Mark Whitcomb
Exodus 2
July 14, 2024
Hinson Baptist Church Sermons
The Hall of Faith...Moses
Well, I am slowly approaching halfway through my life. And I've learned a few lessons in my short time so far in this life. And some of that is to realize that life is often a progression of difficult circumstances. Now, I don't want you to be discouraged first thing this morning, but I want to bring the reality of life, starting with small babies. Oh, they face conflict and difficult circumstances. They need to be fed. They need diapers changed. Now, as adults, we look at that and say, well, it's a fairly simple thing. It's not a hard conflict. Surely they'll overcome such circumstances in time. And then they grow into grade schoolers and now they need snacks. They have fights with their friends. They need more toys. Really hard circumstances, right? We look at their difficulties and we think with small children, that isn't that bad. Well, then you get into high school, right? And now we start dealing with hard relationships. Oh, the pressures of excelling in school or extracurriculars or, oh man, driving, right? Getting a license, right? Conflicts in life that come up as a high schooler. Then we move into young adulthood and the relationships can get more complex and harder. The studies become more serious and now I have to think about a career. I have to think about how to manage my finances and will I get married and will I have children and should I rent or own a house or live in a van or get a job or not get a job or now I have to think about money and the conflict and the hardships seem to keep multiplying. And then you get into older adulthood. And now you have to care for those kids and the adult children that you tried to raise. You have to figure out a new way to love them and then you have to think about the politics of this world and social status and finances and our own health and the end of life decisions and the conflict and the circumstances that are difficult as children only get more complicated the older we get. This is a reality of life and I don't think any of us in this room are unaware of this. We each face our own difficulties. We each wish that they would all go away and that life would be easier. And yet I don't think for any of us in this room that has actually happened. If you found a way to get rid of all of your difficulties please let me know. I would be very interested to hear how you've done that. No instead we grapple with them, we fight with them, we manage the circumstances we seek to find ways out and yet there are struggles that we just don't know the answers to. We don't know how it's going to turn out, we don't know what it will look like in the coming weeks and months and you know it just be a lot easier to face my difficulties if I knew what the end result was going to be. If I knew how it was all going to turn out boy that would make my difficult situation a lot easier to face. Instead it's easier to respond and fear, anxiety and doubts because I don't know what's going to happen five years from now, ten years from now, tomorrow morning. But we know from experience that our difficult circumstances aren't made better because we grow an infinite knowledge and wisdom as we get older. Oh yeah we learn things, we learn how to work through difficult things, we grow and mature. But we need outside knowledge don't we? We need someone else to intervene. And so the question I would challenge us all to be thinking about this morning as we walk through our texts, who do you have faith in when life is hard? Who do you have faith in? Who do you look for for knowledge and wisdom to get through the hard circumstances of life? There's one main idea that I want to pull from our text this morning and help us see in the text and it is this, our faith in God during difficult circumstances reminds us that God knows. Our faith in God during difficult circumstances reminds us that God knows. Today we're going to find ourselves in Exodus chapter two. I would encourage you to turn there in your Bibles. It's towards the beginning of the Bible. You will find Exodus chapter two on page 47 of the Pew Bible. We're going to cover the whole chapter. And thankfully our Scripture reading in Acts seven helped give us some context. But let me quickly remind you of the context. I have been preaching kind of sporadically over the last couple of years through the Hall of Faith. Now the Hall of Faith is found in Hebrews 11 where there are Old Testament saints pointed out to us who responded in faith in all of their different circumstances. And today we're going to focus on Moses. The last sermon that I preached, we ended with the life of Joseph. He had brought his family, the people of Israel, to the land of Egypt. He had providentially spared their lives during a famine. He had provided for them. He had cared for them. And he helps them land there. And we see his life end at the end of Genesis. And now in the beginning of Exodus chapter one, we find out that there's a new king in Egypt who thinks very little of the people of Israel. In fact, he doesn't like them a whole lot. And so he adds to their pain and suffering. He makes them slaves. And he's demanding that they kill their sons who were born to them. He's demanding that their population stay small and that he can maintain control over them out of fear of the Israelites. And this is the context where we find the story of Moses. In a place where there is deep persecution, where there is the death of many young boys in Israel and a ruler who is against God's plan. It is clear