Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 31, 2020 | [re]START - Restart Your Engines!

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May 31, 2020 | [re]START - Restart Your Engines! · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love that new bumper video for our new summer series restart.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's been 12 weeks that we've been doing this, a lot longer than anybody thought that we would be out of church when it started.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And during this time, uh, we've heard from a number of you that you found new ways to, you've you've grown spiritually, you found new ways to handle uh family life, that uh that uh a lot of things have changed, and things have changed to some extent for us as well, because uh, you know, we've developed more technology, and I'm gonna kind of miss all of this all of this fun that we have here at our One Service on Sunday morning, but I'm excited about getting back together and showing you the ways that we can restart and that we've changed.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to say that whether you come and join us next Sunday for our first gathered meeting again, or whether you decide for safety or whatever reason to stay at home, we're we're just glad that you uh called Topeka Bible Church, your home church.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh just before I start this message, uh my heart is burdened for what's happening in Minnesota and around the country.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So would you bow with me in a word of prayer for that?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, evil has been done uh up in St.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, Minnesota.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a murder, George Floyd.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray for his family, we pray for his friends, we cry out for justice, especially when evil and injustice have been perpetrated by the very people whom we look to for justice.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we ask, Lord, that you would uh bring about justice in this case and give the leaders in St.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Paul and in the other major cities of our country today the courage to maintain law and order, even when it was law officers who did this crime to protect good people from bad people who, for personal gain, would take advantage of evil to do more evil.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we pray that with justice you would bring calm into the chaos in Minnesota and across our land.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: For some we know, anger and hurt will never heal in this lifetime.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Broken trust in officers of the law will never be restored, and that makes us sad.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Even so come, Lord Jesus, to establish justice and peace over the whole earth as waters cover the sea.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, please give us hearts, give your people hearts on fire for truth and goodness and beauty and justice and liberty and equality in Jesus' name.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So um, it's one of the most famous commands in all of sports, certainly the most famous command in uh auto racing.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's NASCAR's favorite line, gentlemen, start your engines.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to believe that it happened this year, but it did, this past February, in one of the last great sporting events uh that's been held in our country before we locked down.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our president uttered that line to start the Daytona 500.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And now, three months later, it's sort of like we're all in our cars at the starting line, and we're hearing that command from our leaders again.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Gentlemen, ladies, everyone, start your engines.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: But to the surprise of many of us, uh, we are feeling a strange reluctance to do so.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you: are you secretly dreading the end of stay-at-home orders and a return to normalcy, whatever that may look like in the wake of the coronavirus?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: If so, join the club.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: For those of us who haven't lost our job or loved ones to the pandemic, life has shrunk to something small, something simple.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, the quarantine has brought about its own set of stressors.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's always a, but there's always a certain comfort in being cocooned, in being uh limited, our routines limited to just a few familiar, permissible daily activities and just having to take care of the people and the pets and the things in our immediate bubble.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: For some of you, moms, I know, the last couple of months of being in lockdown with your family, have taken the old daily anxiety and frustration that you used to feel, that used to weigh on you, and have replaced it with this underlying sort of sense of being safe and calm.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: More than a sense of, well, here's where we're safe at home from the coronavirus.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's more of a sense, some of you say, of this is where I'm supposed to stay forever.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Contentment.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're happy because your family life is now filled with less of the bad and more of the good, less of the bad things like squabbles over the bathroom, or whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher or take out the trash, or which of you two has to take the kids to sporting or dance activities.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And more of the good things like lazy mornings with extra cuddles and slow breakfasts, finishing long postponed home repairs, walks and bike rides together, family meals around the table.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Who wouldn't want those days of peace and contentment to last forever?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: During the last two months, I think Melody and I have sat out on our porch, on our patio, sipping coffee without guilt, more than in the last 20 months.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the folks who study human psychology and who teach it are fascinated right now by this secret dread of life and routines going back to the way they were before the pandemic.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: They say it makes sense, Dr.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Barbara Frederickson, who's the distinguished professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, puts it this way.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: She says it's not just the fear of breaking out of the cocoon and facing what's out there.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: She says it's the slowing down of being at home allows us to feel all kinds of positive emotions that we typically race past, like the coziness of connections and the deep in your bones gratitude of being healthy and of being well fed.