God's Leading Presence

Well, this morning, we continue on as we complete chapter 13. We are very much on our way out of Egypt, and yet not out of the grasp of Pharaoh quite yet. This morning, we are considering the leading of God's presence.

Next week, we'll consider the protection of God's presence. And so there's, of course, much relationship between the two. But by way of emphasis, this morning, we consider God's leading. Next week, God's protection.

God Leads in an Understanding Way

As we look at the conclusion here in chapter 13, we find the Israelites taking a roundabout way by the leading of God. As God leads them, we'll see in verses 17 through 22, he leads them in four distinct ways.

First, God leads them in an understanding way. That'll be verses 17 and 18. God leads them in an understanding way. Secondly, God leads them according to his word and the testimony of his word. That's verse 19.

Third, God leads by his own presence. That's verses 20 and 21. And then lastly, we're encouraged to see that God's leading presence never fails. God's leading presence never fails. So beginning with verses 17 and 18, God leads in an understanding way.

It came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go that God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, lest perhaps they change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.

So God led the people around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt. The Israelites are being led by God, but he's not leading them in the instinctive natural path that is close by hand.

He leads them out of the way in a roundabout way, in a way that would almost seem backward or against the purpose of being brought up out of Egypt. The direct route would have been the so-called Via Maris, the way of the sea.

This would take them up past the Nile River across northern Sinai into the coastal plain. This is a route along the Mediterranean coast that at this point in time was already a well-established trade route.

It amounted to a coastal highway. Actually very poignantly, this is sort of where the Gaza Strip runs along as part of this natural way across the sea. So still you can see the turmoil that occupies this stretch of land.

However, this was also the most likely route for invaders. So the Egyptians had heavy fortifications all along this coastal route. For that reason, the Lord leads them around it. He understood the character of this newly freed people.

Though these are his armies, they're a very weak army and they're not battle-tested, very much unlike Pharaoh's armies. And so recognizing their weakness at this point in time, recognizing their preference would be not to fight the established Egyptians that had been taskmasters for so many centuries, but rather to fold and buckle and return to Egypt once again as slaves, God does not lead them by that way.

We have the land of the Philistines here that's largely held to be an anachronism. If we understand by it, what later becomes a civilization of Philistia, but we've already encountered this even in Genesis.

And so whether it's anachronistic or not, we have the people that correspond to the Philistines and this is their land. We're certainly dealing with Canaanites in terms of this great exodus. Once again, more importantly, we have held out to us the sovereignty of God, and yet right alongside his omnipotence, his omniscience, we have the real freedom and responsibility of man.

We've seen that with Pharaoh and now we see it with the Israelites. God, who sent the angel of death to strike down all of the firstborn and bring Pharaoh's great ego down into the dust, nevertheless understands the character and heart of his people and he says, "'Lest they turn back, "'I will not lead them in that natural near path, "'I'll lead them out of the way and around.'".

And so we see the sovereign hand of God and yet also that responsibility of man. These things are not contradictory, but rather complimentary. God is sovereign, and yet look at how he corresponds and leads his people.

So we find God dwelling with his people in an understanding way. Just as we saw in 1 Peter 3 on Tuesday, for those that were present, that a husband is called by God to dwell with his wife in an understanding way.

So God is this great example and he doesn't drive little lambs that are unable to tread the journey. He's not harsh in his manner of leading, but he's sympathetic and full of compassion. He understands what would cause them to flee, what would cause them to melt or break and he will not put that burden that they cannot bear upon them.

He dwells in an understanding way. Matthew Henry says, their spirits had already been broken by slavery and so it was not easy for them to turn their hands all of a sudden from the trowel to the sword.

This was not a tight fit military unit, though it is the army of the Lord as still the army of the Lord is often not running according to the militaries of the world. But thankfully we have our king, our commander, the great captain of our salvation.

So he can take unfit ranks and he can lead them in such a way that they will be victorious. God knows our frame in other words. He considers our weakness. He's not ignorant. He's not somehow arbitrarily prodding, poking and shoving us along the way.

He considers our weakness. He meets our need. He introduces lesser trials in such a way that we are prepared for greater trials to come. This is all of how God leads us in an understanding way. He leads us like a shepherd would lead a flock.

Not running a marathon and only the three rams that could make it cross the finish line, but no, the shepherd has a vested interest in every lamb, every sheep, every member of the flock. In fact, the good shepherd is willing to leave the 99 even to pursue the one that is missing.

