Alright, if you can turn your Bibles with me to Hebrews chapter 11, we're going to be reading from verse 27 through 29. So this is going to be the part two of what we started last week. As we said, Moses has very clear, distinct divisions in his life with the first 40 years he was in the Pharaoh's house, the next 40 years he was out in the desert shepherding, and then the 40 years of wandering the desert as God used him to deliver the nation of Israel from Pharaoh.

So we're at the third part this week, and so we're going to be looking at what it says in verse 27 through 29. Reading out of the NASB. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured a seeing him who is unseen. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.

By faith they passed through the Red Sea as though they were passing through dry land, and the Egyptians, when they attempted it, were drowned. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray for your continued grace. We pray that the worship that we give you would truly be something meaningful in our hearts that we offer up to you, that we would worship you not simply with time, but our whole heart.

Help us, Lord, to know the significance of these words, that it may mold us, move us, change us, Lord God, according to your purpose and will. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I think in the recent days, you know, most of you or many of you probably heard the story of what happened with Ravi Zacharias, and I know that it's affected the Christian world because he was a man that was celebrated and did many good works for decades.

And so if you don't know the story behind that, basically he's a man who God used for apologetics and wrote many good books and had seminars, and many, many people would credit him for bringing them to Christ, and recently found out after he passed away that he completely lived a double life, that he lived a life that was filled with sin, he was a sexual predator, and it was not simply a mistake, it looked like it was calculated, and he didn't really seem like he made much attempt to cover it up.

You know, we have a tendency, like it says in Romans chapter 1, to put people on pedestals, and it's not that the Bible does teach us to honor and to submit and to remember, and all those things are important, but at the same time, our primary sin that is mentioned in Romans chapter 1, we have a tendency to worship the creation rather than the creator, and sometimes we do that to the point where when somebody that we looked up to fails that way, it could really destroy people's faith when we do that.

No one is meant to be worshipped. To honor, respected, yes, but not to be worshipped. No one is to take the place where our faith is dependent upon another man. We need to be careful that we, even as we study through the scripture, we have a tendency to highlight the achievements of man, even though we say in passing that God is sovereign and he does what he does, but we can look at what Moses did, we can look at what David did, and I've heard so many sermons about how David, you know, while he was shepherding, and he, you know, he cleaned up his rocks and how he was, you know, chasing away wolves, and that was that skill that God needed to slay Goliath, and so we need to hone in our skills so that God can use us for his glory.

The point of the story is not that at all, right? We can get off track in our tendency to kind of highlight the achievements of man and the intellect of man and our, you know, our talents of man, then completely forget the point of the whole story. Moses, if you can put the picture up, the next slide.

When we think of Moses, this is usually the picture that we have, that's probably Charlton Heston, for those of you who know who he is, right? Hollywood, this story of Egypt's deliverance and the ten plagues, it's so prominent, especially in the American culture, most people know about this, Christian or non-Christian.

So Hollywood movies were made of it, and so when we think of Moses, we think of this strong confident, fearless leader that God used to deliver Israel. In fact, that's how it starts in verse 1, it says, verse 27 says, "By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured a seeing him who was unseen." Not fearing.

So he's described as a fearless man, and remember who he's going against, he's going against Pharaoh, the strongest, most powerful man who was basically the king of the most powerful nation. And here's this shepherd who's been shepherding for 40 years, and God raises him up to challenge him, saying, "Let my people go." Think how audacious that is, that this shepherd for 40 years would stand in front of Pharaoh and demand, "Let my people go." And he said Moses was fearless when he did that, right?

We could easily look at that and say, "Wow, you know, that's why he's celebrated, and that's why he's known as the greatest leader of Israel, and we need to emulate him." But if you look carefully at the word of God, it doesn't present himself that way. In fact, if you remember in Acts 7, 24 to 20, in verse 25, Stephen gives the sermon about that particular event when he is chased out of Egypt out of fear.

If you remember, he came out and he saw a dispute, and the Egyptians, Egyptian guard, and in order to protect his Hebrew brother, he ends up killing him. He comes out a second time, thinking that maybe God was going to use him to deliver Israel in verse 25, it says, "And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand." So he came out thinking, because he grew up all his life with prophecy that he was the chosen one, and that's why he was in Pharaoh's house.

That's why God was raising him up. And finally, when he came out and he confronted the Egyptian guard, and he came out and was trying to intervene in the dispute of these two Hebrews, I think he thought that that was the time that God was going to use him to deliver.