that even to the Israelites, there were many unknowns of their circumstances. How on earth would they get out of Egypt? How would they get out from this oppression? How would they be rescued? They had a lot of unknowns. I want us to walk through this text and think about our own circumstances. As much as the people of Israel are going through their difficulties, we can learn from this story how to face the difficulties in our own life. So I'm going to have three points this morning. The first of which is to have faith in times of risk. Have faith in times of risk. We're going to look at verses 1 through 10, would you follow along as I read in Exodus 2 verses 1 to 10. Now a man from the family of Levi married a Levi woman. The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with asphalt and pitch. She placed the child in it and said it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. Then his sister stood at a distance in order to see what would happen to him. Pharaoh's daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds, sent her slave girl, took it, opened it and saw him, the child. And there he was, a little boy, crying. She felt sorry for him and said, "This is one of the Hebrew boys." Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Should I go and call a Hebrew woman who is nursing to nurse the boy for you?" "Go!" Pharaoh's daughter told her. So the girl went and called the boy's mother and Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse him for me and I will pay your wages." So the woman took the boy and nursed him and when the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses because, she said, "I drew him out of the water." Well here we find a Levite husband and his wife having their son giving birth to him and immediately facing severe difficulty what to do with this boy because the king had ordered that they should throw this boy in the river. They should be done with him. And yet his mother sees this baby boy and sees his beauty. Now here even in this context, the beauty is not necessarily just his physical beauty, but that he was one that she saw something in. Perhaps even God's kindness to her to see what Moses would become. He didn't hear for us to just pause and rejoice in this mother's morality that she would rejoice in the sanctity of human life that she would seek to preserve this baby's life and hide him away to keep him from harm's way, to protect him as long as she could. But ultimately this baby boy grew and began to make more noise presumably and no longer unable to hide, she builds a basket and she places the boy in a basket and floats him in the river. Now I think here at some level a small irony of kind of obeying the command of the king but not quite. She puts the baby boy in the river, not quite throwing him out there to die but puts him in the river. But also to see her level of strategy in knowing where she was placing this basket, she took a huge risk. Not only did she disobey the king's command, but she floats her baby boy in an area where she knows the Egyptians will be. And along comes Pharaoh's daughter as this little boy's sister stands on the shore to watch and see what's going to happen to her little brother. Pharaoh's daughter and her servant girls come and she's bathing in the water and sees the basket and they bring the basket to her and she sees this baby boy. Can you imagine what the sister is feeling in that moment? What the mother is feeling in that moment, having left her baby up to the whims of Pharaoh's daughter, is she going to just drop the baby in the water and walk away? She sees this baby, hears his cry. She feels sorry for him. Now in the wisdom of this sister, she says, "Hey, how about I find you a Hebrew woman who could help nurse this baby? I have some ideas." And Pharaoh's daughter is amicable to such a request and says, "Yep, go find somebody." And so the sister goes and gets her mom and says, "Hey, Pharaoh's daughter wants to see you." And Pharaoh's daughter not only gives the child back to his mother unknowingly, but says, "I will pay you the wages that you're due for caring for this baby to nurse this baby until he is weaned." And so his mother nurses him and cares for him and he grows older and she brings him back to Pharaoh's daughter and hands her son over for a second time with unknowns, with risk. Will she ever see her son again? And Pharaoh's daughter names this boy Moses and in great irony for us who have read Scripture and know the story, naming him because she drew him out of the water, being the one who someday will draw out God's people from the land of Egypt. But we see in the midst of this conflict that brings great risk at what would happen with this baby boy and all the unknowns that come around it, a mother who acts in boldness to float this baby in the river and to nurse him and trust him back to Pharaoh's daughter. What boldness that would take. How does she know? Well, I don't know that she did. And this is where Hebrews 11 informs us. By faith Moses after he was born was hidden by his parents for three months because they saw that the child was beautiful and they didn't fear the king's edict. From the very beginning to disobey the king and to risk their family's safety and the life of her son, this mother acted in faith. She acted in faith trusting in God. And in the face of conflict and risk she has faith that God's in control, he's at work, that her actions are not in vain and that her obedience is a joy to God. I wonder what circumstances of risk you've avoided even this last week because you didn't know the