He doesn't grade on a curve. He doesn't say, well, at least most of them are along. He faithfully ensures the protection and guidance of every lamb. The shepherd of course is a model leader. God is the shepherd of his people and therefore every leader is to be like this great shepherd.

Moses comes to be called a shepherd. David comes to be called a shepherd. The leaders are the shepherds. Bad leaders are false shepherds, hirelings. Good leaders are like the good shepherd himself. Isaiah, speaking of the Lord in this very way, says in chapter 40, like a shepherd, he will tend his flock.

In his arm, he will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom. He will gently lead the nursing ewes. He leads in an understanding way. Have you known, Christians, something of this gentle leading in your life?

Have you seen the gentle hand that guides you, that understands your weakness? John Trapp says the Lord carefully chooses their way out of Egypt, not the nearer, but the safer. This is how he orders matters all around us.

The evils are not ready for us until we are made ready for them. God leads in an understanding way. Secondly, God leads according to his word and his testimony. Verse 19, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of Israel under Tholomaoth, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you.

God Leads According to His Word and Testimony

So secondly, we see God leads according to his word, his promise, but also the testimony of that word. We're brought back here with verse 19 to the framework of Genesis, and with it, the patriarchal promise.

In Genesis 48, verse 21, Jacob says this to Joseph, behold, I am dying, but God will be with you, and he will bring you back to the land of your fathers. And Joseph, at the very end of his life in Genesis 50, says this to his brothers, I am dying, but God will surely visit you, just like father, so like son.

He repeats the same promise in the same way that Jacob had once spoken it to him. God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land to the land of which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

And then Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you. You shall carry up my bones from here. And Joseph died, being 110 years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

So for this long stretch of time, the body of Joseph, embalmed, lying in a coffin in Egypt, has awaited the fulfillment of this very day. God will surely visit. That was God's word. It was said from Abraham to Isaac, and from Isaac to Jacob, and from Jacob to Joseph, and from Joseph to the children of Israel.

God will surely come. And when He comes, don't leave my bones here in Egypt. When Israel is brought out of this land of bondage into the land flowing with milk and honey, make sure that even my bones come with you.

And in the meantime, let my bones be a testimony of the surety of His word. That's why He requires an oath from them. Of all the things that could be summarized about the life of Joseph, so many of you remember the time that we spent last, at the beginning of this year perhaps, Ethan, looking at the life of Joseph at the end of Genesis, and of all the things that could be said about this man's remarkable life of faith, the one aspect of his faith that is brought into the gallery of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 is this very thing.

We have nothing else recounted about Joseph, though of course, everything is brought up with Joseph as soon as he's mentioned. But the explicit description of Joseph's faith in the gallery of the faithful in Hebrews 11 is this.

By faith, Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel and gave instructions concerning his bones. Does that strike you as somewhat odd? Of all the things that would demonstrate the faith of Joseph, his absolute integrity in the house of Potiphar, his absolute trust on this rollercoaster of providence when he goes from the very height to the very depth again and again, of all of the ways that he received the revelation of God and then acted his whole life in accordance with it, such that he ended up saving all of his countrymen the world over through seven years of famine, and not one of these things makes it into the gallery?

That would be like having at your disposal the great paintings of a master painter. Say you could collect all of the masterworks of Rembrandt and you have a gallery at which to display some of these great masterworks, priceless pieces of art, and you take a sketch from his sketchbook and that's the only thing that you put on the wall.

You say, this is the Rembrandt Museum and everything else is stored away and here's this little sketch and you're like, yeah, that's neat that he talked about his bones, but there was a lot more that he did that was very faithful.

So why this? Why Hebrews 11, 22? Well, like Abraham, like Isaac, and like Jacob, the most important part of Joseph's life was the promise of God. Not the promise of God for Joseph himself, but the promise of God for the people of God.

The promise that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, that their descendants would be taken out of bondage, that the spiritual seed of Abraham would be taken out of the land of death and out of the chains of misery and brought into the dwelling place of God Himself.

Joseph believed that God would fulfill his promise. And now in verse 19, not only are we reminded of that, we're pointed forward as Israel itself is pointed forward. How greatly did Israel need the same faith that Joseph had?

