Abounding Grace

Guest (Male): Pastor Ed Taylor says no matter what you're going through today, you can trust the Lord is up to something good.

Pastor Ed Taylor: When we deal with fears, we deal with the past and it has a way of haunting us. The present has a way of overwhelming us. The future is unknown, and so we're all wrapped up on what might be and what could be. But the Bible tells us and we're reminded today that Jesus has it all worked out for us, that you can trust Him with your life. Just in that moment when you were born again, when you laid your whole life on the line, you can live that way. You can trust Him. God is working today all things together for the good for those that love Him. Do you love Him, church? I love Jesus, and I can trust that He's working things out. I can trust that He's going to put the pieces together.

Guest (Male): Have you ever been in a place where you feel trapped, and fear and anxiety were overwhelming you? It is a common experience, and one the nation of Israel was all too familiar with. Today on Abounding Grace, the Israelites have just been delivered from Egypt, and they appear to be trapped with the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptian army behind them. What happens next is truly amazing, and there are some powerful lessons we can draw from it the next time we feel trapped or are afraid. Here's Pastor Ed Taylor in Exodus chapter 14.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Open your Bibles to Exodus chapter 14. Exodus chapter 14 is where we are. We're going to finish the chapter, and I've entitled the Bible study, "Things are Not Always as They Seem." A big place this is true in our lives is in the times of fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety can, well, at least fear can be used in such a way where we're startled into action and could even be used in a good way. The Bible speaks of the fear of the Lord, or that respect and honor for the glory and the holiness and the righteousness of God.

God uses fear when there's danger to avoid and alerts our emotions and prepares us to flee to safety. But fear and anxiety will often cause an otherwise very rational person to do a lot of irrational things. Fear and anxiety have a way of causing normally rational and logical people to have their minds and lives filled with very irrational and illogical thoughts. You can jot it down. In Proverbs chapter 29 and verse 25, it says, "The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe."

I wonder how many among us, I know not everybody deals with deep fear and anxiety, but many do. I wonder how many among us know this to be true, where you've just seen that things were going just fine and just moving along and then something triggered that place of fear and anxiety. You're no longer walking in a faith relationship with God, but you're trying to control events and circumstances to try to deal with the fear. It's like this: your eyes have been taken off of the faithfulness of God and put on some circumstance, some situation. Your emotions are all tied up in it and wrapped up in it, and before you know it, you're so far away from the Lord, you didn't even realize it.

In Matthew chapter 10 and verse 28, Jesus says, "Don't fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Emotions are powerful, and fearful emotions can move us in directions toward safety but also sometimes toward danger. Back in Proverbs 29 and verse 25, the word "snare" is used. The definition of snare, "the fear of man brings a snare," the typical definition is something by which one is entangled, to be entangled, or involved in difficulties, or a snare is something that impedes our progress.

A snare is often something that's deceptively attractive. We think of a snare like a trap, like maybe a bear trap and you don't see it. Whether you're a bear or a human, you don't see it. It's covered up. It has some type of bait on it. I've never really seen a bear trap personally, but I've seen a lot of other traps in my life, well-hidden, nicely baited, and before you know it, boom, it gets me. I'm entangled in it and I'm stopped in my progress. I'm caught up in new difficulties.

When we deal with fears, we deal with the past and it has a way of haunting us. The present has a way of overwhelming us. The future is unknown, and so we're all wrapped up on what might be and what could be. But the Bible tells us and we're reminded today that Jesus has it all worked out for us, that you can trust Him with your life. Just in that moment when you were born again, when you laid your whole life on the line, you can live that way.

You can trust Him. God is working today all things together for the good for those that love Him. Do you love Him, church? I love Jesus, and I can trust that He's working things out. I can trust that He's going to put the pieces together. I can trust this in Psalm 119, verse 50: "This is my comfort in my affliction, for Your word has given me life." Knowing and experiencing and abiding in His love casts out all fear. First John chapter 4, verse 18: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out all fear because fear involves torment, but he who fears has not been made perfect in love."

