Grumbling in the Desert | Why The Key to Growth is Having A Good Memory

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[music: That's Who My God Is]

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- Well. Hey everybody, welcome to Crossroads.

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We are so glad you're here.

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And whether you're brand new or you've been around forever,

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hey, we've got something really, really powerful for you today.

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But, hey, just a heads up, later on

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we're actually going to be taking communion together.

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So this is your chance to grab something to eat and drink

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if you're ready to join us in that.

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But first, I actually want to read you a little bit

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from the Bible to set up our time together.

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Psalm 23 says this: the Lord is my shepherd,

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I shall not want.

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He makes me lie down in green pastures.

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He leads me beside still waters.

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He restores my soul.

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Now Psalm 23 isn't just dusty old poetry, like,

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it's a snapshot of the most incredible,

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interconnected rescue story of all time.

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And it's a story that you and I are invited into.

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We're actually about to sing a song

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that echoes those words from Psalm 23 that say,

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I shall not want.

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And it's a reminder that no matter how exhausted,

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frustrated, confused, or great you feel right now,

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you're not alone in it

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and that in Him we already have everything we need.

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So wherever you are, I would love for you to stand,

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sing, and use these words as a chance

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to connect with God together right now.

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- Come on, sing this with me.

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- I specially requested this song this weekend

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at all of our sites.

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And not just because I've liked it, but it actually

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is exactly what I'm going to talk about today.

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Strange blessings, strange delivery systems

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from God to bring blessings.

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Honey in a rock? Yes.

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Water out of a rock, bread on the ground. Yes.

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We're going to talk about two of those three today.

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I want to tell you something,

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when God starts getting involved in your life,

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things you think are weird and strange

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actually might turn out to be a real blessing.

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Never underestimate the creative ways that God

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will go through to get your attention

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or work in your life. That's His history.

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I want to talk about that a little bit.

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So let's sing this song that actually

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comes straight out of the Bible right now.

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- You know, so maybe, uh, maybe we've

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taken for granted the blessings of God.

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We sang in that song, if you're singing it,

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like, You got everything I need, everything I need.

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Are we that way for God?

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Maybe some of us we just need to say,

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"God, I'm sorry for being so needy.

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I'm sorry for never being satisfied.

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I have life, I have water, I have breath,

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and I just need to spend more time thanking You."

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So why don't we right now, just go right now,

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God, God, hear these silent prayers.

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We just say sorry.

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Sorry for not being thankful for the simple things.

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Sorry. Just tell Him that. Sorry. God, I'm sorry.

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I'm sorry.

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He wants a contrite heart. I'm sorry.

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And God, we say thank You.

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Thank You for the simple things You've given me.

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Thank You for the simple things of my friends,

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the simple things of my background,

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the simple things of my heart is beating

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anywhere from 45 to 80 beats a minute.

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While I'm here I'm not even thinking about it.

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Who would think that electric charges

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that I didn't generate are making this happen

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inside my chest right now?

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God, the simple things we give You honor.

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Thank You. Let's keep going.

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- I will simplify it. Just sing these words.

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I don't know if you grew up singing them

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or they're brand new for you.

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But in saying, I'm sorry to You,

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this is what we're saying. We're saying say:

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- Come on. Respond.

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- Come on, humbly we say. \

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- Father, there's no one above You.

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I know. This looks crazy what we just did.

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Like, we joined online or we came into a room like this.

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It's dark and we just sang.

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Some of us look to a ceiling and sang,

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some of us are crying, some of us are smiling,

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some of us got hands up, some of us are belting it out,

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some of us are whispering.

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Surrender to you, God, it looks crazy,

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and yet it is the thing that has brought me life.

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There is no part of my life that's not better

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because I've given it over to You.

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That's just the facts,

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because I've given it over to Your way.

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Because I've actually believed You when You said

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You love me deeply, that I am Your beloved.

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Because I actually take You at Your Word

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when you say You're a protector, a provider.

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You're Holy means You're different

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and there's no one like You.

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And so once again, I re-up and I say,

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You can have my trust no matter what I'll face.

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You have my heart.

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Thank You for bringing life like You do.

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You are wild. You are crazy.

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You don't make sense,

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but You make good things and You make life.

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Thank You, Father.

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I pray all this because of you, Jesus. Amen. Amen.

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Man, I love getting to sing together like this.

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My favorite parts of the week.

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I love you joining us online.

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I love you being in the room.

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So if you're in the room, why don't you

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turn to somebody around you and say, "Hey,

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glad you made it today," and you can have a seat.

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Hey, I love being together like that.

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Pretty soon here in a minute

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our Senior Pastor Brian Tome is going to be here.

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We're also going to take communion together.

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So grab bread, juice or bread and wine.

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We'll take that together here in just a few minutes.

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So glad you're here.

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- We can get excited about

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all of those epic scenes in the Bible, right?

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But there's a number of things that we'll often think about,

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like, I don't know what was happening back then,

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especially in the Old Testament.

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Those were all Old Testament images.

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We have this idea of the god who is an ogre

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and has capricious anger.

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At least that's the reputation for many of us.

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There are some things in there that are tough to deal with.

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But the other flip side of that, what happens

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when we see God's anger in the Old Testament,

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His intensity in the Old Testament is

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on the other side of that are

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a bunch of unfaithful people who He has loved

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and He has provided for.

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Today I'm going to talk about faithfulness.

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It's a through line through all of those stories

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we've looked at that are epic in the Bible

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and all the ones I'm going to look at today.

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So let's pray. God, thank You

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for being a God who is faithful.

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I'm reminded that there's never anything You ask me

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to do that You haven't already done

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and are doing Yourself.

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Thank You for going before us.

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Thank You for providing for us in crazy ways.

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And thank You for providing for me to have some words

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I think they're going to be helpful for Your people.

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May You be honored today by all that's said.

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I pray these things in the identity

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and character of Jesus. Amen.

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So today, basically a through line is how to be faithful,

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how to be faithful.

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I don't know that you're going to hear that

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in any Ted talk, any motivational speaker thing,

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any college class, how to be faithful.

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You're here today when you could be any other place

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because you're curious about God,

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you want more of God, and that may mean that

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you want to be more faithful.

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You want to consider what it's like to be faithful.

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Many of us were like, "Well, I'd be more committed to God,

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I'd be more faithful, I would believe maybe

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if only I had a miracle. If I had a miracle,

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if I had proof, then I would."

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You know, the problem with that is

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we look in the Old Testament, we see people

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encounter miracle after miracle after miracle,

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and it doesn't seem to do them any good.

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It doesn't seem to bolster their faith.

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We are a frail people who have short memories

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and we forget about it.

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That's the story of the Old Testament in the Bible.

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I want to go through a bunch of those stories today.