Just as it was said, God will visit you, so on this day, Israel, look, God has visited us. And let the bones of Joseph lead the way, even as his faith corresponds to our faith. They're literally being led by the testimony of their forebears.

They're being led not only by the promise of God's word, they're being led by the testimonies about that promise. So Abraham has a testimony, and Isaac has a testimony, and Jacob, and Joseph. And now this generation will have a testimony for the next generation.

And you can see very easily how we as the church gather today, not as a one-off, not as something new that drops out from the sky, but as those who look forward in faith, standing on this great foundation that has been laid by the promise and all of the testimonies that accord with that promise.

It's one of the reasons I love that we peruse through this blue hymnal, as we go back to the 19th century, the 18th, 17th century, sometimes the 5th century, the 6th century, and we're looking at words that were penned as a testimony for the people of God, their faith and their hope, their trust in the Lord God.

Could we not sing with them how great a foundation is laid for us, not only in His word, but in the testimony of His word. So we see in verse 19, God leads according to His word and His testimony. Third, God leads by His own presence.

God Leads by His Own Presence

God leads by His own presence. Exodus 13, beginning in verse 20. So they took their journey from Sukkot and camped in Etham, the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night.

Once again, in Exodus, we're introduced to the theophanic presence of God. We've already seen God manifest in the burning bush in Exodus chapter three, and here now we see a further manifestation of God's presence, now not only in fire once more, a pillar of fire on this occasion, but also in a pillar of cloud.

Psalm 78 14 records this, in the daytime He led them with the cloud, and all the night with the light of fire. Psalm 105 39, He spread a cloud for a covering and a fire to illumine by night. So the Lord desired to manifest His presence in a perceivable way, a pillar of cloud by the day, a pillar of fire by the night.

Whatever the exact visual phenomena of this manifestation may have looked like, this was a direct revelation of the presence of God. A revelation not only for the guiding, but as we'll see next week, also the protecting of His people.

That's why Psalm 78 says He led them. Psalm 105 says He spread a cloud for a covering. We have the leading presence of God and the protecting presence of God. Now cloud and fire are often associated with the presence of God.

If we go back to Genesis 15, when God cut the covenant with Abraham, what do we see? We see the flaming torch in the brazen oven, as it were, billowing out smoke like a cloud, but also this blaze of fire, but later on in the Pentateuch, we see the glory cloud that descends upon the tabernacle.

When we get to Acts 1, we see Jesus ascending in a cloud or we see God described as a consuming fire. In Acts 2, we see the Spirit descend in part as a manifestation of fire among the apostles. And so over and over, these emblems of cloud and fire correspond to the presence of God.

And we would say this is a theophanic manifestation of God's presence. Some press further, I think there's good reason for this, and they say this is a Christophanic presence, in other words, a Christophany, not a generic manifestation of God's presence, but a manifestation of the presence of Christ.

This is very widespread, especially among the Puritans. They connect the presence of the pillar of fire and cloud to the angel of the Lord in chapter 14. So you'll see that when we get to chapter 14, verse 19.

I think there's good reason to see this as the case. In chapter 14, we once again encounter the angel of the Lord. And it seems to be coterminous with the presence of the fire in the cloud. And so John Gill writes, this is not a created, but the uncreated angel, capital A, the angel of the Lord, the angel of His presence, in whom His name, nature, and perfections were, even the Word and Son of God, the Lord Christ, who went before the armies of Israel as their king and commander.

And I think Gill's right. The main point is this. God leads by His own presence. He doesn't sit aloof in the heavens and say, go. He leads by His own presence. Although God's people are called to travel in an unknown way through an unknown territory, they have no reason to fear.

The Lord Himself will guide them. The Lord Himself will direct them. The Lord Himself will uphold them. Nehemiah 9, this great prayer that breaks out as God's people return to the land after such a long exile.

In Nehemiah 9, we have the sort of micro history of Israel. And in Nehemiah 9, verse 12, we have this very thing recounted. You led them by day with a cloudy pillar and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the road which they should travel.

You see what's being recounted there.

You yourself led them.

You didn't say, hey Moses, here's what you should do. No, you yourself led them. And you did not forsake them, as he goes on to say. The pillar of the cloud did not depart from them by day to lead them on the road, nor the pillar of fire by night to show them light in the way that they should go.

