God of the Small Things

Sermon Summary

Exodus 2:1–10 shows God working quietly in the shadows. Israel is crushed under oppression, and the natural question rises: “Where is God?” The scene looks godless—pain, loss, silence. But the birth and preservation of Moses reveal that God’s hiddenness is not absence. His work is slow, ordinary, and invisible from the inside. This sermon confronts the tension between how God feels and what God is doing, and calls us to trust Him even when His timing makes no sense to us.

Big Idea

God often hides His activity, but His hiddenness is preparation—not abandonment.

Outline

1. Setting the Stage

Exodus 2 opens in the middle of a crisis. A nameless Hebrew couple has a son under Pharaoh’s decree of death. The people of God are enslaved, oppressed, and met with absolute silence from heaven. This is the emotional backdrop: a promise was made to Abraham, but reality feels like the total opposite.

2. The Honest Question: “Where Is God?”

The speaker admits feeling this question personally—and Scripture validates it. David said it in Psalm 22. Jesus said it on the cross.

It’s not sinful to feel abandoned; it’s sinful to build your worldview on that feeling. We’re told to test everything and hold fast to what is true.

3. God’s Hidden Work in Exodus 2

A string of small “coincidences” quietly reveals God’s hand:

• A child is born during a genocide—and survives.
• He’s hidden for three months against impossible odds.
• The river—normally a place of death—becomes his path to life.
• Pharaoh’s own daughter finds him and shows compassion.
• Miriam appears at the perfect moment.
• Moses’ own mother becomes his nurse.
• The future deliverer is raised inside the house that tried to kill him.

These are quiet providences. No miracles. No thunder. No burning bush yet. God is moving—but in a way only hindsight can see.

4. God’s Pattern of Hiddenness

God waited roughly 400 years before raising up Moses. He waited another 400 years before sending Jesus. Each time, silence was followed by overwhelming intervention. God is not early by our definition, but He is never inactive.

5. How We Live When God Feels Hidden

1. Remember who God is and what He has promised.

Even Psalm 22—full of anguish—ends in hope. God rules even when we feel abandoned. Since Genesis 3:15, He has been moving history toward redemption.

2. Search for Him in prayer and Scripture.

Scripture is God-breathed—His thoughts made readable. If we want clarity, this is where it comes from.

3. Rest in Jesus

Jesus understands our weakness and carried our burden. His yoke is easy, not because life is easy, but because He carries the weight.

Through Him we have direct access to the Father.

4. Stay rooted in the local church.

We need people who tell us the truth when we can't see it ourselves. God strengthens His people through His people.

Why This Matters

If you only trust God when He acts loudly, you will doubt Him most of your life. Exodus 2 teaches us that God’s silence is usually strategic. He shapes us while we wait, and He prepares salvation long before we recognize it.

Discussion Questions

• When have you honestly felt like God was hidden from you?
• What details in Moses’ story show God’s quiet involvement?
• Which of God’s promises anchor you when life feels out of control?
• How can the church help you trust God during seasons of silence?
• What is one area of hiddenness in your life where you need to keep waiting faithfully?

Call to Action

Visit Chisenhall Fellowship this Sunday.

Find a Home Group.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Josh Wood. I'm a member here at Chisenhall Fellowship. I've been here since about 2020, right after the COVID scare, and it's just been a blessing ever since to watch what the Lord has done in this church and watch the congregation grow. We started with not too many people, and now, as you can see, we are definitely growing and having new people almost every Sunday, and it's just been a blessing to watch that happen. I'm also currently a Deacon in training, so we will see how that goes. Hopefully you guys are nice and vote me in, but I'll leave that up to the Lord. Today we're gonna be continuing in our sermon series in Exodus with the title of Where is God? The last two weeks, Drew has been diving into Exodus 1 and kind of setting a foundation for a little bit of what we're gonna talk about today.

