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I have been given a question with the request that I attempt to answer it before we get down to the main theme of our study this afternoon, and the question runs as follows: Does the attribute of omnipresence apply to the earthly life of the Lord Jesus. The answer to that question and questions of that kind is a, is a topic that has exercised the biggest Christian brains in Europe for centuries. What I can say about it in two minutes, I really do not know. I do find it, however, in my own thinking a help always to remember that while Jesus Christ our Lord was truly and perfectly and completely human, he who was incarnate in Jesus Christ was nothing less than God, infinite. There is necessarily a mystery about the person of our Lord, as he himself observed, that only God can and does understand. No one knows the Son, save the Father. And here, as we contemplate such a mystery, the proper attitude is one of worship more than analysis. We must be careful how we speak of the Lord Jesus and what kind of rational deductions we make. He was God incarnate, but if you were to say, as the Old Testament says, well, God never slumbers or sleeps. And then you were to proceed to deduce that because Jesus Christ was God incarnate, he never slumbered or slept. You would, of course, be wrong. He fell asleep in the boat. He was truly human. But as far as I understand it, while our Lord was truly human, he was not merely human. He was the Word incarnate. And the Word was always omnipresent and never ceased to be anything else. There's no record that the body of our gracious Lord was omnipresent. But when we talk of omnipresence, we are not tied, of course, to things physical. I simply repeat that our Lord was truly human. His body knew the limitations of our time and space, of hunger and cold and heat and pain and sorrow and weakness, though not sin. But the one who was incarnate in Jesus Christ was God over all, blessed forevermore. With that, allow us now to read the passage for our last study, which is to be found in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter eleven. And we begin to read today from verse twenty three. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents because they saw he was a goodly child. They were not afraid of the king's commandments. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be evil entreated with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked unto the recompense of reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, which the Egyptians, assaying to do, were swallowed up. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been compassed about for seven days. By faith, Rahab the harlot perished not with them that were disobedient, having received the spies with peace. And what more shall I say? For the time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to fight armies of aliens. Women received their dead by a resurrection, and others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, evil intreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes of the earth. These all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made. Therefore, let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. The Lord give us good understanding of his word. In our studies together on these few occasions, we have been thinking, as you will remember, what it means to be a true believer. And on our first occasion, we noticed that the mark of a true believer is this, that he or she believes with all their heart the basic doctrines of the faith, the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of redemption, the re-doctrine, the doctrine of the second coming of our blessed Lord and of our gathering together with him when he comes. The doctrine of our Lord's coming in judgment, the setting up of his reign, and the final dissolution of this earth, the coming of the new heavens and the new earth. As we thought of that last doctrine, the solemn facts that our Lord is coming, and his coming will institute the solemn day of the Lord, the final dissolution of all things, we understood the more easily what the second section of this chapter was about. We found it was this, that if you have really believed in your heart, for instance, like Noah did, that God was going to destroy the world, it would turn you into a pilgrim and a stranger and a resident alien. And so we thought in the second session yesterday morning that the mark of a true believer is this, that a true believer, having heard the call of God, the summons of eternity, the glory of the city that have foundations, whose builder and maker is God, the true believer, having heard the call, begins to be a pilgrimage, starts out to take his first steps on the road that shall lead him through this temporary life and temporary world to the great eternity that lies beyond. As we thought at the end of that second section of the call and life of Abraham, we reminded, we were reminded that he looked for the city that hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God. And that led us on naturally to think of the third great section of this great chapter, Hebrews eleven, that deals with the next characteristic of faith, that faith, where it is true faith, will be tested by God. It will, as we found in Abraham, we thought of him and the testing of his faith and admired