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I love this picture, by the way, uh, from an old movie or whatever, of people hiding out down below their house and finally coming out after, I don't know, the atomic bomb or something like that.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now the question is, this is us now getting ready to come out.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready for this?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Beth Healy is uh a doctor, emergency, actually, emergency medicine doctor, spent a year at a research base, space research base, actually, in Antarctica, studying the effects of long-term isolation on her professional colleagues up there.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: A whole year.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, some people really flourished in the simple life isolation, she says.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: They learned a language, they made art, it was liberating for them.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was a rich period of personal growth.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it went when it came time for them to leave the isolation of cold, dark Antarctica and to return to the busy, noisy world, she says, they were reluctant to leave that simple life, linked with their small crew.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: They resented it.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want the experience to end.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when that first plane landed down in Antarctica from civilization to take them back home, they were upset.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So here it is.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: We may have felt healthy and loved and well fed before the lockdown, but somehow now we appreciate it more.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: In a world that's crazy and still unpredictable, we feel safer and calmer, many of us do, being out of the fast pace of the rat race.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in this series, this summer, this series restart, we're gonna talk about that uh phrase, the new normal, that is being used so nauseatingly often that it triggers us to automatically switch channels.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna talk about what it could be, we're gonna talk about it should be, we're gonna talk about new rhythms, we're gonna talk about new routines that God has for us.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: But in this opening talk, I want to talk directly to those of us who secretly dread ending the lockdown, starting your engine, leaving your shelter in place cocoons.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: The question?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: What does God say to us about our reluctance to restart, our dread of restarting our engines?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: The short answer is that God says to us, keep calm and restart your engines.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Keep calm, restart your life.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to take you to a place in the Bible to show you two stories.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Come to us from some people's favorite book in the Bible, the book of Exodus.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, open it to chapter two, and we're gonna meander on through to chapter six.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Book of Exodus, chapter two from the Christian Standard Bible.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, these two stories have some things in common.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them have to do with the Hebrews, but the number 40 is also a key number in both of these stories.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a number that we're really familiar with right now, only we use the Italian, the Venetian word for the number.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: 40, we use the word quarantine.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: The word quarantine means 40 days because 40 days was the length of time, the period of isolation to protect against plagues.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: So they called it quarantine.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we call it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And here we have a story about a man and a group of people who wanted to stay in quarantine.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this first story that I'm going to tell you is about a man who was who had become content sheltering in place for 40 years and he didn't want to restart his engine and rejoin the world.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the second story is about a large community of people who'd become content where they were living for 400 years, even though it was a dark cocoon and they didn't want to leave it.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, story number one is about one of the great men of history.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Few men loom as large in history or on the pages of scripture as this man Moses.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's the most important prophet in the religion of Judaism.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's mentioned more than anyone else by far in the Quran of Islam.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, over 30, about 30 times as often as Muhammad.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in the Bible, this giant, Moses, takes up more room than anyone else except for Jesus himself.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know the story you learn it in Sunday school, how Moses is born as a Hebrew baby, and he survives the genocidal slaughter of all Hebrew boy babies by being miraculously adopted by none other than Pharaoh's daughter as her own son.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And during the first 40 years of his life, he's raised as an Egyptian prince, as a royal, educated in the palace.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: He escapes doing all that forced labor enslavement that his fellow Hebrews are having to do.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: But he knows that he's Hebrew.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: He knows he's not Egyptian, and one day at age 40, when he sees an Egyptian slave driver beating up a Hebrew man, he strikes and kills that man.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then he finds out that the secret's going public and he's in trouble, so he runs for his life.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we read when Pharaoh heard of what he did, Exodus 2.15, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's about a 250-mile hike he took.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: He left uh uh, this is called the Gulf of, this is the Suez Gulf, and this is the Gulf of Akbar, or I Lot right here.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Israel is up north.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Nile River, this is the land of Egypt taken from the sky, and Moses heads across Sinai into the land of Midian, or today Saudi Arabia.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the Red Sea.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a long hike over hot ground for Moses, and he comes there and he flees to Midian, we I think, we think, because this uh while uh the Sinai Desert wasn't uh Egypt, it was under Egyptian control.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So Midian is just out of Egyptian control, and Moses knows that the Midianites that he's going to are distant relatives way back through Abraham, Abraham's fourth son.