The God Who Delivers

All right. Well, we have been in a series called the Names of God. And this week, I’m really excited. I knew I was going to be speaking, and as I was driving, the word that popped in was the name of God, the Deliverer. The Deliverer. The God who delivers. We’re going to be talking about that today, and I am really excited.

As we are going through this series, really the purpose of it is that we would turn our attention to God and we’d learn His attributes, because even though circumstances around us can shift and change, He never does. Even though circumstances and people will call you to all of these things and try to tell you who He is or how He should fit into your life, He doesn’t do that. He’s a God who is the beginning and the end. There is none like Him. It says that He’s the King of kings, the Lord of lords. And so today we are going to be talking about God, the one who delivers.

The more confident we become in our faith and trust and hope in Him, the more boldly we will live in all capacities, right? If we trust that God is the one who forgives, and He calls us to forgive, guess what? The more we grow in faith, the easier sometimes it is to forgive, right? The more that we know that He never leaves us or forsakes us — and we find ourselves in a situation, and we’ve grown in our faith in Him, and we have fed it — then as circumstances change, we know He doesn’t change. So we’re going to talk about the God who delivers.

The one thing that I realize, and we see it in Scripture, is that God actually never wants us to be caught off guard. Ever. You’re like, “What do you mean?” Now, we’ve all maybe prayed prayers and not gotten answers, or feel like He’s not answered. We may be walking sometimes directionless and being like, “God, where are You?” But the reality is He never actually wants us to be caught off guard. And while we may not know the exact way things will play out, oftentimes He’s already preparing us, right?

There might be an inclination that you have — really, it’s called the Holy Spirit. The world will call it your gut, your intuition. But it says that we’ve been given the Holy Spirit. Actually, today is Pentecost, which is the day that the church received the Holy Spirit. After Jesus died, He rose, He ascended back into heaven, and He says, “Go and wait.” And they’re like, “Waiting for what?” And it was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in us when we say yes to Jesus. The role and the function of the Holy Spirit is to be our teacher, to be our comforter. That’s kind of the role of the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit oftentimes is moving in us, and we won’t even know.

I think I shared this, maybe not. But a couple weeks ago, maybe about a month ago, I was doing laundry — I did share it. I was doing laundry, and I had these towels from the kitchen that needed to be washed, and I didn’t want them on the floor. So I put them on my laundry sink. And as I was walking away, I had this inside of me, like, “Move the towels.” And I’m like, “It’s fine.” Like, it’s literally right there. It was causing me no extra effort. Well, the towels ended up falling into the laundry sink, and I have this old but new washer that does two rinses. It didn’t just do one rinse cycle, it did two rinse cycles, and our whole basement flooded — into my son’s room, into the living room area.

And I just thought, “You warned me. You said don’t leave them there, and I thought, that’s fine.” But that happens all the time, right? And the consequences of that were really minimal. It’s been a lot of work, a lot of cleaning, a lot of just extra stuff, frustration — like, why didn’t I? But the Holy Spirit talks to us, and so often we just brush it off. We ignore it. It’s not a big deal. And so we’re going to be talking about that, because as we grow in our relationship with Jesus, as we grow to understand who He is, the hope is the quicker to obedience we’ll be, the quicker we just won’t brush things off, the quicker that we’re able to respond to Him.

We’ve been convinced we don’t need a deliverer

Now, here’s the thing. We live in a time that we don’t actually need someone to deliver us. We don’t need deliverance. I wrote this down, and I didn’t pre-do this. I didn’t Google it, but I’m going to open it in here really fast. I’m going to open ChatGPT. You guys know what ChatGPT is? It’s AI. Okay. I’m going to show you why we don’t need a deliverer and why we don’t need the Lord. Okay.

“I’m having troubles in my marriage. What should I do?” Let’s see. Helpful. Now it’s giving me tips on how to navigate the tension in my marriage, struggles, and feeling exhausted. “Slow down. Get honest. Focus.” Okay, so it’s giving me six tips. What else? “How many self-help books are there?” That’s going to be an interesting one.

There’s no exact number, but tens of thousands, likely hundreds of thousands of self-help books. That sounded like me talking, because that’s something I would say. But there are tens of thousands, likely hundreds of thousands of self-help books. They can help us in our relationships, leadership, productivity, spirituality, mental wellness, business, motivation, parenting, personal growth. And it gave me some suggestions. Let’s see what else. Well, you get the point. Oh, this was the other one: “I’m feeling stuck in life. What should I do?”