Today we're gonna dive a little bit deeper into that question of where is God. We're gonna zoom in on that and kind of see if we can figure out what's happening when God sometimes feels absent and just what's going on during all of that. So if you would, turn with me to Exodus two. We're gonna be covering the first 10 verses. And I'll be honest, when Drew told me that he was going to be giving me Exodus for my first time preaching, I was like, great, getting thrown into the Old Testament. You know, he couldn't have given me a gospel or an epistle or anything. Just throws me straight into the Old Testament. But it's all good. Old Testament, New Testament is one and all the same. It's the same author writing one big beautiful story from Genesis all the way to Revelation. So we can cross reference and go back and forth. Like I said, it's still the same author. And if anything, I don't know if I would be able

to truly believe in the things that the New Testament has to say if I didn't have the Old Testament and all of the promises and things that were made and that to prepare us for the New Testament. So like I said, one and all the same. So I think we'll be all right. Before I dive in to the text, I do wanna provide just a little bit of background about how we got to this specific point in history. I'm not gonna spend too long just because what I'm gonna cover is pretty much the entire book of Genesis in a sense. So if you want more details, then I encourage you to go read the book of Genesis. But God made a promise to a man named Abraham that through him and through his seed, he would create a nation. And that would note that nation would have people that is numerous and his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the sea. So to continue that promise, Abraham has Isaac,

Isaac has Jacob, and then Jacob, between two wives, has 12 sons. One of those sons is Joseph, who his other brothers are not very fond of. They end up selling him into slavery, where he ends up in Egypt. Long story short, while in Egypt, he becomes Pharaoh's right-hand man, where he's given a lot of authority and power, and he's able to interpret a dream that Pharaoh had, where there's going to be seven years of plentiful harvest in the land, followed by seven years of famine. Well, when that famine hit, obviously Egypt was the only one prepared for it because they're the only ones that knew it was coming. So Joseph's brothers, the other 12 now, there was a new one that was born, Benjamin. The other 12 brothers and his father Jacob over in their land are now experiencing the famine and needing a place to get food. They hear about Egypt. So Jacob sends his sons to Egypt.

They get there, they see that Joseph is now pretty much in charge, and Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, forgives them for selling him into slavery. It's a whole big ordeal. And then he invites Jacob and all of his brothers to come live in Egypt, and it's a great big family reunion. Everything goes well for a little bit. And then as Drew kind of touched on the last two weeks, the Pharaoh after Joseph was not too kind, not too kind. So we know that the Israelites got into Egypt through that story, That's how we see that the whole nation of Israel is in Egypt. And as Drew touched on, over hundreds of years, they became oppressed, enslaved. And now we're at a point where that promise that God made of them multiplying and having descendants as numerous as the stars is under a real threat. Because now Pharaoh is trying to kill all of the male-born children of the Hebrews.

And if that happens, obviously you can't have any children without any males. So it seems like there's a real threat under promise. So if there's any time that God would step in during these hundreds of years, it would have to be now because they're being exterminated now. So that's where we're at, and that's where we're gonna be diving into the text today. So Exodus 2, one through 10, I'm gonna read all the way through it, and then we're gonna kinda discuss it a little bit. So Exodus 2, and a man of the house of Levi went and took as a wife, a daughter of Levi. So the woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she took an arc of bull rushes for him, dobbed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river's bank. And his sister, Moses' sister,

stood afar off to know what would be done to him. Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked along the riverside, and when she saw the arc among the reeds, She sent her maid to get it. And when she opened it, she saw the child. And behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews' children. Then his sister, again, Moses' sister, said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go. So the maiden went and called the child's mother. Then Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him. And the child grew and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. So she called his name Moses saying,

