Everybody here. We're going to start in him number 366.
Him 366. I am resolved.
That's him 366.
To our evening service and I'm glad if people are actually here because it's kind of stormy out there
So I hope everybody's being careful
we did have one family that had to head out early because of
Potential car problems. So just pray for them not that they have them but in the storm they could have them
So just I think they made it home safely. But anyways today's June 15 once again. Happy Father's Day
We've had a good turnout. We did some good soul winning. We have our service time right there on the left Sunday morning
10 30 a.m. Son, can you get them a bulletin, please Sunday evening 4 30 p.m. Wednesday service 5 30
soul winning time
Sunday is 2 p.m. And then the memory chapter for the month Psalm 23
We're on the third week Psalm 23 verse 3. He restores my soul
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake
Year to date we have 147 souls once so now we need to update that somewhere
So we're really on track. It's kind of
It's not been huge numbers. It's been stable numbers. We're getting about one to three a week
So that's been really good. And then sister Linda's birthday is coming up. So if you want to get her 21st birthday a
gift
you know
You can do that 21 plus
Several others. That's what we'll leave it at. And then again, happy Father's Day
June 29 fifth Sunday dinner. We'll send out some info next week
We'll probably do the main dish and then just have everybody bring sides and it's extras and then steadfast
Invited us to their men's retreat at August 14th through the 16th
So if any of the men want to join with that, let me know and I'll get you the details
I don't even have all the details and then we have the fire breathing Baptist fellowship
Oh, it's not fbbb. It's fbbf. I don't know where I got
so
Fellowship and at August 27th to 31st. I will be preaching in Spanish for that event coming up at the end of August and
then
Just pray for sister Karen. She's definitely
Not been well and I think she has family members that aren't well and then just pray for the new
addition to the Garcia family and any other prayer requests just let us know
you guys can email or text the church we're also going to send an updated
prayer lists this week, and on there we'll give you instructions on how to submit for any prayer requests
that may come up. We want to be more diligent and just increase in our prayer for any of the church members.
And also, we want to pray for anybody, like, obviously we want to pray for our friends and family,
but we also want to pray for our pastor friends and their churches. They would continue.
I mean, there's definitely a spiritual battle, and so it's just always important to just edify each other,
pray that they would preach boldly.
And that they would continue to just stay the path so in saying that we'll turn our hymnals over to page
412 and we'll sing the next hymn. Thank you
All right, let's turn in our hymnals to song 412
438 song 438 Savior like a shepherd lead us
chapter number 17. Exodus chapter 17, we'll read there, verse 1, for the Bible reads,
And all the congregation of the children of Israel journey from the wilderness of sin
And there was no water for the people to drink.
Wherefore the people did chide with Moses and said,
give us water that we may drink.
And Moses said unto them, why chide you with me?
Wherefore, de, tempt the Lord.
And the people thirsted there for water,
and the people murdered against Moses and said,
wherefore is this that thou has brought us up out of Egypt
to kill us and our children in our cattle with thirst?
And Moses cried unto the Lord saying,
what shall I do with this people?
They be almost ready to stone me, and the Lord said unto Moses,
Go on before the people, and take with thee
Of the elders of Israel, and thy rod, wherewith thou smoteest the river,
Take in thy hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee,
Thereupon the rock, and horroreth, and thou shalt smite the rock,
And there shall come water out of it, and the people may drink,
And Moses did so, and the sight of the elders of Israel."
And he called the name of the place, Masa and Maraba, because the chiding of the children of Israel and because they tempted the Lord, saying,
Is the Lord among us or not?
Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Refidem.
And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men and go out fight with Amalek.
Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.
So Joshua did as Moses said unto him, and had fought with Amalek, and Moses, Aaron,
and her went up to the top of the hill, and they came to pass when Moses held up his hand
that Israel prevailed.
And when he let his hand down, Amalek prevailed, but Moses' hands were heavy, and they took
a stone and put it under him, and he sat there on, and Aaron and her stayed up his hands.
The one on one side and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the
going down to the sun.
And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial and a book, and rehearse it in
where I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.
And Moses built an altar and called the name of it Jehovah Nisi.
for he said, because the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation
to generation. Let's have a quick word of prayer. Dear Father God, thank you for this day. I think
for bringing us here together, Lord, and thank you for the soul that was won out there, Lord. I pray
that you touch his heart and help him to have a desire to follow after you and do works that
please you, Lord. And I pray that you fill a pastor in Reukea with your Holy Spirit, helping
pray that you fill us with your spirit so that we may receive the preaching tonight. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
All right, we're there in Exodus, the book of Exodus. We're now back to our, I kind of debate it.
I have another sermon prepared, but for the month of June, but I figured this morning
we'll bring that back next week, God willing.
But uh
We're there in Genesis. We're back to the overview of the Bible and a couple weeks ago
We saw the song of Moses, which actually, you know, this is how it's just so much in the Bible was
Doing some other study and then at some point in the New Testament in
Revelation it talks about how in the end times, you know, we're gonna once everything's settled and done
We're gonna sing two songs and one of them is the song of Moses
So, you know, it's just one of those other things that you could just add
to the the repertoire of preaching there's just so much to cover even with this overview you know
there's just a lot of things that I've left
undone or unsaid just for the sake of time or because it just doesn't allow for
developing this and today we're going to cover several chapters there in the
book of Exodus so just if you want to stay there in the book of Exodus as we
go through this but the reason I chose Exodus 17 is because we see that
basically Jesus is that living spring right the Bible clearly
Tells us that the rock that was with him in the wilderness was Jesus Christ
We're gonna actually touch on that and we see that every time except for once the rock is only what smitten
Once you know, he was wounded for our transgressions one time. This is a very
prophetic
foreshadowing picture of the fact that Jesus Christ needed to die for our sins, but deep needed to die only
once and so
This is why it's so important, but the title of the sermon this afternoon is bread
battle and burden and this is a theme we're going to see throughout
Scripture and we obviously we start to see it here in the book of Exodus
But if we go back to chapter 16
The very first point I have for you is that God provides even when we murmur now
Guy will always provide and that's a very important thing for us to understand
If we want him to provide abundantly and bless us, then we need to do the extra things, right?
