Unlimited Grace

Bryan Chapell: And so God, instead of saying, "Do you not understand? I am not evaluating our relationship based upon your behavior, not upon the pattern that you're just artificially putting upon yourself so that you'll get other people's approval or stay out of trouble." God is saying, "I am saying I do not want the obedience that is mere begrudging following of standards that you do not believe in."

Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today's episode, Pastor Bryan shares the second half of a lesson from Exodus chapter 17. Dr. Chapell highlights the provision of God as He washes away our pasts and makes a path for our future.

You can find this lesson and many others when you visit unlimitedgrace.com. And while you're there, look for this wonderful resource from Dr. Chapell, Holiness by Grace. In this book, Pastor Bryan will guide you through reassuring scripture passages to discover how works and obedience are not a means of establishing or maintaining salvation, but a grateful response to God's mercy. Let's hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the second half of the lesson, Squeezing Water from a Rock.

Bryan Chapell: Paul said it so clearly when looking back on this event: "That rock was Christ that followed after them." The language is hard on us. The rock that followed after them was Christ. How does a rock follow after you? Is it kind of rolling through the sand of the desert? You know, is this some sort of R2-D2, BB-8 who's kind of following after them? What's happening?

No, it's what Paul just described. He said, "Remember when you went through the Red Sea, there was God who was ahead of you, who then parted the waters on both sides of you, and then went behind you as a rear guard to protect you from what was behind you, the Egyptians." Here is God surrounding His people wherever they go.

It's kind of like if you can picture it, this may not be a real holy example, but I think of my kids when they started playing soccer. You know, whenever kids start playing soccer, it's magnet ball, right? There's the ball and all the kids gather around it. And no matter where the ball goes, you get those kids grouped all around it. And here is God following after the children of Israel, no matter where they go, as if to say, "I'm not just ahead of you. I'm not just to your right and to your left, but I am your rear guard, protecting you from what is behind you as well. That is how great I am."

And I think why we need to hear that. For the moms who at the end of a day with children they love, nonetheless in frustration and fatigue and exasperation, snap and say or do things they cannot even imagine was true of themselves and now cannot sleep at night because of remembering what I did. Don't you want to know that my God is not just ahead of me, but behind me, protecting me from what was back there?

How much I need to recognize and you need to recognize, God is saying, "Your past is not defining you. I'm the God who is ahead of you. I have plans for you. But I am the God who has cut you off from your past by My great power. It's not the past that controls you. My God is so great, so strong, and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do as I believe He can even move me beyond my past."

I think of one of the most compelling sermons I ever heard from John Piper. He was just honestly unveiled before young men and he was saying, "How many of you who are blessed by God, able, know the scriptures, desire to be used in ministry and mission for the glory of God, but you have checked yourself out because of the pornography that characterizes your life day after day? You must believe your past does not define you."

My God has cut off the past so that we can move forward in the grace and plan that He intends for us. Our past does not define us. I think of my own children at times when they have faced the huge disappointments of not getting into the grad school that they might have wanted, and believe because there is that failure in the past that there's no future.

And I need to be able to say, we need to be able to say to child, to grandchild, to potential minister, missionary, moms, dads, your past does not define you. The God who is ahead of you and on both sides of you has said, "I am your rear guard too." And what would promise to attack you and destroy you from the past, God says, "I have cut that off. I am the God of the yesterday as well as the God of tomorrow. Trust me because My power is so great."

And He's not just telling us here that His power is great. He's telling us how great is His provision so that we will trust Him. We read so simply the words that are in the middle of verse 6: "And water shall come out of the rock, and the people will drink." And we just fly right past it. The people will drink. What people? How many people?

Do you remember that when the Bible is describing the number of people who come out of slavery in Egypt, it describes them as 600,000 fighting men? Men of warrior age. It doesn't number their children, and there would have been large households. It doesn't number their spouses. It doesn't number granddaddy or grandmother. Those who do the estimate say coming out of Egypt had to be between two and even six million people.

And of course, that's not all that has to drink in the desert. You have all of their animals as well. The goats and the sheep and the camels. And if you just kind of in common estimation say, "All right, so you look at there's somewhere between four and eight million creatures that have to be watered in the desert, each of them needing, you know, just rough estimate, a gallon of water a day to survive in the desert."

You have millions of gallons of water that have to come out of this rock. It's blowing away our image that is in all the Sunday school literature. What did it look like when the water came out of this rock? Well, we all know. We've seen the picture. You know, this little gentle stream coming out of the rock. There are the sheep on the hill behind, and children kind of wade in the wading pool, and mom is gathering, you know, a little pitcher of water out of it.