Just like the prophecy, just like he was told since he was a child. But when they turn against him and say, "Are you going to kill us too? Who are you?" It says in verse 14, Exodus 2, 14, but he said, "Who made you a prince or judge over us?

Are you going to kill me as you killed the Egyptians?" Then Moses was afraid and said, "Surely the matter has become known." Well, who wrote this? Because in 27, he says he's fearless, and then here it says he was afraid. In Exodus 3, 10 through 11, after spending 40 years on the desert, God finally calls him, tells him who he is, and says, "Now is the time.

I want you to go." And then this is how Moses responds in verse 10. "Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh so that you may bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?" Remember 40 years ago, he was willing, and he was expecting because he grew up all his life with that prophecy over him.

But now it's not because he's ignorant, it's because it failed, at least in his mind. So why is it going to happen this way? Who am I? He doesn't seem like a man of faith, at least not here, right? He doesn't seem like a courageous man that, you know, with the staff up in the sky, this fearless leader that Israelites was able to get behind.

Exodus chapter 4, 1, Moses said, "What if they will not believe me or listen to what I say? For they may say, 'The Lord has not appeared to you.'" And then again, in Exodus 4, 10 through 15, God keeps on pushing him. "I didn't call you because you are articulate.

I didn't call you because I needed you. I called you because I called you." Then Moses said to the Lord, "Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor the time passed, nor since you have spoken to your servant, for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." "Please, Lord," he's begging, and the Lord won't let it go because God anointed him.

He genuinely doesn't want to do this because he was fearful. Who am I? I mean, think about that. He's talking to God. He's not just talking to anybody. God is audibly speaking to Moses, saying that, "I'm going to use you," and he says, "Well, who am I?" Verse 12, "Now then, go, and I even will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to say." But he said, "Please, Lord, now send a message by whomever you will." Then the anger of the Lord burned against Moses.

Does that sound like the fearless leader that you see in verse 27? Now what happened? And who wrote Exodus? Moses did. And I know that he was dictating by the Holy Spirit, but Moses was writing this, and as he was writing this, did he just get it wrong? Whoever wrote Hebrews, did they not read Exodus?

Maybe these are two separate authors, and they don't know anything about each other, and so one describes him as this fearful man who had very little faith and was begging God, "Please don't let me do it." That's how it's described for us. And then in Exodus 5, 21 to 23, when he finally goes, literally, God is twisting his arms, like, "You better go." "I made your mouth.

You go." And then he goes, and then they had the first encounter, and Pharaoh's heart gets hardened. It says God keeps hardening his heart because he wanted to demonstrate his power. And then the Israelites do the same thing. They turn against Moses and say, "I told you. Because of you, Pharaoh is making it harder on us." And so in 5, 21, it says that they said to them, "May the Lord look upon you and judge you, for you have made us odious in Pharaoh's sight and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us." So it didn't turn out the way, just like the first time.

They didn't embrace him. They didn't celebrate him. So he goes back to God in verse 22, "Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, 'O Lord, why have you brought harm to this people? Why did you ever send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done harm to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.'" And he still lived.

He's saying this all to God. God appears to him, and he's complaining to God. At this point, he's more afraid of the Israelites. He's more afraid of Pharaoh than God himself. Does that sound like verse 27, "By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king"? It sure sounds like he was fearful of the wrath.

He was fearful not only of the wrath, but of their opinion. It says 611-12, "Go tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the sons of Israel go out of this land. But Moses spoke before the Lord, saying, 'Behold, the sons of Israel have not listened to me. How then will Pharaoh listen to me, for I am unskilled in speech?'" So is that that guy on the staff?

Would you draw him based upon this text? Would you draw that guy? That's the guy? Maybe next time somebody draws Moses, he would be like, "Please, please, don't let me do it." Because that's the way it's presented to us in Exodus. Moses is not painted this way. In fact, remember we said Moses is described as the humblest man on earth.

It's like, "Oh, it's a humble brag. I'm the humblest of the universe." I genuinely think he meant that. And what he meant by that was he was humbled. He was afraid. He was scared. He was resistant, maybe even disobedient. And I think that's what he meant. Because he saw that.

He encountered God and he's arguing with God. Will you really deliver? Is this really going to happen? How can you, somebody like me, even as God was showing him miracles, he was doubting and questioning. But why does it have in verse 27 that he was not fearing the wrath of God?

