Abounding Grace

Pastor Ed Taylor: God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. You can’t wake up in the morning—I mean, you can, but it’s not going to be effective. You can’t wake up in the morning, rush into the restroom because you read a book and they said, “Go in every morning and look in the mirror and just look at yourself in the mirror and go, ‘I’m going to do this!’”

The mirror is going to talk back to you, “No, man, that ain’t going to happen.” “I’m going to be better, and I want to be better, and I’m never going to be mad. I’m never going to yell at my kids again. I’m never going to be upset with my wife. I’m never going to get mad at him, my husband, again.” Those are great desires, but looking in the mirror and declaring it’s not going to change anything. But getting on your knees and praying it, that changes everything.

Guest (Male): Some of us read the little book as a child, *The Little Engine That Could*. “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” declared the little blue engine as it made its way over the mountain. But maybe you’ve noticed giving it all you’ve got really doesn’t cut it in the Christian life. We can’t do it on our own. But God will do what you can’t do. That’s the emphasis of today’s study in Exodus here on Abounding Grace. We join Pastor Ed Taylor now in chapter 23 at verse 27.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Look at verse 27, this is so good. “I will send My fear before you,” this is back in Exodus now. “I will send My fear before you, I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. Verse 30, little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased, and you inherit the land.

“I will set your bounds from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River. For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

God promised to give them this land. It was theirs. It was a gift. He is going to give it to them. They didn’t deserve it. They didn’t earn it. It is exactly what we’re learning in relation to our own salvation, that God has given it to us. We didn’t earn it, we didn’t deserve it, and the Bible word for that is called grace. Didn’t earn it, didn’t deserve it. The grace of God.

The grace of God is throughout the scriptures from Genesis 1:1. Do you know that Genesis 1:1 in and of itself, “In the beginning, God,” is a statement of grace? In the beginning, God didn’t have to reveal himself to us. He didn’t have to create—there was nothing that he owed humanity. “In the beginning, God” is a statement of grace. None of us can say we deserve what God has done and is doing in our lives.

And I love this battle. This is one of the things that I’m reminded on a personal level so many times in my life where he says, “I’m going to send hornets,” verse 28, “gonna drive these guys out.” But then he says, verse 29, “I’m not going to do it right away. I’m not even going to do it in a year.” Which, a year is reasonable. Like, you’re going to give us the land in a year? I mean, it’s been a long time, but I think we can endure a year. “I’m not going to drive them out, it’s not going to be a year.”

But he has his reasons. Do you notice that? God has his ways, but God also has his reasons. Sometimes he reveals those reasons to us and other times we don’t get them. We just learn his ways. In this case, he tells them exactly not only the reason but also the way. He says, “I’m going to do it, but I’ll tell you why I’m going to do it the way I’m going to do it. Because the land can’t sustain all of you coming in so quickly. It would be desolate. You’d destroy it. You’d get something and then you would just destroy it.”

He says no, verse 30—and this is what I don’t have it marked, but I have it marked in my life—he says in verse 30, “Little by little I’m going to drive them out until you have increased and you inherit the land.” This is where I make the mistake. I make it over and over again. It’s one of those mistakes that’s so frustrating. I’m sure you have some as well. This is where I make a mistake. I try to do things myself, quicker and different than God does.

And that comes with experience and walking with the Lord for a few years, thinking you have it figured out instead of just remembering God’s ways with his reasons or not are always better than my ways. Even as we learn in another place in the Bible that God’s ways are not my ways, his thoughts are not my thoughts. So if I want something fast and he wants something little by little, it’s wise to choose the ways of God.

The Hivites, the Hittites, the Canaanites, they’re all a type of the flesh. They’re all a picture in the Bible of our enemy. We have a threefold enemy: the world, the flesh, and the devil. And the “ites” in the Bible often reflect the flesh, a type of enemy that’s constantly bombarding us, constantly after us, constantly pushing us, backing us up against a wall. But God says, “I’m going to drive them out little by little,” just like the changes that are happening in our lives. Little by little.

God knows what he’s doing with your life. So what he’s doing in your life, whether you like it or not, is God’s ways. So that when the ways—certainly when we don’t know and we don’t like what God’s doing—we demand the reason. How do you demand the reason? “Why?” And I don’t know how you approach God with the “why,” but he may or may not answer that.

And as we’ve learned many times before, even if he gave you a detailed explanation of what he was doing in your life, it still would not satisfy you. Because you weren’t made to be satisfied with explanations. And you weren’t made to be satisfied with reasons. And you weren’t made to be satisfied with—just write me the book, can you just add a book to the Bible about what you’re doing with my life? You weren’t made to live that way. You were made to live by faith.