So God is leading them and God will not withdraw His presence from them. Oh, how Moses was beginning to learn how much he needed the presence of God. He had seen that at the very beginning when he came and tried to go through a rolodux of reasons that he could not be a mouthpiece for God.

He was not fit to reenter the courts of Pharaoh and stand before that mighty ruler that divinized himself in his reign. He was not one as a shepherd in the wasteland of Midian to go stand before that kind of royalty and say, thus saith the Lord.

He's a stutterer. How could he be equipped? Well, what did God say? I will be with you. I will be with you. I didn't call you because you're sufficient for these things. I called you in such a way that my sufficiency would glow through you, that in your very weakness and inability, I would show forth and I would be magnified.

And now here again throughout every single plague, we see Moses depending upon the Word of God. And in the great Passover event himself as the angel of death sweeps across the landscape, Moses trusting in the testimony of the blood of the Lamb.

Moses now depending upon the leading presence of God. No wonder when we get to Exodus chapter 33, we have this great exchange where Moses says this to the Lord. You have said to me, bring up this people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.

Yet you have said, I know you by name and you have found grace in my sight. Now therefore I pray, O Lord, if I have found grace in your sight, show me now your way that I may know you, that I might find grace in your sight and consider that this nation is your people.

And he said this, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest. And this is perhaps the greatest part. He already has the promise. It's not the first time God has promised his presence, but Moses has finally learned the lesson that unless God's presence leads, there is no hope.

And so Moses cries out in response, if your presence does not go with us, don't bring us up. If you will not be with us yourself, don't lead us out. Don't tell us where to go unless you're with us. Don't bring us out of this land unless you're guiding us.

Moses learned to depend upon God's leading presence. When the pillars advanced, the Israelites advanced. When the pillars rested and stood, the Israelites rested and stood. When the pillars turned to the left or to the right, the Israelites turned to the left or to the right.

They were not called to reason through maps. Manna didn't come bundled with big old atlases and roadmaps. The elders weren't called together to move chess pieces and figure out the course based on the geography.

No one had to hold their iPhone up for reception and ask Siri for directions. They didn't have to gain confidence as God kept on giving them answers to all of their questions. No, nothing was needed, but for them to follow the presence of God.

Nothing was needed, but to follow the presence of God. Brothers and sisters, nothing is needed for you, but to follow the guiding presence of your God. Our heavenly Father does not change. If Christ is the guardian of His church, as Calvin says, He's not less truly present with us now than He was formally manifest to them then.

Christ still leads His people in this way. Lo, He says at the end of Matthew, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. The disciples thought, oh, here you've been with us, literally guiding us by your presence.

You say, go to this village, go to that village. Rest here, spend the night here. Go forth here, gather these things. Oh Lord, you've been with us. All these three years guiding us, but now you'll leave.

And He says, no, I'm with you always to cheer, to guide. Not only is God with us, as Spurgeon says, He will be with us. That's what Emmanuel means, God with us. So the presence of God signals not only the guidance as we'll see today, but the protection of His people.

His guidance is His protection, and His protection is His guidance. As we follow Him, being sensitive and tender to every prompt along the way, we are being protected in the leading presence of God. There's a beautiful, we don't have time to get into it today and we're gonna look at it next week, but in Isaiah chapter four, this incredible depiction of this being fulfilled in the New Covenant, as it were.

God leading by the cloud and the fire in such a way that He spreads His glory over all of His people in this great vision that Isaiah begins to see. God leads presently, not absently. You don't come to Scripture to be led by the Word of God as though God was removed, abstracted from your life and from your daily experience.

You know, sometimes we give a sideways glance in a knowing smirk when we come across our charismatic brothers and sisters, and it seems like they're prompted by God for every jot and tittle of their day.

Well, I was going to here and I was gonna get a medium coffee and a pumpkin donut, but the Lord told me, in fact, to get a glazed donut and a small, and so I, you know, it's just like, oh, really, the Lord gives you orders,.

Literally orders, like drives you to orders?

I don't read my Bible in that way, and we sort of give a knowing smirk, like, you sure that was the Lord? Does He really have a vested interest in your caloric intake? If you're getting a donut either way, do you think He has a preference on flavor?

So we give this knowing smirk, but I think they're probably closer than we are to an understanding of the abiding and active presence of God in their life. Far better to think that God is in the midst of every decision you make throughout your day than to think you're coming by yourself to the Word to be guided as best as you can figure it out, or as best as the things that you put on your podcast playlist can help you figure out, and you have no thought of the personal presence of God, the personal leading of God, that there's no sense of the Spirit moving, imploring, convicting, illuminating, cheering, prompting.

