPEAKER_01: It's found in rest.
SPEAKER_01: And we also reap the benefit of living in blessing.
SPEAKER_01: It says in verse 21 that Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Sepporah, and she gave birth to a son.
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing when we cease running and take on this posture of rest that our Father blesses us with what he knows that we need.
SPEAKER_01: Community, family, and rest.
SPEAKER_01: As we close, this last posture that we see in the text is the posture of responding.
SPEAKER_01: The posture of response or responding.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: It says, During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery, and they cried out for help.
SPEAKER_01: Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: God saw the people of Israel and God knew.
SPEAKER_01: Why is this a big deal from response?
SPEAKER_01: We don't even hear about Moses in here.
SPEAKER_01: It's a big deal because our response is shaped and dictated by God's response.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I mean by that.
SPEAKER_01: It says that their cry came to God.
SPEAKER_01: It says that he heard their groaning.
SPEAKER_01: He was moved.
SPEAKER_01: He remembered.
SPEAKER_01: He saw his people and he knew.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean by our response is shaped by God's response?
SPEAKER_01: Because in the very next chapter, God's going to call Moses.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to call him, he's going to send him back into Pharaoh's court.
SPEAKER_01: And that response of Moses is dictated because of God's response.
SPEAKER_01: Not too long ago, there was a sermon I heard in here where the man standing up here talked about how God can be moved by the prayers of his people.
SPEAKER_01: God is being moved.
SPEAKER_01: It says he remembers.
SPEAKER_01: It says he hears.
SPEAKER_01: It says he sees.
SPEAKER_01: And he responds to his people, and his posture of response then allows us to respond.
SPEAKER_01: It's an invitation.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I can't shake the thought of the Father and the Prodigal Son story.
SPEAKER_01: Says that while he was still a long way off, the Father saw him.
SPEAKER_01: God, you have this posture of invitation.
SPEAKER_01: You have this posture of welcoming home, of I've seen it all, I know it all.
SPEAKER_01: Come home.
SPEAKER_01: Come home and rest.
SPEAKER_01: Come home and stop running.
SPEAKER_01: Come answer my invitation to respond.
SPEAKER_01: So before I close this morning, some of you, some of you, it is weighed heavy on you.
SPEAKER_01: That's me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm running.
SPEAKER_01: And God's been calling, and I've been running.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm tired of running.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not just gassed.
SPEAKER_01: I'm ready to rest.
SPEAKER_01: I'm ready to rest in the hands of the all-sufficient God.
SPEAKER_01: It's a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: God, if for those people, God, I pray that you move.
SPEAKER_01: That you are like a third base coach waving them home.
SPEAKER_01: Because that truth is, you're doing that for all of us.
SPEAKER_01: God, we say we trust you and we love you.
SPEAKER_01: We pray sings your name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Put your hands out like this.
SPEAKER_01: He's heard you.
SPEAKER_01: He sees you.
SPEAKER_01: He says that he knows.
SPEAKER_01: We get to live in light of that.
SPEAKER_01: We get to respond to that.
SPEAKER_01: So go, live, respond in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.