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So Abraham sits down by a well in Midian, and a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water for their flock.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some shepherds came along and drove them away.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: But Moses got up and he came to their rescue and he watered their flock.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love that story.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it shows you, here you go, here, here's a royal, here's a noble, here's one of the greatest, you know, young men in the world.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he is now serving, he's now driving away men to help out a young woman.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is John Wayne's move right here, and it's pretty cool.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you'd think the girls would stay around and chat with them, but you know, that's not done in ancient Near Eastern society, and they're covered head to toe anyway.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: So they leave.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's all alone again.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the girls returned to their father and he asked them, Why have you returned so early?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they say an Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: He even drew water for us and watered the flock.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So where is he?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: He asked his daughters.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you leave the man behind, invite him to eat dinner?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Moses agreed to stay with the man.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So at supper, the guy asked Moses to stay with him.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that something?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: That Moses agrees to stay with him.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Moses, he's been living in the palace.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Moses, he is a stud.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Moses.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: He could, you know, he's been living in uh, you know, in the Hilton Hotel for years, and now he agrees to stay on the backside of a desert, basically in a black tent with uh Midianite shepherd.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then we read that the man gave his daughter Zipera to Moses in marriage.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, will be.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm sorry.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds bad.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Zippra was probably just a great gal, but Moses, of course, was in line to get a to get a uh some sort of an Egyptian hottie like Cleopatra.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses is eating humble pie, right?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's it's just astounding.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: He is he is he is this royal prince, and yet now he uh he is becoming, I mean, he's getting humbled.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Zippra gives birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershem, and that word means foreigner, because that's how Moses felt, saying, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Word could be translated, by the way, as immigrant, sojourner, something like that.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is now Moses' life.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly, between the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3, 40 years pass.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we find out that Moses becomes a shepherd.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Moses is tending flocks, and they're not even his flocks, they're the flocks of his father-in-law in the wilderness.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now we read in chapter 3, 1 through 10.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro's father-in-law, the priest of Midian.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness, and he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to put yourself in Moses' sandals for a moment.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're tending sheep day after day, week after week, in particularly isolated parts of the wilderness.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're not even your sheep, belong to someone else, but you've learned to like it that way.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Long ago in a land far, far away, you were rich.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: You were a royal.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: You were in the limelight.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: You were the Prince Harry, you were the Prince William.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you went downtown, heads turned, you were always going downtown, of course, always going here, always going there, always busy, always surrounded by adoring fans.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: That seemed like the good life back then.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you think back on that now, you think back on the glory of Egypt and that busy life and your place in it, and after 40 years, you're glad to be away.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your old friends wouldn't believe it if they saw you, if they saw that you're a shepherd, which is a poor man's job, a smelly job.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Whole days go by without you seeing or even talking to one other person, but you're sheltering in place, far from danger.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're safe and you're content until a really strange thing happens.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: There in the wilderness, you suddenly see something weird.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: The angel of Yahweh appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And God called to him from within the bush, saying, Moses, Moses, here I am.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here am I, he answered.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Great reply.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Tends to mean, hey, whatever you want, I'll give you.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Only in this case, Moses changes his mind, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: So God says to him, I'm the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, God of Jacob.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Moses hid his face, smart guy, because he's afraid to look at God, knowing that that's how you turn into stone.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not really, but that's how you die.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So then the Lord said, I've observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and I've heard them crying out because of their oppressors.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know about their sufferings, and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing of milk and honey, honey, the territory of the Canaanites and a bunch of other rites.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: God says this is my plan.