All right. Oh, I think I hit my limit, because I don’t pay for this. Oh, no, it’s not. It’s even asking how I want to know my information. It’s giving me a lot of tips. You guys get the point, right? We don’t actually need Jesus. We don’t actually need to be delivered. We don’t need a God who’s going to work out of our box. We literally have everything we need right here. Right? Wrong. Okay. Yes, you guys know I’m right. That’s correct. But you get the point: all of a sudden you find yourself in a situation, and we are so used to looking at other sources that we don’t even consider what the Lord wants to do, or what He even can do.

You know, after my whole debacle with the water, I was sitting there trying to figure it out, and again there was this thought — I’m not this brilliant — just, “Clean it with a carpet cleaner.” I was like, “Oh.” We have a carpet cleaner here, so I went, and that was helping me just suck out all the water. Again, it was tedious. It took time. It was not fun. And there was so much water in there, I had to keep emptying it.

But we have come to a place where we’ve been convinced we don’t even need a deliverer. We’ve been convinced that there’s always another way out. And I’m here to tell you that we need a deliverer. We need someone. He wants to actually be our deliverer. And there’s lots of ways that we can look at this, but we’re going to just talk about how He wants to meet us in the middle of our situation.

God goes ahead of Moses

So if you have your Bibles, we’re going to have Scripture on the screen, and we’re going to go to Exodus. I have a new Bible, but this is my favorite Bible, and I just decided we’re going to go back to it today, even though the print is a little small for my eyes. Exodus chapter 4.

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with this, I would encourage you: take notes, write down the Scripture references, read it for yourself. Highlight in your Bible. I always say it’s okay to write in your Bible if there’s something that sticks out. But when we’re reading this, especially with the Old Testament, what we want to understand is that there are two ways Scripture is happening. It’s describing what’s going on, and it may not exactly interpret to fix my life or interpret into today’s world. But you always have to ask yourself, if it’s in the Bible, why is it in there?

So here we have the story, and the children of Israel are in Egypt. They are slaves. They have everything that they need, but they’re still slaves. They have no freedoms. They’re in bondage. They’re in this place that’s not set for them. And Jesus — or excuse me, God — calls Moses out. And what I was thinking about, and I want you to consider: from the beginning of time for Moses, God was already his deliverer.

If you are familiar with the story of Moses, Pharaoh comes and he’s wanting to kill all the babies, because basically they’re trying to prevent Jesus from eventually coming. That’s the long and short of it, right? And so, long and short, the mandate goes out that basically all Hebrew babies were to be murdered, and Moses’s mom puts him in a basket. If you’ve ever heard this story, she makes this basket, which is kind of beyond me. She puts him in this basket and she sends him away, and then she watches nearby, which is just all really bizarre to me. And then Pharaoh’s daughter comes and finds the baby and keeps it. And he ends up living in this world where he does not belong. But God has set him apart and delivered him from the very beginning.

So as he’s going on, he sees this thing happen, and there’s this dispute, and he ends up murdering in defense. He’s trying to defend the children of Israel. He ends up murdering these Egyptians, and then he flees. Okay. So we kind of have the story of what’s happening with Moses. Is that correct? Oh, someone looks confused. Do not look perplexed while I’m talking. I was like, am I getting something wrong here? Thank you.

Okay, so Moses now is picking up, and God has called him out. And Moses is basically saying, “Hey, look, I’m not the man for the job. I’m slow to speak. There’s got to be someone more qualified than me. I don’t want to go and get the children of Israel out of Pharaoh’s land.” And God says, “No, no, no. You’re the one.” And they come up with this plan, and we’re going to go to Exodus chapter 4, verse 18.

“So Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law” — this is after he’s been in conversation with God — “and said to him, ‘Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see whether they are still alive.’ And Jethro said to Moses, ‘Go in peace.’ Now the Lord said to Moses in Midian, ‘Go to Egypt, for all the men who sought your life are dead.’” Because again, remember, Moses had escaped. He had left because they were after him, after he murdered — or killed — these two people.

“Then Moses took his wife and his sons and set them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all the wonders before Pharaoh which I put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.’” Hear what I’m saying? So God is giving him the instruction and telling him what he’s about to face. “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.’”