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I not only want to look at the wonder of the story,

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but I also want to look at the people's response to it.

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So there's going to like, bam, bam, bam,

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I'm going to give you basically give you

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four talks today in the span of one talk.

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Aren't you excited? Yes, I bet you are.

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Here we go.

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Book of Exodus is where we're going to be today.

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I'm going to start with Exodus 15:22.

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And here is what it says.

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That's Genesis. There it is. There you are.

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All right, here's what it says.

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Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea,

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and they went into the wilderness of Shur.

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They went three days in the wilderness

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and found no water.

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And when they came Marah, they could not drink

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the water of Mara, because it was bitter;

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and therefore it was named Marah.

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And the people grumbled against Moses, saying,

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"What shall we drink?"

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And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log,

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and he threw it into the water,

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and the water became sweet.

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There is a mysterious delivery system

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that God has to meet His people's needs,

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a mysterious, mysterious delivery system

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that woos us to become faithful.

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And here's one of those situations right now.

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Chuck did an amazing job last week talking about

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the crossing of the Red Sea. Didn't he?

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Yeah, he did, he did.

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And I could tell because you all

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were very, very supportive of him.

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All kind of claps and laughs and amens.

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I must really suck because I don't get claps.

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I don't get claps. I don't get freaking amens.

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I don't get it. There it is, there it is.

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But I gotta ask for it. I gotta taunt you to get it.

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Here we have in this story that's relevant to the story

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in just a minute, because you'll see

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there's a common theme, the word grumble

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is going to come up a lot. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

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It's like once one person starts to grumble,

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more people start to grumble.

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The nation of Israel has seen an amazing miracle,

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an unbelievable. They've seen water parted,

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they've gone over, the waters collapsed

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on their enemies and drowned them.

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That's it. Like good enough. Take me home, God.

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You need to give me nothing else.

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I believe I'm all good. We're all good.

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But no, no, no, not the case.

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Three days later. Three days later.

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This is horrible. This is horrible.

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We don't have any water to drink.

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Now, for sure, being dehydrated can be horrible,

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but like, three days later they're grumbling.

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They're all upset. Like (grumbles).

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And it just spreads.

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Like, when you're around unfaithful people,

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everyone's unfaithful.

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When you're around faithful people,

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like, everyone's faithful.

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And it starts because there's people who like I grumble.

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I haven't -- I didn't do many fun things this summer,

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for a variety of reasons. It didn't go many places.

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One place we went is I went to Vegas,

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also known as Lost Wages. I can go to Vegas.

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I have the least addictive personality there is,

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and I don't actually go to --

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Lib and I didn't go to gamble. She hates it.

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I only stay up late, late at night and gamble once a day.

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Doing that, did pretty well too, I must say.

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Actually, I forgot to tithe on my winnings.

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I actually got winnings this time.

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Of course, I would actually say to God,

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"Well, I've lost other times. Does that even it out?"

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You know. No it doesn't.

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But but when we went, we go, we've gone.

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We go, like, maybe once every other year or so we go,

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so we're going to go this and there's shows.

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We do shows at night, we hang out,

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do stuff together, it's really good.

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We went to this comedy, The Comedy Cellar,

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and I had my assistant just book us tickets.

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And so she booked us tickets.

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And when we went, I realized, oh my goodness,

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we had been here one time before like five years earlier

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or something like that.

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And we sat with our -- we took our kids,

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we all sat in the back.

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Where our seats were and it was really cool.

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And this time we had front row seats,

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like the literal front row.

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And the reason we had front row seats is because

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there was hardly anybody in there at all,

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like, a full line up of comics,

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and there was maybe 25, maybe 30 people in the house.

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It was just an odd night, and we're the front row,

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and I am now stressed out.

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I am stressed out because I know, all you people front,

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you have more of an impact on everybody else than you know.

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You d, and I can tell you, some of you suck

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because you just sit there, you sit there

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and you just suck the life out of me.

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You're like.

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If you're gonna sit in the first few rows,

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you gotta give me something.

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You gotta give me something.

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Because if you give me something,

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I'll give more people something.

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Well, I realize this because that's my world, right?

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So, oh my gosh, "Hon. Lib, we've got to be on our game here."

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This is it, so we're sitting down,

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these comedians coming up, anything that's mildly funny.

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"Oh my god. A-ha." And it was great.

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And when you get, when you tell yourself,

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"I am going to have fun today," you have fun.

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When you tell yourself, "I'm going to laugh today,"

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you end up laughing.

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And Lib and I, we led the whole place.

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The whole place came around

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and people were leaving the stage.

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They're high fiving me. They're slapping me.

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By the third comedian comes out, they go like,

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"Man, we heard backstage in the green room,

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it's a small crowd, small but mighty."

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And we're all like, yeah.

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Because the influence of a few positive attitudes

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or a few negative attitudes can be really rippling.

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And this is the way it is for the Nation of Israel.

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They just start grumbling.

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Let's do that together. Everyone say grumble on --

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Let's go grumble three times, say grumble three times

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on the count of three. One, two, three.

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Grumble, grumble, grumble.

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Yeah, yeah, it sounds horrible, doesn't it?

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Let's do it again. 1, 2, 3.

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Grumble grumble grumble.

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That's horrible. It's a horrible murmur that comes up.

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And this is what the nation of Israel is dealing with,

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what God's dealing with.

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The second section here as it goes from here

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and God provides their needs in the midst of grumbling,

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throws a log in the water, becomes sweet,

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His mysterious delivery system.

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And you're going to see more and more of them today.

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Verse two of the next chapter says this:

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And the whole congregation of the people of Israel

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grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

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There they are. There they are again,

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unfaithfully grumbling again.

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They grumbled in the wilderness,

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and the people of Israel said to them,

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"Would that we have died by the hand of the Lord

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in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots

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and ate meat to the full, for you have brought us

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out into the wilderness to kill

00:34:13

this whole assembly with hunger."

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Man, this is -- this is horrible, utterly horrible.

00:34:20

If you want to be faithful, if you want to be faithful,

00:34:24

faithful to your God, faithful to the things

00:34:26

He wants you to do and reap any benefits or blessings

00:34:28

that may come for that or may not come from that.

00:34:30

But if you want to be faithful,

00:34:32

you have to be aware of three spiritual realms,

00:34:35

three spiritual realities.

00:34:38

One of them is this: bad memory brings a bad attitude.

00:34:42

Bad memory brings a bad attitude.

00:34:44

When you forget the way that God has met your needs,

00:34:46

when you forget the things that God has done in your past,

00:34:49

when you don't notice what He's done in your past,

00:34:52

man, that is bad, bad, bad news.