the logic by which he worked out that God would be true to his promise, so that even if, in response to God's word, he sacrificed Isaac, logic of faith told Abraham that God would raise him from the dead. The mark of true faith is that God will not only test it, he will, where necessary, redirect it. We heard again the story of Isaac, who got himself a little bit muddled up over this. Anxious to enjoy God's blessing, he for a little while mistook what blessing consists in and centered his, uh, uh, his attention not on the blessing itself, but on the joys and emotions and sensations that sometimes come when we enjoy the blessing of God. And because he centered his attention not on God's word or the blessing itself, but on the emotions and the sensations that come from God's blessing, he got himself deceived, as we are likely to do. If we pursue- pursue mere emotion and sensation, instead of allowing the emotion to come when God is pleased to give it and suffering any sensations that go along with it. If instead of just doing that, we concentrate on that, we shall possibly get deceived ourselves. What we must do is ever allow the Holy Spirit to redirect our faith, like the needle compass comes round always to point north. Our attention must always be focused on the word of God. Faith in his word that secures the blessing, and we'll let God give what emotions and sensations he cares to, to accompany it. And if our heart's direction is set upon God's word and on faith in that word, we may rest ac- secure that we have the blessing, and we can say to feelings, let feelings come, let feelings go. I have God's word, and I stake my eternity, my present, and my future upon what God has said. And we shall learn to be stable individuals and not driven around with every wind of emotion, not the prey and the victims to our moods and fancies, able to face joy, able to face sorrow, if our hearts are anchored on the rock of God's holy word. And we noticed too how faith was not only tested and then redirected, but in Jacob refined. And we saw evident need for faith in Jacob's case to be refined. He was a true believer, but in his early days he got up to some funny antics. We should all of us be a little bit nervous if Jacob's still uncorrected turned up in heaven. What ho? He'd not only have his own crown, but when you weren't looking, he'd have your crown as well, my brother, I shall see. Put in his heavenly bank deposit, you'd have to watch Jacob. Ha. And if Jacob and the rest of us are to be entrusted as stewards with unimaginable wealth, as we join our blessed Lord Jesus in the administration of the world to come, then first our faith must be refined, and all the dross and unworthy element in it, its selfishness, its, uh, greed, its deceitfulness, and so forth. The unselfish elements be burned out of it, so that what is left is solid, true gold of real, unadulterated faith. We ended up last night thinking of Joseph and admired in him the triumph of faith. He rose, as we were saying last night, to eminence, second only in command to Pharaoh in the whole of Egypt, and all its vast treasures were under his power. The political rearrangement of the country was in his hands. All its economic problems, worse than Mr. Lawson's, uh, were for him to solve, and the record is he solved them brilliantly. When he was dying, however, he gave commandment that he was not to be buried in Egypt. He might have been, he might have had his tomb in the Westminster Abbey of the time, but no, he said they were to take his bones because, said he, God will surely visit you and take you up out of Egypt and bring you at last back to Canaan. And we noticed how, in saying that, Joseph gives evidence that he had not only maintained his devotion, he had maintained his hope. And we must concentrate on that now because it is the key to the next part of this chapter that is about to come before us. The hope that Joseph entertains had been given by God to his ancestor Abraham. The record of it is to be found in Genesis fifteen, where God not only justified Abram in response to his faith, but God made a covenant with Abraham and to his seed that he should give them this great land to inherit it. And that great hope had been nurtured in the breast of succeeding generations of Abram's children. Many a mother in Egypt, as she nursed her children and brought them up in the nursery, had told them and instructed them from their earliest days onward that Egypt was not their home. They were only here pro tem. God in that covenant had promised that while they would be in Egypt for four hundred years, the day would eventually dawn when God himself would visit the people and he would redeem them, and they should come out with a great substance and come at long last to their inheritance. The future lay with them, and all the great purposes that God had for Abram and his seed. It must, do you not think, have seemed an absurd thing to Jesus- J- Joseph's colleagues in the civil service, if ever they caught sound of, uh, his request not to be buried in Egypt. Hello, Joe old chap. You can imagine the conversation, can't you, over coffee, uh, dulce and other things after lunch. I hear you turned down the Pharaoh's offer of a, of a the most prominent tomb in Egypt, uh, Joe old chap. What's all this? I mean, what's wrong with our marble? Don't you like our building designs here