Oh, that would be a far worse way to live, I would think. So I ask the question, are we acquainted with the leading presence of God, the leading presence of God? Octavius Winslow, tremendous book. You can find this online very easily.

It's an older work. Octavius Winslow, Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul.

That's a mouthful.

Just look up Winslow Declension, and you'll find it. He says this, he who knows God, who with faith's eye has discovered some of his glory, and by the power of the Spirit has felt something of his love, will not be at a loss to distinguish between God's sensible presence and absence in the soul.

Let me say that again. He who knows God, who with faith's eye has discovered some of his glory, and by the power of the Spirit has felt something of his love, will not be at a loss to distinguish the sensible presence or the sensible absence of God in the soul.

Some professors, he doesn't mean college teachers. He means people who have a profession of faith. Some professors walk without communion, without fellowship, without daily close dealings with God. They are so immersed in the cares and lost in the fogs and mists of the world that that fine edge of their spiritual sensitivity has been blunted.

And their love has become frozen through this contact with worldly influence. So much so that even the blazing sun of righteousness would cease to shine upon their soul, and they wouldn't even know it.

You see what he's saying?

So blunted, so insensible, so clueless to the presence of God that the absence of God isn't even registered.

And he says this.

Yea, a more strange thing would happen to them if the Lord were suddenly to break in upon their soul with some visit of love than were he to leave them for weeks and months without any token of his presence.

You see what he's saying?

It would be more bizarre for a person in this state, more stirring, more stunning, for God to all of a sudden break into their hearts and into their mind with some glow of his affection than for them to be absent of God's presence for months at a time.

Do you know something of what Winslow calls the sensible presence of God? Are you led in abstraction through various doctrines? Are you led by God's Word according to the presence of God by the Spirit in your life?

Are you able to keep in step with the Spirit? Martin Lloyd-Jones once used an illustration. Got it from Thomas Goodwin. He's talking about this time of sensible presence, what we might call manifestations of the love of God in a special and unique way, or the impression of the Spirit.

This is what he says. There are times when God especially manifests His fatherly love through the Spirit. A man and his little child are walking down the road and they're walking hand in hand and the child knows that he's the child of the Father and he knows that the Father loves him and he rejoices in that, he's happy in that.

There's no uncertainty about it at all. But all of a sudden, the Father scoops him up in his arms and he squeezes him and he kisses him and he showers love upon him out of nowhere and then he just puts him down and holds his hand and they just keep on walking.

Dads, does that sound familiar? I hope it does. You know, you're sitting next to maybe your kids at night and you're reading to them and all of a sudden you just feel this wave of love, like I love you so much and now you must be squished near death, you know?

You just start kissing them and they're, you know, if they're four or five, they're like, ugh, get away.

You're just like, I love you so much.

And then you just go back on. It's not that the love was doubted beforehand, it was just made manifest in a special way. And Winslow says our communion with God should be such that His absence is felt.

That His absence is felt. Just like if that same child walking down the road had been embraced and kissed and sat down and then the father was gone and the child is left bewildered looking around. We should not think a child that was loved in that way, that was walking that closely with their father, would just carry on their way without any thought, without any regard.

We should think that that child would begin to cry out and say, Father, where has Your presence gone? When will You embrace me again? Is there any unclean or unright way within me? Don't keep me from Your presence, Lord, but give me a greater sense, a fresh manifestation of Your leading presence in my life.

God leads by His own presence. I don't mean to make this sound very subjective because there is so much to say about the life of faith and trusting God at His Word when He's tangibly manifest to you in perceptible ways and working within your soul by His Spirit or when that's not the case.

You still, as a believer, must trust and live this life of faith. But it would be hard to read the experience of any Christian in the New Testament to not see this close dealing with God, this intimate communion with God as something that is held out normatively for Christians.

If God's presence is indistinguishable from God's absence to you, you're in a very dangerous place. Fourth, in drawing this out, God's leading presence is unfailing. God's leading presence is unfailing.

It comes by day and by night. In other words, it's comprehensive. There is no time where God's presence was not there in front of the Israelites. When they closed their eyes to sleep, when they awoke in the morning, there was the pillar, whether by cloud or by fire, by day or by night, God was with them to lead them and guide them.

