Voddie Baucham - The Privilege of Prayer Exodus 2_23-25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I would ask you the question, but I already know
the answer. I would ask you if there's ever been
anything that you've prayed for for a long time without
having an answer, But I'm not going to ask you
that because I know the answer to that question. I
know that you've done that, and I also know what

(00:23):
it was like when you did that. Because see, here's
what happens with us. We come before God with this issue,
and it is the most pressing issue in our life,
the most pressing issue in our world, and we bombard
Heaven with this issue again and again and again, and

(00:45):
then we grow weary. We get tired of praying about
the same thing, we get tired of asking for the
same thing. And then after a while we realize that
we haven't been praying for it as much as we
were praying for it before. And now we feel guilty
because it is an important thing, and we should be
praying about this important thing, and we've stopped praying about

(01:05):
this important thing, and so now we pray about the
fact that we're not praying about this important thing that
we ought to be praying about more than we pray
about it, And so we go back to praying about it. Again,
And yet as we go back to praying about it again,
we begin to ask ourselves, what's going to be different
this time? And we continue to pray, and we continue

(01:28):
to pray, and everything in our culture moves us to
believe and expect that things ought to happen quickly. We
are victims of the twenty two minute sitcom microwave popcorn,
and we just believe that things ought to happen quickly.

(01:53):
And when they don't happen quickly, we don't know how
to endure. We don't read big books anymore. Schools won't
even require people to read big books anymore. Moby dick,
What is that? It's too big, it's too long. Nobody's
gonna endure through that. We don't endure through that. Preachers

(02:14):
don't preach long sermons anymore. Well, in other places, we're
told in preaching class, keep your sermons twenty minutes or less,
because people will not endure. They can't endure. We can't concentrate,
we can't bear up, we can't press through. It's just

(02:35):
not in us. And yet there are things that we
wait for and we hope for and we pray for
that require us to continue to press to continue to hope,
to continue to pray. And there is this tension, this
tension between the belief that it should have already happened

(02:57):
and the knowledge have we got to continue to pray?
And there's where sin enters in. That's when we begin
to have sinful, unbiblical, unhealthy attitudes about ourselves, about God,

(03:17):
about our circumstances, about prayer. We begin to interpret things
based on our experience, based on what we feel. We
begin to interpret who God is and how God actually
considers us based on how long it's taking for God
to answer the prayer. We begin to interpret who we

(03:38):
are in God's sight based on whether or not He
comes through in this prayer. Am I really a child?
Am I really a Christian? Does he really love me?
Is he really there? All? Because it's taking a while.
And there are several things that come together here, several

(04:00):
theological realities that come together here. One is the tension
between the sovereignty of God and prayer, because this is
another thing that happens when we continue to persist in prayer,
especially for us Calvinists. Right, well, God is sovereign, right,
He's decreed whatsoever will come to pass anyway, So Why

(04:22):
am I praying and crying out to God like this
if I believe that God is sovereign, and yet the
scriptures tell me that I should bring these things to
Him in prayer. So, on the one hand, the Bible
tells me that God is sovereign, and I believe that
God is sovereign. On the other hand, the Bible seems
to be teaching me that I need to persist in prayer.

(04:46):
We've even got this parable of this persistent widow asking,
seeking knocking. We continue to ask, continue to see, continue
to knock, pray without ceasing, and so there is this
tension there. Beyond that tension, there is the tension of
the problem of evil and suffering. Because usually when we're

(05:12):
praying like this, when we're praying long and we're praying hard,
it's because we're enduring something that's not good. Amen. Last
time I checked, it's never been my experience. I haven't
been a pastor all that long. Okay, we've only been
preaching about twenty five years, so maybe it can happen.
But I have not yet had a person come up

(05:33):
to me and say, Pastor, I've just been praying and
praying and praying. I pray till I get tired of praying,
and I get guilty because I'm not praying anymore, and
so I start praying again about being guilty about not praying.
And then I get back to praying again and again
and again, and God's just not answering what are you
praying about? Things are just so good. I don't know
what I'm going to do, and I'm asking God to

(05:54):
do something about how good things are because I just
can't take it. That's not when we are persisting in prayer. Generally,
when we're persisting in prayer, there's something ailing us. There's
something troubling us. There's something hounding us, there's something eating

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away at us. There's something frightening us. There's something oppressing us.
There's something hurting us, there's something discouraging us, there's something
confusing us. That's when we persist, and then if we're

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not careful, we fall prey to that age old question
why would an all good and all powerful God dot
dot dot Well in the last paragraph of Exodus chapter two,

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I believe we have something that answers these deep theological
questions that encourages us in the midst of sustaining prayer,
ongoing unanswered prayer that rebukes us as we think wrongly
about ourselves and about God and about our circumstances, and

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that informs us as to what is actually going on
and puts us in a right posture as it relates
to these kinds of circumstances. In other words, it teaches
us how to think about prayer when prayers aren't being answered.