in Egypt? We could have given you a beautiful old tomb, you say, old chap. You could have had a name secure for posterity. I mean, why are you choosing oblivion, old boy? Well, how would you explain a thing like that to an old Egyptian pagan as well? Difficult, isn't it, to explain your hope sometimes to modern Irishmen, let alone ancient Egyptians. And Joseph said, well, you see, I tell you what really I believe. Oh yes, what is that? Well, I believe the future of the world lies with Israel. My, my, my, my, tell us a little bit more, Joe or boy. You say what? Well, here was Egypt, this mighty Egypt, leading political power in the Middle East in those days, if not in the world. And Israel, in Joseph's day, were very little more than an extended family and tribe. To say to Egypt that the future didn't lay with them, the future lay with this little tiny, not much more than a tribe of Israel, must have seemed absurd beyond everything. Joseph believed the hope that God had set before him. And we, with our hindsight, can see the point of it, can't we? How Joseph's hope has already been justified. Egypt crumbled to the dust. And that tiny little nation that was called Israel, Abraham's seed, remaining, as far as nations were concerned, comparatively small. But all the wonderful thing that has happened. Abram's seed has turned out to be not merely Jews born physically from him. Abram's seed has turned out to be nothing less than the Messiah, God incarnate. The future was indeed with Abram and his seed. And I tell you what, Joseph aloft, you know where he is now, clapping his hands with glee. He made the right decision. His name might have been simply a bit in the old musty-fusty records of some museum. Stands on the page of Holy Scripture, connected with God's central plan, not only for Earth, but for the whole universe. Joseph made his choice, and so must we. The future of the world, ladies and gentlemen, does not lie with America, nor Dublin, nor London, nor Bonn, nor Moscow. The future of the world lies with Abram and his seed, and preeminently with his seed, that is Jesus Christ, our Lord. Though men gave him a cross, Jesus shall yet reign where'er the sun doth its successive journeys run. Kingdom stretch from shore to shore till moon shall wax and wane no more. The mark of true faith is our decision, once again renewed surely this afternoon. With what future do you cast in your lot? Because your concept of the future, if it is real and genuine, will determine what your ambitions are, what your choices are, what your motivations are, what will be the goals you will set before you in life, and what the great objective. By the time Moses was born, history witnessed the beginnings of a very big change. The long given promise to Abraham, your seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs. They will be afflicted, but after four hundred years they will come out. That long given promise. Now the time had come for it to be fulfilled, and God's great prophetic clock began to work once more. The time had come for Israel to be delivered and to take the next big step forward in God's plans of redemption. We are to think of some of the people that in scripture are associated with the prosecution of that tremendous plan. Mark of true believers. Now, their warfare, their evangelism. We start in verse twenty three with Moses' parents. And when Moses was born, it says they saw he was a goodly child. They were under orders from Pharaoh that every child, male child, should be thrown into the Nile. If you didn't, of course, you risked summary execution. As his parents had to make a decision. They saw he was a goodly child, like all parents do their children, of course, and like all parents had ambitions for their children. Surely you have. If you never were ambitious before, you began to be ambitious when you have children, don't you? And they wanted the best. But then it was dangerous. If they didn't allow the child to be destroyed and they kept him, well, the child would inevitably grow up. What then would happen when he could no longer be hidden and Pharaoh's officers would send him out, and not only Moses be destroyed, but his parents be destroyed as well. Well, not knowing how God would open the door of the future, nonetheless, they made their decision to keep that lad and not let cruel Egypt destroy the child. Mercifully for us, we don't have to make that kind of decision as parents, do we? We live in a land of freedom. There's more than one way, though, that this world, energized by Satan himself, destroys children. I think of friends of mine in East Germany. In East Germany, they tell me, I remember one girlie of about twelve years old telling me how the teacher had told her straight in class, my dear, if you don't join the Young Communist Party, there is no higher education for you. I stood at one of the parts of the wall in Berlin one darkening evening. There were a few folks around, but up the corner here were three or four teenagers, or early twenties perhaps. So we edged across and we began to talk to them. When we found them friendly, I began to ask, is it true that if you are a Christian in this country, you'll never get promotion in your work? And one lad unbuttoned his, his jacket, and there was right across his jersey Jesus late, Jesus lives. Yes, he says. And if you're engaged in young people's work, there's