So we’re going to stop there for just a moment. God never wants us to be caught off guard. He literally tells Moses what is about to happen: “I’m going to harden Pharaoh’s heart. You’re going to go back for My children of Israel. He’s probably not going to want to let them go. So you need to tell him this. I’ve equipped you for what you need.” If you read earlier in the chapters, he has this rod. And something I want us to understand, as you read through the plagues — if you take some time to read through the plagues; we’re not doing that today — Pharaoh actually has these magicians who are replicating all the same things. They’re like this counterfeit. They’re challenging what Moses is saying.

Have you ever been in a place where someone’s challenging what you’re saying, and all of a sudden you’re like, “Wait, do I believe what I believe? Am I right? Am I wrong?” I mean, just even right now, someone made this look, and I’m like, am I saying something incorrectly? Right? So here Moses is going in, and He’s saying, “This is what I want you to say. This is what I want you to do, and this is what you’re about to face.”

Covered by covenant

Now, I’m not going to lie, I had to read this about 15 times, because I was very perplexed about what had happened. So God is telling Moses to go. God tells Moses, “All right, I want you to go, and then I want you to say this. No one’s coming after you. The people that were wanting to take your life for their people’s lives, they’ve gone.” Okay? So he’s getting ready to go, and then in between this instruction are these verses that really perplexed me. I’m not going to lie, I had to read it, and then read it again, and then I opened my study materials. I was like, “Wait, what is happening here?”

So verse 24: “And it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the Lord met him and sought to kill him.” I was like, “Wait, who did He meet, and who was He trying to kill?” Right? He just was talking about Moses. He just sent Moses, gave Moses a task, and now He’s at this encampment trying to kill him. I was very confused. Okay, can I just — no, I was reading and I was like, “What?” So then I had to go back again, like, did someone enter the story that I just read past? Because that’s a possibility. No, He’s talking about Moses here.

Verse 25: “Then Zipporah his wife took a sharp stone and cut the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses’ feet, and said, ‘Surely you are a husband of blood to me.’ So He let him go. Then she said, ‘You are a husband of blood,’ because of your circumcision.” And then, “The Lord said to Aaron,” and I’m like, “What is happening here? What did I just miss in this story?”

Let me explain to you what happens. Moses had committed an act that he was still guilty of. Whether it was out of self-defense, whether he was trying to defend his brethren, he still committed an act of murder, and there was still consequence. And while he was in Midian — now I promise this all makes sense, okay? — while he was in Midian, he was a refugee and safe. He was coming out of that umbrella. And in coming out of that umbrella, there was all of a sudden accountability that needed to happen.

And because of the way that the law works, because of the covenant that he had with his wife, because of all of these way-over-my-head ways that culture worked, the wife actually circumcised her son on behalf of the family. And if we’re just reading Scripture, we don’t realize the beautiful thing that the wife did in that moment: she covered her husband in a way that then put him back into having his debts paid. That moment, that act of circumcision — which is really bizarre to me, at least as I’m reading this — all of a sudden it was a place of saying, “God, we surrender to You, and we acknowledge what we’ve done.” And now, because of the way that marriage and covenant works, what she did actually covers Moses to move freely in what God has asked him to do.

Super bizarre. Doesn’t seem to make any sense. But I also just want to say, this is not a thing about marriage. But I was also reminded of the beauty that we have when we’re in covenant with one another, when we have been married — that we are able to cover our spouse in a way that someone else could never cover them. This is a whole side note: when she did an act of surrender and acknowledgment of what he had done, in that moment it takes care of the debt and puts him back in a position where he can move freely into what God has called him to do.

And so my encouragement to us who are married is: do not underestimate the works and the things that we can do on behalf of our spouse, whether it’s our husband or our wife, or whoever is hearing this. We have a way to cover our spouses so beautifully, because that’s what covenant is. This is all that’s being established in the Old Testament — the covenant. We don’t talk about covenant now, but marriage is a covenant. And so when we do things, we can actually position ourselves in places to cover our spouses, our marriages, and our families so differently, because of the power of the covenant that we’ve made with our husbands and wives and with God.

Beautiful side note. Okay. Anyways, I had to work that one. I was literally in those verses like, what is happening? And then as I’m understanding the cultural dynamic of it — again, when we understand there’s a cultural dynamic, but then also what is actually happening in the background — He’s reminding me, at least when I’m reading this: “Suzie, you can cover Jay in ways that no one could ever cover him. You can cover Jay in ways that his parents can’t cover him. You can cover him in ways because of the covenant that we make.” Because that is how beautiful marriage is. It’s not just me and Jay. It’s my covenant with God. And I’m actually in covenant with God. And because I’m in covenant with God, I’m in covenant with Jay — who’s not here.