because I drew him out of the water. Now, when we read all of that, it doesn't seem like God is really acting anywhere. I mean, there's not even any mention of God in there. Just like Drew talked about, the only mention that we have of God so far in Exodus is the midwives fearing him and then being rewarded for it. But outside of that, this just looks like normal everyday occurrences. Yes, putting a baby in a basket isn't something that you and I have probably ever done and let it float down a river, but it's to say that things like this happen all the time. Things like this isn't some crazy, miraculous thing that God is doing, and so it seems. And so you have to ask, or you have to wonder what the Israelites were thinking at this time. They were probably wondering, where is God at? Why is He just allowing all of this suffering and all of this slavery to happen

when we're just sitting here going through it? I mean, he made a promise to our father Abraham that we would become numerous, and is this what he's preparing us for? Is he just fattening us up for the slaughter? I mean, what's going on here? Why are we just in all this oppression when we're supposed to be under God's grace? And this isn't just a question that Israelites during that time have asked. This is a generational question that you and I and people over thousands of years have asked. Where's God? And when I'm going through all of this suffering, when I have all of these trials, When I'm looking for this job or I'm looking for this answer in my life and I can't seem to find it, where is God? Is He just sitting idly by, watching me suffer? Is He just sitting in the passenger seat and just watching me being cruise control and just not knowing where I'm going? I mean, where is God during all of this?

Because I've read in Scripture that He works, I've read that He does things, but it doesn't seem like in my life He's doing any of that at all. And having these questions are perfectly fine in and of themselves. God can handle our questions. He's not afraid of them. And in fact, He invites us to question our faith. Because if we just have faith that isn't questioned ever, then it's shallow. It doesn't actually have any substance. It doesn't lead us anywhere. So asking these questions of where is God at, even going further than that, of why is there evil and suffering in the world? Why am I having to go through this thing in my life? These questions are not something that God can't handle. He wants you to do them. Now, where they become an issue is when we dwell in them. First Thessalonians 5 tells us to test all things and hold fast to what is good. But that second part is key.

We must hold fast to what is good. If we just test things for the sake of testing them because we're just upset with life and we're just throwing accusations and questions out there, that's when things can start to get dangerous. But if we ask these questions with the intent of finding truth at the end of them, then it's great. It's fine and all, it's one and all the same, it's good. But let's be honest. It's a lot easier to dwell on these questions. It's a lot easier to sit back and say, well, all this suffering is going on in my life. I mean, I'm not doing it, so it must be God doing it. It must be Him doing it. If I don't feel like He's working and He's helping me, then it must be Him allowing all of these things to happen. So when we dwell on these questions, we can get to dangerous places like that where we start to question God's goodness and we start to question His power

and His authority in our life. So it's good to ask the question, but it's not good to dwell. Now, we see that we have these questions. We know that the Israelites probably had this question, but where else do we see this type of language in scripture? Is there anyone else that felt this? Well, Drew already mentioned a few of them last week, but the Psalms are full of this type of language, full of it. Almost every other Psalm you go to, you can see King David or whoever it is asking where God is at or saying, God, why are you not coming to help? I mean, I'm going through all of this, but you're not present. My heart once searches for you, but I can't find anything. And the first one, I'm just gonna give you a list of about five different verses in the Old Testament. You can just write them down so you can reference them later. But we're gonna dive into the Psalms for the first three.

Psalm 10, why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Psalm 44, why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? Psalm 88, oh Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face far from me? So all of those questions are pretty face value. We know exactly what's being asked. It's where is God at, where is God at? I'm going through this affliction, where are you at God? Prophets also felt this. In Isaiah, he says, truly, you're a God who hides himself, oh God of Israel, the Savior. Jeremiah and Lamentations also felt this. Though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. So, in all of those verses, we can conclude that God, for whatever reason, intentionally hides himself from us. It could be because we're having sin that he wants us to address, or it could be because, like Job,