But the big thing we see here is that the things I want to emphasize as we're going through this
This message this afternoon is you know God's provision
Man's rebellion
constant rebellion against God, how we treat spiritual leadership or how
spiritual leadership should be handled, and God's order when it comes to judgment
and delegation. And so we're definitely going to go over these points, but the
main thing we see here in Exodus 16 is God's provision is supernatural and
sufficient, right? But even with all that, what does our flesh still do? It finds a
way to complain.
I mean, you think about the fact that I've seen so many videos lately on both sides of
this immigration issue, but you know, what's interesting on the side that's for that's
not that's for or that's kind of, I guess, debunking these people that are fighting
these immigration issues is right.
The immigration issue is talking about how criminals are being deported.
to that is
Enrique or Lucy can someone bring me a bottle a small bottle water and we can bring me a small bottle water that
I've seen a couple videos, which is true right saying you know you have these people who never lived in Mexico
Who their parents were Mexican?
who go out and protest and destroy private property
and they're waving the Mexican flag
to a country that they've never belonged to,
nor do they want to go live there, right?
Like, none of these people are gonna,
none of these protesters are gonna move to Mexico
in a sign of solidarity to the Mexican people, right?
And so,
You think about how ungrateful
People can get for the good that is in your life, right? One of the things that we need to focus on is
murmuring not only is it a sin, but it can
It can bubble up a root of bitterness, right?
I mean, it's really easy to find the negative in everything
There's a saying that's pretty popular at least when I was growing up someone used it a lot and taught me this that
familiarity breeds contempt
You know when you get comfortable around people the danger of working with people the danger of working with
Congregate like you know with your brothers and sisters in Christ
We're out in the battle or you know even you know most helping or I'll start working with Hester Cobb is you're gonna have one
Of two attitudes you just be like you know
I'm doing this because I'm serving the Lord or you start getting familiar and you start to breathe a little bit of contempt and
Content means like you start getting a little bit annoyed you start
kind of finding and nitpicking the things that the the leadership or the people that are working
with you are doing wrong look that's so easy to do it's not funny but the danger is that because
it's so easy we actually in our flesh naturally do it
And what we need to watch out for is that we don't let it brood or bubble up or fester bitterness in our life.
And we see the contrast here in Exodus, go to Exodus 16 and verse one, we see the contrast between someone like Moses who's focused on the task, right?
And that's why also as men, we need to be goal oriented.
I think one of the things that's funny is I'm always kind of like trying to find the like something, the next thing to do.
or try to keep my mind occupied on things that just don't, that aren't so negative.
We went out earlier and we were looking at the plants and I told Brother Moe, I just,
I love this, the sage, the Texas sage brush, because you can beat that thing up.
you can chop it up and it still comes back, right? Who can attest to the fact that that's why it's
people love the Texas sagebrush? It's not that it's the prettiest plant, but it's one of the most
resilient plants. But he started laughing because I think I've told him this like three times in
the last maybe three weeks. I basically every time I see him, I tell him about this. And you know,
but I thought to myself, why did I tell? Because my goal, I guess I've trained myself to just want
to always focus on like things that stand out that are going to motivate me, that get me excited.
because I just like the underdog right this things like on its last leg and
then it finds a way to just revive itself and the reason that maybe I do
that is just because I don't want to focus on all the negative stuff that
that surrounds us you know if I just take if I were to sit here for a couple
hours I'd get really sad about just how old is building this you know I had my
wife bringing me some wall anchors just because the toilet paper holder and the
women's restroom is falling apart
You know, just, and if we just go room by room, I guarantee you I can make a really long list of
things that are happening. But what do I want to focus on? Well, God's provided us a building,
we're in a free country, I can preach freely, our AC works, like there's a lot of great things here.
But God provides, even when we murmur, but wouldn't it be better to forgot to just always provide
when we don't murmur? Because think about the huge blessings He does. And you see that contrast,
right? Let's look there in Exodus 16 verse one, it says, and they took their journey from Elam,
And all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of sin, which is between Elim and Sinai on the 15th day of the second month after they're departing out of the land of Egypt.
And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
Hey, for me as a pastor, this is a great passage to remind me that the whole congregation could murmur against the leadership.
humans right and the children of Israel said unto them would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt
When we sat by the flesh pots and we did eat bread to beat to the full for yet brought us forth into the wilderness to kill
This whole assembly with hunger
Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law or no, and it shall come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.
for that he heareth your murmurings against the Lord, and what are we that ye murmur against us?
And Moses said, this shall be when the Lord shall give you in the evening flesh to eat,
and in the morning, bread to the full, for that the Lord heareth your murmurings which ye murmur
against him, and what are we? Your murmurings are not against us, but against the Lord. And by the
Because you're saved, even things that don't make sense,
the majority of the opposition you get in life is because you're saved, right?
And maybe you're backslidden, or maybe you're living for God and someone's attacking you.
Remember, it's always against who? Against God, because ultimately, who do we transgress against?
And he said there, and it says there in verse nine,
and Moses spake unto Aaron and said,
say unto all the congregation of the children of Israel,
come near, behold the Lord, for he hath heard your murmurings.
And it came to pass as Aaron spake unto the whole congregation
of the children of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness
and behold the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.