Living with the consequences

God had been delivering Moses from the beginning. And as you look at Moses’s story, we see the continued ways that He delivered him. The reality is — and this is why, before we move on — we don’t get to just freely sin. We may become more comfortable with sinning, and there might be things where we find the gray area of something. Because even though we do have God’s mercy and grace and forgiveness, there is still sometimes a natural consequence to our decisions. And that’s not God making us pay. It’s just the reality of our decisions.

I remember my dad, who has passed away. He was very sick, and I was caring for him. He was super weak. All of his strength was gone. And I remember him saying, “Suzie, am I here because of all of the bad decisions I’ve made?” That’s a heavy question. Obviously, he was contemplating things that I don’t fully understand. His life was literally flashing before his eyes, right? And I remember telling him, “Dad, I don’t know how judgment works, but I do know that you didn’t take care of your body very well, and I do know you ignored some things. And so maybe we’re just sitting in the consequence of that.”

But so often the enemy wants to come in with the guilt and the shame and the lies when we experience the consequences of our decisions, right? As I mentioned, I am currently training for a half marathon, and in my mind I’m like, “Oh, I got it. I’ve done it before.” But I’m going to tell you, every time I go to run, I’m sitting in the consequence of my decisions of being undisciplined, right? My body doesn’t quite move, and it’s not just because I’m getting older. I have just neglected my body. I’m sitting in the consequences of my decisions.

Now, does God want to give me some insight and help me? Yes. Right? So when we are walking through things, we have to understand: Moses still had the consequences of his decisions, and God provided a way of atonement so that he could move forward, but he still was walking in that. So once all of that is dealt with, it then leaves room for God to move.

So we’re going to move on to verse 27, and I want us to keep looking to see how God tries to warn people before it happens, because He’s the God who delivers. The whole reason He wants us to know is because He doesn’t want us walking blindly into something. He wants us to walk so we can walk through it, not just be like everyone else experiencing the same things.

“And the Lord said to Aaron, ‘Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.’” Because this was the compromise. Moses didn’t want to go. He said, “I’m not qualified. I don’t have it.” So then He says, “Go call Aaron. He’ll be the one who speaks for you, since your speaking is the issue.” So “the Lord said to Aaron, ‘Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.’ So he went and met him on the mountain of God and kissed him. So Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him, and all the signs which He had commanded him. Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered the elders of the children of Israel. And Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses. Then he did the signs in the sight of the people. So the people believed; when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel and that He looked on their affliction, then they bowed and they worshiped.” They bowed their heads in worship.

What we see right here is He’s letting everyone know, “I’m about to deliver you out of your circumstances that you’ve been crying out about. I’m about to move. I see you. I hear you. I remember My covenant.” Okay? So everyone is on the same page. Remember that.

When it seems to get worse

All right. So we’re going to go to chapter 5, verse 22. Oh — so before we get there: Moses goes to Pharaoh. He tells Pharaoh, “Hey, you’ve got to let God’s people go. This is His firstborn son.” And Pharaoh’s like, “No way. They’re doing all the work for me.” That’s basically what’s happening. “They’re my slaves. They’re here. They’re mine. I’m not letting them go.” So then Moses returns in verse 22. Because after Pharaoh says no, he then makes their job even harder. He says, “You no longer have straw. You’ve got to build what you need to build. Meet your quota.” Right? Pharaoh’s doubling down on his slaves.

“So Moses returned to the Lord and said, ‘Lord, why have You brought trouble on this people? Why is it You have sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people; neither have You delivered Your people at all.’ Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of this land.’ And God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord.’”

See, what we don’t realize sometimes is, as Christians, we’re going to experience persecution. Just because someone came in the name of God, Pharaoh wasn’t like, “Oh, okay.” Pharaoh had no fear of God. Doesn’t that kind of seem similar to where we are? That there’s people who have no fear of any God? They don’t fear God. They mock God. They talk about God. They probably mock you. They probably make fun of you. Zero fear of God. And Moses all of a sudden is like, “God, where are You?” Even though He had already told him what? “I’m going to harden his heart.” And He reminds them again about what they’re supposed to walk into.

Throughout the plagues, we see that in some places, as you’re reading through it, there is no distinction, and the assumption is that the children of Israel were walking through some of these plagues with the Egyptians. And then there were other times, as we get towards the end half of the plagues, that there’s a clear distinction that they’re not walking through the same things that the Egyptians are walking through. But the reality is we don’t know what we’re going to walk into. We don’t know actually where things are headed. But we are not to be consumed by the world and the noise and the news, but we are to be looking to Him.