outcome. Perhaps avoiding speaking the truth, standing up in the place of work, against what you know is wrong because it might cost you your job, it might cost you that pay raise or that increase that you were looking for if you speak out against what is wrong in the workplace. Perhaps you've avoided the risk of confronting sin because that could hurt the relationship and if I have to be honest about their sin, it probably means I should be honest about my sin, so maybe it's just easier if we don't say anything. Maybe it's the risk of disciplining our children. I mean certainly they're not going to like it. Maybe they're not going to like me. That's a lot of hard work. Maybe it's just easier to give them video games and call it a day. I wonder what risk we face in our lives. I think even the tangible risk of giving generously, I might not know if I have enough, am I saving enough for the future, am I going to be able to retire when I want to, can I pay all my bills in the coming years if there's continued inflation? And yet in each of these situations that I'm thinking of that might be in any of our lives, we recognize that God has called us to be ones who are truth speakers, to be ones who are dealing with our sin and confronting it and repenting of it, to be ones who are disciplining our children and raising them in godliness and ones who give generously. See the risk often is informed by God's instruction to us. And if we are to truly heed God's wisdom in God's counsel, is it truly risk? I might seem like risk to us. It's not risk to God. He gives us instruction in his word. He gives us guidance. He gives us knowledge. As those who follow after him, we should listen and be prepared for those moments of risk, to live out our faith in God. You know, I myself am not one who is foreign to the idea of risk, even in my childhood, being one who would often take risks. Maybe that sounds surprising to those of you that I know, but one of my favorite things in high school, we would go to a place in North Carolina where they had waterfalls. And actually, I've never told my boys this. So this will be a very interesting story for you, sons. Maybe don't do what I did. There's a small waterfall called Turtleback Falls. Very easy. You just kind of slide over it and land in a pool of water and swim around and it's a lot of fun. However, if you hiked another half mile down the trail, you got to Rainbow Falls, which was 150 foot waterfall. To which, as a youth, I was encouraged to climb the waterfall. And you could climb about halfway up to somewhere around 70 feet and jump off that waterfall into a beautiful pool of water. Now I wasn't quite the risk taker that I would do that with no knowledge of what was going on, what I depended on were those around me who told me they did it. Now should I believe them, I don't know. Should I have heated their exhortations? Maybe not. But I took a lot of confidence in the fact that I knew someone else had done it. I knew it had succeeded, so surely I could do it. It actually helped lower the level of risk for me because I felt confidence whilst other people have survived. Surely, I will survive too. And here I am today. I've never broken a bone in God's kindness, I've never had a concussion, I dove into the pool hundreds of times after that and it worked out great. But what lowered the risk to the point that I was willing to take it? Well, it wasn't just my awesome knowledge of the experience because I had never done it. It wasn't because I was a professional cliff diver. It was because I was informed of someone else's greater knowledge of the situation. It gave me confidence to take action and to enjoy the thrill of the moment. I want to argue that our risk in this life is lessened. What we feel as risk is lessened because of our faith in God. I want to come back to this idea later on in this sermon, but I want that seed to be planted in your own mind, your own heart, to be thinking about what I fear in this life, that fear is lessened when I have a greater knowledge of the situation. But it isn't just risk that we face and it wasn't just risk that the Israelites faced. We have to have faith in these times of conflict and so secondly, I want to point out we have faith in times of rejection. Look at Exodus 2, follow along as I read a little bit longer of a passage 11 through 22. Years later, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and observed their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his people. Looking all around and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and hid him in the sand. The next day, he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, "Why are you attacking your neighbor?" "Who made you a commander and judge over us?" The man replied, "Are you planning to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses became afraid and thought, "What I did is certainly known." When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian and sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water and filled the troughs of water to water their father's flock. Then some shepherds arrived and drove them away, but Moses came to their rescue and watered their flock. When they returned to their father, he asked, "Why have you come back so quickly today?" They answered, "An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock." "So where is he?" He asked his daughters. "Why then did you leave the man behind and invite him to eat dinner?" Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughters the pora to Moses in marriage. She gave birth to a son whom he named Gersham, for he said, "I have been a resident alien in a foreign land." Here we see in the story of Moses, he grows up into adulthood, and he's going to face persecution. I don't want us to understand the type of persecution that he's facing. In Acts 7, we're actually told that this is 40 years later. Moses is 40 years old, he's grown up in Egypt, he's gotten his education, he's learned, and yet we find out that he went out to his own people, really hear the idea of he identified with his own people. He did not see it fit to maintain his identity with the Egyptians, but to go out to the Israelites. And so he goes and observes their forced labor. But more than just the broad oppression of his people, Moses observes the specific persecution of an individual who is being beaten. And so Moses decides to intervene. He looks around and he goes and intervenes and he strikes the Egyptian and the Egyptian dies and so Moses hides his body in the sand. He kills him. Moses clearly saw himself as some type of arbitrator or vindicator of his own people. He goes out to defend the innocent, he goes out to protect the oppressed. And so he strikes down the oppressor. Now commentators aren't exactly sure what to make of the language here, of him looking both ways. It could be taken positively, that he looked both ways and saw nobody coming to help. And so he decided to intervene. It could be that he looked both ways and didn't see anyone in sight. And so he took vengeance into his own hands. But whether Moses saw the opportunity or not, I think we can all agree that given Moses' life, he perhaps is one who's a bit reactionary. Now this is strongly my opinion, it doesn't have to be your opinion. I think Moses was a man who seemed to act pretty quickly, perhaps at times in anger or frustration. Is this not the man who threw down the stone tablets and shattered them, seeing the people's rebellion against God? Is this not the man who struck the rock instead of speaking to it, and was thus denied entering the promised land? What I am confident of is we are not encouraged, in God's word here, that murder is acceptable, and that killing was a good thing. It is put matter effectively. Moses intervened. He killed the one who was persecuting and oppressing in order to save his own kind. His own heart's desire was to lead in this way and protect his people, to be able to rescue them. And perhaps we can argue this was a failed way of accomplishing this. And so the next day, Moses goes out and he sees two of the Israelites fighting amongst themselves and he engages that conversation to bring them to peace. And what happens? His authority, his opportunity to judge and be the arbitrator, with his own people who surely would accept him, they reject him. Oh, they look at Moses and say, "Man, you killed someone yesterday and you hit him. Are you going to kill me too? Is that how you deal with problems, Moses? Is that how you're going to lead your people?" Moses realized his actions are known. And surely this will get to Pharaoh himself. Surely, I am no longer accepted here and indeed we see in verse 15 Pharaoh hears about it and he tries to kill Moses and so what does Moses do? He flees. He runs away to a foreign land, he goes to the land of Midian on his own. Moses himself desired to go and defend God's people and to protect them. Hebrews 11 puts this in terms of faith by faith Moses when he had grown up refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and chose to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. For he considered reproach for the sake of Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt since he was looking ahead to the reward. Moses was willing to forsake the prestige and the authority and the wealth and all that came with being an Egyptian in the palace. He was going to forsake all of that to identify with God's people. And when Moses did that he faced rejection even from his own people. His response to being an Egyptian for a time was to respond in faith that God had actually called him to do something else, to go out and to be identified with God's people. And yet we see that it doesn't go according to plan. I'm quite sure this is not what Moses imagined happening when he went into this circumstance, right? I'm sure he went in quite confident and excited, I'm coming from the king's palace, I'm one of these people, they are going to accept me as their own. And instead he is rejected and flees to a foreign land. Moses who had power and prestige in the house of Pharaoh is now despised, even by Pharaoh himself. And where Moses sought authority and leadership, he was rejected. The difficult circumstances Moses finds himself in. And he flees to the land of Midian. And we find Moses at a well where seven daughters come to get water. And they are driven off by these shepherds and how does Moses respond? So you just walk away and say not my problem, not my people, I'm out of here. No, he's still living out the role of the rescuer. He rescues these people. He helps these daughters. And so he draws water for them and he cares for them and they go on their way and they tell their father this wonderful Egyptian showed up and rescued us. And he says, okay, well, why is he not here? I got seven girls. This dude helped you. What's the deal? Like surely one of you would have brought him home, right? Like that seems to make sense. He says, go get him, bring him home, let's have dinner with this guy. Let's see what he's really about. This shows up, he agrees to stay with this family. And the father gives his daughters a poorer to