00:34:54

We can complain about our family of origin,

00:34:56

but if you can't remember how your dad

00:34:59

did a few nice things for you,

00:35:01

how your mom was there for you,

00:35:03

or your guardian was there for you,

00:35:05

or if you had nobody and you grew up in an orphanage

00:35:08

and you can't remember, "Yet here I am

00:35:11

because the goodness of God."

00:35:14

We forget the things that God has done in our past.

00:35:18

And this is one of the nation of Israel's problems.

00:35:20

They just came through the Red Sea.

00:35:23

They just had water that was bitter,

00:35:25

sweetened up by a log that was thrown into it.

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And now here they are, bitching and moaning,

00:35:32

wishing they were back in Egypt.

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That's what they're saying here.

00:35:38

They're saying, "Oh man, we used to have meat pots.

00:35:41

Oh, oh, the good old days was so good."

00:35:43

You were a slave!

00:35:46

Now, let me tell you something, I don't know

00:35:47

if you noticed or not, I am white.

00:35:51

I am very white.

00:35:52

So there are some things when I talk about, like,

00:35:55

I could be getting in trouble here.

00:35:56

But let me just talk about this for a moment here.

00:35:59

Of all the African Americans I've interacted with,

00:36:02

all the books I've read about slavery,

00:36:06

all the things with reconstruction and the stuff

00:36:09

that Andrew Johnson did and the thing or did

00:36:12

and shouldn't have done and Grant, all the things

00:36:16

how we how we screwed over the freed slaves

00:36:19

and broke our promise, all the sharecropping,

00:36:22

all the crappy stuff we did with sharecropping

00:36:24

and the Great Migration to to the West

00:36:27

and all, all these things I have never, ever read

00:36:31

or heard of any, any slave who ever said,

00:36:36

"Man, if only we could go back

00:36:37

to living on the plantation, because, man,

00:36:40

if we could go back to the plantation, that was good, man.

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Like, no one, no one, no one, no, no one

00:36:45

ever says, "Man, there was some good stuff back there,"

00:36:48

because there wasn't, it was all horrible.

00:36:50

And yet here we have the people of God

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because they've had a few bad days going,

00:36:56

"Man, this is horrible.

00:36:59

We had it so good when Pharaoh was taking care of us."

00:37:02

Horrible. When you're unfaithful, man,

00:37:05

you have a bad attitude.

00:37:07

It's not just you're choosing a different religion

00:37:10

or spirituality.

00:37:12

It's that you have a bad attitude

00:37:14

and a bad memory of what God has done.

00:37:16

This is not good.

00:37:17

I need to regularly remember the things that

00:37:20

God has done in and through me and for me.

00:37:25

I was thinking of one just this last week.

00:37:27

I haven't told this story for a long, long, long time.

00:37:30

Just one of the crazy delivery systems of God,

00:37:33

mysterious delivery systems in my life.

00:37:35

I like to ride motorcycles.

00:37:37

I had some friends, we went out west,

00:37:39

we rented motorcycles. This was years ago.

00:37:43

And we're cruising through.

00:37:44

And I was kind of -- My friends at that point,

00:37:46

they were really good guys.

00:37:48

They're still good guys today, but they

00:37:49

frustrated the heck out of me on this trip

00:37:51

because you would have sworn that there was

00:37:53

an elementary school every five miles because

00:37:57

they wouldn't drive, like faster than 15 miles an hour.

00:38:00

It was horrible. I'm like, "Dudes, it's a sin

00:38:04

to drive under the speed limit.

00:38:06

It's a sin, like, you need to be asking God

00:38:08

for forgiveness when you ride under the speed limit."

00:38:11

So after a few days of this, we had this open stretch

00:38:15

and while stuff was happening up front,

00:38:17

and I said, "Look, I'm going to cruise.

00:38:19

I'm going to ride my ride up there,

00:38:20

you ride your bike back here.

00:38:22

We'll meet up at this T way up here,"

00:38:24

and they're fine, they're good.

00:38:25

So I take off. It's wonderful, it's glorious.

00:38:27

And as I'm cruising through, going over the speed limit,

00:38:31

a deer jumps out out of nowhere, out of a bush.

00:38:34

Jump, runs in front of me.

00:38:36

I jam on my brakes.

00:38:38

Bad motorcycle braking technique,

00:38:40

jammed on the rear brake only, not the front as well.

00:38:43

Bad motorcycle braking technique

00:38:45

that God redeemed because He is faithful.

00:38:47

What happened was my bike slid around

00:38:48

because I only did back reel.

00:38:50

The bike slides around sideways. I slam into the deer.

00:38:53

I go through through the entire deer.

00:38:56

I go 40 yards in the air as we measure it,

00:38:58

and then roll another 20 yards on blacktop

00:39:02

right down the center.

00:39:03

And because my bad braking technique and I --

00:39:06

I went through, when I went through the deer,

00:39:08

I went through deer sideways.

00:39:09

And so I landed on my side instead of going face forward,

00:39:13

in which case I would have been broken literally in half.

00:39:17

By the way, I wasn't wearing a helmet.

00:39:18

People were like, people were like, "Man, you should --

00:39:20

You should worn a helmet."

00:39:22

No, I should have worn gloves

00:39:23

because I had stitches in my left two hands.

00:39:26

This is, here are some pictures from that

00:39:28

that my friend got from us.

00:39:29

This is ripped out my drawers.

00:39:31

My drawers got ripped out.

00:39:33

Just that's friction burn rolling all the way.

00:39:35

That is the the blood and the green is the guts.

00:39:38

I went through the gut, through the center of the deer.

00:39:40

And this is the the goggles I had, uh,

00:39:43

that is just deer stuff went right through the center of it.

00:39:46

And as I was feeling myself, I realized --

00:39:49

By the way, I don't recommend riding a motorcycle

00:39:51

without a helmet.

00:39:52

Most of the times I wear a helmet these days.

00:39:55

How fast was I going? Thank you.

00:39:57

Someone's participating in the front couple rows.

00:40:02

About 70 miles an hour was what I was doing.

00:40:05

Because I say because the speed limit was 60

00:40:07

and I knew I wasn't going 60, so I'll just say 70.

00:40:11

As I went, as I was going through my hair

00:40:13

and there was blood and I realized,

00:40:15

"Oh no, it's my hands."

00:40:16

I wipe it off. I'm like, "I'm good."

00:40:18

I'm walking to the car. You saw that woman.

00:40:20

She was an innocent bystander who stopped

00:40:23

and took me to the hospital and just making sure I was all okay.

00:40:26

And in the moment, I was having my pity party with God.

00:40:29

I go through a number of these.

00:40:31

These happen with me every, every few years

00:40:33

where I'm wishing God would give me more.

00:40:38

And I don't mean more toys or something like that,

00:40:41

but I mean more experiences with Him, more visions,

00:40:44

more spiritual gifts, more tastes of miracles, more,

00:40:47

more things that I can't explain.

