The Long Way Home

THE LONG WAY HOME

Date: Sunday, July 20, 2008

Scripture Text: Exodus 23:20-31

Purpose: Home is where you belong. Where do you belong? Are you there yet? This sermon is a directive to help you find where God wants you to be.

Sermonic Selection: Coming Home

I. Introduction

A. Home

1. Where do you live?

2. I am not talking about your street address

3. Home – A place where a person can find refuge or live in safety and security

a. An established place

b. Residence

c. A place of comfort (feel at home)

4. It is said that home is where the heart is

5. It seems possible to be at home and not really feel at home

6. It is a sense of disconnection

7. When one is not at home there is a longing to be there

8. We call it home sickness

a. It carries a mood of sadness

b. It brings a longing to be at home when away

c. No matter how luxurious the surroundings

d. There is truly “No Place Like Home”

9. There is no bed that sleeps like your bed

10. There is no easy chair like the one at home

11. What is it about home that makes it so powerful?

12. We talk about it

13. When we dream about it

14. When we grow up there is something about home that we just want to see it once more or even where it used to be

15. Because everybody knew where the Jones family lived

16. They knew that if you were a Jones, that is where you should be found

17. No matter where you went, if you were asked your name, you were also asked where you lived

18. If you got lost, the first that would happen is that someone would try to get you home

19. Even for those who tried to run away from home, sooner or later you would have to call and get someone to help you get home.

20. Home is valuable

21. Home is critical to your survival

22. Home is that place where you should be

23. I am not just talking about our heavenly home

24. Some need to get to the home of (Gal. 5:22-23)

a. Love – hurt too bad to love again

b. Joy- too many problems to be happy

c. Peace – Arguing day and night

d. Patience – Got to have it now

e. Gentleness – Learned to be hard to survive

f. Goodness – Self preservation is how I live

g. Faith – Been to the Lucky Place to be blessed

h. Meekness – I ain’t no wimp

i. Temperance – Extreme in everything

25. I know it has been a long time

26. You have to get home

B. It is Time to Go Home

1. It’s getting late

2. We did not mean to stay this long

3. The sun is going down

4. “It’s time to go home”

5. You hear Momma / Daddy calling you

6. Don’t act like you don’t hear God today

7. How long will you stay away?

8. Today we want to focus one how to get home

9. What does it take to get home?

10. Don’t let anything or anybody keep you from going home

II. The Journey Home

1. Israel Goes Home

1. . Here in our passage today, this is the first thing we see God telling the Hebrews: He will go before them in the land, and prepare the way before them.

2. For us here today, we need to know that God will go before us like He went before the Hebrews and He will prepare the way ahead of us.

3. The second thing we see in this passage is that God has a drawn out plan for our spiritual growth.

4. The people of Israel have been taken out of captivity and brought out into the desert.

5. There God established relationship with them and has established this relationship through the giving of the Ten Commandments.

6. Now, God, having established a relationship with the people, prepares them for entrance into the land he has promised them (HOME).

7. The Egyptians had for years tried to gain this land with varied success, and only after extensive efforts.

8. The Egyptian Military was one of the greatest at the time and they could not take the land –

a. What chance did the Hebrews have?

b. Because God is going before them.

c. In verse 20 we see that it doesn’t matter that stands before the Hebrews, because God is sending an angel before them.

d. What is the purpose of the angel?

i. To guard you and to bring you to the place I have prepared.