Awakened to Grace

Chad Roberts: Welcome to Awakened to Grace. I'm Chad Roberts, and I'm so glad you're joining us today. I believe God has connected us for a great purpose. Today you're going to hear a powerful sermon. But before we get to the sermon, I want to encourage you to check out my new book. It's called Blind Faith: Seeing God Through Darkness. It's published by our partners at Lifeway.

And the reason I wrote this book is because I am 100% blind. And as I've walked this path of blindness, this path of suffering, well, I want to teach you how Christians can suffer well. I say that today my job as a blind pastor is to help people trust a God they cannot see.

You can order the book right now anywhere that books are sold in any format. Even if you're not much of a book reader, you can even get it in audio, where you can listen to it. Well, I hope you'll go right now to the official website, which is blindfaith.life. Again, that's blindfaith.life. And I hope you'll not only get a copy for you, I hope you'll pick one up for someone who needs encouragement in their faith today.

Guest (Male): I want to be close, close to Your side, as heaven is real and death is a lie. I want to hear voices of angels above, singing as one, "Hallelujah, Holy, Holy, God Almighty, the Great I Am, who is worthy, none beside Thee, God Almighty, the Great I Am."

I want to be near, near to Your heart, loving the world and hating the dark. I want to see dry bones living again, singing as one, "Hallelujah, Holy, Holy, God Almighty, the Great I Am, who is worthy, none beside Thee, God Almighty, the Great I Am."

The mountains shake before Him, the demons run and flee, at the mention of Your name, King of Majesty. There is no power in hell, nor any who could stand before the power and the presence of the Great I Am. Great I Am. Great I Am. Great I Am. Great I Am. Great I Am.

Hallelujah, Holy, Holy, God Almighty, the Great I Am, who is worthy, none beside Thee, God Almighty, the Great I Am. The Great I Am. The Great I Am. The Great I Am. The mountains shake before Him, the demons run and flee, at the mention of Your name, King of Majesty.

There is no power in hell, nor any who could stand before the power and the presence of the Great I Am. Great I Am. Great I Am. Great I Am. Great I Am. Great I Am. Hallelujah, Holy, Holy, God Almighty, the Great I Am, who is worthy, none beside Thee, God Almighty, the Great I Am. The Great I Am. The Great I Am. The Great I Am.

Chad Roberts: Today on Awakened to Grace, we are in part two of a wonderful sermon called "The God of Miracles." We have been studying the Old Testament names of God that reveal His character, they reveal His power. And friends, when you incorporate praying the names of God into your own prayer life, oh, how things will change, not just in your life but in your circumstances. Well, today we talk about how God is the God of all miracles. Oh, I love preaching on the power and the abilities of God Almighty.

Well, if these sermons are encouraging you, I want to ask you to go to my website, awakenedtograce.com, and I want you to explore. I want you to learn more about how you and your family can become a grace giver. Do you know who grace givers are? They are people who, like us, are passionate about spreading the gospel.

And if you are someone that you care about this generation, you care about this culture hearing the gospel, the clear gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, well friends, you don't know how honored I would be for you to come alongside of us and join hands with us, stand shoulder to shoulder with us as we proclaim this great gospel from coast to coast.

Well, go to awakenedtograce.com, click the "Grace Givers" link, learn how you can be part and we can partner together in teaching this culture the words of God. Well, today let's take our Bibles. We're going to see how God is the God of miracles.

Facts do not matter when God shut the mouths of lions in the lions' den with Daniel. Facts didn't matter when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into a fiery furnace. Facts didn't matter then. And facts don't matter in our life when God is working and God is moving. The only fact that you and I need is the fact that God is sovereign and God is Elohim, and God will do anything that God wants to do because He is Creator. Amen? That's the fact that matters.

And here Israel is, and God says, "Take this log, cast it into the water." Well, friends, that makes no sense whatsoever. There are times God will tell you to do things that do not make sense. Praise God for those moments and be quick to obey. Amen? And what did God do? God not only gave them pure water, God gave them sweet water. Sweet water. Sweet water. God took what was bitter and God turned it sweet.

Now, there's a purpose in this. He says in the next verse, "And there the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there the Lord tested them, saying, 'If you will be diligent to listen to the voice of the Lord your God, if you'll keep all His commandments, if you give ear to His commandments, keep all His statutes, if you will do that which is right in His eyes, then what does He say? All the diseases I put upon the Egyptian, I'll not put upon you.' And here the Lord reveals His name, 'For I am Yahweh Ropha, I am the Lord your Healer.'" Amen?