00:40:49

And I was in one of those, one of those funks

00:40:52

at that moment where I was like, "Man,

00:40:54

I'm reading this stuff in the Bible.

00:40:55

I'm not experiencing a lot of these things.

00:40:57

What is going on here?"

00:40:59

And as I was going towards the car, this woman's car,

00:41:04

and God, His presence was really thick.

00:41:08

But it just dawned on me real quick, like, "Wow,

00:41:13

you shouldn't be going as fast as I was going,

00:41:15

not having a helmet, and you're walking to a car

00:41:17

to go get checked out just in case

00:41:20

there's something wrong with you. Right?"

00:41:23

And I said to God, I said, "Look, I know

00:41:26

no one ever gets this one.

00:41:28

I don't know how You did it.

00:41:30

Don't know why You did it.

00:41:31

I've never heard this before.

00:41:33

And God, I am thankful. Unbelievably thankful."

00:41:36

And I want to remember that.

00:41:38

I want to remember the next day.

00:41:39

The next day we went, we stayed in a hotel

00:41:42

and someone put us up, and they were --

00:41:44

They had a little fly fishing operation.

00:41:46

And I'm a born loser fisherman.

00:41:48

Can't catch. I can't catch a cold, let alone catch a fish.

00:41:52

We go out fly fishing

00:41:53

and we're bobbing up and down in this raft.

00:41:55

And I've got bruises, even though I had leather on,

00:41:57

bruises just from the impact all up and down

00:41:59

my forearms and everything.

00:42:00

And they're steeping pus and blood,

00:42:02

and there's gauze around them, and so it's drying.

00:42:05

And as I'm trying to cast, it's snagging on my scabs

00:42:08

and pulling and it's going up and down the hot sun.

00:42:11

We're not catching anything.

00:42:12

And I'm going, "God, God, this sucks, this sucks."

00:42:15

And all of a sudden I realized, "Wait a minute,

00:42:17

I should have a feeding tube right now."

00:42:20

And so I made a commitment and I said, "God,

00:42:22

from now on, every day is a good day because

00:42:25

I don't have a feeding tube. Every day is a good day."

00:42:31

I've had bad days. I've had bad seasons.

00:42:35

And I do, because I have a bad memory.

00:42:38

Bad memory brings a bad attitude.

00:42:41

Remember the things that God has done for you.

00:42:44

Search them out. Scour the landscape of your life.

00:42:47

Write them down and revisit them again and again.

00:42:51

Story continues, verse 11.

00:42:53

And the Lord said to Moses,

00:42:55

"I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel.

00:42:57

Say to them, 'At twilight you shall eat meat,

00:43:00

and in the morning you shall be filled with bread.

00:43:03

Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.'"

00:43:09

He said, "I've heard the grumbling of the people."

00:43:11

Grumbling can be, I guess, a low form of prayer,

00:43:14

because God hears people grumbling

00:43:16

when they're back in slavery.

00:43:17

And then I've heard the cries of My people,

00:43:19

comes and rescues them.

00:43:21

And now He's hearing their grumbling for food.

00:43:24

And He says, "Hey, here, we got a system here.

00:43:27

You're going to know that I am the Lord your God.

00:43:30

I am going to use a miracle to help them remember

00:43:36

and have a good attitude about who I am

00:43:39

and what I'm doing in their life."

00:43:42

Verse next section, verse 14 says:

00:43:45

And when the dew had gone, there was on the face

00:43:49

of the wilderness a fine flake-like thing,

00:43:52

fine as frost on the ground.

00:43:55

And when the people of Israel saw it,

00:43:57

they said to one another, "What is it?"

00:44:00

For they did not know what it was.

00:44:03

And Moses said to them, "It is the bread

00:44:06

that the Lord has given you to eat."

00:44:09

So God has brought them through the river.

00:44:11

God has now given them water, or sweetened up the water.

00:44:16

And now God is giving them food.

00:44:19

This is really, really interesting.

00:44:22

It's a miraculous kind of food.

00:44:23

It's a mysterious delivery system of food

00:44:25

where flakes are falling from the sky,

00:44:29

fall on the ground, and they eat

00:44:31

these little bread morsels all over the ground.

00:44:34

And God does it every single day and every day.

00:44:37

They're supposed to gather up and they're supposed to eat,

00:44:39

and they're not supposed to hoard.

00:44:41

They're supposed to be dependent on God

00:44:43

so every day they're thankful that God has provided for them.

00:44:45

It's like God is training them to be thankful

00:44:47

so they can go, like, "Every day. Oh my gosh,

00:44:49

He did it again. He did it again."

00:44:50

The only day they can take more than one day

00:44:53

is the day before the Sabbath.

00:44:54

They're going to gather up twice as much

00:44:56

so they don't have to work on the Sabbath.

00:44:58

That's what the thing is.

00:44:59

This is a really beautiful thing.

00:45:01

I used to think about this, like, what is the --

00:45:03

What was this manna like?

00:45:05

And by the way, the people, the people say,

00:45:08

"What is it? What is it?"

00:45:09

That's what manna is in Hebrew, when you hear manna,

00:45:12

there's manna from the sky coming down.

00:45:14

Manna means, what is it? They're like, "What is this thing?

00:45:17

What? What is this that's that's falling down?"

00:45:20

And I think to myself, okay, well, if God

00:45:22

was providing bread from heaven, manna from sky

00:45:26

coming down, what was it like?

00:45:28

It had to be just like basic nutritional things.

00:45:31

It had to be like, uh, like,

00:45:32

I'm going to apologize ahead of time.

00:45:34

We're going to take communion in a little bit.

00:45:36

I apologize ahead of time, this stuff is horrible.

00:45:39

It's horrible.

00:45:40

Somebody at Crossroads needs to start a business

00:45:42

helping churches all across the country

00:45:45

have good, simple communion things.

00:45:47

I don't know who makes these things

00:45:49

and thinks the the the bread has to be bitter.

00:45:52

I don't know who makes this thing and has this,

00:45:54

like, reddish stuff.

00:45:56

I don't know what it tastes like, but like,

00:45:58

it's almost like the people who make this stuff

00:46:00

feel like communion should be painful.

00:46:04

I don't understand that.

00:46:06

When the manna from heaven comes down,

00:46:09

they only say, what is it? But it is, quote,

00:46:13

wafers made with honey is what Exodus 16:31 says.

00:46:17

Psalm 78 calls it the bread of angels.

00:46:22

It is sweet. It's beautiful.

00:46:24

It's not like if those of us who are older

00:46:26

who remember the cereal Grape Nuts,

00:46:28

you remember Grape Nuts?

00:46:30

You young whippersnappers, you don't remember Grape Nuts

00:46:33

because your your generation is too smart to buy it.