And the Lord spake unto Moses saying have ye heard the murmurings of the children of Israel speak unto them saying at even
You shall eat flesh
And in the morning you shall be filled with bread you shall know that I am the Lord your God
And it came to pass that at even the quails came up and covered the camp and in the morning the dew lay around about
The host and when the the dew that lay was gone up behold upon the face of the wilderness they lay a small round thing
small as the whore frost on the ground. And this is where we get the
introduction to what? The manna. And then if we skip down in verse 35 it says,
and the children of Israel did eat manna. How long? 40 years until they came to a
land inhabitant. They did eat manna until they came unto the borders of the
land of Canaan. Think about it. The children of Israel murmured for 40
Because God cannot lie. He says he will neither leave us nor forsake us
This is a great picture of the fact that salvation is by grace because God
Despite of all their their transgressions in spite of all their rebellion and their backsliding. What does he do?
He remains faithful to them
Now that's not to say this is a good thing
They could have had probably better blessings. They could have had better results if they just actually would have just humbled themselves and been grateful
You know, every year we celebrate Thanksgiving in America because the founding fathers were
grateful for the fact that they were now free from tyranny and that they could be free to
do, you know, in liberty, worship as they please, you know, raise their families according
to the, you know, the word of God, but you fast forward several hundred years later and
people are so ungrateful.
You know yesterday was a sign of what I'm grateful as my wife reminded me
There was a point I wanted to make this morning and it's the fact that it's such as contrast to the fact that we
You know, they called it what no king day or whatever no king
but wasn't the battle cry of
The Saints and the soldiers, you know, there's this literally their stories of preacher say
The battle cry when they went on to the field for the independence of this country was no king
But what but Jesus?
right? So it's not like God's people don't want a king. The one, the only king we want is the king
of kings, right? We want to worship Jesus. We want to serve under strong leadership. We actually want
to be led by Christ, but we also have to be careful.
that when we're under this leadership, we don't just find a reason to complain and murmur.
It's really easy to do that. I mean, I'm going to re-emphasize that point as we go through this
because that's the easiest thing to do is just find complaints. And everybody has things that
they can complain about. You know, you can complain because you're old and you can complain because
you're young and you can complain because you have a chronic pain or you can complain because
you don't have pains. You can complain because, you know, you don't have a nice car or your car's
complain about just about everything you know but we as God's children need to be
grateful for the fact that God's gonna provide not only that the fact that he's
faithful enough to say he's never gonna leave us nor forsake us and that we
would never be begging for bread
And that's an important lesson. Sometimes when I preach this, you know, I'm preaching it to most myself because the one thing that I've told you guys is
Personally, I struggle with that and we need to overcome that because we are God's children
God is faithful. He is not going to just leave you hanging. He's always going to take care of you, right?
When it feels like you're at the Red Sea and there's no more crossing, he'll part
proverbially that Red Sea for you, but go over to
Go over to John 6 and now I'm gonna read for you really quick in Philippians 2. The Bible says for it is
In verse 13 of Philippians 2 says for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure
Who works that?
God
God works that in us. That's why we don't murmur says do all things without murmuring and disputings
That you may be blameless and harmless the sons of God
Without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom ye shine as lights in the world
You know makes me think of
Pastor Oz I was talking about it just a couple weeks ago
I just think that that that article was so funny because it said that people were terrified
of the fact that he goes to work and he shows up on time and he's polite and respectful,
you know, they couldn't find anything wrong with him because he's just working without murmuring
or disputing or complaining, right? In John 6, verse 29, the Bible says, Jesus answered and said,
They said therefore unto him what signs show us thou then that we may see and believe
What does thou work and I like the way that's worded says this is what the work of who of
God
That you believe on him
Whom he had said and verse 31 says our fathers did eat manna in the desert as it is written
He gave them bread from heaven to eat then Jesus said unto them barely barely I said to you Moses gave you not that bread from heaven
But my father give it to you the true bread from get
Heaven for the bread of God is he which coming down from heaven and give his life unto the world
Then said they unto him Lord evermore give us this bread
And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life, he that cometh to me shall never hunger,
and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you that ye also have seen me,
and believe not, all that the Father giveeth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me
I will in no wise cast out. Look, we need to recognize that he is the living bread,
But then on top of that, once we understand that he believes, then we understand that all work emanates from who?
From our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we don't get, number one, we don't get puffed up, but number two,
that we also don't get complacent or murmuring or complaining about the things that we're doing.
In 1 Corinthians 10-10, the Bible says, neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and we're destroyed of what? The destroyer.
Look God will punish us. He will chastise us for murmuring and what's murmuring when you talk under your breath
I've said it before so I won't
Well, I'll say it again, but now, now that I know I get repetitive in my old age, I'm just trying to,
trying to be careful. But I've said that, you know, like Yosemite Sam, remember that cartoon and he
just murmur all the time, you know, under his breath, you know, I don't know, I always like Yosemite Sam,
because he just kind of had a lot of attitude. But he, he, he did complain a lot about a lot of
things, right? So we don't want to have this attitude of murmuring. Look, we know God's going to provide
but I would rather not just have his provision, but also his blessings and abundance, right?
And we want to go above and beyond that as God's children by just doing things
for the sake of doing them for the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, if we get up in the morning,
we get up, we just do things because God's given us another day above ground. And you know, if the
then just remind yourself God's the one that's going to handle that.
And if you don't have enough money to pay for stuff,
just remember you have enough to be where you are right now, right?
And if you can't afford a nicer car, just remember at least you have a car.
The majority of the world doesn't have a car.
We're so spoiled in America.
Most people have two cars in America
Right. We have more food and abundance than any other country in the world.
I mean, we could literally feed all the poor and hunger,
written children and poor people in this country alone.
If we didn't have some stupid laws where all the food that they throw away every night in every restaurant,
if we could just pick that up and feed it to the poor, there would be no hunger in America.