Do the math. You have at least a quarter million gallons an hour. You have at least four to eight thousand gallons a minute. You've got a tanker truck a minute coming out of this thing. This is not a stream. This is not a fire hydrant. This is a flash flood. When the psalmist describes it in Psalm 78, he simply says, "A river came out of the rock." God is providing overwhelming blessing to whom?

To the people who are putting Him on trial, who have turned from Him, who are accusing Him, who want to murder Moses because they are not getting what they want. What are we learning? Not just our common humanity, but the response of God to sinful, broken, weak, frustrated, exasperated, complaining, grumbling people. He is saying to them, and He is saying to us, "I will get your heart. I will do what I must to get your heart."

And so He is telling them of the preparation that must come in order for them to fulfill the purposes He has for them. The preparation of grace, just think where we are in the book of Exodus. Some of you know, this is Exodus 17. We are three chapters from the Ten Commandments where God is going to say, "This is how you honor Me. This is what will be required for obedience to glorify and honor My name in the land to which I call you."

But we may have missed verse 8 as well. I didn't take you that far. We learn as well in verse 8 of Exodus 17, "Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim." Israel is running. The Amalekites are coming. Do you remember, for 400 years, God has not sent Israel into the promised land because He says the iniquity of the Amalekites was not yet full?

Those who are sacrificing their children, those who are wicked, evil, but powerful warriors, so much so that when Israel comes up to the banks of the Jordan, ready to go into the promised land, they are so terrified that they say, "We can't go in there. We will look like grasshoppers next to those giants." And here we are being told that God is dealing with a people who are whining, grumbling, complaining, wanting to murder Moses, who are going to be His warriors to claim the promises of the future.

So what does God do with these people? He gives them profound, overwhelming grace. Here is water in abundance. You're complaining again? Here is My love again. You are thinking I cannot do it? I am so great and I am so gracious that you can trust Me and turn to Me and honor Me no matter what comes. It is so important that you see the grace comes before the commands. The grace comes before the war as God is saying, "I will claim your heart before I ask anything else of you."

Guest (Male): You're listening to Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell.

Bryan Chapell: God instructs us in His Word to be holy as He is holy. How can God expect us to be as holy as He is? Such a standard seems either to ignore our frailty or to impose certain failure. That is, until we understand how God views us.

In this challenging yet heartwarming book, Holiness by Grace, Pastor Bryan Chapell illustrates the principles of grace, the practices of faith, and the motives of love in living a life of holiness. He will guide you through reassuring scripture passages to discover how works and obedience are not a means of establishing or maintaining salvation, but a grateful response to God's mercy.

Holiness by Grace draws straight from the heart of God as Dr. Chapell's encouraging words will help you understand that your holiness is not so much a matter of what you achieve, as it is the grace that God provides. A grace so rich as to make the pursuit of His holiness your soul's deepest delight. You can request your copy of Holiness by Grace when you go online to unlimitedgrace.com or by calling 844-41-GRACE. That's 844-414-7223.

Guest (Male): And now, more from Bryan Chapell on today's Unlimited Grace.

Bryan Chapell: I will claim your heart before I ask anything else of you. Maybe that sounds easy to believe. Even in the church, we struggle with it. Is God really going to be gracious to me before I meet His commands and His requirements? Is He really preparing me by claiming my heart before He claims the need of my obedience?

I think of a long and dear friend of mine who, in our terms of today, struggled with same-sex attraction. Wanted to honor the Lord, sought counsel, sought help, and by God's great grace found a significant measure of victory over the lifestyle patterns that he had pursued. Until he lost his job, and then the depression and the despair weakened him. And seeking some release, some relief, he turned back to the lifestyle.

I did not hear from him for months. And then the phone call, requests for an appointment, our time together, and he told the story. "Bryan, from the time of my sin, God has given me a new job. And it's in a different place where I'm not tempted by the same friends that I've been tempted by before. And I have a church that loves me and people who support me knowing about me. Bryan, I betrayed you, and I rebelled against God, and all God is doing is blessing me and blessing me and blessing me. It's not supposed to work that way, is it?"

And I had the privilege of saying to him what I would say to you: God will do whatever is necessary to get your heart. He may show overwhelming blessing in order to pull you back from the abyss, in order to show you what His real nature is like. I am not saying that God will never discipline sin, because God disciplines those that He loves.

But His love is to say, "Do I need to turn you this way? Do I need to turn you that way? Is it by overwhelming blessing? Is it by the deprivation of the things that you are counting on for blessing?" God will do whatever is necessary to get your heart. And I say that recognizing it's difficult for us even to believe in the church.

