NOVEMBER 15, 2020 SUNDAY MESSAGE
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Transcription Notes:
Good morning. What is up? I just got to look, it's just good to be back. I know it's been a while. My name is Anthony Dumas, and I am one of the elders here at Common Ground Northeast.
And it's just been a minute since I've been here. So I'm just really soaking it in. And I'm just blessed to be a part of this family. And today I get the pleasure to continue to talk about the gospel story and how we get to move God's promise and redemption and how he moves it forward through his people in Israel as he moves them out of Egypt. And so just on a side note to that, this week is Native American Week.
And if you're in the podcast, there's an incredible podcast called this Land, and it talks about the Trail of Tears and how there were many tribes that were taken from the south and given land in Oklahoma. And then how over time, the government systematically tried to pull that land back from them. It is a very good, very telling, very Truthful podcast about our own little mini exodus that happened here in America. So if you get a chance, maybe check that out. So if you don't mind, I'd like to get started with prayer and then we'll get going.
Heavenly Father, you are good. You are so good. Just like the song says, Dear Lord, and we just thank you. We thank you for everything you do for us. We thank you for your promises.
Dear Lord, we thank you for how you look after us. And after those that need you. Dear Lord, that you keep going. And we just thank you in your name. We pray Amen.
So today I get the pleasure to talk about Moses and Exodus. And at first, when I signed on to this, I was like, great, I get to talk about Moses and Exodus. And then as I read in and got into it, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm talking about Moses and Exodus. It is a lot. And so we're going to break it down.
And I think that God has allowed me to find a cool way to just be able to explain how he took his promise to the people of Israel and how he moved it. A year or so ago, I was able to do actually a sermon on Moses and the Caints and the Ain't. And that's not me. I stutter. I don't even look the greatest.
Get Aaron, get somebody else. But God told him that he was the person. So today we're going to do a lot of reading and Exodus. And so the very first part we're just going to go to is when Moses confronted was confronted by God in the burning Bush. And we're going to start at Exodus three verses 16 through 17.
I'll give you a second. And it says, Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them the Lord the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham. Isaac and Jacob appeared to me and said, I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised you to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt and into the land of the cannites Hittites amirites, Prezites, Hivites, Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey. Folks, our God is good.
He's a God of justice. He's a God of the oppressed. He's a God of the hurting to make sure that they get taken care of. He sees our pains and our struggles. And I'm not talking about just uncomfortable or inconvenience.
I'm talking about people that are definitely being oppressed. That's what God sees. And in this story, God continues to say, hey, I am going to save my people. Like I said. And Moses was the man that he took to do it.
And Moses, guys, at this time, it wasn't like he was in the top ten cohort for nation leading people. It wasn't like he was at the top of everything that was going on. Moses was a fugitive. He had been involved in a murder, and he was actually working, tended flocks for his father in law. And so me being the dad of two beautiful young ladies.
I understand that this guy's like man, I need to make sure this guy is putting food on my baby's table. So it wasn't like he was leading. He was just doing. He was surviving. And so to do this, Moses was
told exactly what that promise was.
So we're going to jump backwards to Exodus three verses seven and nine. And this is what God told him how he was going to fulfill this promise. The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. And I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers. And I am concerned about their suffering.
So I come down to rescue them from the land of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that into a land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the canines, the Hittites, the Amorites, the prezites, the Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me. And I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites out of Egypt.
And we know that regardless of Moses issues, God chose him to lead his people out of Egypt.
And you know, when you think about this, what did that look like? It's just a lot to even think about. I like to try to picture this hearing what happened. You realize it's a God thing and God can only move. The first thing Moses had to do was follow God's directions to get Pharaoh to release his people.
So chapter seven to eleven explain all of the plagues that God sent. And it finally made Pharaoh say, all right, your people can go. So turn the Exodus twelve verses 37 to 42. And this is how they did it. The Israelites journeyed from Ramsay to Sakura.
They were there about 600,000, about 600,000 men on foot. Besides women and children. Many other people went up with them and also large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. With the dough the Israelites had brought from Egypt. They baked loaves of unleavened bread.