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So because the Israelites cry for help has come to me, and I have also seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here it comes.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, go.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, go.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, leave your cocoon, get out of isolation, go back.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sending it a Pharaoh so that you may lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine how that's the last thing that Moses expects, and now that's the last thing he wants.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he gives God five no thank yous, five reasons why God should let him out of this.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to read the text, just gonna summarize them.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: His five excuses in chapters three and four of Exodus.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, he says, I'm a nobody.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: You got the wrong dude here.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the wrong guy.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: You want someone else.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Second excuse, I'm ignorant, you know.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know your name.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know your God, but gods have names.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people in Egypt are surrounded by 2,000 god, literally 2,000 gods.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I know God.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had to learn their names.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: People are gonna laugh me out of town if I go down to Egypt and tell them some no-name God spoke to me, right?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So God's reply is, I am who I am.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: First reply was, I'll be with you.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're a nobody, yeah.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be with you.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're ignorant, I am who I am, that's my name.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then the excuse, maybe the best one is I'm gonna fail.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna convince anyone, certainly not.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Amenhotep II, the great pharaoh of Egypt, whom I knew as a boy.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't believe me, I wouldn't convince myself.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I think that's the maybe the best of the excuses is that we know this about 1446 BC, and the Pharaoh of Egypt is none other than Amenhotep II or Amenhotep II, son of Tutmos III, two of the greatest pharaohs in Egyptian history.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and this guy, Amenhotep II, we have statues of him.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: We've even got his mummy in the Cairo Museum, and Bob Chisholm, head of the Old Testament Party of Dal Seminary, Amenhotep II was the Bo Jackson of ancient Egypt.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we say that deliberately because there's all kinds of quotations about him where we read that that he was the fastest runner in Egypt.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was the best, he could draw the heaviest bow and he could shoot arrows through six, six-inch copper stuff.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, nobody could do that stuff.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: He was the strongest guy.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: He could row for three miles without stopping.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and I mean, he was just, and the thing is, if you visit his mummy in the Cairo Museum, you see that it's significantly taller than the other mummies and broad-shouldered.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, so Amin Hotep is smart, he's young, less than half, you know, he's about half Moses' age, and and look at that, he's carrying balls or whatever, bombs in his hand, just like Bo used to.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's no wonder that Moses goes, I don't stand a chance against this guy.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: This guy is just uh and and the other thing is is that they say there was no rider in all of the known world in that time who could ride horses like Amenhotep II could ride more than one horse at a time and so forth.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, He's not gonna believe me.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And God's answer is, you know, well, I'll give you signs and wonders.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't tell them there's gonna be plagues, he says signs and wonders.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then fourth excuse is, hey, this isn't my gift.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yes, come here and be a public speaker.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a public speaker, another Jewish tradition is that Moses stammered, or and they have a whole story about that, that he stuttered.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think, I don't think that's required.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because uh public speaking terrifies a lot of us.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know when I was growing up, I did not know anyone in the world who is more scared of speaking out in public or in front of anybody than me.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was the most scared person I knew.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then I go to college and it was a shock.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I remember my heart stopping that first day when you get that list of required courses, and it said on there uh one course you had to take for graduate in speech.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, What?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you're assigned a faculty counselor there at Wheaton College and so forth, and he's going, let's work out our schedule for the next year.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Everybody else is getting rid of speech the first semester, and I say, No, uh-uh, not me.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: In second semester, no, thank you, not me.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: In second year, he says, we've got to get rid of the rest of the basic card courses.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Speech.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, No, not me.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, I delay that thing to the last semester of my senior year so that I'm in a class with all freshmen and I barely passed the thing, and I'm terrified, but I knew I couldn't graduate otherwise.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually had a little brother who was a lot like me who went through the same college, we can college, got to the last semester, couldn't take the speech course, didn't graduate, went back home in shame.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the tough, right?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Public speaking.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if if that's what you feel, if your excuse is, you know, I can't speak out, I can't witness, can't talk with people, can't teach Sunday school, can't help lead a group or whatever, ask me sometime how I got from there where I was to here.