Do you realize how much food gets thrown and discarded at every restaurant?
And if you were to try to go pick it up, you know, it's like technically, I don't know,
there's, there's some laws just because of like cleanliness and stuff like that.
Yeah, but you can always
anyways, let me not get off on it. It annoys me. I remember when I worked at City Council,
one of the City Council members came to me and she said, hey, did you know you can go to the
food bank and basically get free groceries? And she's like, this is really meant for the poor
people, but she's like, take care of your family first. And she's like, there's more than enough
for everybody. If you were to go, I mean, I walked that thing, if you go to the food bank, I mean,
they have so much food, they don't even know what to do with it.
Did you know they throw out more food that is donated than they give away? It's it's insane
Yeah, I mean and down in the valley
There's an entire
Sector of business. I don't know if you know this where people sell all the clothes
That Americans throw away or get rid of and they sell it in pallets by the pound and people from Mexico come over
And they don't nitpick they just go and buy pounds of
Clothes so they can resell it in Mexico because those people don't have access to the kind of clothes and
You know and garments that we have
That's how much stuff we get rid of. It's insane the amount of stuff that we just waste.
But I don't know why I got on that, but I guess because people murmur, you know,
people are mad because they don't have the nicest shoe or the greatest suit.
You know, I'm just glad I have clothes on my back. Thank the Lord. But going over to exit
17, so we see this, God's providing the bread. Man does not live by bread alone,
but by everywhere that proceeded out of the mouth of God, right?
The second point I have for you today, I don't have that many points. This is actually a very
I would say very basic, very fundamental sermon,
but it's a much needed sermon,
is that the rock that was smitten, who is that rock?
It's Jesus Christ, right?
Christ is the smitten rock.
And without Him, there is no living water.
The Bible says that it pleased the Father to bruise Him.
In Isaiah, right?
We go to Exodus 17, verse one, it says,
And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of sin after their journeys according to the commandment of the Lord, and pitched and refit him, and there was no water for the people to drink.
Wherefore the people did chide, you know, kind of angry and bitter and hateful with Moses and said, give us water that we may drink and Moses said unto them, why chide ye with me?
Wherefore do you tempt the Lord and the people thirsted there for water and the people murmured against Moses?
They just don't get it right they just got manna and quail
They're a little thirsty and already they're murmuring again and said wherefore is it that thou has brought us up out of Egypt to kill us
And our children our cattle with thirst and Moses cried unto the Lord saying what shall I do unto this people?
They be almost ready to stone me
Here's another thing that happens
I've said this for a long time and you know, I I really believe this that
In the end times it's not just going to be the sense of Belial and the world that's going to come against us
You know those that are they're gonna stand firm on the word of God, but it's gonna be the weak Christians
Right though if you look in the book of Acts, there's a lot of people that are saved
There's not a lot of people that are persecuted, right?
And right here Moses is literally with his people
And there are so bad at him, they want to stone him.
It says in the Lord said unto Moses,
go on before the people and take with thee
of the elders of Israel and thy rod,
wherewith thou smotest the river,
take in thy hand and go,
behold, I will stand before thee upon the rock in Horeb,
and thou shalt smite the rock,
and there shall come water out of it,
and that the people may drink.
And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
And he called the name of the place Masa and Mariba because of the chiding of the children of Israel
And because they tempted the Lord saying is the Lord among us or not I
Mean it got so bad they questioned whether the Lord was with them
And the reality is that's the great thing about the New Testament, right?
We actually have the greatest spiritual gift, which is the gift of what?
blind faith
They were so accustomed to seeing the signs and the wonders. I mean, and we see this even in Jesus time
But that's what they expected and because they weren't seeing that they were they were basically
Tempting and even questioning was the Lord even among them because they were so used to seeing the pillar of fire or the
Or the pillar of smoke and you know partying of the Red Sea and all these great miracles, but we
We just live by faith
And honestly, in my life, I can say that the Lord's been true and He's come through every
single time.
There's not been a time in my life since the moment I got saved that God hasn't come through.
Now, I will say He's not come through the way I thought He was going to come through,
but He definitely comes through.
And if you look at your life today, you know that He's come through.
I mean, even the congregation we have now is God's doing.
Honestly, there's no way on God's green earth that we could have written this up and all the plans that I ever had
You know soul winning and maybe marketing and I've talked about maybe one day getting a
What do you call those man my brain just left me?
You know you're driving on the highway. You see the advertisement
A billboard, thank you.
Thank you for helping me with the hard ones.
You know, I've even talked about getting a billboard
and doing online marketing and blasting and everything.
I never thought that another church would end up
coming over here because of, you know, bad leadership
and then, you know, basically just uniting our church
and making it stronger and basically becoming
one church under God, right?
There's no way that I would have been able
to write that story.
I'm not that creative, you know, I'm not I'm not that good at it, but go over to Isaiah 53
Let me read for you really quick in 1st Corinthians 10
The Bible says there in verse 1 says more ever but more over brethren
I would not that you should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud and all hey guys
I need you to stop making that noise. Thank you
And it says moreover, brethren, I would not that you should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud and all passed through the sea
And we're all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea and did all eat
The same spiritual me and did all drink the same spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them
And that rock was Christ
but with many of them God was not well pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
God provided doesn't mean he was pleased.
You know, manna is the consistency of the bread of life and the water that's coming out,
the Bible literally tells us what's what, that spiritual rock that followed him, that rock was Christ.