(07:47):
Genesis Exodus, chapter two, beginning at verse twenty three. This
paragraph is divided rather evenly into two halves. The first
half looks at things from the perspective of Earth, and

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the second half looks at things from the perspective of Heaven.
And the unfortunate thing for us and the reason that
we get off track is because we only think about
our prayer from the perspective of earth, from the perspective
of the circumstances that we can see. But God gives
us a glimpse in this paragraph into things that we

(08:30):
cannot see, that are going on in the midst of
our circumstances. That helps us to think about prayer rightly
in this regard verse twenty three. During those many days
the king of Egypt died. Interesting during those many days
Moses is forty years old when he comes here to

(08:52):
the wilderness. In Midian, he's eighty years old when he
goes back to Deliver, so he's close to eighty now,
been forty years. But the author just says during those
many days, this is how Moses reflected on his time
as he wrote, the king of Egypt died, and the

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people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried
out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came
up to God. There's the perspective from heaven, this is
the transition, or from earth. Rather, now there's a transition.
The transition is that phrase. Their cry for rescue from
slavery came up to God. And then from Heaven's perspective,

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listen to this. And God heard their groaning, and God
remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.
God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. God heard,
God remembered, God saw, God knew. Those four words are

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absolutely critical for sustaining prayer when we don't see answers,
and that's what I want us to concentrate on here.
The backdrop of this is that again Moses is in
the wilderness because the king, the Pharaoh, has discovered what
he has done and killing an Egyptian. He's there for

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forty years. The question is when and how is the
transition going to come. We know that he's here in
order to be transitioned. We know that he's here. We
looked on last week at the things that God is
doing with him in order to make him fit for
his calling. But he can't just stay here forever. If
he's going to be this great deliverer, He's got to

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eventually go back. So what's the trigger here? Well, the
trigger here is the death of the king. So during
these many days, the king of Egypt died. And when
the king of Egypt dies, the people of Israel sort of,
you know, they reignite their groaning because there is a reigniting,

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if you will, of their oppression. And it's in the
midst of this that we hear those four words. And
that's what I want us to examine. Those four words
in light of this experience that we all have of
trying to persist in prayer without falling into sin. And
the first one is this God heard, God heard saints.

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You need to know God hears your groanings. God hears
the groanings of his people. God is not deaf to
the groanings of his people. The natural tendency of the
suffering saint is to assume that God does not hear.
That's just natural. We're praying, and we're praying, and we're

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praying and nothing's happening. And it's not as though when
we pray that there are audible voices that come back
to us and say, yeah, I heard that. It's not
like other conversations. You know, other conversations. You have a
conversation with another person and you look at the person
and you're saying something, and generally people don't just sort
of stand there and look at you like this while

(12:15):
are you talking. If they do, you sort of get
discouraged and distracted. Right. Generally, what we do when we're
listening to one another is we give clues or cues
so that people know we're listening and so we're not
in the head and you go, okay, now they're listening
to me because they're not in the head, you know.
Or they shake their head if they're supposed to take
the head. Okay, they're listening because they shook the head,

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or they smile, you know, or yeah, you're listening because
they smile, you know, or they go mm hmm yeah,
to let you know when you get that response, and
that's what communication is happening. But when we're in the
midst of our despair and we're praying, we can't see
God nod in his head, we can't hear him going
mm hmm, and our natural tendency is to look at

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our circumstances that aren't changing and to assume that God
has not heard. This text says different Israel was assuming
that God hadn't heard. They're groaning and crying out to
God for a deliverer, and it hasn't happened. It's been

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for centuries and it hasn't happened. We believe He hasn't heard.
But that's just a tip of the iceberg. Saying that
we believe that God doesn't hear us really means that
we doubt that God cares for us, and that's where