00:46:35

They've probably gone out of business by now.

00:46:37

Who's over 50 remembers Grape Nuts.

00:46:39

Horrible, horrible. Here's a throwback for you.

00:46:44

- I'm Euell Gibbons.

00:46:45

I spent years learning about natural foods.

00:46:48

Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.

00:46:52

Natural ingredients are important to me.

00:46:55

That's why Post Grape Nuts is part of my breakfast.

00:46:58

- Grape Nuts, Grape Nuts was horrible.

00:47:02

It was horrible and he kind of gives it away.

00:47:05

"Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible."

00:47:09

No, never ate a pine tree. Don't want to eat a pine tree.

00:47:11

Here's the other thing,

00:47:12

Euell Gibbons died of stomach cancer,

00:47:16

and yet he wants us to eat Grape Nuts.

00:47:19

Grape Nuts were horrible. God didn't drop Grape Nuts.

00:47:23

He actually drops Frosted Flakes.

00:47:28

He does. He does.

00:47:30

Bread of Heaven. Sweet wafers made with honey.

00:47:36

It's beautiful how good God is. Next one.

00:47:45

Therefore, the people quarreled with Moses

00:47:50

and they said, "Give us something to drink."

00:47:52

So they got beautiful stuff that was given to them to eat.

00:47:54

And now they're back on water.

00:47:56

"Give us something to drink."

00:47:57

And Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me?

00:48:00

Why do you test the Lord?

00:48:02

Behold, I will stand before you

00:48:04

there on the rock at Horeb,

00:48:05

and you shall strike the rock,

00:48:07

and water shall come out of it,

00:48:09

and the people will drink."

00:48:13

This is back to water, understandably back to water.

00:48:18

I'm going to talk about water in a little bit,

00:48:20

but they keep going back and forth

00:48:21

between water and bread, water and bread.

00:48:24

Everything that is in the Old Testament is there for a reason,

00:48:28

not just to communicate the character of God,

00:48:31

not just to communicate our history as people of God,

00:48:34

but also to set us up for who Jesus is,

00:48:37

also to set us up to understand everything in the Bible.

00:48:41

When Jesus prays what you may know as the Lord's Prayer,

00:48:46

our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...

00:48:49

Give us this day our daily bread,

00:48:51

it's throwing back to manna.

00:48:54

Give us today enough to meet our needs today.

00:48:59

Give me today. Give us this day our daily bread.

00:49:02

When Jesus says, "I am the bread of life"

00:49:05

in the book of John, He's saying, "I am your manna.

00:49:10

I am here to interact with you on a daily basis.

00:49:13

I'm here to give you grace every single day.

00:49:16

I'm here to to meet your spiritual needs every day."

00:49:20

He is the bread of life.

00:49:22

God generally, He doesn't dump a bread factory on us.

00:49:27

He gives us due every day like clockwork.

00:49:31

And we have to condition ourselves

00:49:34

to thrive in those spiritual conditions.

00:49:37

And people who can't thrive in those spiritual conditions

00:49:39

will actually die because they won't be faithful.

00:49:43

Pick out your favorite restaurant,

00:49:44

whatever city you're in,

00:49:46

Boca, Ruby's, Lindey's, VASO, whatever it is, pick it up.

00:49:50

You can't survive there.

00:49:52

You can enjoy those mountaintop cuisine experiences,

00:49:54

but you have to figure out

00:49:56

how do I get my daily nutrients every day?

00:49:58

This is what faithfulness is.

00:50:00

It's not waiting for the massive spiritual mountain

00:50:02

where all my dreams came true and I had this vision.

00:50:04

It's every day being faithful.

00:50:06

It's every day meeting God.

00:50:08

It's every day noticing how He's been there for you.

00:50:11

It's every day walking in the love of God.

00:50:13

It's every day seeing His goodness.

00:50:15

It's every day, every day being aware,

00:50:20

that is how you are faithful.

00:50:22

You don't wait for something amazing,

00:50:23

"Now I'm happy. I'm faithful."

00:50:25

No, you're at it all the time because

00:50:27

you're looking for the manna all the time.

00:50:30

And when you get it, you don't forget about it.

00:50:33

Now, there's a strange thing going here

00:50:37

before we crack on Israel too much,

00:50:39

we also have to remember God's created us

00:50:42

to need nourishment.

00:50:43

He could have created us so we didn't need nourishment.

00:50:45

He's created us to need nourishment

00:50:46

and especially hydration. Right?

00:50:49

We need to drink water.

00:50:51

So we got to be careful that we don't crack on Israel too much

00:50:53

because when you haven't drank water for a while,

00:50:57

it'll kind of get the worst of you.

00:50:59

It's not good for you.

00:51:00

So the second spiritual realm is this:

00:51:02

we have to see to be faithful we have to be

00:51:05

into formation over hydration.

00:51:10

God is into your spiritual formation

00:51:14

more than He is into your physical hydration.

00:51:17

The nation of Israel was allowed to get parched,

00:51:22

allowed to deal with hunger for a very, very short

00:51:25

breath of time because God was forming them.

00:51:29

The most important thing on God's agenda

00:51:32

is making you look like Jesus.

00:51:35

That's the most important thing on His agenda.

00:51:37

Number one on His agenda is not giving you a raise.

00:51:40

Number two on the agenda is not giving you family beautiful.

00:51:43

Number three is not giving you cancer free prognosis.

00:51:47

No, these things are all crises to our faith

00:51:50

if you think God's job is to make you happy.

00:51:54

It's not. His job is to make you like Jesus.

00:51:59

And that means Jesus goes through a wilderness era.

00:52:03

Jesus has difficulty. And guess what?

00:52:05

You and I are going to have difficulty. We are.

00:52:07

And what's happening in it is God is using it

00:52:11

to actually form us.

00:52:14

I promise I'm not going to have every illustration

00:52:16

be a cancer illustration, but here's the one

00:52:18

for this week as Lib is dealing with cancer

00:52:20

and chemo and everything.

00:52:21

By the way, if you're curious about what's going on

00:52:23

with her, I have a email list BrianTome.com email list,

00:52:27

and I have an email coming out that's

00:52:29

going to share some of my learnings.

00:52:30

If you haven't subscribed to that, you can go ahead

00:52:32

and subscribe to that if you want to get

00:52:34

personal updates on a variety of things.

00:52:36

Some of you are already on that,

00:52:37

and you can you can get that, but it's an email

00:52:39

that goes out every month.

00:52:40

I've been doing it for years and years and years.

00:52:42

You want to subscribe to that, my next one

00:52:44

is about our kind of little journey on that.

00:52:46

But nonetheless we haven't, we have people

00:52:48

that have been faithful friends to us

00:52:50

for now for a couple of months.

00:52:51

We haven't cooked a meal from scratch in months.