he's just doing something completely different, that we have no idea what's going on. Poor Job went through so much suffering and affliction until God appeared to him and kind of addressed what was going on. Really, he didn't even address it. He just pretty much told Job, I'm God, and that's all you need to worry about. But it took a while of suffering and not knowing what's going on and having friends come to him for him to finally get that answer. So we can take away that God does intentionally hide himself. So we feel this, King David felt this in the Psalms, the prophets feel this. Who else in scripture has felt this? Well, when we go to Matthew 27, we see that our own Lord and Savior, the very creator of the universe felt this exact feeling dying on the cross. He quoted the famous Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Which for those of you who don't know what forsaken means,

that pretty much just means abandoned. So he's saying, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Now, this is the Lord and Savior. This is the only perfect human being that ever lived without sin. And he is still feeling these same emotions that we go through. But we have to ask the question, where was God? Where was God when Jesus was dying on the cross? Was he just watching his only son be tortured and brutally murdered and just sitting idly by? Was he not working during all of this? Well, we know the answers to that question. That was when he was performing his greatest work of all time, is when his son felt most isolated from the Trinity, from God the Father. That's when God the Father was doing his greatest work. So we can conclude from that that even when it feels like God is not present, we know that He is, because He did the greatest work of all time.

The reason that you and I are standing, or sitting here and here right now in this building is because of what Jesus did on the cross. It's because God isolated and cut off Jesus from Himself temporarily, so that He could pay for all of our sins and take all of that guilt and shame upon Himself so that we can be free. all of the righteousness that Jesus deserved, He gave to us all of this sin and all of the shame and guilt and punishment that we deserve, He took. He just switched places for us temporarily. And so we know that even Jesus Himself, the reason that we're all here, felt these exact feelings.

So kind of like I alluded to right now, what is actually going on though, when God is absent? Is He truly absent? Is He truly not at work? And in order to address that, I'd like to dive back into our text and Exodus. So I'm not going to reread through all of it again, but I'm going to kind of go through all of it and paint a little picture so that we can see that through all of these normal tiny small details, God was still working. He wasn't just sitting there watching these things happen, he was making them happen. So first thing is he allowed the Israelites to multiply under oppression. They could have been wiped out and killed by all the Egyptians because they just were underneath them and they weren't they weren't and didn't have any authority over them. So they could have been wiped out there and then. When Pharaoh told the midwives to kill all of the male children, they could have been exterminated then as well.

They could have all of their progress and multiplying could have stopped right then and there. But we see that they feared God instead and they were rewarded for it. Next is that when Moses was born, now this one's a little bit of a stretch, but he was a beautiful child. That baby could have been ugly. That, I mean, that baby could have been so ugly that his mom thought, I don't even wanna deal with this. The Egyptian authorities are just waiting to hear a cry from a Hebrew child to come in and take it. So this baby isn't good enough, I'm just gonna kinda give it up to the authorities and not have to worry about it. But what did she do? She hid him for three months. Now, I don't know if any of you have ever had a newborn baby, but hiding them for three minutes is not gonna be possible, let alone three months. So the fact that she was able to hide that child

with all of its crying and everything that goes on with a newborn for three whole months without the Egyptian authorities finding out about it, that's a miracle in and of itself. I mean, we can close up shop and go home. That's amazing. That's incredible. And then after the three months, were up when it says that she could no longer hide him, which, I mean, bravo for getting to that point. She put him in a basket and had him float down a river. Now, you don't know anything about rivers. You put something in a river, it's probably not coming out. Or if it is, it's not coming out the same way. But he was safely carried down that river in a basket to Pharaoh's daughter. Now, Pharaoh's daughter was Pharaoh's daughter. She knew daddy's orders. She knew that dad was saying that any Hebrew male child that's born needs to be tossed. And so when she saw that child, she could have been like, ah,

oh, I gotta follow dad's orders, let me go tell dad about this and let him figure it all out. But no, she had compassion on him. She had compassion on Moses and decided to let him live. And who was watching this whole thing happen and unfold? Moses' sister. So when she saw that Moses was found by Pharaoh's daughter, she came up to Pharaoh's daughter. And that's when Pharaoh's daughter asked her to go get a Hebrew woman to come nurse the child. Well, it's Moses' sister, so who's the mother he's gonna go get? Moses' mother. So Moses' own mother got to nurture Moses. Even when he was gonna be Pharaoh's son in the future, she still got to nurture her own child until he was at an age where Pharaoh's daughter, I guess, felt comfortable to take him in, probably after he was out of diapers and all that good stuff. Let Moses' mom do the hard part and then she took over.