We don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. We don’t know what is going to happen in six weeks. I don’t know if it’s pre- or post- or mid-tribulation. I don’t know any of that. But what I do know is that He always wants to deliver His people. And He starts with deliverance by giving them instruction first. And we have to know His voice. We have to know His Word so that we are not caught off guard. Not out of fear. No, because I’m going to tell you, I believe that as things get darker, as the world shifts — and we even see it in here; I’ll read it in a second — we have to be free from the fear of death. We have to be free from the fear of man’s opinion. We have to be free from the doubt that the enemy wants to bring in, that we’re not qualified, so that we can be effective in the last days. And we are in the last days, because Jesus has already returned to heaven. We’ve already been in it since He ascended.

But I’m telling you, if we continue to be consumed by the noise and the fear and what our eyes see, we will miss the deliverance of the Lord. We will miss the opportunity to be walking through things with minimal consequence. We can miss the opportunity to share the gospel with someone when we don’t know it might be their last moment. I’m not trying to be dark and gloomy about this, but we have to recognize that there are people all around us every day, and we don’t know what is before them. We don’t know what is before us. And if we are so consumed by what’s happening around us, and we’re so consumed by our situations, we will miss the opportunities that the Lord puts in front of us for Him to be the deliverer for us, but for Him to also be the deliverer for other people. We need to be looking to Him.

Chapter 6, verse 5 says, “And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. Therefore say to the children of Israel, ‘I am the Lord your God.’” See, I’m going to tell you, even if our teaching is great or wonderful, church is great or wonderful, mediocre, whatever the case may be — they did not have any production here. Okay? When we come and we preach and we teach, or we’re trying to encourage people, it’s not very different than Moses going and sharing the gospel, or sharing the words that God gave him. The stakes are kind of all still the same, just different.

“Therefore say to the children of Israel, ‘I am the Lord your God. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm with great judgment. I will take you as My people. I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land which I swore to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and I will give you the inheritance. I am the Lord.’ So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel, but they did not heed Moses, because of the anguish of their spirit and cruel bondage.”

They could not hear because of the cruel bondage and the anguish of their spirit, so that they missed the instruction of God — the God who was about to deliver them.

But they weren’t just in physical bondage. And this is where I want us to catch this, with Him being our deliverer: they were also in a spiritual bondage to what was being provided to them. The place where there was torture, there was also stability. The place where they had no freedom, they still knew what to expect. The place that required them to meet quotas of work still had food and provision. But they were still in bondage.

If we don’t deal with the things that we are in bondage to, it will block our ability to hear and receive the promises of God, and will just keep us in our circles. If we’re in the anguish and the exhaustion and in the same place, I’m here to tell you that He is your deliverer. He is my deliverer. He’s our deliverer. But we must walk it out, even when it seemingly gets worse.

See, He had already declared His covenant. He had already declared that deliverance was coming. He had already declared and let them know, “Hey, it’s going to get a little rough there. I’m going to harden Pharaoh’s heart.” If someone were to tell me that, I can start picturing what is maybe going to happen, considering the source, considering what’s before me. He was warning the people.

And so I’m just here to tell you that deliverance is available for all of us — to not be in bondage to the things that keep us bound, to the thoughts, to the actions, to our habits, whatever it is. He wants to free us. He wants us to live freely in Him, in the joy and the hope. And when I say in joy and hope — because I feel like if I look at things, we no longer have joy like we used to. We no longer have hope like we used to. We’re just kind of like, “Ah, it’s always going to be this way.” And I’m here to tell you that we serve a God who’s our deliverer, who says, “You can follow Me, but you need to walk it out. The things that you’re doing are the things that are actually keeping you in your circles and bound. If you want to be free, some things have got to change. I can’t make you do them, but you have to still walk this out.”

That’s the God who’s our deliverer: He will always make a way, but it’s up to us to walk it out. If we choose to not walk it out, if we choose to stay in the comfort of the things that we know, the things that bring us comfort, the things that make sense, then we’re going to just keep going in circles. And we can say, “Yeah, I follow Jesus. Yes, I go to church.” And there are things that are sucking and suffocating the things that the Lord’s trying to do. We can’t run bound. We can’t make traction when there’s weights on us. And see, this is where the children of Israel were: they couldn’t even hear the possibility because of the things that kept them bound.