The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare the food for themselves.
So Pharaoh said, Go leave Egypt. And it was so quick and on such a large scale they couldn't even get their food ready. Right and prepared. I mean, it's unbelievable how much the guy can do with the people. And so when I saw this, I started thinking, I wonder, what were the numbers and how did it look?
And I wanted to show you my theological jazz by giving you a number of how many people it was. And then I started reading. And there was one person that said, this one person said that. And then I came along an article by Cambridge scholars called Colin Humphreys. And this is when I knew I was out of my League.
Guys, the article was called The Number of People in Exodus from Egypt. The coding mathematically, the very large numbers and numbers one and XXVI, which I had to remember was 26. So when I'm like, I can't even figure out what the title means. I know this is too much for me. So what I'm just trying to say is that God mobilized a lot of people really quick to get out of Egypt.
And how does this happen? Only with God? And so now while they're following Moses, this is how it looked. And if you go to chapter 13, we're going to read verses 20 through 20. And it says after leaving Sacoth, they camped in Ethan on the edge of the desert.
By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way. And by night and a pillar of fire to give them light so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the Pillar of Cloud by day nor the Pillar of Fire by night left its place in front of the people.
God gave them the directions God led them. There wasn't any way there wasn't any map crest. There wasn't any trip tick to follow. God gave them a visual sign. And if you move in, going to numbers in chapter nine, it even breaks down a little bit more about these pillars just to kind of paraphrase Moses.
Number one let everybody know we're following the pillars. But the way the pillars went is that as they went, the people went. But as a pillar rested, the people knew, all right, we make camp. It could be for a couple of days. It could be for a couple of weeks.
It could be for a month. But they follow these pillars. So guys, the Israelites literally looked at God every single day, every single minute while they were on this journey. And so as they started off within the first weeks, Pharaoh decided that he wanted to come and he wasn't in agreement, and he wanted to take care of the Israelites. So he sent his army out.
And we're going to go to Chapter 14, verses ten through 14. And as Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?
Didn't we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians. It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert, Moses answered, the people do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance of the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians, you see today you will never see again.
The Lord will fight for you. You only need to be still.
And this is when God allowed Moses to part the Red Sea and dry a path so his people could safely move away from the Egyptian Army, which he then closed the sea and destroyed the army. When all hope was lost, God still continued to follow through.
And as they continue to move and they continue to go, we're going now to Exodus 1520 through 25.
Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, and they went into the desert of shore. For three days. They traveled in the desert without finding water. When they came to Mara, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. That is why the place is called Mara.
So the people grumbled against Moses saying, what are we to drink? Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw the wood into the water and the water became fit to drink again. God continued to follow through. And then in verse 27 even tells us that after they left there, God took them to a place called Elam, where there were twelve Springs and 70 palm trees.
So not only did he give him water, he took them to a resort so that they could really rest and realize what has happened and what they've already gone through and what he has already delivered them through. And so when you think about this and you kind of see what's going on, it leads me to my first discussion question. And that is when have you ever become upset or agitated? Almost immediately after God has moved the mountain in your life when he's taking care of something that only he could take care of.
But you immediately turn around and go back to your grumbling.
So think about that and give you a minute or so to discuss with whoever you're around and you guys at home, please type it out. We'd love to look at this later and see what you're thinking.
So quiet.
Well, guys will give you about 30 seconds and then we'll continue to move on.
Okay. Well, thank you. And just to let you know really quick, I don't get out of this. Also, Mother's Day this past year, my son and I were in a very bad car wreck that somebody ran a red light and hit us head on and totally destroyed our car. And if the car had not hit a light pole in another car, we would
have been over an edge off of Fall Creek.
My son and I walked out of it without a scratch, without a piece of glass anywhere. I know it wasn't right at this time. God, I know it. I'm explaining that.