And then he was raised as an Egyptian, which at that time was a blessing. It was a blessing because the Israelites were being enslaved, they were being oppressed, they weren't being treated well at all. So for him to be raised as an Egyptian and not have to go through all of that was a blessing for Moses at the time. And so we see through all of these little bitty things that God wasn't doing some grand miracle. He wasn't stepping in and making that basket float above the river so that nothing got it. He wasn't making Moses face just shine bright that everyone thought that, oh, this baby has to stay alive. No, they were just very natural, silent means. And that's typically how God works in our life. He doesn't constantly show up doing these grand big events. He does sometimes, but most of the time, it's him sitting in the background putting little chess pieces on play

so that when he's ready to move, he has everything set up and ready to go. And a way that we can think about this is imagine that you are plopped right into the middle of New York City and God says, hey, I want you to make your way a central part that way. Just start heading that way and I'll guide you and you'll get there. Now naturally you're gonna be like, okay, cool, I guess I'm just gonna head that way and hope for the best. And so you're going, you see people doing every normal New York stuff, walking across the street and honking at each other, yelling, all that good stuff. But what you don't see is two blocks in front of you, there's a shopkeeper who is about to close up shop, but he just jammed his key in between a machine and now it's bent. And so he's struggling trying to get that shop locked up and it's taken him a few minutes. So that when you walk by a few minutes later,

you see, oh, maybe this man who has a shop will know how to get to Central Park. So I'm gonna go up to him and ask him. You go up to him and ask him while he's fiddling with his key. And he tells you that he actually has a map in his shop that is the map of Hall of New York City and a map of all of Central Park and he can tell you exactly how to get there because he's lived in New York his whole life and he knows the city like the back of his hand. Now, if that man wouldn't have jammed his key, then he would have been able to close up shop and be on about his day, and we would have never met that man ever. But because God set that up for him to jam his key, to then have a hard time closing up his shop, it gave you the opportunity that you needed to get to Central Park. Now, to you, that just looks like a man trying to close up his shop, having trouble, and I just got lucky that he has a map in there.

But to God, that's Him setting little pieces in motion. That's Him giving you what you need. Now, we may look back in hindsight and be like, oh man, I could have missed that guy. I'm glad that I found him. But when we're in the middle of it, we typically never, ever, ever are able to have that hindsight, that bird's eye view that God has of, oh, this is what God is doing. Oh, this is the puzzle piece. Even when we may feel like we know what's going on, we typically don't. We may know that there's a piece being moved and set up, but we don't typically know what that piece is. And a good, two good examples of this in scripture is one, exactly where we're at right now. There's hundreds of years of what seems like silence from God, and then he shows up with Moses. Same thing before Jesus. After the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, there's hundreds of years of silence,

of Israel being in captivity under different nations, and then Jesus shows up. So we see that that's a pattern that God likes to follow, is he typically kind of sits in the background, sets things up, makes things happen naturally, and then he comes in and acts. And we see that both times that he did step in, he came with miracles. Not gonna spoil the rest of Exodus, but it's some of the biggest miracles that we've ever seen in history, and that's after hundreds of years of silence. So we know that God intentionally hides himself from us sometimes, whether that be from our sin or him just doing that on his own accord and just setting things up. And we know that even when he is hiding, he's not truly hiding, he's just sitting to the side, setting things in motion, he's still working. He's never truly absent. So now that we know both of those things, how can we actually apply this to our life?