I am haunted, I must tell you, I am haunted by the experience of, you know, being in a room and walking into rooms where sometimes young people or older people suddenly, because the pastor's in the room, you know, the conversation changes and the language cleans up because, you know, I've never heard those words.

And the impression so often is as long as we maintain some level of behavior that is acceptable in the church or to the pastor or to my parents, then I'm a Christian. And we begin to base our status before God on how bad was our language or how good is our pattern of who we're sleeping with or not. And we begin to assess we're okay with God because other people don't know what's really in our hearts, what we're really struggling with, what we're really willing to do if other people did not know.

And so God, instead of saying, "Do you not understand? I am not evaluating our relationship based upon your behavior, not upon the pattern that you're just artificially putting upon yourself so that you'll get other people's approval or stay out of trouble." God is saying, "I am saying I do not want the obedience that is mere begrudging following of standards that you do not believe in."

God is saying, "I want you to believe that I love you and I have a plan for your life and I have such zeal for your own heart that I will do whatever is necessary to claim you. So that your heart is not just saying, 'I will do this out of begrudging slavery to God.' No, you have been freed from slavery. What we are being called to do is to love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength. And we do so because we have seen how great is His grace toward us."

It changes us. It changes our world when we recognize we are not just kind of meeting some measure of acceptance in order to be Christians. God is saying, "I will not even accept that basis of your standing before me. I will have your heart first. Before the commands, before the battles, I will have your heart."

And that is tough because of the people that He's dealing with. You have to recognize not just the provision of grace that is preparing people for the commands as they love God, they will now want to follow Him, preparing them for the battles, as they love and trust God, they will face whatever enemies they must face. They have to learn to trust God's pardon as well.

And so He teaches them that grace also. Verse 2, right at the end, "Why do you quarrel with me?" said Moses. "Why do you test the Lord?" Not so obvious to you in your English Bibles, the word test is actually the word for a lawsuit. Why are you taking the Lord to trial? Not only do they have a lawsuit against God, they know what the verdict will be. They have said what God is trying to do. End of verse 3: "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt? To kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?"

So much are they bringing an accusation against God that Moses will later call this place Massah, which means place of trial, and Meribah, which means dispute. This place where you dispute with God by putting Him on trial. Despite the fact that He has shown you how great is His grace toward you, you complain. No, you do more than complain. You call God a murderer. And that same God gives them living water in response.

It is not the first time. It will not be the last time that God provides for people who cannot provide for themselves, who deserve it none at all. In the play, The Sign of Jonah, a group of refugees like these Israelites is struggling to understand what they must endure in a broken, fallen, and cruel world. And ultimately because they cannot explain it, they also put God on trial.

"God is to blame! Our children are suffering. God is to blame! We don't have the food that we want. God is to blame! We don't have the homes that we like. God is to blame!" So they put God on trial and God is found guilty. So this becomes their judgment. The crime is so severe that there will have to be the worst of all possible sentences for God. He has to suffer as His creatures have.

God has to live on the earth as a human being. Let Him know what it's like to be obscure and poor. Let Him be born as a refugee on the backside of nowhere with a peasant girl for His mother. Let there be suspicion and shame about His birth for all of His life. Let Him know what it's like to feel disappointment and failure without others understanding. Make sure He suffers pain and let Him be executed as one who is betrayed, isolated, friendless, and abandoned.

And the lights go down and the play is over, as we are made to understand. The sentence was carried out against God by the authority of God. He sent His son to bear the verdict that you and I should have paid by our sin. And He who would come in obscurity and poverty, He who would be rejected of men, He who would die upon the cross in excruciating pain, He who would be betrayed and isolated and abandoned, He did it all willingly for you and for me who deserved none of it and could not have made it happen by any work of our hands.

Why? So that our hearts will say, "How great is our God!" His power is amazing. His provision more amazing still, and His grace amazing beyond my comprehension and beyond my sin. He has cut me away from my past; it need not rule my life. He has said, "I will provide what is needed for you before you can even obey Me." And when your obedience has failed Me, I will still go after your heart with everything in Me. Because I'm the great God who redeems the broken and claims the brokenhearted and forgives the sinner. And in Jesus Christ, My Son, I have shown you that. He took the verdict for you that you might have grace from Me.

Guest (Male): That's Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace. If you'd like to hear more from Dr. Chapell, you can find a collection of valuable resources at unlimitedgrace.com. When you visit, you will find today's message and many others from Pastor Bryan.

Also, be sure to request a copy of Dr. Chapell's book, Holiness by Grace. We'll send you this book right away as our way of saying thank you for your most generous financial support. Once again, go to unlimitedgrace.com or you can give by calling 844-41-GRACE. That's 844-414-7223. Please be sure to join us next time as, once again, we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by His unlimited grace.

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