Now, here's the application for today. Obviously, we believe this piece of wood, this log, is not only symbolic to the obedience that you and I are to have at the revelation of God in our lives, but it's also symbolic to the cross of Jesus Christ. When you and I face bitter situations in life, it's the cross that makes it sweet to us. Amen?

I was lying in bed last night, unable to sleep, and as much as I've thought about this text, not once have I made the connection until last night. If you go back and listen to my sermons throughout the last few months, you'll often hear me say that this blindness has become a very sweet season to me. The Lord has caused this to become sweet.

And I was lying in bed last night, and I was thinking, "Lord, times that perhaps I should feel bitter, times that I should feel uneasy, or times that I should feel upset, or whatever word you want to insert there." No, no. What I feel is the sweetness of the Lord. Friends, I can tell you from absolute experience, things that should make our life bitter, things that should be bitter to our soul, God has an ability to make them sweet. God has the ability to turn it for our good. God has the ability to help us when no one and nothing else can help us. We find God faithful in those bitter moments of life.

And it was here that God gave them a statute. God gave them a rule. That if we do all that God commands us to do, if we do that which is right in His eyes, if we give ear to all of His commandments, if we keep all of His statutes, then what is the glorious promise? The glorious promise is God says, "You will find Me in the crisis. You will find Me, Yahweh Ropha, the Lord your Healer." That's the promise of God. Amen? Praise God for it.

And there He gave His part of the deal, and He gave our part of the deal. His part is that He will provide healing. His part is that we'll find Him faithful. His part is that we'll find Him in the midst of crisis and we'll know Him and we'll know His character. But our part is that we have to obey His statutes. We have to keep His rule. We have to obey His law.

So, my friend, I want to ask you today, is there anything that's blocking God from being able to work into your life? Is there any disobedience in your heart today? Unforgiveness will stop the healing work of God in your life. Unbelief will stop the healing work of God in your life. Ungratefulness will stop the work of God. When you're not a person filled with gratitude and you're not a person filled with thanksgiving, the Lord will not be able to work in your life.

And do you know where so much sickness in our lives comes from? Do you know where so much resentment comes from? It comes from this bitterness that can set up in our lives. And how does bitterness come? For some, bitterness comes through the acts of individuals, things that people have done to them, things that people did to them back in their past, things that family did to them, and it causes bitterness in their heart.

For some, bitterness comes through the misdealings of God's people, the mishandlings of the church. You may be listening to this sermon today and you may have been greatly hurt by a pastor or by a leader in a church, or by an elder or deacon or someone that you admired or you looked up to. Bitterness sometimes can come from our own sin, sin that we're unwilling to repent from.

And I want to tell you this: if someone has wronged you in the past, and it doesn't matter what that wrong is, if that wrong is that they walked out of your life and left you picking up the pieces, if that wrong is that they molested you or abused you, if that wrong is that they didn't keep their promise to you, or they stabbed you in the back, or they gossiped about you, let me tell you, friend: do not allow their sin to become your sin. You forgive them in Jesus' name. You let it go in Jesus' name.

You say, "Chad, that's so much easier said than done." Oh, I realize that, but see, the cross makes the difference. The cross makes the difference. When you put the cross in your situation—and whether that is rape or it's abuse or it's divorce or it's hurt or it's neglect or whatever it is that someone has done you or cheated you or wronged you—when you put the cross into that situation, I'm telling you, God can make your life sweet again. God can heal you of this. Amen? What is bitter in your life, I'm telling you from experience, God will make it sweet. He has that kind of ability.

So, what do you face today? What is it that you're going through that, in reality, you have a reason to be bitter? But the cross makes all the difference. In reality, you can complain, but the cross makes all the difference. In reality, you have a reason to be discouraged, but the cross is our reality, and the cross makes all the difference. I tell you friends, God will take what Satan meant for harm and He'll turn it for our good and for His glory.

Now, as we close today, notice what happened. Moses cried out to the Lord. The Lord showed him the log. He threw it into the water. The water became sweet. God says, "If you keep My statutes, you give ear to My commandments, you do that which is right in My eyes, and you listen, you diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, if you do all these things, I'll not put on you the diseases I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord your Healer." And God revealed this in a moment of crisis.

Then watch what happens. The Lord led them to Elim. If you're listening today, just say Elim. Elim. Praise God, Elim is a sweet place. See, in my mind's eye, if God rescued me out of the Red Sea, then would He not take me straight to Elim? No. First he had to go through Marah. First we had to taste the bitter waters so that we would pass the testing of the Lord. First we had to meet the Lord in crisis. First we had to realize He's the Lord our Healer. First we had to listen and learn and obey the statutes of the Lord.