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we begin to sin. God didn't really care for me,
Why because he hasn't heard me. If he really cared
for me, he would hear me. I'm praying, I'm groaning,
I'm crying out, and there's nothing that indicates that God's hearing,
so he must not care. If he cared, he would hear.
He doesn't hear, therefore he doesn't care. We also fear

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the worst. I'm praying and I'm crying out. God doesn't
hear me. That means this thing's probably gonna get worse
because God's the only one who can help me, and
if he's not hearing me, they can't get better. Sometimes
we turn from following God. We got an email recently

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his elders from someone who basically said, I don't believe
God's there. I'm not gonna follow him anymore, basically because
I've been praying, I've been crying out, I've been groaning,
and he hasn't heard. He hasn't heard, So if he's
not gonna hear me, why am I gonna persist? We

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shake our fists at God and we get angry with God.
How dare he not hear when we pray? The Bible, however,
makes it clear that God does hear us when we
pray Psalm fifty five, seventeen evening and morning and at noon,

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I utter my complaint and moan, and He hears my voice. Amen.
Proverb is fifteen twenty nine. The Lord is far from
the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous
one John five, fourteen to fifteen. And this is the
confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask

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anything according to his will, he hears us. And if
we know that he hears us, and whatever we ask,
we know that we have the requests that we have
asked from him. God hears us. So it is wrong.
It is erroneous for us to assume that he's not hearing.
And it's also erroneous for us to assume that because
he's not hearing that these other things are true, he

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doesn't care for us. The worst is ahead of us.
We shouldn't follow him. But there's several things that we
need to remember. First is this, It is a privilege
to be heard by God. And I mean just to

(16:20):
be heard by God is a privilege that in and
of itself is a privileg I'm not saying it's a
privilege to be heard by God when God does what
you've asked God to do. That's not what I said.
What I said was it's a privilege just to be
heard by God. If you never get another affirmative answer,

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to prayer. God's been better to you than you deserve,
just by hearing you. When you pray. God is upholding
the universe by the power of his might, and yet
God hears us. Think about that, He flung the stars

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into space, and he upholds him and sustains them. The
entire universe is being upheld and sustained by our God.
He's busy, people, and yet he hears us. It's a privilege.
We are sinful, insignificant creatures in the grand scheme of things,

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and yet God hears us. How dare I think that
God owes me a hearing? God owes me death and judgment,
that's all God owes me, and yet he hears me
when I pray. It's a privilege to be heard by God.
We are mistaken when we believe that God owes us

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a hearing, because he doesn't. God doesn't owe us anything.
Actually a form of arrogance to accuse God of wrongdoing
because we believe that He has not given us the
hearing that we deserve. It's arrogance and pride. How dare
you not listen to me? How dare you not hear

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my voice? As though God owes you are hearing. He doesn't. Oh,
you are hearing. And besides that, as His children, he
does hear us when we pray Amen. So it's doubly sinful.
Number one, you're accusing him of something that's false. And secondly,
you're accusing him of something that, even if it was true,
it wouldn't be wrong on his part. God doesn't have

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to hear you, and yet he does. And that in
and of itself is a privilege. We must remember that
it is a comfort to be heard by God, not
just a privilege. It's a great comfort to be heard
by God. Through prayer, we have communion with the most
High God. This is communion with God. Yay Dough, I
walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I
will fear no evil. Why because You're with me. God

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hears you. God's with you. Your prayers are being heard.
Don't forget that. As I've been going through this text,
and as I've been preparing this, my prayer has been God,
would you please change my heart, because generally speaking, I

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don't believe this. I don't believe that it's a privilege
just to be heard by God. And I don't believe
that it's enough just to be heard by God. I
think the only reason for me to rejoice is if
I have something that is concerning me and I bring
it to God and God does what I tell him
to do. That's how arrogant and prideful I am. That

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if God doesn't just hop to it and do what
I told him to do, he's not worthy of my
praise because he hasn't done anything worthy of my praise.
My prayer has been God, would you crush that? And
was you? Caused me to realize that just the fact
that I can lay prostrate before the holy and righteous
God of the universe who ought to judge me, and
that I can write out to him and know that

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he hears me, that that's enough to be able to
walk out of the prayer closet and have someone say,
did you get what you asked for? No? Then why
are you smil him? Because the God of the universe
heard me when I prayed, and I had communion and