At some point in this deliverance story, Moses does get courage. At some point, Moses becomes that deliverer. And at some point, he is that man who raised up the staff and God uses him. But that's not how it started. He was not fearful. And the description of what happened, it just says simply, he says, "He saw the unseen God." That's what it says.

That's all it says. He endured. Right? Meaning, like, he did what God told him to do. He endured. And seeing him who is unseen. And that's it. That's what changed him. You know, I've heard so many stories about how God used him in 40 years and built up courage and trained him and spoke to him.

And so he became this man of God when he showed up. And that's why he took him out into the wilderness. And that's our tendency to elevate man's work. That if we just do this, if we said this, and if we did that, and if we had the right people and the right money with the right training, we can get the right things done.

That's our natural tendency to think we just elevate man's work and forget that what happened here with Moses was simply, here's a weak man who was fearful, who encountered the living God. What changed him was not years of discipling, years of training, years of discipline. He met the right people, did the right things with the right program.

He just encountered God. And so when he's at the burning bush, he's like, "Well, if I go, what do I tell them?" Exodus 3, 14, God said, "I am who I am." He says, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you.'" I am.

I don't come from anybody else. I'm not created. He is self-existing, self-reliant, omnipotent, all-powerful. Tell him Yahweh has sent you. And all he tells him is, "I will be with you." Now, remember, this is Pharaoh. Other kings would be terrified to go to Pharaoh. The strongest of men would be terrified to be in the presence of Pharaoh.

So humanly speaking, we can understand why he was terrified. But the only strength that he gives him, only comfort that he gives him is that when you go, "I will be with you." I will be with you. He doesn't say, "Here's a list of things to memorize and make sure you say this." When he does this, do this.

He doesn't say, "No, I will be with you. Just go. When I say to speak, you speak. When I say to do this, you do this. Just go." You know, we think about the Great Commission in Matthew 28 where God is sending out his disciples and we have so many people have memorized that passage.

Go make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. But the real power behind the Great Commission is what comes before and what comes after. So we have a tendency to memorize scripture.

We got to go. What is our strategy? What is our five-year vision? What is our 10-year vision? What is our discipleship program? How are we going to raise up leaders? And we have all of these great programs. And there's nothing wrong with any of that, but we pour our energy into human ingenuity.

But the real power behind that is prior to him saying, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. So therefore, go." And then he says at the end, what did he say? "Lo, I am with you to the end of the age." So the power behind the Great Commission is his authority and his presence with us, not our ingenuity.

That's why in Acts 1-8, when the disciples were ready to go, he said, "Don't go, because you don't have the power. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will have power, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the end of the age." And God prepared people to go.

Everywhere Apostle Paul went, those people who were at Pentecost, in fear of persecution, as they were running, they were sharing the gospel. So when Apostle Paul started his journey going to these places, these Christians were already there, already sharing their testimonies. That didn't happen because of great planning or discipleship.

They were running in fear of their life, and God was planting seeds already by his power, because that's what he said he was going to do. Our natural tendency is if a church is successful there, if that man seems to be bearing fruit, we go and take notes and do what he did.

Because we think if we copy what they're doing, we can have the same success. And so people write books and seminars, "This is what we did. This is how we teach. This is how our program. This is what we do." And then people just copy that, and then we regurgitate what that man is doing, and then we just happen to do it here.

Because that's our natural tendency, to worship the creation rather than the creator. Jesus' fearlessness did not come because of great training. If anything, for 40 years out in the desert, what do you think he learned? 40 years. What part of the... Humanly speaking, you could say, "Well, God's raising up to be this great leader, so he learned this by shepherding sheep.

He learned this by attacking wolves, and God used that. Because when he went against Pharaoh, Pharaoh was the wolf." Foolish. What was he doing for 40 years? Moses came out. Remember, before he went out to the desert, he came out like the ruler. He came out. He even killed an Egyptian, and he thought, "They're going to come behind me.

Now God's going to raise me up." And then he throws him out to the desert for 40 years. What do you think he learned for 40 years? Shepherds were the lowliest of profession. He went from the highest to the lowest. If there's anything that he learned in the 40 years, to empty himself.

He got humbled. He got humbled. And that's why the Bible says, "If you want to be used for noble purposes," what does the Bible tell us in Timothy? To get rid of ignoble things. He doesn't say fill yourself, right? Like read a lot of books. There's nothing with any of that, okay?

But that's not where the power is. Our natural tendency to think, if we get the right people doing the right thing, that God's going to bless it. But all we're commanded to do is to be emptied. The greatest hindrance to the work of God is not that we don't have the right people in the right place, it's typically we have the wrong people in the wrong place, or sometimes wrong people in the right place.