Moses in marriage. And she gives birth to his son, Gershan. Now, I don't know that this is what Moses was looking for. This is not what he expected. To go through a hardship of being rejected, cast out of his own household, rejected by the people he wanted to identify with, off into a foreign land. And he finds himself married and with a son. I want us to be able to step back and look at both of these circumstances from Moses' mother hiding him and sending him out into the water, not knowing what would happen. To Moses being disappointed in what he expected to happen. And yet both stories ending in ways that actually bring great delight and joy. A son who is able to live and actually sent off to Egypt to prosper and to grow, to become wise. And a son who is born, to a man who should have died, has an infant. See, we always don't know the end of our circumstances, do we? We don't know the difficulty that we face, how that's going to turn out. We wait and we endure and we have faith. Now I don't know what type of rejection you might be facing. I get it we live in a free country, we have freedom of religion, it's not often that we face a lot of rejection and yet I think we deal with rejection quite often whether we recognize it or not. Things that comes at the cost of the rejection of family. Those who want nothing to do with us because we're fanatical Christians, a child who grows up and wants nothing to do with their parents who raise them in the church or a spouse who wants nothing to do with your faith because they're not a Christian and they don't want to be a part of it. And to the personal level of perhaps our own fear, being rejected in our social circles with non-Christians, fearful to say that we're a Christian in case they don't like us anymore. Perhaps even rejection within the church of our own people. Oh, that if I confess my sin and I'm open and transparent about my sin, these people are going to reject me, they won't want anything to do with me. They can't handle my problems. My friends want to challenge us that we don't have to fear rejection in this life. Now, granted, we should be rejected for the right reasons, okay? We shouldn't be rejected because we're jerks and idiots. We should be rejected because of our faith in Jesus Christ and our desire to follow after Him. You know, none of us want to be that great school kid that everyone knows is a jerk and he's walking around wondering, "Why does nobody want to be my friend?" Well, because you're a jerk to everybody. Of course, no one wants to be your friend, all right? Those are not good reasons for us to be rejected. No, if we're going to face rejection, friends, let it be because of the gospel. Let it be because of our identity with God's people. Because through that rejection, we can have faith that God has brought us to that circumstance. He is allowed in our life. In fact, New Testament writers write about this that we should expect rejection. First Peter, 4, 15, and 16 says, "Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evil doer, or a meddler. But if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in having that name." And we should actually expect these types of trials and rejection. And as we recently studied in James chapter 1 as Michael preached through James, consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. What does our faith do in the midst of rejection? Our faith strengthens us to endure in the Christian walk, to continue to find our identity as Christ's followers, and to follow after him in faith, knowing that he will sustain us. If he is promised in his word that we will endure, then he will sustain us. And so as we look at these circumstances, that the Israelites face, that Moses' mother face, that Moses himself faced, we see the difficulty that they went through. We aren't even told of all the fears and the doubts and the anxiety that they had in those circumstances, but we are told that they had faith throughout those circumstances. There's no way they could have guessed how things would turn out. And so how does their faith help them through these things? I haven't been particularly clear on exactly what is their faith in. Who is their faith in? I was sure God, but I feel like we would all be left a little short if I just dismissed us and said, "All right, go have faith in God. Good luck." If you do that, believe in him, things will be fine. That's not at all what I'm saying. Well, my friends, we are going to face difficulties. But it is my faith in God that reminds me that God knows. And so our third point, this morning, the third point is have faith in the God who knows. Look at verses 23 to 25 here, the end of this section of the story. After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor, and they cried out, and their cry for help because of the difficult labor ascended to God. And God heard their groaning. And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the Israelites, and God knew. Another 40 years passes in Moses' life. During that time, the king of Egypt dies, and the Israelites are crying out to God under their persecution as the labor is difficult and heavy, and their cry goes up to the throne of God. It ascends to him, and he hears their groaning, and how does God respond? He remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and with Jacob. And he sees the Israelites, and he knows what they're experiencing. God was not ignorant of or inconsiderate of the Israelites' difficulties. And in the end, this is what makes all the difference, that the God of the universe was aware of what the