Now that we know that God is never absent and he's truly working, how can we respond to that? And before we get into that, I would like to give you just five reasons of why we might get to this point of feeling like we're isolated from God. And this isn't just the only five reasons life has a lot of other struggles and things that are thrown at us, but it's just kind of five general reasons. First one is energy. Sometimes we are just so worn out from our job, taking care of our kids, maintaining the household, doing our ministry work, that we just don't have any energy to have time for God. We don't wanna sit down and read the Bible because we feel like we might fall asleep. Same reason for prayer, and we feel like we might fall asleep. I gotta get up and get to work in the morning, and it's already 10 o'clock. You know, I don't know if I really have the energy

to do this, and in doing that, we can kind of create this relationship with God where it's just, when it's convenient to us. Whenever we have the energy, then we can dedicate time to Him. Another thing that can do that is time. Sometimes we just feel like we don't have enough time on our hands. We're trying to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, or the job that we do have is I have a big role in it, and so I have a lot of responsibility, and that takes a lot of time. I have to stay after work often to be able to do this, and so I just really don't have time to sit down and have that family time that I need to, or I don't have time to sit down and read that book that I've been wanting to read for years that's about this topic that I'm really interested in just because I don't have enough time.

Another one is comfort. Sometimes things in life are just going too well. Sometimes the bills are paid, family's happy, kids aren't running around screaming, causing chaos, they're kind of calm, and my job's going well. So sometimes things are just going so well that it feels like we don't really need to go to God. Me and God are, we're good, we're in a right relationship, I'm just kind of in cruise control, he's taking care of everything in my life, and that can kind of make us feel numb to God in a sense that God is transactional and that we only need to go to him whenever we feel like we need something. Well really, even when we are comfortable and feel like we need something, we should still go to him because there's other people who aren't comfortable and need something. And we can always, always, always pray for them. Even when we don't feel like we need anything,

well we know at least one person, if not more, near us that needs something that we can pray for. Fourth one is hurt. Sometimes we are just hurt from things that happen in life. Sometimes that's church hurt. Sometimes that's religious hurt from people who claim Christ or claim a certain religion and don't actually act the way that they say, that can definitely throw us off. It can make us feel like we don't wanna be a part of any of what God has. If that's what God has in store, that type of person or that type of institution, I mean, why would I ever wanna be a part of that? Because that's not beneficial at all. So whenever we get the wrong picture of Christianity, we get the wrong picture of Christ. People who claim Christ don't actually follow Christ. it can definitely distort us and make us feel like we don't need God and draw us away. And last one, this one is for unbelievers and believers,

feeling lost. Sometimes we're just been searching for truth for so long that it feels like it's not there. If we've been searching for so long and we still can't find it, it probably doesn't exist. Or if it does exist, it's not within my reach. So that can make us feel like God is kind of for the elite Christians or isolated for only those to really dedicate time to follow him.

So yeah, those are just five reasons that can make us have seasons where we don't feel like God is present at all. And having these, going through these times is very, very normal. And it's important that we recognize when we're going through these times because we can seek the help that we need. Not only that, but we can recognize it in others because we all go through these seasons. We're never at a point in our life where we're just completely fine and we don't have to worry about anything. Even in those times of comfort, when everything's going well, well, that could be God setting you up to go sacrifice your time for other people. That could be God setting your family up to be good so that you can then go dedicate your life to another part of work that He wants for you. So, whenever we're going through all these seasons, it's important that we do, that we keep some things in mind.