He did not, verse 22, He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day. He did not take away the pillar of fire by night. He did not take away His presence from before the people. So let's boil all this down just by way of application.

Just kind of make a sentence that I'm then going to elaborate about God's leading presence in the life of a Christian. So here's the sentence, and then we'll open it up. God leads by goodness, in truth, through temptations, through valleys, to living fountains.

That's how God leads His people. God leads by His goodness, in truth, through temptations and valleys, to living fountains. So let's begin first with God leading in His goodness. Romans chapter two uses God's leadership in this way.

Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? Here we see the goodness of God is something that God uses to lead us.

Do you not know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? He goes on to say, no, in accordance with your hardness, with your impenitent heart, you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath.

You notice again there in Romans two, sovereignty of God right alongside the accountability of man.

What does he say?

Do we read, do you not know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance, but He has hardened your heart and you will not repent. He is preparing you for, no, is that what we read?

No, what does he say?

Do you not know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? No, in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart, you are treasuring for yourself wrath in the day of wrath. Don't blame God for your hardness.

Don't blame God for your refusal, your rejection. Don't blame God for your sinfulness. You yourself are treasuring up wrath in the day of wrath. You yourself have an impenitent heart. You yourself have hardened and rejected the Lord God.

And yet even so, even still, in the midst of all that, the goodness of God would lead you to repentance. The goodness of God would lead you to repentance. Consider, our sins are committed against the prompting and leading of God's own Spirit.

As surely as it would have been for the Israelites, seeing the pillar, guiding along the path and just saying, no, I'm going this way. We go astray, not in some sort of innocent, beguiling, white little way.

It's like rejecting the clear, prominent leading of God and saying, no, and turning our back to His presence. We sin against the Spirit's attempt to restrain us from sin. We sin against the Spirit's attempts to reclaim us from sin.

We sin against the Spirit seeking to renew us to repentance. And yet even still, the goodness of God leads us to repentance. Consider that our sins have been committed against a constant river of mercies from God.

Every morning, His mercies renew, and as the day carries on, we sin against that mercy. And yet the next morning comes, and His mercy renews. Even still, the goodness of God leads us to repentance. Consider that our sins have been committed against not only mercy, but even against discipline, against His chastening, which He does as a good Father does to rebellious children.

And just like rebellious children, as soon as we're set down, and as soon as His love is affirmed, we write back up, look up in defiance. And yet even still, God's kindness never fails. In the midst of our failure, His goodness leads us not to draw away, but actually to draw close wherever sin abounds, grace abounds, much more.

This is the faithfulness of God's leading. He leads by His goodness. This is why His people trust Him to lead. This is why they'll follow Him. He doesn't lead like Pharaoh leads. He's a God that is merciful, gracious, full of compassion, abounding in long-suffering.

William Gernal says, what more powerful consideration can be thought of to make us true to God than the goodness of God to us? The goodness of God. And understanding that perfect goodness of God helps you settle those things in your life that just don't look good to you.

Lord, I can see that I'm supposed to be walking in this way,.

Not in that way.

Even though this seems near and easy, and your way seems really difficult and hard, I don't know how I'm gonna get there, it doesn't look good. But you are good, and your goodness can lead me. The situation doesn't look good, the cost doesn't look good, but you are good, and so by your goodness, I will follow.

Matthew 11, remember Jesus teaching, and in Matthew 11, right before He says what I'll read, He's rebuked all of the cities. Of course, in giving this sort of prophetic denouncement, just like every mighty prophet, the hope would be that the scribes and the leaders and the teachers, those who professed God and served Him, would repent and understand that God is now speaking through the prophet.

But just like the prophets of old, Jesus' testimony, His sermons are rejected, the lies turn away. And we can read this as somehow Jesus abstractly, unemotionally responding to that. We ought to read it in the fullness of His humanity, just like Jeremiah, just like Isaiah.

Just like He says later on in Matthew 23, overlooking from the Mount of Olives, the great city, and He says, see, your house is left to you desolate. I was willing, I was willing. Why wouldn't you come to me?

We have to read that with the full humanity beneath that. And He says this in Matthew 11. He's preached now through the cities and all of the wise, all of the prudent, all the leaders, all the scribes, all the Pharisees, have all rejected His testimony, all rejected the prophetic revelation of God.