Israelites were experiencing. He was not ignoring it, and he actually cared. And so we look at Moses' faith, and we say, "What was his faith in?" Well, here we are told this very thing, that God would remember his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Moses forefathers who received the covenant blessings and the incursments of God's faithfulness, that he would provide a people and a land and a deliverer for the people of Israel. That Moses' faith would be in the fact that this is the God who he served, and he identified with. And I think that's why this is a wonderful text. As we go through Exodus 2 and Acts 7 and Hebrews 11, and we see all of this come together to inform us, that Moses, in the place of difficulty and frustration in life, has faith that God is the one who's in control, and God is the one who knows and has not forgotten their circumstances. They believe that God was going to be faithful to what he promised, and they would rather submit to God than to the circumstances around them. They would rather fear him than fear what might happen in their life. And so they endured risk and rejection rather than uniformity and conformity to what was going on in their culture and society. They were living out their faith by confidently facing the trials that they were going to face. And so I return to my question, is what or who is your faith in when you face difficult circumstances? Is it in your own strength? Is it in your own wisdom? Perhaps you're really good at decision-making and planning and scheduling and people-person skills. My friend, that's not going to be enough. There's no skill that you possess that will give you enough strength to endure what you were facing whenever those hard circumstances arrive. And so I would challenge you. If you're here this morning and you haven't put your faith in God, what are you putting your faith in? What do you think is actually going to save you from your circumstances? What gives you the strength to endure? Well if that faith is in yourself or some other person in your life that you deem to be your savior, that's not going to work because God's word is abundantly clear that even Moses himself wasn't the right savior for God's people. And Moses do some great work, does the story continue, and we find the people of Israel leaving Egypt, yes, but even Moses can't bring them into the promised land. Even Moses can't save these people from themselves or from their oppressors. My friend, if you're here this morning and you have never had faith in God as your savior, let me challenge you that there is a better Moses. There is a son who was born. His name was Jesus. Do you know that he was born into a kingdom with a king who was killing the babies? His mother hid him away and took him to the land of Egypt. He grew and came back, he became quite the teacher, very wise prophet and teacher that many were excited to hear from and listen to, and then his own rejected him. He was in Israel, just like Moses. The people of Israel rejected this Jesus. So what did he do? Well, he actually went outside of the town, nor he went, he went too well. You know what he did? He gave these foreigners to the people of Israel living water. Truth that would bring them life-returnity, that he alone was the sinless son of God who would redeem a people for God's own name. And so Jesus in his ministry, in his life, lived perfectly and yet his own people turned against him and they crucified him on the cross. A death that he did not deserve and yet a death that he was ready to pay for his people to suffer and to die for you and me. That we would be saved from our sins because we have faith in him that he accomplished what we cannot, because Christ and his death on the cross defeated sin, taking our sin upon himself, and in his resurrection from the grave three days later defeated death itself, that we might have life-returnity. And so what are we called to friends? We are called to profess our faith in Jesus Christ, not ourselves and not our own strength than not in our circumstances being made right. Not that my life would be perfect and peaceful, but that I would know Jesus above all else, that my faith would inform me in my circumstances that if Christ has given me salvation, I need nothing else in this life. I can face whatever circumstance and hardship comes my way, because I have faith that God has fulfilled his promise to redeem a people for himself. That God has truly sent a deliverer who can deliver you and me not through our own strength, but through his strength and his faithfulness. And so friends, put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ today. If you have never trusted in Christ, today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to repent of sin, to turn away from it, and trust in him. I would love to tell you more about that message of the gospel and what it would look like for you to put your faith in him. I'll stand down here right after the service, would love to talk to anyone who wants to think through what does it look like for the gospel to be lived out in my life. But for those of you in here who have already put your faith in Christ, and you're following after him, what does it look like to live out your faith in front of the circumstances that you face? You cry out to God. The Israelites did, and he was there to hear them, and he knew their circumstances. The Israelites cried out to God knowing what God had promised. Do you know God's promises that he's given to you? Have you studied his word? Have you studied God's character to see that he is faithful to