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fellowship with Him in the midst of my suffering, He
hears me. I'm not alone, God hears me. Whatever we're suffering,
it is number one, temporary, Amen. Whatever it is, it's temporary,

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even if it kills you. It's temporary because you're not
going to carry it into eternity. Right, It's temporary, whatever
it is. And secondly, it's not worthy of compare with
what awaits us. Listen to Paul's words in Romans eighteen nineteen,
For I consider the sufferings of this present time are

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not worth comparing with the glory that is to be
revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing
for the revealing of the sons of God. Paul says,
whatever I'm suffering, it's not even worthy to be compared
to what awaits me. Only when we realize these truths

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do we realize the great comfort that it is to
know that God hears us. Just that alone is a
great comfort. The other thing that you need to realize
is this that the world is not a black and

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white Western. And oftentimes we accuse God in these instances
because we believe the world is a black and white Western,
and we believe that there are good guys and that
there are bad guys, and that we're always the good guys.
And even when we read this text, you know the tendency.
The tendency here is to look at this and say,

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Israel good guys. Egypt bad guys. The fact of the
matter is Israel's not good. They rejected their own deliverer too.
Or do you not remember that Israel's not innocent in this?
Israel's not good in this? We need to remember that

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Israel is in need of a deliverer, not just from Egypt,
but from sin as well. They are sinners and you
are a sinner. And one of the reasons we shake
our fists that God is because we actually believe that
God owes us something. The second truth we need to

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know is this, not only does God hear, but God remembers.
But what does he remember? He remembers his covenant. The
text says he remembers his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac
and with Jacob. This is crucial. This is crucial when
we talk about our prayers. First, God didn't remember Israel

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because they were the good guys. They were not innocent,
and they were not sinless. God didn't owe them anything.
There is none good but God. We've got to keep
that in mind. And I'm not a good die either,
which means that I'm wrong when I accuse God. Because

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of these reasons, consider the good things that we recall
when pining over God's failure to rescue us. I pray
to you God, and you didn't rescue me. I'm a
good person and you didn't rescue me. I pray to
you God, and you didn't rescue me. I go to
church and you didn't rescue me. I prayed to God,

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you didn't rescue me. I don't do all the bad
things that other people do, and you didn't rescue me. See,
these are the things we actually believe that God owes
us something. We actually believe that we have a standing
before God in and of ourselves that makes God owe
us something. Or this one. I'm a Christian God, I
have trusted Christ as Lord and savior of my life.

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And you didn't do what I asked you to do. Folks,
God remembers his covenant. God answers prayer in accordance with
his will. Even Jesus prayed your will be done, not mine.
You See. Part of the problem is that we assume
that we know the best thing in a given circumstance.

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We assume that what God ought to do is take
our advice and do what we say, because the universe
will run better if he just does that. After all,
I'm a good person. I'm a Christian, I go to church.
I'm not as bad as other people. How dare you
not do what I asked you to do? You owe

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me God? We ought to be frightened that that thought
even enters into our head. Anyone who knows what God
owes him ought never say God, you owe me, ay man.
God remembered his covenant, and God remembered his redemptive purpose.

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We have to keep this in mind as we pray.
God does not exist to give us what we want.
God orders all things according to his will and according
to his redemptive purpose. And this is why me not
receiving what I ask is never an end indictment against
God's goodness or God's character. Again, how can I know

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that I serve a God who crushed and killed his
own son, who was spotless and sinless, in order to
bring glory to his name, and somehow think that me
enduring whatever I endure makes him unjust. I've said it before,
I'll say it again. Who do you think you are?

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That Christ suffered for the glory of the Father, the
sinless lamb of God. Not only did Christ never do
anything wrong, he did everything right, not only did he
do everything right. He is God in the flesh, immortal,
invisible God only wise the Son is that he is

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the pure radiance of God wrapped in flesh. And he suffered,
and he groaned, he cried out in the garden of Gasseimone,
probably for hours, sweat drops of blood, and yet he
was not delivered. And I have the audacity to pray

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for a few weeks because of something that's bothering me,
and think that God owes me something that he didn't
even give to Jesus when it came to his glory.
How dare I? How dare you? It is a privilege
just to be heard. It is a privilege not to

