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Delivered – Week 2: God Promises

Delivered – Week 2: God Promises

God’s promises never fail!

Purpose of the series: Looking at the parallels between the story of the Exodus and our lives today.

  • God is unchanging! The God we see in the Old Testament is the same God we see in the New Testament and the same God we worship today!
  • The Old Testament gives us the full story of God’s redemptive plan

Recap: Man has disobeyed God and sin has broken the relationship between God and man. God has a plan to redeem His people and will use the least likely individuals to accomplish His purposes.

Exodus 3:16-17 16 Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, 17 and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.” ’

This is a major promise! The Israelites had been in Egypt as slaves for roughly 430 years! The US has only been a nation for 244 years!

Exodus 4:1 Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you.’ ”

  • Moses immediately looks at the situation through the lens of the world.

Exodus 4:2-5 2 The LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” 3 And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. 4 But the LORD said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— 5 “that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.”

  • God is teaching Moses that His promises are not dependent on what is possible according the world!

Exodus 4:10 But Moses said to the LORD, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”

  • Moses’ first attempt at convincing God didn’t work, so he changed from his circumstances to his own shortcomings.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 4:11-12 11 Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

  • God’s response: “I made you! Therefore, I will determine what you are capable of”.

1 Corinthians 1:26-29 26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

  • The validity of God’s promises are not based on the circumstances we are in or whether or not we feel worthy to be used by God.

Exodus 5:1 Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’ ”

Exodus 5:6-9 6 The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, 7 “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. 8 But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ 9 Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.”

  • Will you trust that God’s timing is perfect?
  • Will you trust that God sees the bigger picture even when we don’t?

For discussion with your small group, family and friends.

Passages: Exodus 4-6

Ice Breaker: Share a memory of when things have not gone as planned.

Sermon Reflection – What was thought-provoking to you from the sermon?

Questions to discuss:

1. Read Exodus 4:1-17 What do you see about God in this passage? What does it tell us about Moses? A) What are ways God has demonstrated his power and provision to you?

2. Moses was reluctant to do what God asked him to do. He would disrupt his current life and go back to a place that he had failed and ran from. In what ways can you relate to Moses? A) What do you do when you are in situations that feel like where Moses was? B) Hebrews 11:24-26 have a different perspective of what was going on in Moses’ life so far. Who or what helps you gain a different perspective of what is happening?

3. Read Exodus 5. What is happening in this passage? What would you be thinking if you were the Israelite people? What would you be experiencing if you were Moses?

4. Read John 11:1-6. Talk about who John the Baptist was and what he was experiencing. A) What holds you to trusting God when timing and events don’t go as you expected?

5. When has following Jesus not gone the way you expected it would?

Next week: Delivered! God Delivers Passages: Exodus 7-12

Check out: https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/exodus-1-18/