no promotion at work in your secular work for you. It's a risky thing to do. In that situation, some Christian parents told their children to join the Young Communist Party. What would you have told your children as a Christian parent? No higher education, no advancement in work, if you don't join the party. No advancement in work if you show yourself too vigorous in Christian young people's work. What would you as parents have told your children to do? So it isn't true, is it, that some Christian parents would say, well, well, well, career, but that's important, you know, and uh, told their children to join a party. We needn't criticize them, need we? Can I ask you, parents, what is your ambition for your children? In the university where I was, there was a great Christian man of God named Basil Atkinson. He was deputy head of the university library, great scholar, but an enormous help to generations of undergraduates, delightful believer and expositor of the word. He told us once a Christian woman came up to him after a conference and said, Doctor Atkinson. He said, yes, what ho? Well, she said, now I'd like a little advice, you see, uh, uh, my boy. Now, uh, what career would you, uh, would you, uh, advise for him? Is he a believer? Yes, yes. What career? Well, he said, I should suggest being a missionary. A what? The woman was flabbergasted. No, no, she wanted a career for her boy. Well, what bigger career could you possibly have? What are our values, my dear parents, that you'd see for your children? What ambition would you have? We can't all be missionaries, can we? Many of us called to serve God in secular work, but this of this I'm sure that whether our work be secular or whether our work be sacred, surely the ambition that motivates us is that we should do all, secular or sacred, for the sake of Christ and the advancement of his glory. Alas, how many young folks, though Christians, are encouraged to put first worldly success and find themselves so pressured in the battles of life that they haven't scarce any time at all to give to spiritual things and the promotion of God's kingdom. It's the mark of a true believer that it shapes our ambitions. Ambitions. That our ambition is, whether secular or sacred, we seek first the interests of our Lord. When Moses grew up, he had to come to his own decision, of course. We're told he, when he was grown up, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and made his choices. There was, on the one side, to be evil entreated with the people of God. There was on the other side the possibility of enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season. And in those words, you see the things that led Moses to make his decision. Affliction with the people of God. Nobody enjoys affliction, I hope. It's a bad psychological trait if you do. And even to be associated with some of these Israelites must have been a pain, mustn't it? For somebody brought up in the Egyptian court with all the learning. And you will remember what they did to him when they got him out in the desert, or he got them out into the desert. What an unceasing trial they were to him. How they grumbled in spite of all he sacrificed for them. But he deliberately chose affliction with the people of God. You say, however, did the man manage to make that choice? Because he really believed that they were the people of God. That's why. We roll the word off our tongue so easily, don't we? Do you really believe it? Do you believe the woman sitting by your side is part of the people of God? It has often been said, I repeat it, if you saw that dear Christian lady sitting by your side, not as she is now, but what she will be in glory, you'd be tempted this very moment to get down on your knees and worship her. It wouldn't be a good thing to do, because not even the angels would allow you to worship them, but that good lady is destined to be glorious, far above the biggest angel of God that was ever invented. Part of the people of God. Companions of the Messiah himself. Heirs of God. Joint heirs with Christ. I know some of them came of lowly stock and lowly occupation. So did our blessed Lord. He was a carpenter, and they're not all that lowly, are they? But he came of humble stock. I shall reign with Christ one day. It is not being sentimental to ask, how will you measure the privilege of being associated with the people of God? But you see, you won't discern it naturally, says Paul, it will take an enlightening of the Holy Spirit in the eyes of our heart to see the exceeding riches of God's inheritance in the saints. Love your brethren, says Peter, don't love the world. And when you first hear it, it sounds perverse. Sometimes I say to Peter as I read it, dear Peter, my man, do be a little bit realist. You say love my brethren and don't love the world. Have you met my brethren, Peter, by any chance? I know some very polished people that are not believers, and you're telling me to love these believers. Why should I? Well, says Peter, because the world's going to fade, like the beauty flower and the grass, it fade. Your fellow believer, born again of the word of God, the incorruptible seed that lives and abides forever. Love your brethren, they last eternally. And he chose it, wise man, rather than the pleasures of Egypt's court. Some of those pleasures were really real pleasures. Oh, the aesthetic