That's why when people get all up in arms, you have no idea how many times people tell me that I worship the King James Bible
No, I worship Jesus Christ
He is the word
Not the book not the leather, but the words coming out of here are a hundred percent
I am not convinced you don't have to like I'm not doing it come like if you don't want to be convinced about it
Well, then that's your problem. This is Jesus Christ
You know when I get up here, and I read the words of the Lord Jesus Christ
I am not failing you and feeding the flock
Now my opinion sometimes I get things backwards. Maybe I forget what a billboard is then I can fail you
But when I read the words of Jesus Christ, I'm not failing you and he's always with us
That's why it's so important to show up to church because we're not in the wilderness our wilderness is the world
This is the rock this church because Scott founded it, right? He said upon this rock
Speaking to Peter. I will build my church
In Isaiah 53, verse one, it says,
who hath believed our report,
and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed,
for he shall grow up, speaking of who?
Jesus, right?
He shall grow up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of dry ground.
He hath no form nor comeliness,
and when we shall see him,
there is no beauty that we should desire him.
He is despised and rejected of man,
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,
And we hid as were our faces from Him, and He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
Surely He hath borne our grieves and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him,
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, right?
The Lord struck Him, smitten of God, and afflicted, but He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him,
All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone onto his own way, and the
Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.
He is broad as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his ears is dumb, so he
opened not his mouth.
He was taken from prison, and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation?
out of the land of the living, for the transgressions of my people was he stricken."
There it is again. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death,
because he had done no violence. Neither was there any deceit in his mouth. Yet
it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul in
He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
He shall see of the travail of his soul.
and shall be satisfied by his knowledge, shall my righteousness, my righteous servant justify many,
for he shall bear their iniquities." And I did this on purpose. I read it because
it's the main theme throughout the Bible. You get to the children of Israel and they're striking
them. You get to Isaiah and the Bible says that the Lord pleased them to bruise them.
He was stricken for our iniquities. We get to the New Testament. That's how we're saved.
You know, we went soul winning earlier and we didn't get to soul win a lot. I mean, oh, sorry
Let me go to verse 12
Let me just finish it because where there says therefore I will divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide spoil with the
Strong because he has poured out his soul unto death and he was numbered with the transgressors
And he bear the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. We were out soul winning
Really, we were out soul, one soul winning because the storm was coming and it wasn't,
you know, I don't mind soul winning the rain and as a matter of fact, we had started to
go out in the rain, but
This was not a like this was a storm right with thunder and wind and all that so long story short
We had just gotten up the block right here pastor on Spring Valley
And we got to the first home and there was a guy parked there and he was sitting on a bench
I thought that's where he lived turns out. He was just waiting to go to work
He's actually from Cyprus and I kind of caught him off guard. I crossed the street. I'm like, hey, you know
We're with spring press Baptist
and you know and then I started to give him the gospel and I noticed that he in his hand he
inconspicuously hid his marijuana joint and he had this joint that's what he was gonna do is he
That's irrelevant because the most important thing was the Lord led us right to him. I thought he actually lived there
Turns out he's not even from here. There was the perfect timing. We gave him the gospel
He got saved we started walking to the neighborhood and then the big storm came which was you know
That's what's caused that we you know how it is and he said but anyways long story short
The Lord blessed our time because we we got out there. We did the job and we had to come back
You know, that was the the rest of the afternoon, but why do we do it?
because salvation is free.
And you know, what's the most important, what's the most common thing response that we get from people just like this guy?
Hey, you know, he actually said he was sure he was going to heaven. I said are you a hundred percent sure you're going to heaven?
He's like, yeah. I said, why do you think you're going to heaven and he's like, well because I'm nice to my mom and
you know, I try to be nice to people and I grew up in church and of course we turn it around and I cleared it up for him.
And you know, it's even further than that. Not only did he think he was going to heaven, he thought it was not only because he was nice.
but he actually thought that Jesus was just the Son of God like a created being and not God Almighty.
So I actually had to spend some time and I took him through several verses to explain that Jesus is God
and we got him over on that side. Like this is why it's important to preach the gospel.
This is why it's important to go through everything because we see how deep it goes.
Right when you're out so many people say oh, you don't need to know all this to get to it
I agree you just need to know that Jesus is God and you need to believe on him
But if we're gonna do the work of the Lord, we need to know this
You know, this is the most important time.
This is where we build our ammo.
This is where we build our strength, right?
This is where we get the training.
So when we go out there, we get these guys
that maybe don't understand it fully,
God gives us the strength to maneuver through his word
to get the right thing done, right?
He is providing that bread.
He has given us that, that, that, uh,
function to function, go over to Hebrews four,
go over to Hebrews four.
And in verse 15 the Bible says,
I like how it's worded, not to get help,
but to help in time of need.
Hey, there's no greater time of need to help someone
than when we're pulling them out of the fire.
But we need to come boldly to the throne of grace.
But the only way we do that is to first be saved.
You know, we're not like other churches.
We don't want just anybody in our congregation, right?
We don't just want,
I heard, I was listening to a pastor when he gave a great analogy and I'll just kind
of add to it.
But he's like, not all growth is good.
He was just, he was discussing how he saw a dead dog on the side of the road.
And then, you know, he drove by the next week and the dog was bigger and then he was bigger
because you know, when, when he died, he started to get bloated.
He's like, that's not good growth.
And you know, you could say that about a lot of things, right?
Literally there's entire
What is it reality TV shows my 500 pound life?
My one thousand pound life and you see these big people just laying around they can't even move
They can't even shower. They have to like, you know, let me not gross anybody out. It's pretty disgusting, right?
That kind of growth is not good. The growth we're looking for is the spiritual growth
So we're not just I don't want just anybody in our church
We want people who are dedicated to the Word of God who want to actually be fed who want to go out soul winning
Who are pro soul winning who are gonna support us in the battle that we're in?
That's the that's what we're interested in right and the reason that that kind of leads me to my next point which is
Here next to the 17 in the next few chapters versus we're gonna see what the first war
After they leave and it's a picture of what fighting the flesh
right
Amalek
is kind of like this type of flesh that we see from generation to generation.