There's four things that I wanna leave you with. The first one is we need to remember who God is and the promises that He made. So diving into Psalms again, like I said, Psalms are just full of this. We're going to read Psalm 77 where He says, will the Lord cast off forever? I found this on the web. We're diving into Psalms again. Like I said, we're kind of... Thanks, Siri. I'll look at that later. Will the Lord cast off forever, and will He be favorable no more? Has His mercy ceased forever? Has His promise failed forever more? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies? And I said, this is my anguish. Now, key part right here. But I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the works of the Lord. Surely I will remember your wonders of old. So we see that King David, whenever he is going through these times,

first thing that he does is remember who God is. Remember who the person he is that he's talking to. Because although he may not be working in our lives right now, so it seems, we can look back at the work that he has done. He has worked in our lives. The biggest work that he's done in our lives is saving us, giving, making us a new creation, giving us His Holy Spirit. So we can always go back to that work. We can always put our hope and faith in that. And another promise that we can remember is made all the way back in Genesis 3:15, where God says to Satan, which is kind of a mandate for all of mankind though, and I will put enmity, which is hostility, between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now that whole head heel bruising thing is essentially just what God is saying is that Satan is gonna bruise Jesus' heel

by killing him on the cross, him being dead on the cross, but Jesus is going to bruise his head, crush Satan by resurrecting three days later and defeating death and defeating sin and defeating Satan. So the person of Christ did this thousands of years after it was promised. It took a very long time of God setting things in motion. I mean, the entire Old Testament had to happen before this happened. So we see that even over thousands of years, even when it seems like nothing's going on, God is still putting little tiny puzzle pieces in a play. So we must remember who he is and the promises that he's made for us. Second thing that we must do is search for him in prayer and scripture. This Bible right here is the only tangible thing that we have from God. It's the only physical thing that He left us, other than this church building. This is the only thing that we actually have.

And not only that, but the Bible says that every word in here is God-breathed. This is God's own thoughts on paper. So if you ever want to know what the will of God is, you're not going to find it out there or anywhere in here, you're going to find it in here. This is the only place that we can find God's will. We're not going to find it with our own intelligence or with our own emotions. If anything, those are going to lead us away from God's will. But going here, we will always get us into God's will. And not only that, but 1 Timothy says that, For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, The man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. Now, I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Old Testament sacrificial system, but in order for them to enter the Holy of Holies, which was God's presence, they had to go through this long ordeal

sacrificing a spotless animal and then having its blood sprinkled on the altar and it was just it was a whole big ordeal and that was the only way that they were able to enter the Holy of Holy in God's presence. Only way that they were able to go to God and have their sins forgiven. Well when Jesus died, that veil in that temple was torn from top to bottom, which was Jesus's way of saying the door is now wide open. I am the door now to get to God. You don't have to go through this entire sacrificial system. I am the sacrificial system. I am the one true final sacrifice. You don't have to do anything anymore because I now end that door straight to God. We don't have to do this whole killing animals and whatnot because I did it all. So we have to keep that in mind that what we have is incredibly special. That Jews, whenever this happened, they marveled at it

because they were like, wow, we don't have to do this. We don't have to go to the temple anymore to worship God. We have God in our hearts now. We have Jesus who we can just go directly to. So we've got to keep in mind that this is something kind of brand new in history the last 2000 years. People before this had to go through different things. Not to say they couldn't pray to God. People could still pray to God. But if they wanted to truly have their sins forgiven and enter the Holy of Holies, It had to be this whole big ordeal. So we've got to remember to search for him in prayer and search for him in scripture, because those are two direct access points that we can get to God.

Third thing is we must rest in Jesus. When he was on that cross right before he died, he said, it is finished. I don't know about you guys, but when something is finished, I typically leave it alone. All of the work that we have to do to earn our salvation has been paid for. This is what separates Christianity from every other religion in the world. Every other religion in the world says that you've gotta do this to earn your salvation. With Islam, it's that your good deeds have to outweigh your bad deeds so that in the end you can enter Allah's presence. Buddhism says that you've just gotta be a good person and its whole karma system. All of these other religions are works-based. You have to do something in order to earn your way to heaven. Christianity is the complete opposite. Jesus did all of the workforce. Anything that we have to do in order to enter those gates

