York Alliance Church Message Podcast

Exodus 15 contains the first recorded worship song in the Bible. Revelation 15 records the last. Both songs show us the true nature of worship and why it's so important to us as followers of Jesus. What God has done shows us who He is, and when we celebrate who He is we have hope in what He will ultimately do.

The vitally important reminder as we engage formation is that we are called to stand in faith, but that God is the one who does the heavy lifting. Formation starts and ends with the work of God but must necessarily include our action. This mysterious tension is at the heart of true discipeship.

Freedom from is only part of true freedom; it must give way to freedom for something as well. In God's message to Moses we find out that deliverance is the precursor to formation, and that formation is necessary for us to truly inhabit the Promised Land.

The Passover story is a clear precursor to the atoning work of Jesus. Through layers of symbolism, the deliverance story is told right before it happens, and the story of leaving Egypt is layered with signs of the goodness of God. In the same way, we tell the story over and over again as we remember the power of Jesus' sacrifice and the true place of our hope.

There is a line that gets crossed when it becomes evident that God is at work. In those instances, we can either embrace the forward movement of the Kingdom of God or harden our heart against His rule and reign. The love of God confronts our idols and brings us into freedom.

We are comfortable with the love of God, but tend to recoil a bit at the judgment of God. However, true love requires real judgment. The plagues are a reminder of the futility of worshiping false gods, past and present, and of the extent to which God will go to deliver His people from oppression.

Lost to most of us across culture and language is the powerful truth of Exodus 6: God proposes to Israel, His bride, and commits Himself to her, and by extension, to us. The promise of deliverance is the forerunner to the anticipation of intimacy and inheritance for the people of God.

Suffering and disappointment are part of the human experience, and Christians are not exempt from this reality. In fact, it's in the midst of the most powerful work of God that we often experience the formational work of suffering and pain in our lives. While we can't avoid suffering and disappointment, we can prepare ourselves for the inevitability of it and learn to sustain, and even grow, during those difficult seasons.

Our hesitation is no match for the plan of God. He works through imperfect people like us to accomplish profound things in our world. However, He also takes our response to His work seriously and asks us to submit to His Lordship. He can't be Savior unless He's also Lord.

God is both transcendant and imminent. He is holy and yet close. He is the God in whose presence we must take off our sandals, but He also the God who invites us to come near. When we come to grips with this paradox, we begin to see the majesty of the salvation story and God's ongoing work of reconciliation in the world.