You were made to live by faith, and the way that your faith grows is little by little. Change by change. Challenge by challenge. Success after success. Failure after failure. You see, the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites are not going to give up so easily. Your flesh doesn’t die so easily. We’re to reckon the old man dead, and it doesn’t die so easily.

But daily, little by little, your flesh needs to be dealt with and driven out. “I’m not going to do it in a year.” Some of you today, you just need to pray—and I prayed over this service today for this one thought. This one thought hit me today as I was reviewing my notes, and that is, I’m praying patience over your life. That you would be patient.

Little by little requires patience. “I want it done in a year.” What if it’s 10 years? Do you still want it done in 10 years? What if it’s 20 years? Do you still want it done in 20 years? What if it’s 30 years? Do you still want it done in 30 years? What’s it going to take for you to say, “I don’t want it then”? Well, then you simply don’t want it in little by little either. You don’t want it in a year if you don’t want it in 20 years.

Because for you and I to say, “I’ll take it however you give it to me, God, if it’s a year, little by little, whatever you have for me, you know what’s best for my life.” But if you give up right along—“Well, I’ll wait 20 years, Pastor. I’ll wait 20, I’m on year 19 right now, so I’ll wait 20 years and then I’m done.” Well then you really don’t want the will of God. You’ve written that last chapter of your life.

And God says, “No, I’m going to do it little by little.” And that little by little will remind us of the day-by-day trust that’s required to follow the Lord. And he’s going to give them the land. He set the bounds in verse 31. He said it’s going to be from the Red Sea to the Sea of Philistines, from the desert to the Euphrates. Some that do this kind of math on a map say that this was roughly 300,000 square miles of territory. That was his promise. That’s what he’s given them little by little.

Yet at their highest peak as a nation, they only really occupied and controlled 30,000. 30,000 out of 300,000 makes the math really easy. That’s 10%. 10% is not on fire. 10% is not sold out. 10% is not wholly committed or all in. And I wonder how many of that, how many of us that describes? It may not be the entirety of your life. Maybe it’s an issue in your life. 10%. I got victory 10%. That’s as far as I’m going to go. I want—I have victory 10%, that’s all I want to do. I’m happy 10%. 10%’s better than 0%. Yeah, but you got 90% on the table. You’re going to walk away from 90%? Live the rest of your life in compromise? The rest of your life handing over to the generations compromise, compromise, compromise?

Notice what they say in verse 1 of chapter 24 now. “Now He said to Moses, ‘Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. And Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but they shall not come near; nor shall the people go up with him.’ So Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice,” listen: “‘All the words which the Lord has said we will do.’”

And in a movie, the music changes. “Yay!” Everybody—the curtain comes down. “We will do it, Lord.” I mean, isn’t that often the heart? That’s our heart. We will do it. But we have to have that commitment in the right place. We have to express that commitment as one of yielding and surrender and submission, not self-confidence.

The nation of Israel is now becoming a covenant people. There’s an agreement being made. Chapters 20 through 23 are called by some the Book of the Covenant. Notice in verse 7 real quick, it says, “And he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people.” They’re becoming a covenant people. They ratify it. They agree to it. Notice, “All of us, we will do it!”

“And Moses wrote,” verse 4, “all the words of the Lord. And he rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he sent young men of the children of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord.”

The covenant puts them under a theocracy, a governmental system that has God as supreme. And the people are excited. This is actually the second time they say this, that they’re eager to do all that God has told them. But they never do. And neither do you. We never can provide 100% compliance. They keep most of it, but their history shows that in their own strength, they couldn’t keep the laws of God.

The law would simply show them over and over that man fails. That you and I fail. Desires are great, but they had no capacity to carry it out. It takes more than just lip service to follow the Lord. It takes more than just religious outward activity to follow the Lord. It takes more than—for some—just total fakery. That is not following the Lord.

I’ve met people over the years where they spend so much energy being a fake and a fraud. And everybody sees right through them, but they either don’t care or they don’t listen. And you walk away kind of saddened and hurt by the whole situation and you have this thought—I look at them and go, if they spent that much time, as much time as they spend being a fake and a fraud, following the Lord, they would be amazing for the things of God.

I’ve met people that have shared so many lies that they’re sitting next to me a week later lying to me, and they don’t even remember what they told me last week. And I’m just listening, listening, letting them just reel them in, just reeling it in. And in my mind, I’m just thinking they have no idea that we were just talking in the foyer last week and this is the exact opposite of what they said last week. But they’re so confident because they’ve got this whole story and this whole narrative and they’ve got this whole life and they have this whole appearance they want to appear some way to someone.