Not the easy way

So often we want the easy way out. Let me tell you, I like the easy way. You ask my kids — they will tell you, when it comes to working out, I will give you all the reasons why I can’t do it and why it’s not working for me. I like the easy way out. I just want to be fit and do nothing, right? I really do. I’m not going to lie. I go to the gym once and I’m like, “Yes,” and then I’m like, “Why hasn’t anything changed?” I literally want the easy way out. But it’s not just there. I want the easy way out of a lot of things. I want the easy way out of awkward relationships. I want the easy way out on my finances. I want the easy way out on anything. I would much rather take the easier way out. Am I the only one? Okay.

Children of Israel, Exodus 13:17. Now all of the plagues have happened. The firstborn of the Egyptians have now been killed. The Passover has happened for all the children of Israel’s firstborn — He makes a distinction between the two. And now Pharaoh’s like, “Get them out of here. I’m done. I’m done. I’m done.” He’s tried God. He sends them out. “Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, ‘Lest perhaps the people change their mind when they see war, and return to Egypt.’” Hmm.

God was delivering them. He wasn’t just delivering them to a place out of bondage. He was delivering them to a place of promise. He was delivering them to a place of hope. And He says, “I’m not going to take them the easy way, because what is about to happen will cause them to want to turn back to the old ways.”

He is our deliverer, and He doesn’t want us to be caught off guard. But also, sometimes the journey He has us on isn’t going to be the easiest one, because it says in Scripture — not that He wants us to be perfect, but that He’s perfecting us. And there’s hope in that. When I look at the things in my life, or I look at the things I struggle with, I kind of scratch my head. I’m like, is there an easier way, or do I actually have to deal with this and let this go?

See, God was taking them, because He knew that our hearts, as humanity, tend to want to go back to what they know. And with what was about to happen at the hand of Pharaoh — who was not by any means just, and was about to go to war — the children of Israel would want to go back to what was familiar, because it was easy.

And I’m here to tell you that the Lord wants you to grow in your relationship with Him. He wants those hearts and those prayers. It says He heard their prayers. He hears your prayers. But you can’t keep going back to the things that bring you the satisfaction, or bring you the comfort, or bring you the knowing, just because it’s what you know. And the journey He has us on isn’t a journey of deliverance alone. It’s a journey of deliverance that’s being led by Him. And because He is God, that means I can either question Him all the time, or I can trust Him that there are things that I do not know and that I cannot see. But He’s always there to deliver.

Stand still and see

Exodus 14:1. We’re going to keep going. It says, “Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel’” — and tell them to go a certain way. Verse 3, because I don’t know how to say those words: “For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, ‘They are bewildered by the land; the wilderness has closed them in.’ Then I will harden Pharaoh’s heart again, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord your God.”

Verse 8 says, “And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and he pursued the children of Israel; and the children of Israel” — I want us to catch this — “went out with boldness.” They were ready. They were going out. They were heading out of the place of bondage, and they left with boldness.

And then verse 10: “And when Pharaoh drew near…” So they heard God. They were convinced. They moved in boldness. And it says, “When Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched around them.” What did they do? They got their eyes off God. They were just moving in boldness a second ago, and then all of a sudden they start looking at their circumstances, and Pharaoh’s creeping in. They’re marching around them. They’re encircling them. “So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out. And they said to Moses, ‘Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us, to bring us out of Egypt?’” In verse 12 it says, “Is it not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would be better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

How many times do we say it’s better to sit in what I know, to sit in what’s keeping me bound, than actually to walk out into the place of freedom? I need us to get this, because we can say, “God, where are You?” And He’s saying, “I’m delivering you. I’m calling you. I’m calling your name. I’m waking you up in the middle of the night. I’m trying to get you to go left instead of right. I’m trying.” But you continue to go back to the things that are familiar. You keep feeling all the noise, so that you don’t have to listen to Me. You keep going back to sleep. You don’t even ask, “God, is this You?” He’s calling out to us. He’s calling out to provide a way. And we ignore Him, and we go back to the things that make sense.

When I read this, I see myself so much in the children of Israel — of just going back. I want to be the person that says, “I move in boldness all the time.” And yet I know my own propensity, my own weaknesses that call me back, and I put God back on a shelf: “You belong here. I would rather be in the comfort and out of Your presence than in the wilderness, right where I need to be.” Would you rather be in the comfort without God, or in the wilderness where you only need God? Sounds good in theory, till we all find ourselves in the wilderness.

“And Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.’”