It's ourselves, we get in the way. That's why if you look at John 15, when it says, "You can't bear fruit unless you abide in me." And then you know why it's so important to abide? Verse 7, "Because if you abide in me," my words abide in you, "ask whatever you wish, he will do it." That's why he says to abide, right?

Not so that you can be this prayer warrior and I'm going to do mighty things, because when you abide, if you abide in him, his word abides in you, you have more effective prayer. That's what he says. So the power is not in our abiding, it's in our abiding we have more effective prayer, like God will do it.

See, his power came simply because he saw God. And even the 10 plagues was to demonstrate to Israel and to demonstrate to Egypt who God really is. He didn't just say, "I am who I am," he was going to show them. He was going to show them that God is above every God.

So every one of these plagues, the Nile turning into blood, the God of ISIS was one of their goddesses that was a god of the Nile, and he turns it into blood. The frog, Hekt, the Egyptian goddess whose head was the frog. Nat, the god that they worshiped. Geb, god of dust and the earth.

Fly, Kepri, the god and the...it was the head of a beetle. Sick cattle, Hathor, is the goddess of fertility. The boils, again, the goddess of health, ISIS. Hail, Nut, the goddess of the sky and the goddess of the air. Locust, Neper, Nepri, god and goddess of grain. Darkness, their greatest god that they worshiped.

Ra, the god of the sun, the most revered. Every one of these was a power encounter, not only to show Egypt who it is that's delivering Israel, but these Israelites for 400 years who fell into despair. It's almost like they've kind of accepted the fact that they were slaves.

And when Moses tried to...God used him to deliver them and it didn't happen right away, He said, "It's better for us." Remember, every time it got hard out in the desert, even at the Red Sea, they kept saying, "Oh, if we went back there, I knew we were slaves, but at least over there we had food and we had water and we had safety." So 400 years, they've accepted their identity.

And so God was coming in, having a power encounter with them to show them who He is. Moses at some point in this process began to see and began to believe. He lost all faith in himself and maybe he lost some faith in God during that time and God was rebuilding him up.

So this man who was afraid, this man who was terrified, timid, becomes this mighty soldier that God uses to deliver. You know, the Bible talks about how, you know, if you have a faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. That's exactly what happened, right? Moses, this man of tiny faith, like literally begging God, "Please don't let me go.

Please." That guy, right? "They didn't listen to me before. Why are they going to listen to me now?" Even as he is seeing the miracle, it kind of needed time to build. That guy with that tiny faith, God moved Pharaoh. Exactly what he said he was going to do, simply because he saw God.

Hebrews chapter 12, 20 to 21 describes Moses seeing God at Mount Sinai this way, "For they could not bear the command, 'If even a beast touches the mountain, it will be stoned.' And so terrible is the sight that Moses said, 'I am full of fear and trembling.'" Fear of God.

He met God, and he realized who God was, and instead of fearing Pharaoh, instead of fearing the opinions of the Israelites, it's that he feared God. The great theologian Kanye West says, they asked him, those of you guys who know Kanye West is, right? They asked him, "Aren't you afraid of the cancel culture?

You know, things that you say, and the Christian things that you say, and Jesus is Lord?" And he said, "I don't fear that because I fear God." He said, "Fear of God overcomes all other fears." Kanye West. Out of mouth of babes. Proverbs 9, 10 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Beginning of wisdom is when we are emptied of our self-confidence, when we're done with our ingenuity, when we've reached the end of the possibility that we have, our potential, when we've reached the end of all of that, and you have no other hope but to turn to God, and you fear God.

He said, "That's the beginning of wisdom." The greatest hindrance to our fruitfulness is not our circumstance. It's us. Us thinking that us get together, and if we have enough of us, and if we have the right techniques from us, that God's going to magnify us. That's what gets in the way.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And the way that we use that is, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." When it's really meant, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Our natural tendency is to worship the creation rather than the creator.

He changed, and his fear was overcome by a greater fear of God, because he saw what was unseen. You know, whenever we do inductive Bible study, we have to ask good questions, right? And so the question that we ask is, verse 28 and 29, so he said, "By faith he left Egypt and he was not afraid of Pharaoh because he saw God." And then there's two particular events that are highlighted.