But then God brings somebody in their life that goes, “No, no, no, you’re a liar.” “Oh, I’m not a liar! You’re a horrible pastor.” “I might be a horrible pastor, but you’re definitely a liar. Because we were just talking about this, you don’t remember?” I remember sitting with someone in particular where they just fought me and fought me and fought me on what was said. And I pulled out my notes.

And when I’m in difficult conversations like this and I know I’m going to need to quote something later, I will put quotations on it as an exact or close-to-exact thing that was said to me in that moment. And I can just scan through my notes and go, “Oh, I know you said,” and I read it to them from my notes of what I wrote down the previous meeting. “I didn’t say that!”

I guess you’re going to live a life apart from God the rest of your life because you know you said it. And the Lord put me in your life and another person in your life and another person in your life. And I don’t know if you’ve met anyone like that, but I’ve met quite a few. That if they would just spend the time—they’re so wise and so smart—if they would just yield themselves to the finished work of the cross.

And I believe I’ve met a few believers like this. I don’t think they’re just unbelievers. They’re so compromised, so caught up in their flesh. And it’s just a reminder, we don’t want to be this. We can’t succeed and please the Lord in the flesh. In our own wisdom and our own strength. You go, “Ed, come on. Do you really mean that?” I do. I mean it 100% because I’m quoting to you the Bible. Romans chapter 8, verse 8. You ready? Here’s what it says: “So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Let the word of God just permeate your heart. Even you, maybe you’re not here right now, but you’re listening to me and you’re just that—you’re that person. If you would just spend that kind of energy diving into the things of God, you’d be so amazing for the kingdom. Just repent. Give yourself completely to the Lord. That when you say, “We will do it,” don’t say it in a way where we *can* do it, but say it in a way where we yield to you, Lord.

We’ll follow you. We’ll follow the hornets. We don’t want to get in front of the hornets now. If he’s sending hornets before us, then we’re going to let the hornets do their job. If he’s going to send an angel before us, we’re not going to get before the angel. We’re going to follow. We’re going to take the position of dying to self. Jesus said if you want to follow me, you first need to die to yourself. If you really want to be my disciple, you need to deny yourself, take up your cross, then you can follow me.

It’s not just a declaration, “Here I am, I’m ready.” But rather, “Here I am, I’m ready to follow. I’m ready to deny myself.” You fast forward into the time of Messiah and the cross and the death on a cross and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the ushering in of the new covenant. The new covenant is not based on my ability to perform. Grace is not based upon my ability to perform. It’s based upon God’s capacity to keep his word and keep his promise.

Some of you have been around long enough, you might recall a few years ago or many years ago, there was a dynamic men’s ministry that was vibrant for a while that had a real catchy theme to it. They were called Promise Keepers. And that was great, Promise Keepers. To describe the men, the 30,000 men in a stadium, hearing Bible studies and worshiping, and nothing like men coming together and worshiping and it’s just amazing. But then to declare, “We will keep our promises,” it was a stadium full of 35,000 failures.

It’s noble and it’s great and I do believe we should keep our promises. But being a promise keeper becomes secondary to the promise giver. He’s the reliable one. Promise keeper, not so reliable. But promise giver, 100% trustworthy. That I can bring my desire to follow him, and I can bring my desire to worship him, to serve him, to be the man that God wants me to be, to be the husband he wants me to be, to be the pastor, to be the friend.

I can bring that to him. And don’t come to him, “I’m a promise keeper, God! I’ve made the commitment. I’ve signed it. I got the book. I sang the songs. I went to the conference. I’m a promise keeper.” God says, “That’s great, but it’s nothing like being a promise giver because not only can God give the promise, he can also give the power for you to keep it.” It can never be separate from him.

The grace of God wasn’t a gift to be given to us so we could walk away and do it in our own strength. We’ll see in Galatians Paul will ask them, “Because you guys are going to begin in the spirit and then try to perfect it in the flesh? No! Don’t do that. You can’t. Don’t go backwards.” God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

He says, “I’m going to write my will on the tablets of your heart in the new covenant, instead of tablets of stone. I’m going to work on the inside of you, not merely the outside of you.” You can’t wake up in the morning—I mean, you can, but it’s not going to be effective. You can’t wake up in the morning, rush into the restroom because you read a book and they said, “Go in every morning and look in the mirror and just look at yourself in the mirror and go, ‘I’m going to do this!’”

The mirror is going to talk back to you, “No, man, that ain’t going to happen. You’ve been here every day, you’ve been saying that every day and nothing’s changed.” “I’m going to do this! I will never fail in this area again. I will never get mad driving on I-25.” Then the mirror says, “Just leave, bro. Just go. That ain’t going to happen.”

