Matt Chandler - Looking Back and Going Forward

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them; we’re going to be in Exodus chapter 19. It is so good to be back! I always love bringing in friends who can faithfully preach and teach you the word of God, but there is always an angst to be up here with you when I’m here and they’re doing that. It’s great to return, and I’m really excited to dive back into Exodus. If you haven’t been around from August to December, we covered chapters 1 through 15, and now starting this weekend through the end of May, we’re going to explore chapters 16 through 40.

What I thought we could do today is look back at two foundational truths we saw in the first 15 chapters, and then we can look ahead at what is to come. My hope in doing that is to orient us around some truths that will be necessary for us to flourish as the people of God. From there, I’ll touch on what I think are four categories of things we’ll get into as spring, winter, or whatever this season is progresses, depending on the day.

Before we dive into that, when you came in today, you should have received one of these. If you didn’t, there should be some on the table in the foyer. This is our Exodus Part Two guide, containing everything from family devotionals to a reading plan, a place for sermon notes, small group questions, and much more. We provide this as a resource so that, as a community of faith, we can allow the word of God to shape and mold us more into the image of Jesus. If paper booklets aren’t your thing, you can download this onto any device you have from our webpage. Just go to the website and download it, or visit the resource page to find it.

Now, you may be wondering how I could take 17 sermons, each roughly 45 to 50 minutes long, and condense them into two truths necessary to orient our hearts. The first truth we discussed repeatedly in the fall was that God is working a plan. That plan is good, but it rarely unfolds the way we expect. Throughout the first 15 chapters of Exodus, we saw this to be true: God is working a plan, and it often doesn’t play out like the people of God think it should. That should make sense if we stop for a moment; God is infinite, while we are finite. God knows everything, whereas we are limited in every measurable way.

How many of you slept last night? You know who didn’t? God! You’re going to need to eat, or you’ll die — that is not true about God. There are things you are completely ignorant about, and the Lord is not that way at all. It makes sense that His plan for us can differ significantly from our plans for ourselves. What we can trust is that the plan is good. We need to be oriented around that truth so that when a wave crashes over us, we’re not thinking, «God hates me; this is punishment. I knew I should have been more consistent with my quiet time. I knew I should have been tithing.» Instead, we will run to Him and trust Him.

The second thing we learned in those first 15 chapters of Exodus is that God is self-defining. That is significant: God is the only self-defining entity in the universe. Only God is self-defined; everyone else defines themselves based on others and external factors. Our temptation is to make God in our own image, deciding for Him who He is, what He does, how He acts, and how He doesn’t act. This is human nature — to try to mold God into our image, but we are made in His image; He is not made in ours. The more we attempt to define God outside of His self-definition, the more we stray from reality.

You become like the person who claims their favorite fish is a Labradoodle. It doesn’t matter if a thousand people agree; you’re wrong. A Labradoodle is not a fish; it’s a genetically modified animal that will likely spawn more mutations and could potentially harm us all. We’ve seen the movies, right? God is not a concept that we can shape as we choose. God is God; He is ultimate reality; He is self-defining. We see this in Exodus 3:14–15. I’ll put that on the screen for us. God said to Moses, «I am who I am.» This is in response to Moses asking, «What should I say…?»