Sermon for Sunday July 18th, 2004

Pounding us Flat and straightening us Out by Michael Whittle

Exodus 5:1-6:1

Exodus 5:1-6:1 Pounding us Flat and straightening us Out (July 11, 2004)

Introduction:
Paul Li and I had a job to do last week at my house. We laid interlocking brick on my driveway. That was bad enough, but the really had work had to be done before the bricks were laid. We had to dig out 11 inches of dirt. Then lay 6 inches of gravel and 3 inches of sand. Even that wasn’t the worst; we had to pound it down. To do that we had to rent a machine called a compactor. It was very heavy. About 240 pounds. We got it and then had to figure out how to use it. First we started it. Then we tried to move it. It wouldn’t move. We played with it and found out that the way to move it was to get it pounding at the fastest speed. It then drags you around the driveway, pounding everything flat. If you keep your toes out of the way, it will do the job for you with no trouble. My driveway is now finished. It did not take long, thanks to that machine. If I had not got the machine and tried to do it by hand, I would be still pounding away.

Need: Our lives are often like that driveway. They need pounding into shape. To do that God allows trouble into our lives. Troubles are God’s compactors. They pound away at us causing us to think right, live right, and trust in God right. This is very important, for if it were not for the troubles we face, we never give a thought to God, or the danger we are in as we live in this world.

Topic: Life’s Troubles (Exodus 5:22-23; 6:1).
Theme: God can cause good things to come out of your Worst Troubles