How many of you can say amen for the Marah seasons of our life? Amen. So he came to Marah, but now the Lord's going to lead them to Elim. Now, I don't know how much water was at Marah. I don't know how large the body of water was. But listen what happened at Elim. The Bible tells us there were 12 springs of water. Friends, how many tribes were there of the children of Israel? There were 12.

You telling me God didn't have this custom-made for the people of Israel? 12 tribes of Israel, and God leads them to 12 springs of water. Each tribe got their own spring. Praise God. And not only were there 12 springs of water, there were 70 palm trees, and they were able to enjoy the shade in the wilderness. Amen.

And God will do the same in your life and my life. He'll take us through a season of testing. He'll take us to the waters of Marah. He'll teach us how the cross makes the difference. He'll teach us to learn and obey the statutes of the Lord. And then God will work miraculously in our life and He'll lead us to the sweet places. He'll lead us to the good places. He'll take us to Elim, where we'll drink deeply out of the waters of the Lord. Glory to God. Oh, I love this section of scripture.

And you know this week when I was listening and studying chapters 14, 15, 16, 17, I was just saying to the Lord, I said, "God, what would it have been to have been in that day and saw such miracles? To see the Red Sea split, to see the waters at Marah all of a sudden become sweet, to be led to Elim and have 12 springs of water, to see manna come down from heaven as it will in chapter 16, to be fed by quail as they will in chapter 16, to have the rock come from the water at Horeb as it did in chapter 17, to see God defeat the Amalekites in a supernatural way as He did, as we saw last week in chapter 17." I thought, "Lord, what would it have been to have seen all those miracles?"

And it's just like the Lord said, "Chad, are you kidding me? You live in the greatest day of miracles. See, you live in a day where the Holy Spirit indwells you and all of my people. You live in a day where you have all the record of scripture, of the history of scripture. You have thousands of promises of God. You want to follow a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire? Chad, you can follow the Holy Spirit. What a day you live in." Amen.

But now today, we see miracle after miracle. See, every time someone is saved, what a miracle. Every time that someone's delivered from bitterness, what a miracle. Every time that someone's set free from drugs, what a miracle. Every time that someone lets go of unforgiveness, what a miracle. There are miracles upon miracles upon miracles that God's doing right now, right here in our day.

Are we paying attention? Are we watching? Are we listening? I believe we're going to see God do miracles today. Are we watching? Are we listening? More importantly, are we obeying the statutes of the Lord? You know, I just feel in my spirit right now that God's been dealing with someone to give up something or walk away from something. Why don't you just obey the Lord right now? Why don't you obey His statute? Obey His rule. Diligently listen for the voice of the Lord your God. Do that which is right in His eyes. Give your ear to the commandments of the Lord today and keep all of His statutes, and oh, how God will work in your life.

Come on, let's pray right now. Lord, we want to be obedient to You, God. We want to be obedient to You, Lord. We want to be swift in our obedience. We don't want to procrastinate in our obeying the commandments of God. We want to be swift; we want to be obedient. Oh God, may You help us. May You help us in Jesus' name. Help us to be obedient in Jesus' name.

Come on church, pray right now. What's God dealing with you about? What's God saying to you right now that you need to be more sensitive, more obedient? Lord, don't let unbelief get in the way. Don't let unforgiveness get in the way. Don't let ingratitude get in the way. God, help us in these matters, Lord. Help us in Jesus' name today. Lord, show us what You're doing right now by Your Spirit. Show us Your will in Jesus' name.

Come on, what's God dealing with you on? What's God dealing with you on? What do you need to obey? What do you need to obey? Obey the voice of the Lord today. Obey His voice. Lord, we're listening right now. We're listening. We'll be diligent to listen for the voice of the Lord our God. Thank You, Lord, for leading us through tests, through the waters of Marah.

Thank You, God. Thank You for taking us to these bitter waters, only to show us that the cross will make all the difference. The cross will take what's bitter, it'll make it sweet. It won't just make it pure, it'll make it sweet. Sweet for the tasting. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord. Come on, just pray right now. Whatever the Lord's telling you, pray.

Chad Roberts: Have you visited my online store where you can find books, music, sermon series, and so much more? I hope you'll go there today, awakenedtograce.com/store, and keep checking back because our resources that are designed for spiritual growth are always growing. Awakenedtograce.com/store.