But as soon as it happened, and even though my son was safe because it hit his door head on, when I got out, I was mad because the ambulance that I was in getting checked out, I had to move out so the family that hit me could get taken care of. And for a minute I had the gall to be upset because they were pulling me out and they were going to put this family in that needed it. And I mean, that's how quick we forget the glory and the understanding and the Majesty of God, because myself nor my son could have come out of that.
But immediately I went back to thinking about me.
All right.
But do you see this pattern? And I'm talking about that God's chosen people continue to see God, but yet continue to struggle when it gets tough. So now we're going to go to verse chapter 16, verses one to three, the whole Israelite community set out from Elam and came to the desert of Sin, which is between Elam and Sinai. On the 15th day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron, the Israelites said to them, if only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt.
There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted. But you have brought us out into the desert to starve this entire assembly to death. So now they're even not even wishing death. But now they're wanting to go back to slavery. After 400 years of being enslaved and being oppressed, they're thinking that God's will for them was even worse.
That's how bad it was for them to think about what was going on. But when this happened, do you remember what happened when they grumbled? Well, while Aaron was trying to talk them down and relax them and speaking to the Israel community, they looked forward to the desert, and there the glory of the Lord appeared again in chapter 16, one through 16. It Satan, the Lord said to Moses, I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them at Twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread.
Then you will know that I am the Lord your God. That evening Quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of Dew around the camp. When the Dew was gone, then flakes like frosts on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, what is it for? They did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, it is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded. Everyone is together as much as they need. Take an Omer for each person in your tent. They have received it to the point where they did not need to gather or store it up anymore.
It was there for them again. God continued to follow through on his promise to his people. Are you getting this idea that I'm saying? As we continue to look at the gospel story, God continues to keep his promise. When it looks, feels and must be homeless, God continues to follow through.
So as you think about that. And right now, in our country, in our nation, in the world, there are some things that are stretching us right now. The election covet. My next question and question number two is in between everything that's going on right now. How do you see God moving today?
So how do you see that? How do you see God moving right now in the midst of everything that's going on? And I'll give you a minute to discuss with each other.
And if you're at home, please type it out. Talk it out over the chat line.
Okay, give you about 30 seconds and we'll keep on moving.
All right. Well, thank you, guys. I hope you had some good things you thought about. As for that. And when we look at this and we look at these stories that we've kind of talked about and the events that happened, this could only happen because of God.
Moses led the people, but through God and by God only. And he led them to the promised land that he promised them in our country right now, I kind of feel like we're wandering people right now looking for how we're led and how we go. The elephant in the room is the election right now. Some people are ecstatic about the election, and some people maybe are not four years ago, it was the exact opposite. Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, our new President and vice President elect.
But guess what, guys, they ain't my God, our current President, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, who've led us over the last four years and got us to where we are right now. They may be the President, the vice President, but they ain't my God. Do you know who my God is? You want to know who my God is? Do you want to know who our God is?
Our God is the Alpha. He's the Omega. He's the sunrise. And he is the sunset. He's the keeper of the Covenant.
He's a healer and a reliever. He's a creator. And he's still creating. He makes a way out of nowhere. He makes the good better.
He makes the better best. He moves mountains. He turns lost in the leaders. He's the dealer of hope to the oppressed. He is comfort in mourning.
He is joy in the midst of pain. And lastly, I always talk to my dad when I get a chance to preach, and he always tells me to take it to the cross. Son, take it to the cross. Lastly, our God gave his only son to die on the cross for our sins and then raise him from the third day so that if we believe, we can have everlasting life, that is our guy. And I don't care if you're on this side.
Democrat, Republican I don't care if you're on that side. I don't care if you're a Christian, if you believe in God, if you believe in the one that does these miracles that got Israel to Egypt like he promised, understand that that we are here together. And I'm asking you right now, who is our God? Somebody tell me, who is our God? Give me one.
Give me one.
Our God is faithful, loving, trustworthy, gracious, compassionate. Thank you. And I'm not saying it from this side. I'm not saying it from that side. I'm saying it from here.
If you're a Christian and if you believe in Christ and you believe in the Bible in the Word and why we are here, I don't care what side you're on. Let's do this together. Let's grow together. Let's move together. And here at CG and E, we're going to be a part of this.