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be crushed under the weight of my own sinfulness, let
alone the weight of His majesty. It is a privilege
not to have to come trembling and fearing before a
holy and righteous God. It is a privilege not to
be afraid of the fire and the smoke. It is
a privilege. And it's enough. God remembers his covenant. And

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when we pray, we need to know that God is
working all things according to his will. And many of
the things that I ask are not according to his will.
And I don't even know that. I don't know what
God is doing. The only way I figure that out
is when I look at it from the backside. And
how many times have we come to God, cried out
to God, begged God, prayed to God, and it didn't

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come out the way we wanted it to come out.
And then years later you turn around and you look
and you say to yourself, looking backwards, at God's providence,
I couldn't have asked for a better outcome. Or you
look at what God has turned you into, this trophy

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of grace that you've become, because of the suffering that
you endured, because of the obedience that you learn through
enduring suffering, because of the glory that God gained through
your life, because of the way you endured the suffering.
And you look back and say, I never would have
asked for this, but God used it. You don't even
know how to pray, and yet you assume that God

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ought to do what you say. You don't see the
whole picture. You don't understand the whole picture. You don't know.
But we do know that God hears, and we do
know that God remembers his covenant. God is not going

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to deny his covenant. Thirdly, we know that God sees.
Here's the burning question, how could God see this and
not act? Don't you know that? Israel asked that how
could God see this and not act? How can he
not see the Egyptians and who they are and what

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they're doing and not act? How could he? How could he?
How could he? This is where we get to this
whole thing of the problem with evil and suffering. The
answer is God sees. God sees some verses one to eight.
I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where
does my help come. My help comes from the Lord
who made heaven and earth. He will not let your

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foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold,
he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The
Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on
your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you
from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord

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will keep your going out and your coming in from
this time forth and forevermore. This is not just temporal folks.
The Lord keeps it people. The Lord keeps his people.
Does that mean as people don't suffer. You know that's
not true. We're reading Exodus. Amen. But the Lord keeps

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his people, and the Lord keeps his promise. God is watching.
God sees. Oftentimes we think the only way that I
could be dealing with this is if God wasn't watching.
God's not seeing. God sees. He always sees. When you
got that bad diagnosis, God was watching when your heart

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was broken. God was watching when your loved one died.
God was watching when you suffered that miscarriage. God was
watching when the storm destroyed all you had. God was
watching when that child went astray. God was watching when

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your parents divorced. God was watching when you lost your job.
God was watching, and on and on and on and
on and on. Don't you dare say God wasn't watching
when that horrible thing happened to you. God was watching.
Don't you dare say that? But why is this comfort

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to us? Because it seems like it's not comfort. Why
would it be a comfort for you to say to
me that when that horrible thing happened, God was watching.
That doesn't comfort me because if God really loved me,
he would have stopped that thing from happening. Watch yourself,
you're judging God again. The reason that that's a comfort

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is because the alternative is absolutely unthinkable. If God wasn't
watching when that horrible thing happened to you, then that
means he's not sovereign, he's not in control, and you
have no reason to hope that He is going to
work all things together for your good because there's things

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he doesn't see, there's things he doesn't know, there's things
he doesn't control. You better be careful. We try to
protect God from the implications of his sovereignty because we
think that if we hold on to a sovereign God,
then somehow we have to blame God for evil. That's
only because you believe that God owes you protection from evil,

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and he doesn't. Because the minute God starts wiping out
all evil, you're on the list too. You see, here's
the problem when we start thinking about evil. The problem
is we only think about God dealing with the evil
out there, and never think about God dealing with the
evil in here. Other people do things because they're evil.

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I do things because people don't understand me. You were
wrong and you meant what you did. I just made
a mistake and you didn't understand you're evil. I just
sometimes misstep. And it's because we view the world this

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way that we have the audacity to shake our fist
at God. It's because we think about things this way
that we have the audacity to blame God. It's because
we think that, here's how a hurricane ought to come ashore.
A hurricane ought to come ashore like this. It blows
in and its winds come hundred and ten one hundred

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and twenty miles an hour. The storm surge comes and
it washes ashore, and the good people who go to
church should have the water and the wind go around
their houses while everybody else is wiped out. God help
you if that's the way you think the universe ought
to operate. Causes it the rain on the just and

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the unjust. We don't serve God because serving God exempts
us from suffering. We serve God because God is God.
And in spite of my suffering, He's worthy. And whatever
it is that I'm suffering, it's better than I deserve.