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: My mother was the most surprised person in the world when I got into public speaking.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, she was the most shocked the first time she saw me even answer the front door.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not my gift.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, please, please, please let me stay.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Would you please send somebody else?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rather stay right here.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's or Moses' here am I has now turned into a here am I, Lord, send somebody else.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: But God is shutting down his stay-at-home isolation.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: God has allowed him to become somebody for the first 40 years of his life as a prince in Pharaoh's court.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's allowed him then to become nobody for the next 40 years of his life in the far side of the wilderness, right?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses wanted it to stay that way.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: But now, for the last 40 years of his life, God is telling Moses, summoning this nobody to be a somebody for him.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And just like that, God puts an end to his lockdown, to his quarantine.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to notice something, by the way, in this conversation.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody ever says this, but uh, you know, there's something that strikes me about this conversation between Moses and God.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Moses has all kinds of insecurities.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: He has these fears, doesn't know what's going on.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Think for a second.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: God is omniscient, God knows everything, God is all-powerful, God could have solved Moses' insecurities, God could have smoothed the path, greased the way a little bit for Moses to slip out of the cocoon, get out of the womb, you know, and so forth.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: He could have erased his uncertainty by just telling him ahead of time what was going to happen.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: He could have said to Moses, you're right.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to convince Bo, Aminho, Jackson, Napoleon.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: He was the Napoleon of Egypt.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to reject you.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to hate you.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to work the Hebrews even harder, and then they're going to hate you too.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: But that'll be my trigger.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'm going to bring the mightiest nation in the whole world to its knees, this great Pharaoh, this great Egypt, with not one, not two, not three, but ten terrible plagues.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end, Pharaoh will be begging you to go.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the Israelites will follow you like the sheep are following you.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: God's sovereign, right?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: God is all-powerful.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: He knew Moses is feeling safe at home in Midian.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to leave it.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to restart the rat race in Egypt.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: With just a few words, with a little peek into the future, God could have wiped away Moses' fears and insecurities.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: But he didn't.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why not?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not quite sure, but he doesn't do it with me and you either, does he?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: He just doesn't.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not his style.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: His style is to say this.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: His style is to say, start your engines.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, go.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Just trust me.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what he did with Moses.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And right now, that's what he's doing with you and me.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses goes, and initially it works out, his brother Aaron joins up.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he now has a sidekick who can help him with communication.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: In Egypt, he calls together, Moses calls together the leaders of the Hebrews, and they say, Well, if God's told you to go to Amenetep and tell him to let his people go, and if Pharaoh will do it, and God's going to give us a land of our own, hey, thumbs up.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Go for it.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses and Aaron go for it, and it turns out very badly.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Moses has decided to keep calm and restart his life, but it's all turns black.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Moses and Aaron go in, they say to Pharaoh, This is what the Lord the God of Israel says, let my people go, so they may hold a festival for me in the wilderness.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: But Pharaoh responds, who is Yahweh?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: That I should obey him by letting Israel go.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, Yahweh.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Besides, I'm not going to let Israel go.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: That very day.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh commands the overseers of the people as well as their foremen, don't continue to supply the people with straw for making bricks as before.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: They got to go and gather straw for themselves.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get them focused not on leaving the country.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get them focused on work.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And those of you who, like I, have been in places overseas in third world countries where people make bricks, you know that bricks don't hang together without straw.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: So people are always gathering dead bits of twig and so forth to put in the bricks as they bake underneath the sun.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Israel is now in deep trouble.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to take them at least twice as much time to forage around for straw since the Egyptians have closed their warehouses, which are full of straw, and so they are desperate.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: But require, says Pharaoh, the same quota of bricks from them as they were making before.