delights of the art of that time and the music. Wow. Send you into raptures, wouldn't they? But in spite of all the beauty of their arts and literature and culture, it was a culture flawed by sin, and at best it was but temporary, and Moses made his choice for the people of God and the eternal. And now you see what's come of Egypt and its so-called treasures. You can't say that Moses made the wrong decision, can you? He was debseen about two thousand years ago on the Mount of Transfiguration with the Lord. There weren't any pharaohs in sight. Then you'll see, uh, he, uh, countered the reproach of Christ, greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. He learned the lesson that our Lord subsequently taught. When all sorts of wrong things are said about you for the son of man's sake, not because you are a difficult character to get on with, but for the son of man's sake, then rejoice and leap for joy, for great is your reward in. They are honorable wounds that we carry for the sake of Christ. My dear brother, my sister, when we get home to glory and see the Savior's wounds, shall I have any wounds to show? Will you have any wounds to show? Have we spent our time far back behind the firing line and have never been wounded for the sake of Christ at all? Well, then came the great moment, you'll see, of deliverance. And here was Moses charged with the tremendous task of bringing these people out of Egypt. They had to be saved, first of all, from the wrath of God, for they were sinners. Then they had to be saved from the power of Pharaoh, for they were slaves. And by faith, Moses did both, did he not? But before he did it, look at verse twenty seven, Because verse twenty seven precedes verses twenty eight and twenty nine. He forsook Egypt, says verse twenty seven. That surely must mean that that occasion referred to came before the Passover and before the Red Sea. He forsook Egypt, must be talking about that period at the beginning of his life. He had come along and attempted to deliver a, a couple of Israelites who were being mal- maltreated by an Egyptian, and he'd slain the Egyptian. And the next day or so, he came along and he saw two Israelites having a scrap, and he tried to separate them, and they turned on him and accused him of having murdered the Egyptian, and Moses was afraid, and he left and got himself to the desert. It must refer, therefore, to that, uh, uh, fleeing of Egypt, and there is a difficulty at first, isn't there? Because it says he fled not fearing the wrath of the king, whereas when you read Exodus, it says that Moses feared and left. So what is verse twenty seven saying? I take it that, uh, verse twenty seven is saying that though in one sense Moses feared the wrath of the king, yet it wasn't a fear in that sense that dictated now his movements. This was a tactical withdrawal. If he had gone in and faced Pharaoh at this stage, the people of Israel would not have been ready to back Moses up or to follow him, and the whole thing could have been a debacle. So there was a tactical withdrawal, and Moses went into the desert. But, uh, he persevered, not fearing the wrath of the king, but seeing him who is invisible. And in spite of the almost insuperable might of Egypt, Moses persisted in his belief in God's purpose and the eventual deliverance. And what caused him to persist? He saw him who is invisible. And certainly he did, and notably, of course, at the burning bush. When God came down in the bush that burned with fire and yet was not consumed, and Moses drew near it and found it to be God himself in the middle of the thorn bush. Oh, what a vision it gave to Moses in those moments, and gave the solution to deliverance from Egypt. Do you know what Egypt stood for? Well, listen, if you will, for a moment, and you'll find out. When Moses eventually came back and went into the presence of Pharaoh, good morning, your majesty, he said, and I'm sent by God to tell you to let his people go. Come, come, Moses, he said, uh, is this a hangover or something? I mean, uh, what is this? What is your saying now? Well, the Israelites, Your Majesty, you'll see, Je- Lord Jehovah has sent me saying, let my people go. God has a purpose for them, you see. He's got a beautiful inheritance for them out there across the desert, and he demands that you let them go. I never heard this piffle in all my life, said Pharaoh. What poppycock stuff you do believe, Moses, you Jews la. You say, what do you say? Inheritance out there somewhere, uh, and the people have got to be let go to get at it. Nonsense. I tell you what, Me- for Moses, he said. Do you know what life is for you and your people? I tell you straight, there's no inheritance out there for you. Life is getting up in the morning, going to work, eating, more work, a little more eating, going to bed, sleep, get up in the morning, go to work, eat, sleep, play the odd game of football, go to bed again, get up in the morning, eat, sleep, yeah. That's life. It's all there is. There ain't no inheritance out there, and the sooner you learn to buckle down and accept that for you that's all life is, there is no future, it's just the daily round with a bit of games and TV put in, and that's that. That's a view that many moderns hold, isn't it? I know nothing about an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fade is not away, getting up Monday morning, going to