The Philistines, the Amacolites, all these guys,
they represent what this constant battle in the New Testament,
we obviously don't go to war physically. I mean, our countries do,
but we don't. But what do we war with regularly?
The flesh. Go back to Exodus 17, verse 8,
the Bible says, for if Jesus had given them rest, then He would not have
There remaineth therefore rest to the people of God speaking of Jesus, right? For he that has entered into his rest
heth also ceased from his own work and God did oh
Man wait up. How did I get this messed up? I'm sorry exit is 17. I'm in Hebrews
I don't know. I guess I copied the wrong thing
Yesterday, I don't know. I thought I was I did you know what happens. This is this is that let's let's let's kind of segue here a little bit
I was like really proud of myself because I got all my sermons done like that in the last hour
I've usually write in them last minute and then it turns out they're even worse like my notes
I mean in my mind they're well well put but I somehow missed missed
Misappropriated notes. We're in Exodus 17. It's a good thing. We can go here to the word of God
And we're there in verse 8 and the Bible says then came Amalek and fought with Israel and refudim
Moses said unto Joshua choose out us choose us out men and go out fight with Amalek
Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand
So Joshua did as Moses had said to him and fought
With Amalek and Moses Aaron and her went up to the top of the hill and it came to pass when Moses held up his hand
That the that Israel prevailed and when he let down his hand Amalek prevailed, but Moses hands were heavy and
They took a stone and put it under him, and he sat there on, and Aaron and her stayed
up his hands, the one on the side and the other on the other side, and his hands were
steady until the going down of the sun.
And Joshua discomfited Amalek and all his people with the edge of the sword.
And the Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the
years of Joshua, for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.
Jehovah Nissy for he said because the Lord had sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to
Generation and this is not a super strong theme
This is my the way that I see it
But you kind of see the Trinity here in a way right obviously we know what the rock represents who?
Jesus
Right and Moses being the patriarch or a representative of the Old Testament
It's kind of almost a representative that like God the father right the law
Remember Jesus says I came to fulfill the law and the prophets speaking of Moses and in that time Elijah is a representative
right at the Mount of Transfiguration and what does Joshua represent Joshua represents that
soul that was won, right?
The next generation, Moses leads Joshua.
Joshua comes under his leadership.
And in the New Testament, who are we?
What do we do?
We're the ones that are let out.
by the Holy Spirit and we go to the book of Acts it says that they were filled with all power and
The Holy Spirit right Joshua represents that Holy Spirit filled man
Who's able to go out and do great things for the Lord because if you think about it?
Joshua and Caleb are the only ones that at the end of this whole thing who are the ones that are filled with the Holy Spirit
All right, and I love this story because the mode the battle even though Josh was this great warrior
The only reason he wins is because God's with them
Right Moses has to do a certain thing and if he doesn't do it a certain way
They start to lose and it should be a reminder that even when we have the Holy Spirit
It's the Holy Spirit that makes us great not the other way around
All right
And so we have to make sure that we're grounded in Christ because there's other times when the children of Israel will go in a battle
And they're gonna lose because they didn't see God's counsel
They didn't see God's direction and we like to think that we see God's way all the time, but the reality is we just get
You know there's times where like I'll say someone something or someone and then I'll come back later be like oh man
I meant to get back to you right and do this right? We're well in tension, but we don't do these things
What's the same thing in the spiritual? You know, I'm like Lord
I want to seek you for every decision and you tell your family
We're gonna do this based on God's guidance and then we just kind of get lost in the day-to-day in the world
We're fighting the Amalek's of this world
and we forget to look up and make sure that Moses is grounded on the rock
and that Aaron and her are there to hold him up and that Joshua is out there in the battlefield
soul-winning doing the work that he needs to do. It's a team effort but with God on our side
right? Springcrest will never be a great church without Christ. If we have any greatness even
It's because we we believe in the Trinity. It's because we believe that God the Father
God the Son got the Holy Ghost are working in unity
To edify us and to strengthen us to go battle the world
I mean, that's the only thing that that matters go you don't have to go there
For the sake of time but in Galatians 5 or 17 the Bible says for the flesh lusted against the flesh
And these are contrary the one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would do
Roman 723 the Bible says but I see another law on my members worn against the law of my mind and
Bringing me into the captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. I mean, how many of us struggle with that to this day?
You know, one of my biggest frustrations is like Lord
When am I gonna when am I gonna stop all the stupidity that I do and then I'm reminded I'm not but I just need I still need to get better
You know I need to get better every day every day. We just need to improve every day
We seek the Lord a little bit better every day
We pray a little bit harder every day
We just think more on the things of Christ seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things
She'll be added unto you
The Deuteronomy 25 verse 17 says remember what Amalek did verse 17 unto the by the way when you were come forth out of Egypt
How you met thee, by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee,
even all that were feeble behind thee, when that was faint and weary,
and he feared not God. You know, because they didn't always listen.
Go to Genesis, I mean, Exodus 18, and we'll close this thing out.
And the title was Bread, Battle, and Burden because it's a nice alliteration, but we've seen what in chapter 16
God gives them the bread of life.
Basically, that's what the picture is, right? The manna is coming down from heaven.
You know, if you have food on your table today, today we went to Mighty Burger and ate. It was because God provided for all that.
Don't get so high and mighty that you think you provided for it, right?
and he gives us bread number one we need to be fed in the word of God because we need nourishment but
number two we also need nourishment so that we can fight the battles you know you think about
the nations are knocking at the door of world war three right now and what are they doing
they're stocking up right on military grade equipment whether it's ammunition or tanks or jets or
naval ships whatever it is they're building it well the Lord does the same
thing with us what's our ammunition how do we get the bazookas and the RPGs and
the lasers and all the supersonic missiles we read the Word of God you know
some some of the chapters are are you know 45 caliber some are 9 millimeter
I didn't mean to make that analogy, but isn't that what we do?