We're going to continue to fight for those who need a voice. We're going to continue to champion for those that are oppressed. We're going to fight for those that justice has not been seen for and we're not going to stop. And we're not going to apologize. We're going to fight for this.
We're going to fight for equality for all. And I'm about to shut up here in just a second. But what I want to let you understand is that I am of a beautiful group that has been around for quite a while that has seen the ebbs and flow of common ground to common ground northeast. Our family's been here over 18 years and we have watched and seen God move and continue to move. And that is why we are here.
And then on top of that, I am one of the very few people of color that has been on this journey.
My brother up there is one of my others.
And what I want to explain to you and to make you understand is that there have been many days that maybe I didn't understand or that I was uncomfortable or that I knew I was on an island. But I talked it through. That's what my house Church was for. That's what my friends were for. There were days that I wondered, do they see me?
Do they hear me? I love this place, but I feel like I'm by myself. So if you are a person, that right now this is stretching you. The conversations seem awkward. You maybe want to step out of that conversation and not be in it.
Please understand. I hear you. I understand what it feels like to maybe be in a group where you don't understand or it doesn't sound right. So what I am asking you what I am begging you. What I am pleading from you to do is to reach out, talk to your friends, talk to your house Church.
Be honest. We don't have to all be politically aligned. I'm not asking you that, but I want us to be Christ aligned. I want us to know that everything that we disagree with, that there is an answer, and we have to do it together. And here at 74 40 North Hague Road.
If we can sit down and not run from this, not skate from it, not mumble under our breath when we walk out or we separate. If we do this together, we can be on the front end of what moves and how we move in 2021. And that's what I want to do. And I know that's what Eric, the elders and everybody in leadership here wants to do. We want to move this thing together.
We don't want to move it separately. We don't need all on one side or all on another. No, that's not practical. And it's not logical. It is for us to do it together in Christ.
And I love you guys. And I thank you. And I'm just going to pray for us. And I just hope that we can continue to move as a family together. Period.
Heavenly Father, I just thank you. Dear Lord, I thank you for my friends and my family here. I thank you for your promise. I thank you for your son. I thank you for taking him to the cross for us.
Dear Lord. And I just ask Heavenly Father that you allow us to fight your battles here. I ask that you allow us to see those that are hurting, those that are oppressed, those that don't have a voice. Dear Lord, and you let us just fight. Let us use our resources, our networks to fight for the Kingdom.
Dear Lord, and in your name, I just thank you and I pray and we all say Amen.
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COMMUNION:
(1 COR. 11:23B-26)
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
SAVE THE DATE: The 2020 Marriage Retreat is scheduled to be Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and November 8!
PRAYER REQUESTS:
We are hosting prayer team meetings for both the congregation at large and individuals to sign up for individual prayer.
SUGGESTIONS FOR WORSHIP:
Coty Miller’s own “Praise & Worship” Spotify playlist and “Praise & Worship” YouTube playlist (slightly different from each other), both of diverse music that are being constantly updated!
Bethel Music :
Bethel Music’s hours of live music YouTube Playlist, also being constantly updated
Bethel provides chords to most (if not all) of their songs here (just have to register email, but free!)
Live worship moments from the Upper Room YouTube Playlist
Journal writing! (I’m a writer too, so sometimes creative writing and writing my thoughts to God is my form of worship.)
Declare and worship with truth by singing and praying scriptures.
WORSHIP NIGHT! Dedicate a night to worship with friends and family, your house church or neighbors, those who need prayer, love worship, or just enjoy music through a video chat platform like Zoom. You can have one person leading at a time (switching off to whoever else wants to lead) while others sing along, pray, or prophesy, etc.
Serving your community, both online, in person, or both, is a great way to worship God, from spreading encouragement and God’s Word online to physically serving food to others. If you are able to go out and serve, click here for opportunities.
COMMISSIONING:
As Jesus said in John 20:21,
"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
Go, be the Church!
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.