WHERE HE LEADS
I want to talk to you (today) about following the Lord. To me, this is what being a Christian means. Following Jesus means we are a disciple of His. Jesus explained this when He came to Peter and Andrew, in Matthew 4:19, and said,
"Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."
This is an important part of our relationship with the Lord.
Jesus wants you to know HE is calling you, and to know where HE is leading you.
The problem today is that many Christians only:
· Think they know where they are going, but (in fact) they are not really certain.
· Think they have been everywhere they can go with the Lord. (we old timers have seen it all)
Other (younger) Christians are overly concerned, and worried about making the wrong turn. They are convinced if they miss hearing God, they will be punished for being so foolish.
And still others see themselves as Dorothy on her way to seeing the Wizard of Oz. They believe that if they just stay on that yellow brick road, they hope that (someday) they will find God. Maybe someday they will know what it means to follow the Lord.
Perhaps you fit into one of those four categories. I trust the Word of God will show each of us how to follow WHERE HE LEADS. In this day and time, we all are being pulled in different directions. Even if you consider yourself to be a sincere and committed Christian, there are times you simply don’t know where your life is taking you.
Perhaps there are some who are not concerned where they are going this morning. The fact of the matter is we all are going somewhere (in our spiritual lives).
This may not seem important to you, but I know that it is important to God. Because in Proverbs 3:23, the Lord desires this for your life,“…you will walk safely in your way, and your foot will not stumble.”
I want to make sure we are all going to walk safely and not stumble. I want us all to meet with the King (in heaven) together. There we will be forever and ever. I don’t want anyone of us to be left behind.
Let me remind everyone that as a church, we are all in this together. We are the family of God. There shouldn’t be any stragglers. We are here today for God and for one another.
Text: Exodus 13:21 & 22
Prayer:
Here in Exodus 13, we see that God had led the children of Israel to exactly where He wanted them to be.
This is important because I believe that God is constantly leading you and I both day and night. God wants you and I to know exactly where it is He wants us to be, and where He is taking us.
This morning, we have a specific place with God where He wants to find us. Not just anywhere, but in His perfected presence.
We can find the model of how He will do this with this story found in Exodus. Allow me to outline what has happened.
I. The Book of Exodus - The Redemption of Israel from Egypt
A. In 5 & 6, Moses Confronts Pharaoh with the Word of promise from God. (God spoke to Moses):
“I am the LORD; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you…”
B. In 6 & 7, Moses Confronts Pharaoh with Miracles
God spoke again: "And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and (I will) multiply My signs and My wonders....”
C. In 7 thru 11, Moses confronts Pharaoh with 10 Plagues
D. In 12 & 13, Israel is redeemed by the Blood Sacrifice through the Passover. God Spoke Redemption:
“Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you…”
To this day, this is how God chooses to redeem His people.
He redeemed His children with the blood in the Old Testament and He has redeemed His children living in the New Testament.
First, there was sent a Word of Promise. The Word was Jesus.
It was this man, Jesus, Who performed the miracles of signs and wonders. He demonstrated Himself with power, but he finalized the redemption of man by shedding His own blood and dieing on the Cross of Calvary.
When the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea and were delivered from the tyranny and oppression of Pharoah, they rejoiced. Today, we have God to thank this morning for sending us His Son to set us free. He redeemed us from sin and death.
These things have been accomplished for all of God’s people.
In the spiritual sense of things, we have been delivered from living in the bondage of sin. We have also crossed over into the Land of Promise. My friend, you and I need to know where it is we are going from here.
For the children of Israel, the Land of Promise was a land in which they had never been, and they could have easily lost their way. My friend, the Lord has not saved you and delivered you from sin just have you stumble off somewhere and get lost.
You are much like the children of Israel- you may be delivered from all of the bondage of where you use to be, but without the leading of the Lord you are vulnerable. You don’t need to go anywhere except WHERE HE LEADS you.
Thank God He has set us free from our oppressor (the devil), but the question for you is where do you go from here?
The answer to this is quite simple. We will go WHERE HE LEADS us. We will follow the Lord.
Let me explain.
The children of Israel needed direction. God knew this so He gave them a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
As Americans, we may not understand having to depend on following a cloud. You see, we have this culture of “do it yourself”, and we are taught that you are never going anywhere in life unless you “do it yourself”.
I would simply say that is not the plan of God for us.
Church, we need God! This idea of following the Lord may seem strange to some of you, but imagine how strange it must have been for the children of Israel to have to follow a pillar of cloud.
I have lived all my life without having to walk behind a cloud.
Why would I have to live like this, now? Because God is telling us that in and of ourselves, we don’t know where we are going.
We cannot trust our instincts on this. Without the Lord, we lack wisdom to know where to turn, and how to live for God.
If we were honest with one another, there are some of us that have made some foolish decisions in our lives. Think about it.
Ask yourself if you have ever done anything foolish in your life.
I would suggest that when we have done foolish things (that we later regretted), we should know that God was there with His pillar of cloud by day and His pillar of fire by night.
The great part about this pillar of cloud (in Exodus) was that it was big enough that everyone could see it, and no one would ever get lost. It was a simple thing for Moses to explain.
The people had to begin a new experience of not having to rely on the things they use to rely on. The former things were left behind in Egypt. Those things were gone and they would never see them again. Everything now had become new to them.
There was a whole new way of living for God’s people.
The people had become very reliant on this pillar of cloud. They would soon find that there was nothing more reliable than that pillar of cloud by day and that pillar of fire by night. It would cause them to always look forward, and to never look back.
Does this sound like something you might need for your life?
I will speak for myself and say that I need guidance in my life.
Even though my life may seem routine sometimes, I face a new wilderness almost everyday.
Many of us get up each morning with the same surroundings that was there the day before. Same breakfast table, same car we drive to work, same route to and from work, same this and that. Nothing may seem to ever change for us. We may even feel that we can make it through the day the same way we made it through yesterday. We may think we don’t need God to send this pillar of cloud into our lives. We will be just fine on our own.
We have been here before. We can make it on our own.
Listen carefully my friend. You are wrong.
With each new day, we need to know WHERE HE LEADS us. We cannot allow ourselves to become distracted from WHERE HE LEADS us. We need to look straight ahead and simply walk behind Him and trust WHERE HE LEADS us.
We must begin to allow the Lord to go before us in everything we say and do. Every decision we make and every thought we have should be focused on following that pillar of cloud He has set before us. We must follow WHERE HE LEADS.
The pillar of cloud represented the Presence of the Living God for the children of Israel. We should know that His presence goes before us. Psalms 121:6-8
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; he shall preserve your soul.
The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.
This new wilderness the children of Israel were now in was not a paved highway for them to follow. Not even a pig’s trail. We all are being led of the Lord to new places in His plan for us.
Closing:
Text: I Corinthians 10:1 thru 4
This cloud offered direction and protection for the people of God.
We have confidence in knowing that WHERE HE LEADS us He will protect us as well. We are all in this together. We are one in the Lord on this road through the wilderness. We all eat the same “spiritual food and (we) all drank the same spiritual drink”. We have each other when times are good and when times are not so good. Because we have that same “spiritual Rock” and His name is Jesus.
Revelations 10:1
I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.
No doubt, we have Jesus to be our pillar of cloud by day and our pillar of fire by night. God has not changed the way He does things. He still wants His people to have His guidance and protection as travel through this wilderness.