Fear is always an indication that I need to get back into that place of love and abiding, running to the Father, trusting Him, hiding in, covered by Christ. Well, here in Exodus chapter 14, we have a moment of fear. It's one of those places in the Bible that I think on the one hand we can relate and on the other hand it's hard to relate, only because we know the whole story. So when you're reading the Bible, you have to remember this. Those that were reading about are living out this situation in real-time.

They do not know what the next paragraph or the next verse or the next chapter says. They, in a very real way, are living on the promises of God. They're trusting in their leadership. They're looking back and seeing the faithfulness of God, but they don't know the future. We come to a time in the nation of Israel, being delivered from Egypt, they are led into a dead end, millions of people. So it's not just a small group of people. Millions of people are led into a trap, and there seems to be no way out.

The Red Sea is before them, on either side of them are mountains or large hills, and then coming up behind them very quickly, the dust is rising, are the armies of Egypt. I mean, they've just been delivered. Certainly, there are some logical men in the group. There are some logical people that are assessing the situation. They see the trap. The only way out is to come backwards, but then they're thinking, the entire economic engine of Egypt has just left.

They recognize the strength and the power that they brought to this nation, and now they're gone. Whether they can see it with their own eyes or they can hear it with their own ears or they can just see the dust coming up, they recognize that they're in trouble. It's true. They are in a difficult spot. That was a truth. The fast-approaching Egyptian army is coming for them, and yet there's truth, but only partial truth. It is true, all the circumstances that I just shared, except that their fear has blinded them from God's will for their lives.

Their fear has blinded them from the truth, the real truth. These are all elements of what's happening and they're all true elements, but what is the real truth? The real truth is that they're about to find out that God has led the children of Israel to a place to trap the Egyptians. That's really what He's doing. He's going to make His name known among the Egyptians yet one more time. Pharaoh in his pride is falling into the hands of the Lord.

God does this, you know, when you follow Him. He leads you into places that you come up with all the conclusions. You assess it, you look at it, and you come to the conclusions, and many times your conclusions are wrong because you've factored out your faith in God and His faithfulness. You fail to take your real fear and cast it upon the Lord for His safety and His security that you find in Him. Now, I may be the only one in the room, I doubt that I am, but I may be the only one in the room that does that, but I know of which I speak.

How easy it is to assess and to look and to see and just to come to conclusions that aren't from the Lord at all. Even if you're in a trap tonight, God is working. He's working behind the scenes. He's taking care of things that you don't see, that He hasn't yet revealed, even as we see now. Notice in verse 15, we'll pick up in verse 14, as it says, "The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace." And then notice, the Lord said to Moses, "Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward." Where would they go forward? Into the sea. That's the word. Moses, tell them to go forward.

Why are you crying out to Me? Now, this is interesting because in verse 15, as Moses has turned to the Lord and has cried out to Him, you can say that God is saying to Moses, "Stop praying. Stop praying. This is what you need to do. Here's your answer. Get up and tell them to go forward." And you go, would God ever tell us to stop praying? Oh, yes. Jot it down. You'll remember in Joshua chapter 7, Joshua is in a great crisis.

It's such a difficult time later on in the children of Israel among the nation. You have great defeat at Ai. They had great victory in Jericho, but there was great defeat at Ai, and it has troubled Joshua, their leader, greatly. Notice in Joshua chapter 7, it says in verse 10, "So the Lord said to Joshua: 'Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things, and have both stolen and deceived; and they have also put it among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they have become doomed to destruction. Neither will I be with you anymore, unless you destroy the accursed from among you. Get up, sanctify the people, and say, "Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow."'"

There's a time to pray and there's a time to act. God tells Moses, "Why are you crying out to Me? It's time to move." Verse 16: "Lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. And I indeed will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them. So I will gain honor over Pharaoh and over all his army, his chariots, and his horsemen. Then the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained honor for Myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen."

Someone once said, "Only when we learn to stand still are we able to go forward." It reminded me of Psalm 46, verse 10: "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." Sometimes when we're standing, the Lord would have us to be moving, and sometimes when we're moving, the Lord would have us to be standing, which everyone asks a good question at this point: how do I know the difference?