work, eating, sleeping, marrying, having children. They grow up, they marry, they have children, then the next lot come and they have children. It all goes round in one colossal great circle. Eat, sleep, work, play. That's all there is. No, that's not all there is. And Moses came in to break that bondage, that limited view, that narrow-mindedness that sees this world as all there is. Moses came with the message that he heard again from the living God in the burning bush. Moses, you and your people had a past long before you came into Egypt. Moses, I had a plan and a purpose for your people, one day through them to bring in Abram's seed. And though Moses didn't know it then, he knows it now, the seed would be God incarnate. They had a past. And Moses, your people have a future. I've come down to deliver them and take them to their glorious inheritance. They have a future, Moses. Go and tell my people that. I know, Moses. I'm grateful for the opportunity to stand and remind you of what your situation is in this little planet and your little seventy years on the surface of this planet. This world is not all there is, my brother. Long before you came, you Topsy and you Bert, long before you came, the Almighty God of eternity had a plan and a purpose for you, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. And multi-million years from now, people will be still talking of you. You shall reign eternally with Christ. There is an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and it fades not away. This is no Red Riding Hood stuff. This our temporary planet was built as a stepping stone from the one great eternity to the other. And you haven't understood life unless you've understood life here in the context and framework of the great eternities. I love to stand with Moses at that bush and see him who is invisible, as he declares himself the God of my past and the God of my future and the God of my eternal present. I am that I am. Our Lord Jesus quoted that verse, didn't he? When the old Sadducees, sorry souls they were, had tried to prove to him there is no such thing as a resurrection. And he said, have you never heard- read what God said to Moses at the bush? I am the God of Mos- of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. I am. Not I was. If you were to come to me and say, Gooding, you come from England, do- don't you? Yes. Did you know Churchill? I shall say no, because I didn't. Oh. If you went to God and you say, God, did you know Abram? What do you think God will say? I do know Abram, here he is, look. Yes. For all live to him. When God enters into a relationship with you, that gives you yourself eternal life, all live to God. God of my past, God of my future, God of my present. He sees you not merely as you are at this moment, said he to Moses, if you want a confirmation of this, uh, is this, when you come out of Egypt, you'll worship me on this mountain. And when Moses eventually got to the mountain, he looked back and said, ah, that's come true, and God knew all in advance, did he? He did indeed. Oh, my brother, I tell you, my sister, he sees you not as you are merely now, he sees your circumstances ten days down the road. He sees you as you will be in glory in Christ. It's a God who designed and made you, and the God who gave his son for your redemption. God of my disability as well. Moses began to put on the best stammer, stammer he was capable of, and said, God, I don't really want to go because I'm not very good at speaking. I've got a bit of a stammer, you know. Says God, oh, don't, don't, don't, don't fool about Moses. Get going. No, as I said, I can't speak very well. Look here, said God, who made man blind or dumb or deaf? That's a hard question to answer, isn't it? For at one sense, we mustn't blame God for the sufferings of humanity, must we? Mother and father have got a child born congenitally mentally defective. I must be careful what I say, mustn't I? Mustn't go and say that God made it mentally defective, may I? As a result of the fall. But then, but then, where shall I find comfort? Has the universe got out of God's control? Did God so lose control that that infant was born like that? Or may I not believe that ultimately God, yes, what God allows and permits, God must be answerable for. Believe what you must. I find colossal comfort in this, that my disabilities, and they're not few. My disabilities, I anchor my soul in this, that I'm not some accident that got accidentally spoiled in this universe. He's a God of my very disability, and the disability that he would allow, he will take and use it and transform it. And make it serve his eternal purpose for me. The very hairs of your head are numbered. Your very disabilities, if you have any, known. He's a God who will stand by you loyally for eternity. Eternity. And And most Moses caught a sight of that God, and he persevered, and it took him through in the great work to which God called him. He taught Israel then how to avoid the wrath of God and offer the Passover sacrifice. Took a bit of nerve, don't you think? He had to be right, didn't he? That offering a sacrifice like this was the way to escape the wrath of God, because if he were wrong, there were going to be a lot of people dead in Israel. It's a solemn thing to stand before somebody, and their eternity is in balance, isn't it? And claim to have the answer that can save them from the wrath of God. How's your courage, my good man? There are Christian churches that have lost their nerve a den any longer preach the atonement. Because it's an unpopular doctrine. How's your courage? You still believe it? There is no other hope for man's deliverance from the coming wrath than the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Not social engineering, not good works, though necessary. What can wash away my stain? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. He got them out as far as the Red Sea, and that was a question of getting them across or through. And by faith, the waters parted and Israel went through, and the Egyptians trying to do it were drowned. We'll leave all other comments. The New Testament says that Israel were baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Bit of a nerve, don't you think, to stand at the head of the waters? What if they'd have come over and drowned the whole lot? A new in charge of the nation. But he told them, did Moses, to walk through. And we're told to tell people to get baptized, aren't we? How's your courage, old chap? Some Christians have lost the nerve, taking the view it doesn't matter whether people get baptized or not. But it remains the commandment of the Lord. And if Peter were here, plus his beard, and you got converted through Peter's preaching, Peter would command you to be baptized. Well, God save us becoming from becoming lax. We're servants of the Lord. We're not ashamed, are we, to require obedience to the commands of the Lord. And when they got the other side, there were the impenetrable fortresses of evil represented by the walls of Jericho. Faith stormed them as well. We fight similarly. Spiritual wickedness is in high place, called to do battle, to cast down all kinds of imaginations and the spiritual powers that keep men in their slavery. What of our converts. Rahab is an interesting convert, isn't she? What a difficult situation the woman was in. It's all right, you know, standing up in Ballywillow Gospel Hall and confessing the Lord. They'll congratulate you to a man. You stand up in Jericho and say you've changed sides, see what happens. I think that's why she told a lie, didn't she? Who say, yes, I doubt whether I shall want to associate with Rahab when I get to home to heaven. The woman told a lie. And haven't you ever? Oh, shame on me for the times when I kept quiet when I ought to have spoken. Because of the pressures. It ain't a popular thing in academic circles to confess faith in Holy Scripture. But Rahab had to make up her mind, didn't she? Whose side she's going to stand on. And she turned to God from idols. That meant taking a stand against the corrupt society of Jericho. God give us grace and wisdom. Our gospel doesn't carry of necessity, does it, that people must give up their culture, for some culture is neutral, it's neither here nor there. But culture may never be allowed to stand as an excuse for not taking our stand openly with Christ. Oh dear, dear, dear, what am I saying, for I talk beyond my experience. What would I do if I were in a Muslim country and someone professed to trust the Lord? Would I tell them to be baptized or not? Oh, what would I do if I knew that getting baptized would cost them their lives? Big things, aren't they? But we're in the battle, my brothers, my sisters. Don't let's hide too far behind the lines so that we never come across the very big and painful questions that have to be faced. But I leave you with the, with the, with Rahab in Jericho. She turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for Joshua to come across the Jordan, didn't she? Ha! And when Joshua came across the Jordan, that was judgment for Jericho, but for Rahab it was salvation. Thus do we wait. And time would tell, would fail us to tell any more of all those great worthies that entered the battle and fought in the cause of preaching the gospel, in the cause of establishing the people of God in their inheritance. Some were successful in this life, some apparent failures. I pick out from the long list one simple thing. Some, being tortured, did not ass- did not accept deliverance that they might have a better resurrection. Are there degrees in glory? Scripture apparently says there are. What am I prepared to suffer to get a better resurrection? Resurrection. And then all things fade, don't they? As finally we meet our blessed Lord, captain of our salvation. We consider not now Moses' ambitions and Moses' objectives, we consider the objectives and ambitions of our Lord. There was the joy set before him. And never once through the dusty lanes of Samaria and the stinking hovels of Palestine at the time, and the blood, sweat, and tears of Calvary, did the vision and objective leave him. The joy that was set before him, and in all its immensity, this almost incredible thing, the joy of having me, of having you in his presence, eternal. Never once did the objective become dimmed for that joy that was set before him. He endured the cross and despised the shame, and the objective shall one day be achieved. God use his word to stimulate us more and more, to show ourselves men and women that are genuine believers in this too, that we are involved to the hilt in the work and warfare of the Lord, in the evangelization of the lost, and in the building up of God's people for his name's sake.