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Don't reduce it for their slackers.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they're crying out, let's go and sacrifice to our God.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Impose heavier work on them so they'll focus on work.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that happens that way.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the Israelite foreman, whom Pharaoh's slave drivers had said of the people, were beaten because they couldn't pull it off.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they ask, why haven't you finished making your prescribed, you know, a number of bricks yesterday or today as you did before?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the foreman go in and cry for help to the Pharaoh.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit of Stockholm syndrome here.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna go to your, you're gonna go to the people who are oppressing you and you're gonna talk to them as though they're nice.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you teaching, treating your servants this way?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: But he said, You're slackers.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now get to work, no straw will be given to you.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: You must produce the same quantity of brick.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: So of course, what do they do?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: They leave Pharaoh confront Moses and Aaron and say, We hate you.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: We hate you.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: May the Lord take note of you and judge, they said to them, because you've made us reek to Pharaoh and his officials, putting a sword in their hand to kill us.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Moses and Aaron now.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh hates them, their own people hate them.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the rest of the story is that this kicks off, this triggers the plagues, and there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and the Israelites refuse to talk to their own leader, Moses, during this time.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're so mad, but they're watching these plagues and they're going, wow.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, Moses and his people get together for conversation before plague number 10, because Moses says, Listen, this is really important.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: The death angel's going over, you need to kill a lamb, you need to put its blood in the shape of a cross over the lintel and over the sides of your door.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: You need to put this blood there, and when the and when the when the because there's going to be a huge plague, death of the firstborn.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when the angel of death flies over, when he sees the blood, he will pass over you, so that the plague will not be on you to destroy you when he smites the land of Egypt.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's exactly what happened.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then that night, as the wailing all across Egypt, and as Pharaoh's child's son dies, crying, he says, get out of here.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the Israelites follow Moses.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you think, wow, everything's good.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: The fact of the matter is, they never wanted to leave.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: We find that just almost immediately when they get caught between Pharaoh and the deep Red Sea.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we find their complaint to Moses, they look up and they're the Egyptians coming after them.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the Israelites are terrified, and they say to Moses, get this, what have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't this what we told you in Egypt, leave us alone so that we may serve the Egyptians?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that astounding?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: You say, no, that's impossible.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: That people who are in slavery working hard and have no freedom, it's impossible that they would get used to this and say, just leave us here.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Wrong.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: We find that this is true in psychology, that people who are kidnapped somehow develop sometimes an attraction for their captors, and they refuse to testify against them.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we find in this case that though they've been slaves in a sense for 400 years, the Israelites say, you know what, we were comfortable there.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: We were quarantined, we're in lockdown, we knew what to expect.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And now then, though they escaped the Red Sea, we find that after a few more weeks, they say, and we were fed well there.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: The entire Israelite community grumbled against Mosaner in the wilderness.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites said, if only we died by the Lord's hand in the land of Egypt when we sat by pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't want to leave.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: We loved it back there.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what they were feeling.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: They were feeling a longing for isolation.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they keep complaining, as you know.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's the last of my verses, but but they keep going on for weeks and months saying Egypt was the best.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: We had meat there, we had onions, we had garlic.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: We should have back there.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't want to leave.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they ruined the rest of their lives with this fixation on the safe life.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Back in Egypt, God finally gets a belly full of it and says, Okay, I'll give you another 40 years here in the wilderness.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your children will get over this fixation, and I'll take them into the promised land.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it happened just that way.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: It did.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, God says to their children as they stand on the border of the promised land, about to start a new life and a new normal.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: He says, be strong, courageous, don't be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've been in isolation lately.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: We are reluctant, some of us, to leave that isolation, to leave that place and restart our engines, restart our life.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: The United States was a similar kind of isolation, you might say, back in the 1930s.