I. Troubles teach us the Truth about his life (5:22-23).
a. One of the most important lessons we need to learn, and it is not an easy one, is that this life is not our friend.
b. If you have ever tried to do farming, or even gardening, you will know this is true. To make your garden nice you literally have to fight it. To keep it nice you have to keep on fighting it. If you do not it will beat you.
c. Living in this life is like pushing a rock up hill. You have to keep the pressure on, or it will roll back down again.
d. Our motto should be “I live, therefore, I struggle.” All of us struggle. It does not matter who we are, it does not matter how old we are, or how rich we are. We all struggle. All living things have to struggle to survive. Darwin called it Survival of the fittest.” I would call it “the troubles of the breathing.” If you breathe you are going to have trouble.
e. When we are born, what is the first thing we experience? A smack to make us cry and take our first breath. And those smacks will continue till the very last breath we take. Every day will bring it’s own difficulties. Now the fact that you struggle every day should teach you something about the nature of this life. This life is not human friendly. To struggle is to live
f. James shared last week about a Chinese man who committed suicide. What happened? He decided that he was not going to fight anymore. He gave up doing what we all have to do.
g. Nor does becoming a Christian mean that you will not have to struggle anymore. Christ told his followers very plainly that in this life they would have troubles. Our troubles do not stop until we get to heaven. There are some churches that will preach that if you are a Christian then in this life you will have blessings. That may be true spiritually, but it is not true physically.
h. Mr. Zhang (Able) was telling me this week in the car that Chairman Mau once said, “To fight against heaven, the earth and your enemies is delightful.” Even Mau knew that life was a struggle. Though I don’t think it is delightful - it might be necessary, but not delightful.
i. This life is like those pit bull terriers. The owners will tell you how well behaved they are, how loyal, how gentle, but then you will hear about one that turns on a child and rips it to pieces. Ah, now we see the real nature of the dog. But we should have known it from the beginning, it was obvious. Just look at its jaws and teeth. It does not have teeth like that so that it can eat grass. No, it has jaws like a lion so that it can act like a lion. Those teeth are warning us that it is savage and dangerous. It is the same with the world. We think it is nice, and gentle, until it bites us and then we begin to see its real nature.
j. Now, the troubles you face help you to realize this.
II. Troubles teach us the truth about ourselves.
a. Talking about pit bull terriers, I think there is a pit bull in each of us. If you face enough trouble you will see how savage and mean we really are.
b. Who are you? What are you really like? Are you patient? Are you faithful? Are you loving? Are you courageous? You really don’t know until you are tested by troubles. When in school, how much are you learning? You really don’t know until you are tested.
c. I cannot remember much I learned is school, but I do remember something we did in chemistry. They gave us these little pieces of litmus paper and told us to dip them in the different chemicals. The paper would turn a different colour dependent on what chemical it was dipped into. That is what trials are like. They cause you to go different colours so that you can see what you really are like. Some troubles will cause you to go red with anger. Others will turn you blue with sadness; some will turn you green with envy, or pink with embarrassment. Some will turn you black with depression, or yellow with cowardice.
d. But when you look at what the Bible says it tells us what troubles should really do, they should turn us into silver. That is how you should come out. Like silver. That is what God wants. Most of us, unfortunately, come out like Jell-O! This is what happened to the Israelites. Instead of turning them to silver, they turned to yellow Jell-O. Poor old Moses got the blame.
e. We once had a tortoise. The boys would have great fun holding it up to the mirror so that it could see itself. You know what it did when it saw its reflection, it would snap at the mirror. This is what we do when we are unhappy. We tend to snap at other people. We blame those who are trying to help us. The real problem is ourselves.
f. The English have a proverb that goes like this: We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed. Recognize that it is possible to do that but then resist living like that. Don’t allow your troubles to turn you sour and miserable.
g. Last Sunday Greece beat Portugal in the European cup. It was a shock to everyone, especially the Portuguese. The Greeks were delighted; but the Portuguese were disappointed. However, the Portuguese fans still went ahead with their celebration after the defeat. I thought that was good. They did not let their disappointment spoil their life.
III. Troubles teach us about the uncertainty of the Future.
a. We should all know that our futures in this life are uncertain, but it takes us a while to learn it. When we are young we look to the future with optimism. After we have been around a while we begin to have our doubts.
b. The Israelites groaned because of their captivity. The future seemed hopeless. Finally, God started the rescue process and the future seemed worse!
c. You guys in China felt the difficulties of life there. You looked forward to Canada, but then you arrived here and though the country was different, the troubles were the same. The troubles followed you over here, perhaps stored in your luggage. In fact, they seemed to have become worse. Perhaps they are acting up because they are home sick.
d. In China, you had trouble because you had a job; here you have trouble because you don’t have a job. In China, you have trouble because people do understand what you say; here you have trouble because people do not understand what you say.
e. How can you handle this? You must place the future in the hands of God. James 4:13-16. The Old Chinese knew this. They said that we couldn’t take a single step unless heaven wills it.
f. You say, “What difference will that make?” All the difference in the world. I remember when I first came to Canada; I did not like it at all. I was home sick the winters were hard; I could not work because I was a student, and so I did not have much money. I had no car and so I had to walk to school. I thought that I would stay a year and then go back to England and plant a church full of English people. Look what God did. He made it so that I would stay in Canada and plant a church full of Chinese people. What would have happened if I had insisted on my own way? If I had said, “I don’t care what God wants me to do, I am going back to England?” We would not be here today. I would not have a great marriage and good sons.