How do I know the difference? Well, you can trust the Spirit of God in your life. Believer, you have the Spirit of God dwelling in you, and you can trust that He'll have you stand when you need to stand and move when you need to move. We've learned that in our studies. This goes very well with some previous studies we've had on our weekend services through the opening and closing of doors. That's one way. Through the reading of His Scriptures, that's another.

Through your intimate prayer times, that's another. Through your morning walks or your evening walks, that's another. Through a trusted brother or sister in the Lord, that's another. But here's the thing. No matter what, if you're going to stand or you're going to sit, if you're going to pray or you're going to act, you have to do it by faith. Because I know we want to know for sure. I got to know, I got to know for sure. And the Lord says, "I want you to trust Me for sure. I want you to trust Me."

And here, Moses says, "Get up." I mean, God tells Moses, "Get up. You're going to speak because God is ready. God's ready to act." Deliverance was theirs. All they needed to do now was follow their leader in faith. There was a way that didn't even cross their minds in this trap. There was a way out of this that they didn't even think of. Or maybe perhaps some of them thought, one of the thoughts you can hear ring out in the beginning there, "Maybe we can swim, maybe we can swim."

And then, "Are you serious? Nobody's... they're going to get us before the first second or third row of millions of people goes through. Maybe we can climb." "Oh, come on, there's no way. There's no way. Maybe a few of us will get over, but they'll get the rest of us. And what about the women? What about the children? What about our stuff?" I'm sure it was a chaotic scene. But there was a way that God had for them that they had yet to know until it was revealed.

Church, there is a way available to you even now that God has yet to reveal. Until He does, you look to Him. You stay faithful to Him. You're caught up in the impossibility of it all, and God says, "I don't want you even thinking about the impossibility. I want you to think about what's possible. I want you to look to Me." The impossibility is swallowed up by God giving you something you can do. It's amazing. God does this very often. When we're faced with something we can't do, God starts with something we can do.

And so you have this impossibility, you're trapped, I don't know what's going to happen. He says, "Okay, well, I know you don't know what's going to happen here in this trap, but I'll tell you what. You can pray. I'll tell you what. You can come to fellowship." Some of you might even be here right now because the crisis got you. The crisis got you, and you go, "I don't know what to do. I know what I'll do. I can go to church. I haven't been there in a while." Well, welcome back. Because you could. You haven't, but you could.

And here, God knows things that I don't know yet. It brings me comfort to know that God knows what He's doing with my life. I don't always know what He's doing with my life. I don't always know how things are going to turn out. I don't always know what's going to happen in the morning. I don't always know, but God does. Jesus would remind me, He would tell us, He says, "Take My yoke upon you and," what? "Learn from Me." What can we learn from Jesus?

His utter dependence upon the Father. His complete surrender to the Father. What can we learn from Jesus? We can learn that our Father in heaven is a gracious and good God, that He's not ready to give us rocks and scorpions and snakes, but He's ready to give us of the Holy Spirit when we ask. We learn of Jesus that our Father in heaven is like that Dad that was waiting for his prodigal kid to come home while at the same time he was living with his other prodigal kid, faithfully loving them and caring for them and being available to them even when they wanted nothing to do with him.

What do we learn from Jesus? We learn that obedience brings blessing. What do we learn from Jesus? Every time you open up the Gospels, you have a specific lesson. We learn from Jesus, look at the flowers tomorrow. Pay attention to them. How beautiful and wonderful they are. He says, you look at the flowers, you see how beautiful they are. Man, I'm telling you, my Father, He'll take care of all of your needs. You don't need to worry about what you're going to wear. Pay attention to the birds.

Perhaps like me, you have birds that think they own your house. And so they're all over thinking that they pay the rent. They don't pay the rent on my house, but they live there rent-free. I've never observed the birds and enjoyed them and listened to them in the morning. Up to this point, I have never seen any bird up on the sidewalk of my house back and forth all worried. "I don't know what's going to happen today. I don't know what's happening. I can't believe it. I don't know where my next food, where the worm..." I've never seen a bird, have you seen a bird do that?