00:52:54

God's so good by blessing us through other people.

00:52:58

This last week, one of the meals that we got

00:53:00

was from a woman who I've never known.

00:53:03

It was a friend of Lib's.

00:53:05

She was in a Bible study with her some time ago.

00:53:08

And this woman has lost her daughter.

00:53:12

The daughter died and she provided us a meal.

00:53:15

I don't know, you know, one thing

00:53:17

that's not supposed to happen is

00:53:18

you're not supposed to outlive your kids.

00:53:20

That's just not supposed to happen.

00:53:21

And when this woman provides me, when I found the story,

00:53:24

it meant so much to me because I was getting a meal

00:53:27

from someone who was faithful.

00:53:29

When life isn't going your way

00:53:31

and you decide to still be faithful,

00:53:33

you're on the right track with God.

00:53:35

And the reason, the reason, the reason why

00:53:37

people are dropping away from the faith

00:53:39

isn't because God isn't good.

00:53:41

It's because you're not faithful.

00:53:43

That's why you're dropping away.

00:53:44

It's not that you're smarter than somebody else

00:53:47

because you figured something out

00:53:48

because people way smarter than you are faithful.

00:53:50

It's not because this --

00:53:53

Faithfulness, like the lid, the lid

00:53:55

of your spiritual maturity is

00:53:58

how much difficulty you can handle.

00:54:00

If you can handle this much difficulty,

00:54:02

that's how much your faith is going to be.

00:54:04

If you can handle this much, that's how much faith.

00:54:06

Handle this much, that's how much,

00:54:07

that's where your faith is going to be.

00:54:10

They want water and there's a big massive rock.

00:54:13

And Moses knows they need water.

00:54:16

He takes his stick, and this is kind of a sign,

00:54:19

not just meeting their needs, but also a sign,

00:54:21

he takes that stick and Babe Ruth's it. Bam!

00:54:24

Smashes that rock, and out of the rock comes the water.

00:54:29

I used to think of this as some little itty bitty rock

00:54:31

that Moses hit.

00:54:33

No, it's a big rock that he strikes and he hits

00:54:36

because it had to feed massive, massive numbers of people.

00:54:42

A lot of people, it had to feed.

00:54:45

And God hydrates His people, but He hydrates them

00:54:50

once He tests them, once He gives them difficulty.

00:54:54

And it ties back to, again, my God has provided for me.

00:54:58

He brought water out of a rock.

00:55:00

Interesting the geologist would say

00:55:02

this part of the world has sandstone infrastructure

00:55:06

underneath with cracks and fissures,

00:55:08

and sometimes water can burst forth from there.

00:55:12

So perhaps God uses the geological systems in that era,

00:55:17

and he times it such with Moses striking the rock

00:55:21

to bring hydration for His people.

00:55:24

Friends, just understand if you want to be faithful,

00:55:27

keep in mind God's up for your spiritual formation

00:55:30

more than He's into your hydration.

00:55:31

Critical to know.

00:55:32

The third realm, the third realm

00:55:35

is prefiguring of perfection.

00:55:39

Let me explain this one, prefiguring perfection.

00:55:42

There are things that happen in the Old Testament

00:55:45

that are prefiguring, they're a prefigure,

00:55:49

a prophetic living out, if you will,

00:55:51

of what's going to be perfectly enacted in later times.

00:55:57

Everything in the Old Testament

00:55:59

is there to point us to Jesus Christ.

00:56:02

Everything in the Old Testament, everything points

00:56:05

to Him in some way or shape or form, He fulfills it.

00:56:08

And when Jesus does miracles and says teachings,

00:56:11

all of His hearers understood all these miracles

00:56:15

in the Bible, in the scriptures,

00:56:18

and that's why they made sense.

00:56:19

And that's why He was doing what He was doing,

00:56:21

He was reenacting and perfecting many of these things.

00:56:25

John 8:37 says this:

00:56:27

Jesus stood up and he cried out, "If anyone thirsts,

00:56:29

let him come to Me and drink.

00:56:32

Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture said,

00:56:34

'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"

00:56:38

Now this he said about the Spirit,

00:56:40

whom whom those believed in Him were to receive,

00:56:42

for as yet the Spirit had not yet been given,

00:56:45

because Jesus was not yet glorified.

00:56:48

Jesus is drawing on this, on this image,

00:56:51

talking about spiritual formation.

00:56:53

He says, "Your hearts are like rocks. Hard, hard.

00:56:57

Your hearts are like rock.

00:56:59

But when God gets ahold of your life,

00:57:01

when I get ahold of your life,

00:57:03

out of you will flow rivers of water,

00:57:07

that is the Holy Spirit coming out of you

00:57:09

and blessing other people.

00:57:11

Not being about yourself, because the nation of Israel

00:57:13

at this time, they're all about them all the time.

00:57:15

That's all they're thinking about is

00:57:17

themselves, themselves, themselves.

00:57:18

But when they come out of themselves,

00:57:21

they're going to be blessing other people,

00:57:22

this is what Jesus was talking about.

00:57:26

Justin Martyr in 150 A.D., an early leader

00:57:29

in the Christian church, he said this:

00:57:31

The events of Israel were recorded,

00:57:33

and the whole law framed, to be types and images

00:57:36

of what would happen to Christ,

00:57:39

and what was to be done by Christ.

00:57:43

You ever considered that not only is

00:57:45

Jesus the rock that brings forth the water,

00:57:48

but Jesus is the rock that was struck?

00:57:52

Jesus brings forth water

00:57:56

because He was struck on the Cross,

00:57:59

He was painfully struck on the Cross.

00:58:01

And if He doesn't go through that pain,

00:58:03

He doesn't bring you forth the forgiveness and mercy

00:58:06

that you and I deserve right now.

00:58:08

Check this out, 1 Corinthians 10:

00:58:10

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers,

00:58:12

(this is a New Testament passage)

00:58:13

that our fathers were all under the cloud,

00:58:15

and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized

00:58:18

into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,

00:58:21

and all ate the same spiritual food.

00:58:23

They all had manna, they all had the quail,

00:58:24

which I'm not going to get into today.

00:58:26

And all drank the same spiritual drink.

00:58:29

For they drank from the spiritual Rock (capital R),

00:58:33

they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them,

00:58:36

and that Rock was Christ.

00:58:39

Jesus is the rock.

00:58:41

He is the rock that brings forth hydration.

00:58:45

And He is the rock because He was struck.

00:58:48

He was struck. He was struck.

00:58:50

He was battered, He was bruised, struck once.

00:58:53

Had that happen one time in the Cross,

00:58:55

but He's still giving life to us today.

00:58:58

That's why we want to be like Him and celebrate communion.

00:59:01

Let's do this right now. I'm not done talking, by the way.

00:59:04

I'm not done talking.