And God does bless.
I mean, I've gone out soul winning before and explain the trinity.
And for some reason, the Lord today, I mean, gave me way more, more verses
and chapters that I could tie together than I've ever done in the past.
You know what where that comes from just from reading your Bible constantly, and I'm not saying that all the other times
I did it bad
But I'm just saying that I did it better today than I've done in the past number one because we're doing it constantly
So you're always improving but number two because I've read so much more Bible
Says then the last time I had to deal with that that I was able to just tied to get it just more clear
And isn't that what we want to do because I'd rather be more clear and better about explaining something today than I was yesterday
so that I don't leave any doubt in the person that I'm leading to Christ.
You know, by the time I was done, the guy was like, I was like,
look, let me come back to this. Do you believe that Jesus is Christ?
He's like, well, based on what you're telling me, yeah.
He's like, I haven't been to church in a long time and I hadn't thought about it,
but everything you showed me shows that Jesus is God. It's a good.
because that's what we need you to understand. I say that's a pretty important point,
because if you don't get that, you're going to hell. He's like, no, no, I believe,
all right, perfect. And then we just continue with the other thing. I don't normally spend that
much time with it, but I don't normally run into people who don't believe that Jesus is a God.
You know, so go back to Exodus 18 and work there in verse 13. The last point I have for you is
And if you think about it, it's it's a good ending because today's Father's Day and my morning sermon was about leadership
And we need to not only be leaders, but we also need to know how to follow leaders
Right here in verse 13 it says and it came to pass on the moral that Moses set to judge the people and the people stood
By Moses from the morning until the evening and when Moses father-in-law saw all that he did to the people
He said what is this thing that thou do is to the people?
Why sitest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee, from morning unto even?
And Moses said unto his father-in-law, Because the people came unto me to inquire of God.
When they have a matter, they come unto me, I will judge between one and another,
And I do make known the statues of God in his law.
And Moses' father-in-law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good.
That will surely worry away, but thou and this people that is with thee for this thing is too heavy for thee now are not able to perform it
Myself alone, harken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee, be thou for the people of God word,
that thou mayest bring the causes unto God, and thou shall teach them ordinances and laws,
and shall show them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do.
Moreover, thou shall provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth,
hating covetousness, and play such over them to be rulers of thousands.
and rulers of hundreds and rulers of fifties and rulers of tens.
Let them judge the people at all seasons, and it shall be, that every great matter
they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge, so it shall be easier for
thyself, than they shall bear the burden with thee. If thou shalt do this thing, and God command
thee, so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all these people shall also go into their place
in peace." So Moses harkened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had said,
able men out of Israel and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds,
rulers of fifties, rulers of ten. And they judged the people at all seasons. The hard causes they
brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves. And Moses led his father in
You know what's interesting is
Jethro says, hey, this is too hard for you, Moses.
And in the flesh, trying to do everything yourself is too hard.
But the concept of delegation is not something that's for someone who can't handle it.
It's actually for someone who can handle it,
but understands that their value is bigger than that.
The thing that Jethro missed here, and here's where I'm getting this from.
God
Literally God delegates the most in the Bible if you look at the Bible. He doesn't come down
He sends angels to destroy
He sends, you know, and then when she even when Jesus walked to earth Jesus focused on his ministry
And what do you do? He sent them out to by two by two. I mean God can handle anything
So this thing's not too hard for God, but it is a picture of what God wants us to do, you know
God that's maybe that's where we get that concept of like not only work harder, but smarter, right?
We don't want to just work hard, but we want to be smart about it
I will say this delegation is is important for us to continue to grow in the ministry
You don't want to you know, the world teaches delegation
So they got more time to basically show off how much money they're making and how much free time they have
But God wants you to delegate, so you actually have more time to get better at the Word of God.
Remember the book of Acts?
The people come in murmur.
Here's another picture, right?
And what do they do? They appoint deacons so they can focus on prayer and the Word of God.
And this really resonates with me for a couple of things.
Number one, you want to have children because you can delegate stuff out.
I mean, it's easier to clean the house with five people than it is with two, even if they're small children.
It just makes more sense, right?
In business, you hire people so that you can focus
on the big things.
And church is the same thing.
You wanna find men in leadership
so that they can do different things.
So a couple of things that I'm always focused on.
Number one, you know, Mo's been a blessing to the church
because I've been able to now have just someone
that I can delegate some of the administrative staff
to, I mean, administrative, small administrative things.
So I can actually focus on the things that I wanna do,
which is preach the word of God and feed the flock.
Why is that important? It's not just so I'm free, so I can say,
hey, I'm free. I need to do a better job preaching the Word of God
because there's men in the congregation that are, what, feeding their families
with the spiritual meat of Christ. And if they're only feeding their families the milk,
then I'm not doing my job.
Right and and a great example of that is when we came back
We had a little bit of time and we were all here and someone asked me about this now. I know his name this false
Prophet or whatever you want to call this kid who's in his like early 20s who goes around telling everybody that God
saved him at a Waffle House and because he was going to kill himself and in no
point he ever uses any scripture no point ever talks about what salvation
really is you just basically telling you all about himself you know he's an
egomaniac right and and we were talking about that and I pointed out I said these
guys are false prophets you know because I've had time to listen to them
And I gave them the, you know, the verses in the scripture.
Now the guy was already on it, but that's my duty.
I would rather spend more time with other men in the church,
going back and forth on doctrine and getting better
than being like, hey, can we all meet
so that we can clean the church or pay bills or do that?
Now we need to do those things
and I'm not neglecting any of those duties.