This is what I’m here to tell you: if we can become a people who stand still and look for the deliverer, and wait for the deliverer, and say, “I’m not moving until I hear the deliverer. I’m not going to let my faith be detoured because circumstances around me have changed” — I’m telling you, He fights the battles for us. And maybe some of us haven’t quite needed Him to fight the battles, and our life has been good, which is really great for you. But there are some of us who have been through it and are in the wilderness, and are saying, “God, where are You? I thought this was supposed to be good because I said a prayer. I thought this was supposed to change because I read my Bible.” And the word of the Lord is: do not be afraid. Just stand still. Put your phone down. Don’t ask ChatGPT. Don’t even ask your friend. Just stand still and look for the deliverer.

Where can He be found? I’m telling you, too many times we’re asking God, “Why aren’t You doing this?” instead of, “God, what are You doing? Where are You? I’m in this. I’m not moving until I hear. I’m not moving until I see.” We don’t need to be afraid. We can stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace. Do not be afraid. See, the enemy always tries to come in and remind us how it’s only going to get worse — or better yet, why didn’t it get better, because you started following Jesus?

And as we read through Scripture, Scripture is not absent of hard times. It’s finding God in the midst of all of that: that He’s our hope, that He’s our anchor, that He never leaves us or forsakes us, that He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever, that He’s a God that shall not lie, and His Word will not return void. These are all promises of God. And the reason we need to know who He is, is so that we can stand still and say, “God, You’re going to fight this for me” — that we don’t give in to the fear of the circumstances.

But I’m telling you, Jay is a lot more level-headed and steady, which is great a lot of times, and other times I’m like, “Hey —” It’s why we work, okay? It’s why we work. But Jay is often level-headed and steady. And maybe this is because I did grow up in California, where you’re always ready for the disaster. You sleep with your shoes by your bed, you have a flashlight, you probably want to sleep with clothes, because you don’t know when the big one’s going to come. That’s how I lived. Okay? And the big one has still not come. I’ve been waiting for the big earthquake all of my life. I lived in a constant state of fear that it would happen today. Honestly, when I go to California, my prayer is always like, “Lord, not this trip. No earthquakes.” That’s all I ask: keep me safe, and no earthquakes. I do not like earthquakes, right? But there’s this place that is always trying to figure it out to make sure I’m safe. And Jay does such a good job of keeping us level-headed: where’s the Lord? Is that fear speaking, or is that the Lord?

Because there are times that the Lord will speak to us as He’s delivering us, and He’s giving us warning. He’s trying to get us to wake up and pay attention. But if we do not know the voice of God, if we don’t know His promises, if we’re not feeding our spirit like we should by getting in the Word, by worshiping, by praying, we will miss it, and we build a different foundation. And so we’re all about building it, so that we know the difference between the fear of man and God trying to warn us and give us the discernment of something. Because we read time after time after time: He wants His people to know and not be caught off guard.

All we are to do is stand still and see. We must look for God in all circumstances, instead of looking at all of our circumstances and hoping to see God. He works for us, and He fights for us.

So I want you to consider, as I’m rounding up: what does it look like for you to hold your peace? What does it look like to walk away from the places that are keeping you bound? What are the places that are keeping you bound? What does it look like to allow God to interrupt the places that you’re bound to, so that you can experience His deliverance? He wants us to experience His deliverance.

A new song in my mouth

We’re going to quickly turn to Psalm 40. This is David, who was a warrior. He went to war. He was a king. He made really bad choices. He had an affair with someone and then had her husband killed. I mean — but he was after God. It says that David was a man after God’s heart. David was a complicated person. This is where you’re just like, it was as bad as you think it could be, and yet God was so good in His faithful redemption, because David kept coming back to God. He kept coming back to God.

So this particular psalm David wrote, and he puts: “I waited patiently for the Lord. I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined to me, and He heard my cry. He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay.” He doesn’t just bring us out and say, “All right, now you’re done.” It says, “And then He set my feet upon a rock and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth — praise to God. Many will see it and fear, and will trust the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, and does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.”

I’m telling you, when I read that, I circled “aside to lies.” The enemy likes to come in through the lies, through the doors that we have opened, through the things that have been spoken over us that we have no clue about, things that have been said to us since we were little. I was talking to one of my kids, and they were like, “Well, that was the moment that I stopped doing XYZ.” And I was like, “Really?” Right? There’s things that happen to us in life, big or small, and we don’t even realize it — all of a sudden it just happens to us. But he’s saying, look: blessed is the man who makes his trust in the Lord, and does not respect the proud, nor turn aside to lies. Because the lies are where our bondage is found.

“Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us” — the thoughts He has towards you, the thoughts He has towards me, the thoughts He has towards people who mock Him, the thoughts He has towards people whom He loves deeply or who deeply love Him — “cannot be recounted to You in order; if I were to declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.” Just think about that. His thoughts towards us are more than can be numbered. It’s not based on our performance. It’s based on who He is and how He sees us.

“Sacrifice and offering You do not desire; my ears You have opened. Burnt offerings and sin offerings You do not require.” He’s saying, look, the works and doing things — You don’t require this anymore. “Then I said, ‘Behold, I come to the scroll of the books that are written. I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart.’ I have proclaimed the good news in the great assembly; indeed, I did not restrain my lips, O Lord, You Yourself know.”

This is verse 10: “I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart.” Another version — I think the ESV — says, “I have not hidden Your deliverance.” New King James says “righteousness within my heart.” “I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth from the great assembly.”

Let me tell you, part of our deliverance, part of us walking free from being bound, is the things that we declare out of our mouth — the things we testify of what God has done, the things we testify that we’re believing. Someone brought it up today when we were talking about communion: it actually does say in Scripture that we’re to confess our sins to one another. Wait, what? I don’t want people to know. Why would I confess? Because when we confess our sins — and it doesn’t have to be a great assembly — we’re to confess our sins to one another because we’re to grow, because there’s to be accountability. There are places to pray. This is walking the Christian life. We’re not just to keep quiet the things that He’s done.

And that’s why I love this. Even though in this version it says, “I have not hidden Your righteousness,” it’s really, “I have not hidden Your deliverance within my heart. I will declare it.” I’m telling you, as we begin to declare the things of God, as we begin to declare His Word out of our mouth, we will see the changes that we are desiring. The more that we keep it in — like, “Oh, just between me and God” — we’re going to stay in the same spot.

“Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O Lord; let Your lovingkindness and Your truth continually preserve me. For innumerable evils have surrounded me; my iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head; therefore my heart fails me.” He’s saying, “Look, I sin. I don’t get this right. But God, I’m still looking to You.” “Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me.”

Verse 16: “Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; let such as love Your salvation say continually, ‘The Lord be magnified!’ But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, Lord.”

I’m going to tell you, He wants to be our deliverer. He is our deliverer. It matters, the words that we declare. It matters, the things that we choose to hold on to. I want you to literally go home and just think: what are the things that I’m still holding on to because they provide me comfort, because they provide me safety, because with them I know what to expect? What things am I not willing to surrender because I think it’s more protective? But God is saying, “I want to deliver you out of those things.” And then watch Him move and meet us in that moment.

That’s why I wanted to read Psalm 40. And you could read it, read it again, because David’s saying, “Look, there’s a lot of sinful things about me. There’s a lot of ways that keep me bound. But God, don’t delay in delivering me. Don’t forget about me. And when You deliver me, I won’t keep those things silent. I will declare them, and I will testify over and over, so other people would come to know You, so other people would come to fear You.” And not fear as in God’s going to provide judgment. No — know the fear of God, because the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that You desire for us to find You in the midst of our circumstances, not how our circumstances define You. God, we just pray that this week, as we would just spend time in Scripture, we would be convinced even more — not of Your goodness, not of Your love, but that You’ll never leave us or forsake us. That’s what Your Word says. You want us to be people who are not bound.

God, I pray for those things — just like the children of Israel couldn’t hear because they were so in anguish from the things that kept them bound — God, I pray that there would be a breakthrough and a freedom, that the things that have kept us bound will no longer clog our ears, no longer blind our eyes from how You want to move, how You want to meet us, and from the deliverance You want us all to experience every day. God, I pray just for Your wisdom as we go through this week. We ask for Your protection as we go. Lord, I pray that our ears would be open to You, our eyes would be open to see how You’re moving, God, and that we would rise up with the boldness to move out into the places You’ve called us to move out in — whether that’s a place of obedience of sharing our faith, whether that’s a place of obedience of praying for someone, whether it’s a place of obedience of forgiveness, or letting something go, or removing habits.

Lord, whatever it might be, God, I know You want to meet us in those places. And so, Lord, I pray that as we surrender our life to You, as we surrender those things to You, You would meet us right in that moment. We thank You for who You are. We thank You for Your goodness and Your faithfulness. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Transcribed from the message recording and lightly edited for reading.