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It's better than I deserve. You stand there before a
house that's been washed out by the storm. The Christian's response,
ought not to be God. You weren't watching the Christians response,
ought to be God. I deserve to have been washed
away with that house. Finally, God knows. God knows. Oh

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this is so important because so far we have this
picture of a sob and it's wonderful to have this
picture of a sovereign God. But this last word gives
us a picture of an intimate, loving God. God knows.
This means that he loves us and he pities us.

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God knows. God knows first and foremost which circumstances will
maximize his glory. And if that is the goal and
the desire of my life, I embrace my suffering to
the degree that it maximizes God's glory. God knows what

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you really need. He does. God knows what you really need,
and evidently deliverance from this particular thing that this particular
time is not what I need. If it was, that
would be what God gave. And I know this because
I know God. God knows what you can bear. Oh

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how many times have I heard people say I just
can't take this anymore and then I see him again tomorrow? Amen,
somebody right, how many times have you done I just
can't take this anymore? And then you wake up the
next day guess what you took it some more. Amen.
God knows what you can bear. God also knows your

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deliverer is coming, and you know the good news. God
is your deliverer. God is your deliverer. Do you know
the worst thing that you are oppressed with in this life?

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It's the thing that you are at least likely to
bombard Heaven about. The thing that you're oppressed with in
this life is not your failing health. That's not the
worst thing that you're oppressed with in this life. The
worst thing that you're oppressed within this life is not
the disappointment of your circumstances. The worst thing that you're
impressed with in this life is not lost. It's not

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people sinning against you. The worst thing that you are
oppressed with in this life is your sin. That's the
worst thing that you're oppressed within this life. Because there
is a holy and righteous God who demands righteousness, and

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yet you sin against him. That's the worst thing on
your plate. I don't care what else you've ever dealt with.
That's the worst thing on your plate. You sin every day,
all day against a holy and righteous God. That's worse
that a bad diagnosis from the doctor. Bad diagnosis from

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the doctor. Does that mean again? Last time I checked,
death rate was one per person. Nobody gets out of
here alive. Amen, what's a bad diagnosis from your doctor?
In light of that? But here's what I know. Sin
separates us from God. A bad diagnosis from a doctor
can't separate you from God. Sin can. Sin is the

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worst thing on your plate. It's the worst thing that
you deal with. Israel's sin is worse than Israel's captivity.
Yet they cried out for deliverance from their sin, but
not from their captivity. But not for deliverance from their sin.
And that's you and me too. Everything else in my life.

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I shake my fist at God, but I make little
of my sin. How many tears have you cried begging
God to deliver you from your sin? How many sleepless
nights have you spent crying out to a holy God
to make you righteous? How many? How many? We don't

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do it. We pray that other people will be good
to us. We pray that other people will stop disappointing us.
We pray that other people will stop sitting against us.
We pray that circumstances will stop being bad. We pray
that storms will stop coming. We pray that financial ruin
will stop coming, but we don't pray that we'll stop sinning.
And that's the worst thing on your plate by far,

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it's the worst thing on your plate. In fact, everything
else that you deal with is a result of sin,
yours or another's. And if you can't figure out which,
just go back to Adam. Amen, why do storms come? Well, ultimately,

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even the ground was cursed because of him? Right? Because
what because of sin? Why do our bodies decay? Why
do we get diseases because of sin? Why do we
alienate and hurt one another? Because of sin? You see,
when all you look at is your circumstances and the

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things that you don't like, the things that you don't want,
what you're doing is you're missing the bigger picture. You
don't need a deliverer from hurricanes and from diseases and
from a heartache and pain. You need a deliverer from sin.
And that's precisely what God brought about. The Book of

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Exodus does not end with Israel coming out of Egypt.
It ends with the Tabernacle. Because Israel didn't just need
to get out of Egypt, They needed to get into
a relationship with God. He needed sacrifice for sin. They

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needed spiritual deliverance, and that's what you and I need
more than anything else. Does that mean these other things
don't hurt? Absolutely not, but it puts them in perspective.

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Where was God? That's a question we get a lot
pastor this happened to me and it hurt. Where was God?
He answers to that question, and it's not original to me.