But if I can avoid those duties
so that I can do other duties better for Christ,
then that's what we need to do.
You know, I mean pastor, I didn't see the wisdom in what you were doing when you were doing it with me pastor at the time
But pastor Cobb just kept giving me more work
You know, I don't know that he naturally knew he knew that I was willing and he would ask me to take over more things
And what I realized is that he at one point was doing all the work and he's like I just need someone to delegate to
He wasn't as vociferous about it as I am, but that's literally what he did
I remember he was like, hey, why don't you take over Sunday school?
And then he, that was one last thing he had to do, which made him a better preacher.
Not that he wasn't a good preacher, he'd been preaching for a long time.
But you know what?
When your mind's distracted in a bunch of other things, it detracts from the ability
to focus on the main thing.
You just can't do it.
And that's the the lesson Jethro's teaching here. He's like Moses. It's not that you don't know what you're doing
It's just that you should focus on the big stuff because you're the one that has all that knowledge
Teach everybody else a thing and what is this also a picture of go to act six by the way go to act six?
Because I want to make sure we cover those verses. We're almost done here
But what is this a picture of also? It's about the fact that we need to get better also. So when we get to heaven God willing
we get
appointed some cities to look over because he says hey give it to thousands and
hundreds what is gonna happen in in in the New Earth God's gonna appoint
leadership he's gonna delegate out you notice God isn't the one ruling every
city he's gonna point it that's why the American form of government a republic
not a democracy works because it's based on a biblical model
It doesn't work now, because now it's just an amalgamation of whatever people decide,
but when it first started, it was a good concept.
In Acts 6, verse 3, the Bible says,
Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy
Ghost and wisdom, who we may appoint over this business, but we will give ourselves continually
to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.
And the things that thou hast heard of me, among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.
And I'm closing out with this one, it's just one verse, so you don't have to turn there if you want to.
1 Corinthians 14 verse 40, the Lord says,
Let all things be done decently in an order.
And if I could basically take these three chapters as overview, the one thing we see is God's order, right?
He first gets them out.
And he feeds them, he makes sure that they're nourished, and then he makes sure that they're, I guess, hydrated spiritually,
because he's preparing them for what? For a battle.
And you need to be nourished, and you need to be hydrated spiritually, because our tendency is to murmur.
Our tendency is to complain.
Our tendency is to have a defeatist attitude, to have some stinking thinking.
That's the man in us.
He will always try to pull us down.
The only way that we can keep him away and down where he wants to be
is to lift up the spiritual man.
But there's only one way to do that.
It's through God's Word.
That's why you show up to church on Sunday morning.
That's why you show up to church on Sunday evening.
That's why you show up to church on Wednesday.
You know, a lot of people don't see this.
I posted a thing when Pastor Cobb back in 2015, you know, licensed me to be an evangelist.
And people don't see all those years of just waiting for people to show up to actually have
someone to preach to.
But you know what?
And it wasn't just me, you know, Pastor Cobb could have given up and been like, well, maybe
Enrique is just not, maybe he's not, he's not that good.
Maybe he just doesn't have the gift.
Maybe I should just give up and not support him.
But he was faithful and over time, people just started showing up and it wasn't because
of anything we did, believe me.
It was just the Lord, you know, the Lord's the one that provides.
You must stop murmuring
Stop doubting stop trusting. I mean, it's a commandment. You need to stop
And you need to catch yourself and you need to stop
being a complainer
You say pastor, you're are you calling? I'm not look if you're in this room today. You've complained about something
And if you haven't done it in a long time, well, then good for you.
But at some point, we all fail, we've all complained, and we've all murmured it, whether
you voiced it audibly, like me, who tends to talk more, or you're quiet like Moe and
he probably just says it in his head, you need to stop.
And by the way, Moe, I'm not picking up, I'm just saying all of us, that will destroy
your ministry, destroy the great things that God's doing in your life quicker than anything
that's number one. Number two, the reason you need to do it is because in order for us to
gain any advantage in the spiritual battle in God's work, we need to stay focused on the task.
We need to keep the main thing, the main thing. Jesus is the main thing.
But not this happy Jesus, God's word Jesus, right? The whole book from beginning to end.
We need to just pray and you know, it's funny. I don't I'm not I don't scream as much as some of these other pastors
But the stuff that I'm saying would still piss off like 99% of Americans because I'm just preaching the Bible
and
The one percent I didn't piss off, you know because of that I would piss off because they're Christians and I used the word piss off
So at the end of the day, you can't please anybody so you might as well just please the Lord
because that's the truth right? The only person that we should be focused on pleasing is our Lord
Jesus Christ, is God Almighty. So let's close in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father Lord,
thank you Lord for the bread of life, thank you Lord for the battles of life, and thank you Lord
for lifting and making our burden easy in life. Thank you for teaching us that
There is a smarter better way to work Lord. Thank you for teaching us. There's a smarter better way to battle
Thank you for teaching us is a better smarter way to be nourished
You know we focus so much on all the wrong things and when we do that we end up just complaining and murmuring
And just losing sight of what's most important, which is you, Lord, if anything, we should be grateful.
Thank you, Lord, for the rain that you sent today, Lord.
Thank you for the soul that was won.
Thank you for the individuals that are here today, Lord, that are willing to be here through thick and thin.
Thank you for all those that were in attendance this morning, Lord.
Thank you for the fact that we live in this country that allows us to express the word of God freely and preach it unencumbered.
Other than just some complainers and murmurs Lord help us to take advantage of that time Lord and to preach harder
And to lead more people to Christ and to do greater things and to just look if out to the rest of 2025 and not see
Oh, we're only halfway through the year
But hey, we still have half a year where we can do great things for you Lord
Just give us a great week as we go about our business Lord bless all those in attendance Jesus name we pray amen