what he has promised to do? Whatever circumstance you're facing, not every circumstance is bad, but every circumstance tends to come with a lack of knowledge of how it's going to turn out. Whatever you face in this life, are you living through that in faith rather than fear or doubt or concern? Because your faith will remind you that God knows about your circumstance. So let me bring you application from my own life as I preach a sermon like this. I find myself at this moment as your all's pastor in circumstances that I don't have clarity on. It is a great joy to send someone like David Fisher out to Hillsborough First Baptist, to be a loving brother, to see that family flourish and to care for that church. But I wouldn't have planned for David to leave our elder team. I kind of like that guy. You know, I wouldn't have planned this timing for Mary Alice DuBore's retirement, and yet I can rejoice in that because Mary Alice is so faithful in the ministry here. I'm excited to see what's going to happen in the coming months and years as she gets to minister outside of the context of being on staff. I'm really excited about that. You know, I wouldn't have chosen this time for Nea Woolard to step down as a pastor and be able to care for his wife and family. And yet I rejoice that that's the work that's happening is good work. You know, I wouldn't have chosen this to be the time that Bonnie Hugh would go work for Simeon Trust. And yet I'm thrilled. It is a good ministry. Praise God. We can provide further support and care and love for the opportunity for men to grow in the preaching of the Word. And what I have chosen this time for Daniel Shreiner to get called to be a lead pastor at Pinehurst Baptist Church, no, okay, no, to all of that. But I don't make those decisions. Yeah, I would have loved rather than five weeks that to be spread out over five years. That might have been a little more manageable, right? And yet I am in circumstances I cannot control nor did I create. And how do I respond? Well, in God's kindness, few and far between moments of anxieties and fears and doubts. But landing in this passage this week, oh, my friends, I find myself deeply immersed in my faith that God will accomplish what he's promised. He will keep his church. He has established his people and that will not end. He has promised to complete a good work in my life that he has begun. Oh, and I'm excited to see where that goes. Because what I'm sure of, no matter what circumstances I face and unknowns, even when they're joyful and good and wonderful circumstances that I can say, praise God. I can step back and say, I don't know where things are headed other than what God has already promised me, that he is going to continue to redeem his people. He is going to sustain his people and he will give us strength for the work of the ministry. And so brothers and sisters, I will stand here today and boldly and joyfully proclaim the gospel and minister the word and continue to equip the saints because that's what God has called me to. And all I need is God's continued faithfulness to me and my faith in him. And it is a joy to be able to proclaim that to you, that I truly believe the work that Jesus Christ has done in my life transforms everything for me. It gives me the strength to face every circumstance and everything in my life that I don't know and understand. And so when I come back to a text like this, it makes me ask the question, what if I don't know everything? Maybe you don't know if you're going to keep or lose your job or if you will ever see your kids come to faith or maybe you don't know if you're ever going to get married or if you'll ever have children or if you'll ever get past the disease and the illness that you face or if you'll ever have enough money to feel comfortable and I don't know the answer. But you know who does, God knows, God knows. And that is the confidence that we take in our faith that God is already aware of our circumstance. And so if that means I wait 40 years and I wait 40 more years and I get to see God's faithfulness at the end of that, praise God. Because we don't have to live in panic and fear and concern about what might happen. We know what has already happened and what God has promised will happen, our salvation. And so I challenge us that this week as we go into whatever lies before us, we make decisions based on our faith in God. As we study his character and we come to him in prayer and throw ourselves at his throne to depend on him and we rest in him. Our faith will be strengthened in him as we walk with him and as we walk into the unknowns of this life. And so go this week remembering that our faith in God during difficult circumstances reminds us that God knows. Would you join me in prayer? Would we joyfully come before your throne having studied your word and being confident that you have called us to yourself in Christ Jesus? And at the faith that we have that has been founded in our salvation is the faith that we bring to everyday circumstances. And so God we cry out to you in every circumstance that we face of unknowns and say God walk with us, strengthen us, help us be confident that you know. And so God we pray this morning that our faith would be strengthened, that our knowledge of you would be deepened and that our proclamation of the gospel to the world around us would be seen and known as they see the peace and the comfort and the joy that you give to your children. And so we walk in faith this week proclaiming your faithfulness to us as you know our circumstances. We pray in Christ's name, amen.