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Back then, uh we were not the mightiest country in the world, far from it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Japan was mighty in the 1930s.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Germany under Hitler was mighty.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Italy under Mussolini was a mighty country.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Russia under Stalin was mighty, and they were all dividing up the world.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: The United States was still reeling from the Great Depression.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Our army was not impressive.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was surprised going back and reading our history books to find out the United States Army back then wasn't in even the top five in the world, wasn't in the top 10.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was barely in the top 20 in the world.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number 16, only 130,000 soldiers and officers.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Number 16, we were behind Czechoslovakia.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Poland had a bigger army.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: So did Romania, Spain, and Turkey.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't see ourselves as a world leader.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the 1930, 1933, when the world invited the United States to join in an all-world economic summit conference, President Roosevelt said, no thanks.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: We did not see ourselves as a great leader.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: We were content to stay at home.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: We were content to quarantine, to shelter in place, to stay in isolation from world politics.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when Hitler suddenly broke all those treaties, and in September of 1939, the same month this church, Topeka Bible Church, was founded, when he invaded Poland and then invaded France six months later and took them over, the United States stayed on the sidelines.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then Great Britain was under attack.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Winston Churchill pled with Roosevelt and America to help.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: We said we'd prefer to stay over here, thank you.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: A part of it was fear, part of it was comfort, part of it was we were sheltering in place.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the midst of all of this, when we had uh lots and lots of us uh of Americans saying, let's stay isolated, keep the U.S.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: out of war, be neutral, something happened on December the 7th, 1941, as you know.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: That was that uh Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the dove of America turned into a hawk.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: We restarted our engines, we ramped up our economy, we jumped into war, and you know the rest.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of uncertainty.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't easy, there were no guarantees, there was loss.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: My Uncle Tom, age 20, my father's youngest brother, joined General Patton's infantry in its move across Europe.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: I went through France, and on March the 5th, 1945, he and his company, Uncle Tom and his company, were at the Saar River in Germany, and they were attacked by a German tank.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm the sort of the caretaker of the of the letters and so forth my grandmother got from the government.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I read here a letter from the chaplain, headquarters, 302nd Infantry Regiment.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's with regret that we refer to the death of your son, Private Thomas Congden, 302nd Infantry Regiment, killed in action May, March 5th, 1945.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Private Congdon was engaged with his company in an important frontline action near the town of Sarag, Germany.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Across the Saar River, they were attacked by a German tank.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Private Congden and his fellow bazooka man went off to the flank to find the tank.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: The area was blanketed with artillery fire, mortar, and small arms fire.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Army investigation is established.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Both men gave their lives at this time.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have a letter signed by President Truman awarding my Uncle Tom a purple heart signed by Truman.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: There were costs, there was uncertainty, there was fear, but the cause was clear.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was time to leave isolation.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was time to save the world.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to say to you today that the message from the Lord today, I think, is restart your engines.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're reluctant, I know you're uncertain.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know you feel insecure, but just trust me.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Join me in a word of prayer.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Father, there are uh some of us that are eager, that are uh chomping at the bit to get back into uh into the speed and the pace and the busyness of life, but there are also many of us who, frankly, have enjoyed the slowdown and the simple life and the family life, and we've found great benefit in it, and we are reluctant and we feel insecure about getting back in.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, would you be our stay?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Would you remind us that you are with us, that we can trust you, that you've got it.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let me say just a word.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want to thank you for joining us online today.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um as you know, we uh are offering uh a service here together next week.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's June the 7th.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: We know that not all of you will feel safe joining us.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Our team will be here.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be live streaming, continuing to live stream just like we're doing today.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: That'll be 9.30 and 11, as uh as you've heard.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: And our hope is that as soon as you're really able, you will join us right here for the church gathered.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk about that next week.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, if you're there at home, sheltering at home, or halfway around the world as we know some of you are, we hope that you will continue to make the people Topeka Bible Church your church home.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.