So we have to ask, "Why are those two things highlighted? How come the other events are not highlighted?" Right? I mean, he said, "There's 10 plagues, not one." So many things happened, but why are these two particular events highlighted saying that this demonstrated the faith of Moses? The first one is pretty obvious because it says, "By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood so that he destroyed the firstborn would not touch them." So we know the Passover.

Every time we have a communion, we celebrate that because Jesus fulfills that. You know what's interesting about that is their top God was the God Ra. And some of you guys may know from maybe watching National Geography. I'm butchering that. I forget what that is. National Geography. Okay, so you've probably seen pictures, right?

And that's the one that kind of looks like a dog, right? And that was the top God that they worshiped. And as they worshiped that, it was understood that Ra owned all of the firstborn children of Egypt. It was dedicated. If you had your firstborn, it was dedicated to Ra for the service of Ra.

So you can see why God, his final and the most powerful power encounter with Egypt was to challenge Ra. That he was going to come, the angel of death was going to come and destroy all the firstborn, but the only ones that would survive are the ones that by faith covered their doorpost with the lamb's blood.

And so that was the power encounter. That was the final and the greatest challenge to the nation of Egypt. And for Israel to realize that there's only one true God. But the second reason is pretty clear because that obviously pointed to the coming of Christ. And as soon as that happened, God told the nation of Israel that you do this every single year to celebrate this Passover meal.

To remember the way that God delivered you. Clearly pointing to the coming of Christ, the blood of the lamb is going to cover our sins and the angel of death is going to go over us and we will be saved. Those of you who participate in the Passover meal, there's a part of the meal where you take the three pieces of matzah and you take the middle one and you hide it away for a while and at the end of the meal you bring it back and you break it and give it to each of the members at the table and your family.

They said that the Israelites, the Jewish people to this day practice that, but when you ask them exactly what the meaning behind that, they don't know. They lost it. That was practiced in the first century when Jesus was practicing it. So if you look at the text when Jesus is practicing the Passover meal, he takes the bread, which would have been the second one, they hid away for a while and brought back, broke it and gave it to them and Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me." I mean it's pretty clear that that second is Jesus Christ, the second and the third person of the Trinity that's crucified for three days and buried and come back to life.

I mean we see that very clearly, but they practice this every year without knowing the significance. We don't know why the Passover is chosen because it is the clearest picture about his death and his atonement over us. But why the deliverance from the Red Sea? In fact, the deliverance of the Red Sea is so dramatic that this event is recorded in Psalm 66, 68, 13, 106, 9, 136, 13 and is repeated over and over again.

In fact, Moses breaks out into this song in Exodus 15, 1-13, "I will sing to the Lord for he is highly exalted, the horse and the riders he has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song and he has become my salvation. This is my God and I will praise him, my Father's God, and I will extol him." Why is this event particularly highlighted?

You know as I was wrestling through that question myself, I began to see so many similarities of what God was doing. Remember in the book of Hebrews it says the tabernacle is a shadow of the reality to come in Christ. But it wasn't just the tabernacle. The whole nation of Israel, the Feast of Booth, the Passover, all of the feasts that God gave the nation of Israel pointed to something that was going to be found in Christ.

So let me ask you, right? How many years were the Israelites in bondage? Four hundred years, right? How many years gap was there between the Old and the New Testament where there were no prophets, where it says that God was silent during that period? Four hundred years, okay? So during those four hundred years God wasn't speaking and Israelites fell into despair because the prophet wasn't coming.

God wasn't speaking to them. And so they began to kind of fall into different categories. Like, well what are we going to do? What are we going to do? So they broke up into Pharisees and they broke up into Sadducees, the Essenes, and you know, and the Zealots, all trying to by their own strength and by their own might.

Some became a little bit more religious. Some became more political. Some decided to just walk out to the desert. And then some picked up arms, right? And got militant. But it was all their effort to fulfill what they wanted. Well, four hundred years while they were in bondage, the Israelites fell into despair because God didn't deliver.

You know, remember when they walked into Egypt, they came in as Joseph's second man. And they were protected by Pharaoh. But at some point, the new Pharaoh comes and they forget and they turn into slaves and they've been crying out and it took too long. But right in the middle of their despair, God shows up and delivers them.

And clearly, the Passover is what God used to deliver both Egypt and the New Covenant people. But if you look at the Red Sea, when does the inauguration of the church, the New Covenant people begin? Acts chapter 2. The Holy Spirit comes and he enters into the people. They begin to speak in tongues in various languages.