has been done for us. That's why someone like the thief on the cross could enter heaven, even though he didn't do a lick of work in his life that was anything beneficial to God. Jesus looked over to him and said, today you will be with me in paradise. Not after you repent, not once you do this and that, he said, today you'll be with me in paradise, because that man on the cross acknowledged who Jesus was. So that is all that it takes. That's all it takes. It doesn't take waking up every day and reading our Bible for hours a day. It doesn't take being in prayer for hours a day. It doesn't take becoming a pastor or going on a mission trip. All it takes is every normal day's submission because all of the work has been done for us. That's why Jesus and Matthew says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. For those of you who don't know what a yoke is, I didn't really know what a yoke was, it's something that you put on top of an animal to steer it in a certain direction. Kind of like with a horse, you want it to go a certain way, you can guide it that way. So when Jesus says, take my yoke upon you, he's saying, come into submission with me, and I will guide you. And my yoke is easy. It's not some hard yoke that's put on top of our shoulders that hurts, and he's just gonna jerk us around and make us go this direction. No, He's very gentle and kind with us. He steers us kindly in the directions that we need to go. When we're about to go over mud and rocky terrain, He's gonna be there to hold us up and guide us. He's not just gonna let go and hope for the best for us. When He sees us about to walk off a cliff, He's going to turn us a different way.

So, whenever we're going through these seasons of wondering where God is, we know that there's a promise that we can rest in. And that's the promise that Jesus gave us through the cross. Lastly, and this one is huge, is we must find local community and church. Everyone here at Chisenhall Fellowship who is honest with themselves has gone through these types of seasons before, if not currently going through this type of season. So if you need someone to talk to, whether it be a deacon or a pastor or any other member that you feel comfortable with here, go to them, go to them. God lives inside of us. This is the temple, but he gave us a home for all of those people who have the spirit inside of them to go and have a home, go and have a family. We are family here, and what families do is they help each other out. They encourage each other, they lift people up. And through this, church members

can kind of be like navigators. They can navigate you through tough times in your life whenever you're going through storms. They can put the cells up and show you which way you need to go. because like I said, people have gone through these very exact same emotions and they can help you get through them. And members, I encourage you, don't just have a conversation with people. Having conversations at church or just passing by is great, but if we're being honest, they don't actually lead anywhere. They don't actually do anything. Have that conversation, but go further than that. Invite them over to dinner. See what's going on in their kids' life. Their kids are in sports. See if you can go make a sports game. If you have a life group or a home group going on, invite them into your home group. I mean, there are endless ways that we can encourage each other and help each other out

when we're going through difficult seasons. So I encourage you guys to use that that we have here. So we can conclude in all of this when we read Exodus, when we read the Psalms, when we see Jesus on the cross, that a lot of times God seems absent. A lot of times God seems like he's just in the background not doing anything. But we know that that's when when he's doing his greatest work. We know that his death on the cross has set in motion possibilities that weren't possible before. Him dying on the cross gives us his Holy Spirit to go out and evangelize to a world now that wasn't being evangelized to before. He gives us his spirit now to have confidence and boldness to encourage each other and to build each other up so that we can go and spread the kingdom. So, my encouragement to you guys is remember who God is. Remember he's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Remember that you have ultimate hope and rest in Jesus. And lastly, we have community here with church. So use all three of those things whenever we feel like we're going through these times. Pray with him. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for just being the God who saves and for being the God who, even when it feels like you're not present, we know that you're still working. We pray that as we go throughout this week, you allow us to remember the promises that you've made to us. And ultimately that promise that you made on the cross, that everything that we have to worry about is finished and that we just need to rest in that. And the word we pray that you allow us to use our church body and the members here to be encouraged and uplifted by one another so that when we go throughout these busy seasons and go throughout these tough times in our life, we have hope and we have rest in you

and we have fellowship with one another. So Lord, we pray that You just reign over our hearts and allow us to remember You. Send Your name and we pray, amen.