Leaning On The Everlasting Arms

1. What a crazy year, especially for our Seniors (and I don’t mean those over 65)!

a. COVID-19 interference – loss of the end of the most important school year/pictures/parties/graduation ceremony

b. You have a choice – be bitter or make it better. This can be a great time to tell your children and grandchildren someday. It’s an opportunity for “out of the box” thinking.

2. Today I want to talk to you about choices before you.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility. Eleanor Roosevelt

a. Seniors, you are at a crossroads of your life making choices for your future: College; Tech School; Military; Family; Employment

b. There are also God choices. Statistically many of you will leave home and decide to leave God. I hope that is not true of any of you but it is a possibility. It’s a matter of choice – Joshua 24:15.

3. Ezekiel 29:1-9

In the tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: 2 “Son of man, set your face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him and against all Egypt; . . . [He tells what God will do to Egypt] . . 6 Then all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the LORD. “Because you have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel, 7 when they grasped you with the hand, you broke and tore all their shoulders; and when they leaned on you, you broke and made all their loins to shake. 8 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will bring a sword upon you, and will cut off from you man and beast, 9 and the land of Egypt shall be a desolation and a waste. Then they will know that I am the LORD.

a. Ezekiel prophesied in Babylon among disobedient Judah

b. Israel had been carried into captivity by Assyria/Judah by Babylon

c. Here is a picture of judgment on Egypt b/c they did not deliver Judah when they depended on them

d. Restoration of Hebrews to Israel; condemnation to neighboring nations b/c openly hostile or rejoiced in sufferings

4. Let’s talk about choice

I. We Can Choose to Trust the Wrong Sources

A. Judah Trusted Egypt

1. When threatened they sometimes trusted God; sometimes allies

2. Egypt was a great power in the day (no longer like Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Nazi Germany, USSR, USA?)

3. Human logic makes earthly alliances – Solomon

4. God had warned NOT to make alliances, especially with Egypt, but to trust him

a. Egypt (from word for Restraint) is a picture of our world – slavery to sin

b. God frees us and says, Don’t go back! – Makes a Promise Philippians 1:6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

c. Judah leaned on Egypt – a broken reed – as an unstable person on a walker instead of God

• God is too invisible – We’ll trust Egypt whom we see

• It required too much faith – faith is evidence of things not seen

B. Lesson: When We Trust Something Other than God It Fails & Hurts Us

1. Ezekiel says Egypt is a broken reed that does harm when leaned upon

2. COVID-19 is a wake up call to trust God

3. The American gods we trust fail and harm us – science, technology, wealth, people (are we always being told truth?), Government, own strength, wisdom, and health

4. All of these are gone in an instant

C. Egypt (picture of the world) is False Hope – Psalm 62:7-8 7 On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God. 8 Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.

1. The reed looks good but breaks under our weight

2. The ROCK stands firm – Psalm 50.14-15 14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, aand perform your vows to the Most High, 15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

II. We Can Choose to Trust the Right Source – Matthew 7:24-27

24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”