And that was the inauguration of the New Covenant and new people. Well, Israelites, them exiting Egypt and coming into the New Promised Land on the other side of this Red Sea, they become the people of God. They were Israelites by descendants, but the political Israel, the national Israel happens on the other side of Red Sea.

And at the Pentecost, you see, when the Holy Spirit comes, it says there was a violent wind that came. In the Red Sea, it says that the wind began to swirl and started to divide. And so they were crossed from one kingdom, kingdom of Egypt, to a new kingdom, the kingdom of God.

And that's what happens at the Pentecost. The people of the Old Covenant, by the Holy Spirit, becomes the people of the New Covenant. Now you can say I'm milking it, but these are things that I see that clearly point to God's people being delivered by the blood of Christ and then inaugurating a new kingdom on the other side.

Now, why is it significant? Because every part of this points to the sovereignty of God. Every part of this is God's plan. Every part of it, even the things that we understand, things that we don't understand, God has been orchestrating in details of what was going to happen. So God is in complete control.

Moses was just a weak man that encountered a great God. Anytime we put a man on a pedestal and our faith depends on that man, and when that man fails, we fail along with him. Because we have a tendency to worship the creation rather than the creator. No man is to be in that slot.

It doesn't mean that we don't honor. It doesn't mean we don't respect. God says to submit to the elders of the church, but no man stands in the position where only God stands. Our faith should not fail because a weak man failed. Your faith should not be shaken because a fallen man happens to demonstrate his fallenness.

Our faith is on solid ground. Christ and Christ alone is our foundation. So as we study and as we go through the history of Israel, if we look at that and we see, "Wow, Moses was a great man. What did he do? He shepherded that we need to hone in our skills.

David, he became a huge, he became an expert rock thrower, so we need to shine our rocks and make sure that we do this." You missed the whole point. The whole point of that is why does he choose the lesser over the greater? Why didn't he choose the Sadducees?

Why didn't he choose the rich? Why did he get a bunch of fishermen who know nothing about the law? They weren't trained at the temple. Why did he get a bunch of people who hated each other, the tax collector, like in zealots on the same team? Why did he choose the weak to dumbfound the wise?

Wouldn't it be easier to get the wiser to dumbfound the wise? If you're going to go over power, wouldn't you get something more powerful? Why does he choose the foolish? Why does he choose the dumb? That's not my language, the Bible, right? So that you and I would recognize that it's not us.

It's him. It's God. It's always God. So that our faith would not rest in man, but on God. That's why Apostle Paul, with all of his wisdom and knowledge and training, he says, "I resolve to know nothing but Christ crucified." Because the power is not in me, it's not in you, it's not in our system, it's not in our experience, it's not in our age, it's not in our knowledge, it's not in our determination, it's not in our discipline, it's not in our organization.

It's in Christ, in Christ alone. So if there's anything that we need to be striving week after week, it's to see God. We don't study the Bible so that we can be experts in the Bible, we study the Bible so that we can see God. We don't pray so that we can say we prayed one hour, two hour, three hour, we pray so that we can encounter God.

We don't come to worship because we have greater music, we come to worship so that we can encounter God. Because the only power to change the world is God. To think that somehow, that if I'm articulate enough, if I'm smart enough, if I'm organized enough, if I'm disciplined enough, I can bring somebody who's going to hell to give up their lives and follow Jesus Christ.

The arrogance of that statement. If you can do that by honing your skill, you should be the richest man on earth. If you can get somebody to abandon the world and to follow Jesus Christ by your skill, by your knowledge, by your will, then you can sell anything. You should be a multi-billionaire.

The arrogance of that. We are the strongest when? When we are the weakest. When we are weak, He is strong. So if we learn anything through Israel's history, that we recognize not these men, but the God behind these men, that we may worship Him and build our life upon the rock of Christ.

Let's pray. Let's take a few minutes as our worship team comes up to lead us in prayer, to take some time to really ask the Lord and ask yourselves, when was the last time you could say you've genuinely encountered Christ? I'm not asking like, did you check off that I read the Bible, I prayed, and I did my homework, and I gave, and I served.

But that's not the question I'm asking. When was the last time you really felt like God was hearing your prayers? You encountered God, and you got courage because of that. That you were willing to forsake whatever you were tempted by because the fear of God, the love for Christ, was much bigger than anything else that was tempting you.

When was the last time you encountered this God? Maybe the thing that we should be striving for now, more than anything else, is to come before the Lord and seek Him, ask Him, knock, and to honestly pray. I believe, help my unbelief. I don't have the power within myself.

I need you. Let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us.