00:59:05

We're just going to do it right now instead of later on.

00:59:07

Take the bottom part of this, that little wafer

00:59:10

that represents stale manna.

00:59:14

Put it in your hand and represents the body,

00:59:16

the body of Christ.

00:59:19

This body has been stricken for you.

00:59:21

This body has been broken for you.

00:59:23

And Jesus in the early church instructs us,

00:59:26

whenever we're gathered together, to remember

00:59:30

that He was faithful to us

00:59:33

and to decide to be faithful to Him.

00:59:35

The body of Christ broken for you,

00:59:37

all of you who have given your life to Christ,

00:59:39

take and eat.

00:59:43

Then the other side we have some reddish liquid.

00:59:49

This is the blood of Christ.

00:59:51

If you have never had communion before,

00:59:53

or if you've never received Christ before,

00:59:55

you can receive Him right now

00:59:56

and this is your first communion.

00:59:58

If you haven't received Him

00:59:59

and this isn't what you want to do, that's okay.

01:00:02

These aren't applied you yet.

01:00:03

Maybe someday these will apply to you.

01:00:05

But these -- this applies to all of us

01:00:08

who have drank from the Rock of Christ,

01:00:11

drank from Him, been nourished by Him,

01:00:13

want to identify with Him.

01:00:14

He spilled His blood so we could be forgiven.

01:00:18

And we spill our bloods to be faithful to Him.

01:00:21

The blood of Christ, take and drink.

01:00:27

Not sweet, is it? But beautiful nonetheless.

01:00:34

Let's keep going with our story.

01:00:49

Exodus 19:16-19.

01:00:52

Here's where it gets even more intense. Here's what says:

01:00:56

And on the morning of the third day,

01:00:58

there were thunders and lightnings

01:00:59

and a thick cloud on the mountain

01:01:01

and very loud trumpet blast. [thunder]

01:01:09

Gets me every time.

01:01:11

Every time gets me.

01:01:13

Very loud trumpet blast,

01:01:15

so that all the people in the camp trembled.

01:01:18

Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God,

01:01:22

and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain.

01:01:24

And now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke

01:01:28

because the Lord had descended on it in fire.

01:01:31

The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln,

01:01:34

and the whole mountain trembled greatly.

01:01:37

As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder

01:01:40

Moses spoke, and God answered Him in the thunder.

01:01:46

Moses goes up on Mount Sinai.

01:01:49

He gets the tablets of stone, the law of God.

01:01:51

The people of God can't go up.

01:01:53

They can be at the base of the mountain.

01:01:55

And they know something's going on because

01:01:56

every time they come to the base of the mountain

01:01:58

and Moses goes up. They're like, what is going on?

01:02:00

We're hearing trumpets. There's crashes of lightning.

01:02:03

There's stuff happening up there.

01:02:04

It's been a pretty calm mountaintop,

01:02:05

unless Moses goes up there.

01:02:08

And he comes down, the dude's face is glowing.

01:02:10

Comes down the first time he's glowing like my word.

01:02:13

Geeze. Glowing face.

01:02:16

You just have to put a veil over his face.

01:02:18

Interesting, the prefiguring means perfection.

01:02:22

The New Testament tells us Moses put a veil over his face

01:02:25

so that as the glory of God would fade,

01:02:28

people wouldn't get freaked out. Because guess what?

01:02:32

There's times when you're not feeling God,

01:02:34

It doesn't mean you're not faithful.

01:02:35

There's sometimes you're just not glowing.

01:02:38

But faithful people aren't dependent on the glow,

01:02:41

they're just doing the right thing.

01:02:44

Moses comes down the second time

01:02:46

and there is a golden calf

01:02:55

there in the midst of the people.

01:02:56

This is a horrible thing because this golden calf,

01:03:02

let me get the verse here for us.

01:03:05

This golden calf is a replica

01:03:10

of the false gods that were in Egypt

01:03:12

that the nation of Israel came out of.

01:03:15

That was one part of their their deity in Egypt

01:03:18

was like calves or a bull.

01:03:22

And here they are,

01:03:23

they get recreated right here in their midst.

01:03:26

It says this in Psalm 32:1:

01:03:28

When the people of Israel saw that Moses

01:03:29

delayed to come down from the mountain, the people

01:03:32

gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him.

01:03:34

That's his right hand guy.

01:03:35

Aaron said to them, "Up, make us gods who shall go before us.

01:03:39

As for this Moses, the man who brought us

01:03:41

up out of the land of Egypt,

01:03:43

we don't know what's become of him."

01:03:44

As for this Moses.

01:03:47

Gosh, how a leader gets forgotten real quickly.

01:03:51

As for this Moses, this Moses,

01:03:52

you mean the one who parted the sea?

01:03:55

The one who, like, prayed and manna from heaven came?

01:03:58

As for you mean the one who hit a rock

01:03:59

and you've been hydrated?

01:04:01

Like how quickly you forget.

01:04:03

He's yesterday's news. We need some spirituality here.

01:04:06

So Aaron said to them, "Take off the rings of gold

01:04:08

that are on the ears of your wives, your sons,

01:04:10

your daughters, and bring them to me."

01:04:12

So all the people took off the rings of gold

01:04:14

that were on their ears and brought them to Aaron.

01:04:16

And he received the gold from their hand

01:04:18

and fastened it with a graving tool and made a golden calf.

01:04:21

And they said, "These are your gods, O Israel,

01:04:24

who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!"

01:04:27

Oh my goodness! Horrible, horrible.

01:04:31

You can't get any more disgusting than this.

01:04:34

The God who has rescued you, if you ever read

01:04:37

the Ten Commandments, it starts off where God says,

01:04:40

"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery."

01:04:43

The foundation for the Ten Commandments is,

01:04:45

remember, remember what I've done for you.

01:04:47

Not only are they not remembering

01:04:49

what He's done for them,

01:04:50

they're going back and worshiping a false god.

01:04:53

They're creating a false god of the Egyptians.

01:04:57

One of the things that happens when you become unfaithful,

01:05:00

you revert to what you did before.

01:05:03

So the substance you used to abuse,

01:05:05

you start abusing the substance again.

01:05:07

The power trips used to have

01:05:09

you start finding ways to have power trips.

01:05:11

The sexual stuff you had going on,

01:05:14

you go back to where you were sexually.

01:05:17

Your financial practices and principles,

01:05:20

you go back to managing your money

01:05:23

exactly the way anybody on your street would

01:05:25

who doesn't know Jesus.

01:05:26

When you look exactly like them financially,

01:05:28

you're not faithful. You go back to that.

01:05:30

The attitudes used to have, you go back to that.

01:05:34

You just, boom, you revert all the way back.

01:05:36

That's what being unfaithful is.