g. You guys are over here and you are experiencing many of the same troubles that I experienced. You have all your great plans to be rich and successful in Canada and you are disappointed. That man who committed suicide. He was disappointed because he lost his professional job. He would not do a labour job, and so he killed himself. If he had been able to say, “Things are as the Lord wills.” Who knows what great work he could have accomplished for God. Now, for sure, he can accomplish nothing. You are the same. Do not think that the future depends on your plans. It does not. Your future depends on what God will do. Get this into your mind. Then when your plans do not work out, you can say, “Oh, God has something different in mind for me.”
h. It is the troubles and the disappointments that will guide you into the Lords’ will.
IV. Troubles drive us to God for answers and deliverance (6:1).
a. The proof of prayer lies in the answer to prayer. I have been reading things lately that really try to explain prayer away. They say things like prayer does not change the things we pray for, it changes the person that prays so they will be satisfied that they do not have it. That is not true. If your baby is crying for food, will his crying make it so that he is not hungry anymore? No, he will cry all the more. Only the food – the answer to his cry will satisfy him.
b. It is the same with prayer. If you really pray, you will not be satisfied until you get the answer. If you do not get an answer then you have not prayed correctly.
c. There are many ways that God will answer our prayers. In Israel’s case, he started to answer by sending Moses to demand that Pharaoh let them go. That was the beginning of it. But Israel and even Moses did not like the prayer being answered in that way. They looked at what was happening; how Pharaoh was responding and it frightened them. They became sorry that they had prayed. The more they prayed the worse things were becoming.
d. I have known people in this church. They are working part-time jobs; they pay to get fulltime jobs. No sooner do they pray than they are sacked from their part-time job. “Oh,” they think, “What is the use of praying. Things only get worse.” Well answer me. How is God going to give a fulltime job if he does not get rid of the part-time job first? Even God cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs. That is what is happening in the story of the Exodus.
e. Notice that God does not tell Moses that he will stop the troubles, he tells him to wait and see what He is going to do. Now that is what we must do. After we pray the troubles may not stop, but what we are supposed to do is patiently wait to see what God will do.
f. God does not tell the trees that he will stop the wind and the rain and the snow and the frost. He says, “Be patient, and I will show you what I will do.” Those trees grow tall and dig deep and live for centuries because God does not stop their troubles.
g. Most of us never really pray until we need something. This is why trials can be useful. They are like little reminders that we cannot live successfully without God’s help.
h. Let me make this important point: troubles cannot destroy you unless you let them. Your life is in God’s hand. Ultimately, only he can take your life away. It is like the famous story of how an old man in a village once handled a group of young men who were jealous of his wisdom and decided to trap him. The youths planned to show him a bird in their hand and ask the old man whether it was dead or alive. If he said it was dead, they would let it fly. If he said it was alive, they would close the hand and crush it proving the old man wrong. They approached him and asked: "Old man, is the bird dead or alive?" "Young man," he said after a long pause, "it is in your hands." You are in God’s hands. If you live or die it is God who determines it not you. The troubles you experience therefore cannot destroy you without his permission. So, do not fear them, try to learn what you can from them about life and about God.
i. The great example of course is the life of Christ. He was known as “the man of sorrows.” His life was filled with troubles, and yet it was through his troubles that he accomplished so much good for all of us. Every hardship he faced, every threat that was made against him, evey argument he had, every lie that people told against him, and every drop of blood he shed on the way to Calvary fulfilled a purpose. The purpose was the fulfillment of God’s will. And like Moses the human race waited to see this happen. God did this for you and for me, and for all. We are privileged because we have seen that it has already been accomplished two thousand years ago.
Conclusion:
Nobody likes troubles, just like, I am sure, my driveway did not like pounding. But if those troubles serve to make us think right about this world, and about ourselves. And if those troubles cause us to realize just how uncertain the future is and they drive us to God in faith and prayer, then they serve a good purpose in our lives.
But is it really true? Will God act to work out his will in your life? Many will not believe it. They will think their troubles are pointless and meaningless. The entire struggle is for nothing. And there is a sense in which if your troubles do not drive you to God then they are right. Their pain their struggles are pointless and will accomplish nothing.

Once upon a time, a man was ship wreaked on a desert Island. The Island was beautiful. It had fresh water, fruits of all kinds, and plenty of animal life to eat. The man thought he had found paradise, and he would have stayed on that island except for one thing, it was full of stinging insects. Every time he went out of his little hut the insects would come and bite him. It was the insects that made him what to leave, and so he started making a boat, and as soon as it was ready he set sail, and sailed all the way home. The troubles of this life are like those stinging insects. They make us homesick for Heaven – our real home. Let the troubles of this life cause you to seek the better home that God has prepared for you. Do not be like the Israelites who faced the troubles of this life and did not want to escape. The troubles are meant to make us want to escape.

May we not be so foolish that we fail to learn the lesson of our troubles. May they cause us to escape to Christ and the cross. Only there will we see what God has done. Only there we will experience forgiveness and hope. Only there we will find a trouble free world called Heaven.