I mean, seriously, it starts with a great desire, right? I mean, that’s not a bad desire. “I’m going to be better, and I want to be better, and I’m never going to be mad. I’m never going to yell at my kids again. I’m never going to be upset with my wife. I’m never going to get mad at him, my husband, again.” Those are great desires, but looking in the mirror and declaring it’s not going to change anything. But getting on your knees and praying it, that changes everything.

That was another amen moment, by the way. I heard people online say amen louder than you guys. But I know it hits different in the room because you get it right. I had no smiley faces on this message. You’re just going to have to deal with it. It’s just the way it is. You can’t just stand up and declare. You need to understand that right away, all that day, you’re going to be tested on that one thing all day long. Why? Because you’re weak in the flesh. Every single one of us.

We’re so weak in our flesh. You’re going to be tested and tested until finally you break, and then what’s the very next thing? Condemnation. You just set yourself up for condemnation. Standing strong in your own strength. I mean, there’s even some false theologies that teach you to do that. Don’t listen to them. Read your Bible and pray every day and watch the internal work of the Holy Spirit in your life.

You come to the promise giver and he’ll make you the promise keeper. But you come to him as the promise keeper, you may never get to the promise giver. You don’t start with self, you start with God. You deny yourself. It would be better to get up in the morning, instead of “I will never do this,” just to look in the mirror and weep at the condition of your life in the flesh. At the pain that you’ve caused. At the difficulty. Humble yourself before the mighty hand of God and what? He will lift you up.

You go in the mirror a few times weeping before the Lord, you’re going to find the comfort and the encouragement and the strength of the Lord where eventually he’ll just soak in the forgiveness of God and the goodness of God that you won’t weep in the mirror anymore because you’ll sense that it’s time to move on. But you keep coming to the mirror and just standing there and demanding and just committing and it’s just an endless cycle of the flesh.

Right now, we’re as close to God as we choose to be. All of us are at different levels, different degrees of closeness or intimacy. Basically, you are where you are right now because that’s what you’ve chosen to be. We’re gathered here in another Bible study as a church, I commend you for the extra investment. You will benefit by pressing into the things of God. You will benefit taking in the word constantly.

You don’t know exactly how. You walk away from Bible study sometimes, “I don’t know, I didn’t get much from that.” No, no, you got it all! You just don’t know how it’s going to be lived out yet. You got it all! What do you mean you didn’t get much? You got it all! And even the worst Bible study, even the worst Bible teaching I would ever give you, I read to you a whole chapter and a half of the Bible. You got it all!

The Lord’s going to use that. He’s going to use it all in your life because he says, “I got a group here that says, ‘This is what I need. I need refreshment, I need strength, I need wisdom, I need my mind washed with the water of the word, I need to be transformed by the renewing of my mind.’” So you press into the word every day, every Bible study, every Bible reading through the Bible, all of it is from the Lord.

And you’re here because you chose to be here. And you’re in that place of maturity because of a series of choices. Some small, some big. But as it’s been said, you make your choices and your choices make you. So you choose that which is righteousness. And today I want to encourage you to ask God for more. More faith, more courage, more forgiveness, more help. In fact, God wants us to ask for more. He wants us to seek, and he wants us to knock. He wants us to be persistent. Here we are in the first few weeks of a brand-new year and you can still be asking God for more.

Guest (Male): This is Abounding Grace, and Pastor Ed Taylor is leading a study of Exodus right now. You can hear these radio programs on our website anytime at aboundinggraceradio.com, or listen to us wherever you get your podcasts. Another way to go and grow in the word is by downloading our app. Search for Ed Taylor. This is a great way for you to take in the word of God wherever you may be.

Do you struggle with anger, as so many do? We’d like to recommend an excellent book on the subject from Tim LaHaye and Bob Phillips. It’s titled *Anger is a Choice*. Whether you’re dealing with the rage of others or battle it yourself, you’ll discover how to keep anger under control instead of it being in control.

Request a copy today when you give a gift of $25 or more to Abounding Grace. Call 877-30-GRACE. And I should also mention the book is available online at our e-store. Take a look at calvaryco.store. Calvaryco.store. Again, the toll-free number: 877-30-GRACE.

There are some costs that go with being on the radio like this and we’re looking to the Lord to provide for us. If he’s leading you to take an active role in the ministry through either a one-time gift or ongoing monthly support, please visit us online at aboundinggraceradio.com or call 877-30-GRACE. Abounding Grace is brought to you by Calvary Church Colorado, here in Aurora. God bless you.