01:05:38

Being unfaithful isn't like,

01:05:39

"Oh, I just don't believe anymore."

01:05:41

You go back, you revert.

01:05:43

And this is what happens in Nation of Israel.

01:05:45

It is a horrible, horrible thing.

01:05:50

When I was going into the car of the woman

01:05:56

who drove us, drove me to the hospital

01:05:58

and I had that moment with God walking to the car

01:06:03

where I realized, "Oh, no one gets this one, God,

01:06:05

this one, this one is for me. Thank you."

01:06:07

I had this, like, I had waters, I had living waters

01:06:11

that wanted to gush out of me. I like --

01:06:13

I needed, I couldn't just philosophize about this thing.

01:06:15

I needed to share it.

01:06:17

Like, I get in the car and I say to the woman,

01:06:20

I put my evangelist on,

01:06:22

I want to bring this woman to Christ.

01:06:24

She she has got to know the God that I know.

01:06:26

I mean, the reason why many of us can't remember

01:06:32

the last time we shared our faith is because we're stale.

01:06:37

We're just stale. We're not fresh.

01:06:40

And when you're when you're feeling fresh with God,

01:06:42

when yoH freshly understanding what he's doing for you,

01:06:44

it just naturally comes out.

01:06:46

So here I am in the car, and I'm like, I said,

01:06:50

"Hey, do you believe in God?"

01:06:53

And she gave me this answer that I interpreted

01:06:57

as kind of mamby pamby, all gods are

01:06:59

the same spirituality, religion kind of thing,

01:07:02

which is not the same as what we're looking at here today.

01:07:05

I said, "Do you believe in God?"

01:07:07

She said, "Well, don't we all?"

01:07:09

And it was, just hit me the wrong, wrong way at the time.

01:07:12

I just had this moment with God, right?

01:07:15

Like the gloves were off. I said, "No, we don't all.

01:07:18

There's one God. His name is Jesus. Do you know him?"

01:07:22

Not the right response. I could've --

01:07:26

Right heart, but my emotion got away from me

01:07:28

and it kind of shut that conversation down.

01:07:30

I didn't handle that really well,

01:07:31

but at least what happened there was that

01:07:33

there was this, like, purification that took place

01:07:36

where the water was coming out of me,

01:07:38

because I had just had a fresh encounter with God.

01:07:41

My prayer, my hope for you, is that

01:07:43

you are all having that today,

01:07:45

that you're remembering what God did to you at one point.

01:07:50

You might be having God doing something for you right now.

01:07:53

My prayer is that you have a clarity and a vision

01:07:58

and a focus that you want to be faithful

01:08:01

to the one who is faithful,

01:08:03

that you want to have fresh water.

01:08:07

You want to taste of His sweetness.

01:08:09

You want to be in tune to the mysterious delivery systems

01:08:12

that He brings of honey in the rock, water,

01:08:16

water out of the rock, manna on the ground.

01:08:20

You want to be in tune to that.

01:08:22

And the more in tune you are,

01:08:23

the more faithful you will be.

01:08:25

And the land of faithfulness is a connection with God

01:08:30

that you cannot imagine. It's not philosophical.

01:08:33

It's not intellectual. It's not even moral.

01:08:36

It's definitely not political.

01:08:38

It is personal. Personal with you and your God.

01:08:42

And that is the place of spiritual power.

01:08:45

That's what God wants from you.

01:08:47

That's how He's forming you right now.

01:08:50

God, I'm thankful for being patient with me

01:08:53

and forming me and restoring my memories

01:08:57

of Your amazing faithfulness.

01:09:00

I pray you've done that for us today.

01:09:01

And Lord, we want to make a fresh, fresh, fresh statement

01:09:06

that we will be faithful.

01:09:09

We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen.

01:09:12

- Hey, thank you so much for watching.

01:09:14

I don't know what today's talk stirred up for you,

01:09:16

what it might have challenged you on or encouraged you in.

01:09:19

But hey, we'd love to pray for you or process with you,

01:09:22

encourage you however we can.

01:09:24

Now, I also want to give you a heads up on some of

01:09:26

the things that are happening around Crossroads.

01:09:29

So first, it's fall.

01:09:31

I don't know if you've ever felt like that time

01:09:33

in your life where you're just getting pulled

01:09:35

in a hundred different directions.

01:09:36

Maybe it's work, family practices, errands.

01:09:38

It's easy to feel like you're just surviving,

01:09:40

but you were wired for more than that.

01:09:43

We actually go best when we're most connected,

01:09:45

when we're living life together.

01:09:46

That's why this fall we've got

01:09:48

three powerful ways for you to grow.

01:09:50

First, Made is for anyone who wants to experience

01:09:53

greater purpose and energy and something more than the grind.

01:09:57

Secondly, we've got Naturally Supernatural

01:09:59

to help you live and lead like Jesus with confidence,

01:10:02

even in the miraculous.

01:10:03

And third, if there's a short list of things

01:10:06

that have benefited my marriage, this is near the top.

01:10:09

We've got listening training to help give you

01:10:11

practical skills to deepen every relationship in your life.

01:10:15

If you're ready to reset, reconnect,

01:10:17

or take your next step,

01:10:18

you can do it all at Crossroads.net/Anywhere.

01:10:21

Now, if you ever feel like, man, you're missing

01:10:24

some of the great things that are going on around Crossroads,

01:10:26

there's a cheat code.

01:10:27

It's the easiest way to stay connected.

01:10:29

You can just text Anywhere to 301301

01:10:32

and you'll get one text message from me a week

01:10:34

with some of the things that are going on

01:10:36

that will encourage you.

01:10:37

Next, if you are some of the faithful people

01:10:39

around here with your finances, we've got the Blue Team.

01:10:42

Those are self-identified people who faithfully tithe

01:10:45

and fuel what God's doing around here,

01:10:46

as well as those who are a part of the 10X Push.

01:10:49

If either of those groups describe you,

01:10:51

I just want to remind you that this coming Wednesday,

01:10:53

September 10th, the Blue Team is gathering

01:10:56

for our annual family meeting.

01:10:57

So if you've got the email invite,

01:10:59

you can RSVP and join us.

01:11:00

It's going to be incredible, vision 10X updates and worship.

01:11:03

And maybe you're new around here

01:11:05

and don't know what I'm talking about.

01:11:06

Like what's the Blue Team or 10X?

01:11:08

Hey, this is your invitation to find out.

01:11:10

You can even join us in live stream the family meeting

01:11:12

to see who we are and where we're going as a church.

01:11:15

And whether you're already giving or just considering it,

01:11:17

this is your chance to step in and try it out.

01:11:19

You can check it all out and find out

01:11:21

what we believe about money at Crossroads.net/give.

01:11:24

Hey, thank you so much for watching

01:11:26

and we'll see you next week.

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