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Is that when that thing happened to you, God was
in the exact same place he was in when his
own son was crushed and killed for sin, not his own.
That's where God was, and that's where God remains, and

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that's where God will be. I don't know what that
thing is that keeps you up late praying. I don't
know what that thing is that gives you that tendency
to shake your fist at God. I don't know what
that thing is that causes you to believe that God

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has done you wrong. But whatever it is, know this God,
here's you. God remembers his covenant and will always be
faithful to it. God sees everything that you're going through.

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And God knows, and very specifically God in Jesus Christ
knows we do not have a savior who cannot identify
with us. What are you dealing with? You're dealing with loss,

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You're dealing with pain, You're dealing with disappointment, You're dealing
with rejection, You're dealing with The list goes on and
on and on and on and on and on and on.
God knows why, because Christ was tempted at every point
that we are, and yet without sin, Christ endured rejection,

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Christ endured the Cross, Christ endured death, Christ endured shame,
Christ endured everything. So whatever it is, not only does
Christ know your circumstances and know you, but he knows
your pain and he knew it without deserving it, and

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he overcame it at the Cross. So here's the prayer. God,
I've been praying about this thing for so long and
it's not changing, and my tendency is to be discouraged.
But thank you that you hear me. Grant by your

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grace that I would just be satisfied in that that
I would be satisfied and knowing that while I walk
through this, I can call on the God of the
universe and that you hear me. And God, make that
enough for me, Make it enough, Make it enough, Make
it enough. I'm heard, I'm heard. You remember your covenant,

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and I'm your child. And you call all cause all
things that work together for good to those who love
you or who are called according to your purpose. This
doesn't mean that everything is good. This doesn't mean that
everything is easy, but it means that you will work
those things together for good. And ultimately, my greatest good
is your greatest glory. You see, you see everything that's

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happened to me, and there's nothing that's happened to me
that's caught you by surprise. You see, this didn't happen
because you're sleeping him, because you're slumbering. You're in control.
And that's good news because it means that I can
trust you. And you know. You know me because I'm
your child. You know my circumstances because you're God, and

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you know my pain because you made him who knew
no sin, to become sin for us in order that
we might become the righteousness of God in him you know,
intimately behind the shadow of any doubt. And so would

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you give me what I need to walk another day?
Would you give me what I need to trust you
in spite of my circumstances, Would you give me what
I need in order to wait for the full measure
of my deliverance to come? Because it will, because it

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has you see, ultimately, the greatest need that you have
is your need for Christ. So ultimately there is a
sense in which the greatest prayer for us to pray
in the midst of our suffering is Lord, use this

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number one to drive me to the cross. Use this
to drive me to Jesus Christ. And secondly, use this
to conform me to his image and make me more
like him. Don't waste my suffering. Don't waste my suffering. God,
Please use my suffering to make me more like Jesus.
Use my suffering to make me more humble. Use my

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suffering to make me more dependent. Use my suffering to
make me weaker. Use my suffering to make me trust more.
Use my suffering in order to prime my hands open
to let go of the things of this world. Use
my suffering to make me long for eternity. Use my
suffering to crush my pride. Use my suffering to make

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me more like Christ. There's a prayer. There's a prayer
that we can look forward to being answered. Always in
the affirmative. But are you willing to pray it? Are

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you willing to ask God for that? Because it's a
whole lot easier to say, God, I don't like this,
would you take it away? I don't like that? But
you make it not so. Cling to the cross, flee

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to Christ. He is your hope, He is your deliverer,
He is your answer. Let's pray, Lord God, we bow
before you, the God who hears and remembers, and sees

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and knows. We bow before you in the midst of
our suffering and our grief, and our pain and our sorrow.
We bow before you, in the midst of our arrogance,

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and our pride and our selfishness. And we ask that
you might meet us there, that you might be our
deliverer there, that you might cause our hearts to cry

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out for holiness and righteousness more than we cry out
for deliverance from circumstances. That you might guard us against
that knee jerk tendency to accuse you of doing wrong

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simply because you haven't done what we demand. Grant that
we might trust you, that we might trust your heart.
We can't see your hand when we can't figure out
what you're doing or why you're doing it. May we
trust in the character that you have revealed through the
person and work of Christ and God. Would you make

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us as keenly aware of our own sin as we
are of the sins of others, and as desirous to
see it eradicated as we are to see our circumstances changed,
conform us to the image of Christ. We pray this,

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we ask this, We beg you for this and Christ's
name and for his sake. Amen.