I just seen a bird singing and enjoying life and avoiding predators and making nests in my house and thinking they're going to get away with it, watching me. I'll come out in the morning and birds will be on all the corners of my neighbors' houses checking me out, wanting to dive-bomb. "Like, what's your problem? Come on, man. Come on. Like, what are you guys doing?" They completely, completely live a life of trust. We have a lot to learn from Jesus. It's very simple. He's a very simple and yet very powerful teacher. You feel like you're trapped today?

Jesus says, "Come and learn from Me." Come and learn that even through the worst torturous pain that a human being could ever endure, you learn from Jesus, "I triumph. I rose again from the dead. I'm alive today. Learn from Me. Come to Me." Paul would even pick up on this in his own personal life. In Ephesians chapter 4, you remember he said in verse 20, "But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man." The old man worried.

The old woman tried to control. The old man loved to take things into his own hands. The old woman ran away from her problems. But you haven't learned that from Christ. You put off the old conduct. They're in a place of learning to follow, learning to follow the Lord. And they're in a great, I have found that some of the deepest, most intimate times I've had with the Lord have been some of the deepest times of crisis in my life, where I've been brought to the very low of low, lowest of lows in my life, and the Lord's been so faithful to meet me there.

Larry: That is Pastor Ed Taylor on Abounding Grace. And Ed, here at the close of today's program, you mentioned something that's noteworthy. You said that some of the deepest, most intimate times you've had with the Lord were during a deep crisis. Would you explain how the Lord met you there in a special way?

Pastor Ed Taylor: Wow, this is a big one to unpack. I'm not even going to attempt to unpack it all, although when I hear the question, Larry, that's what comes to mind. I do a live radio broadcast here where I answer questions, and it goes out all around the country on the station you're listening to, most likely. And there are times when a question will come in and I'll say, yeah, this question is so big, it's too big for radio. And I think this one is too, to some degree.

But here I am today, as I'm recording this, a little bit ahead of when it airs on the broadcast, and it's my grandson's 13-year birthday. But we haven't been able to see him. And it's one of those days where like, okay, today is going to be a day when I'm able just to press into the things of the Lord and trust Him and know that my intimacy will be built up through an ongoing trial. And it reminds me of not only that situation, but when my son passed away 13 years ago, and it created a whole new channel in my heart that I didn't know I needed, and I didn't even know I didn't have yet, where I'm pressing into the things of the Lord and trusting Him with every aspect of my life.

These times of crisis and trial and tribulation reveal a couple of things. One, that God is faithful and reliable, and that when I cast my cares upon Him, He cares for me. But you know one other thing that trial and crisis reveals? It reveals areas of my flesh that are still very much alive and get in the way of my faith walk with Jesus. So I could go on and on, I have a lot to say about the deep trial, but I have more to say about the faithfulness of God. He is good, and I'm grateful to know Him, and I'm grateful to serve Him.

Larry: Thanks, Ed. I'm sure someone listening really needed to hear that. And friend, if you'd like to hear this study again, go to aboundinggraceradio.com or 1place.com. At Abounding Grace, we're committed to bringing the truths of God's word to the radio and internet every day, but we can't do it alone. We look to the Lord and our listeners to help us provide these daily studies. And today, when you give a donation of $25 or more, we'll send you "Just Do Something" by Kevin DeYoung.

Has this thought ever crossed your mind: why won't God reveal His special will for my life already? Kevin DeYoung would answer, because He doesn't intend to. With pastoral wisdom, He debunks unbiblical ways of understanding God's will and points to a wonderful and biblical alternative: live like Christ. He also exposes the frustrations of our waiting games and underscores the freedom of finding God's will in scripture and then simply doing it.

Request a copy right now by calling us at 877-30-GRACE. That's 877-30-GRACE. You can also order it online at calvaryco.store. Then join us next time when we'll have another great study in the word from Pastor Ed Taylor here on Abounding Grace.

[Music playing - Amazing Grace]

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