Desert Survival Series Pt 19- Moses the Servant of God — Don Courville

Living Under the Shadow of the Cross

Take your Bible, if you would, and turn to Exodus chapter 12, we'll be in 12, 13, and 14. Exodus chapter 12, where we covered last week the Passover. This is our Desert Survival series. And I'm Moses the servant of God, and I've started giving these sermons titles, and I've titled this, Living Under the Shadow of the Cross.

Living Under the Shadow of the Cross. Let's start with a word of prayer. Father, would you take the time that we have now, the next few moments, by your Spirit, and speak to our hearts. We have needs, we have spiritual needs, physical needs, emotional needs, and all of these are met in thee.

Again, Father, if there's one without Christ, I pray that that one see their need of Jesus, how they can't get along with death, and even if they do manage to stumble through life for many years at the end of the road, it's going to be a lonely end of the road without Christ.

You warned us about hell, and told us what we need to do to get to heaven. We all be careful about those we minister to and talk to during the week, that we may be the light that they need. Thank you, Father, for this time.

Would you pour out your Spirit, would you bless these people. Amen. In Exodus chapter 12, we cover the Passover, and I'm just going to go through Exodus 12, 13, and 14 briefly with you, and make a few comments on it.

The Passover and Salvation Through the Blood

Living under the shadow of the cross is living in the shadow of victory. If we're not living under the shadow of the cross, within the realm of Christ and His presence, then we move away from that position into the position of defeat.

We're either being defeated or living victoriously every moment of our life. Now, in the Passover, we saw last week how there was no blood, there was no salvation. But the Word of God says, And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are.

And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. If you haven't received Christ, then you actually haven't come into the realm of the blood of Christ. And God will have to punish you for your own sins, instead of you taking the punishment that was paid for you on the cross.

Instead of you receiving the free gift, as the Bible calls Christ, the free gift. If you don't receive the free gift of salvation, of having your sins paid for by Christ, then you have to pay for your sins yourself.

This is what the blood symbolizes. And then we saw in the Exodus, when Pharaoh said, You can't go, and God was bringing them down from these plagues, that they did not apply the blood on their doorposts.

There was one doorpost, like I said, I wondered if there wouldn't be, to show a cross. If they didn't apply the blood, then the firstborn in the family would die. Well, the firstborn in his household with his son died.

And this broke Pharaoh, and left him a broken man. And then they came and they said, You can go. And so Israel is set free. And the last thing I'll mention about that chapter, just for a note, because we'll touch it later on, it says that a mixed multitude went up also with them.

I believe a lot of Egyptians hopped on the bandwagon with them too. Just a whole gang of people, and they were set free. All kinds of slaves were jumping in there, not just the Israelites either, which would give them some trouble.

Deliverance From Bondage in Exodus 13

Then when you come to chapter 13, we see that God said in verse 14, as he was going through how they were to show their sons what God had done, and they were to keep the Passover, and slay the lamb, and have the Passover meal.

And the son, he might ask them in time to come, saying, What is this? Verse 14. Thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage. Are you in bondage?

Is there something that has you bound? If you're without Christ, then you're under the bondage of your own sin, your own nature, your own habits, your own lifestyle. If you're a Christian, and you're under bondage, then you're refusing the Lordship of Christ in that area.

He's wanting to live in your life in that area, because he can produce the victory in your life. You can't produce it. I can't. As Jared is saying, very good stuff that he produces in our life. Well, they were in bondage, and he's going over this, how he dropped them out of bondage.

And we saw some good things on that a few weeks ago. And then we come down into that chapter, we come on down. It says that in verse 17, it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let them go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines.

In other words, instead of cutting right straight back up to Israel, God took them around to the wilderness. And it was so that they wouldn't see war. The Philistines were fighting people up there, and so he took them around.

Actually, he was going to take them into the desert. It was sort of like their honeymoon. And show them that he could provide all their needs, and he was all they needed. And we're going to learn some valuable lessons in this study, as they go into the desert, and they get to bellyaching about everything.

But he takes care of them. And he took them down and gave them the law. And then they were only just to spend a short time down in the desert, and he was going to bring them into the land. And we'll learn that.

But it says that he brought them through the way of the wilderness. In verse 18, but God led the people about through the way of the wilderness. And God may be leading some of us through the way of the wilderness, not to kill us, but to the gospel, and that's the life of Christ.

So he led them in the way of the wilderness around by the Red Sea. And so it says they went up harnessed in groups of fives, which is what that means. And then they took Moses' bones and whatever. And then verse 20, 21, and 22, the thing I want to mention there is that the Lord doesn't, by a pillar of clouds, by day, by a pillar of fire, by night, he doesn't.

They could always see that presence of the Lord. The Bible says that God was there in that cloud. Now that brings us up to chapter 14. When we come up to chapter 14, you didn't know it would go that fast, did you?

It's the pre-scripture. Okay, don't worry. We won't be here until 1230 today. Actually, if we hadn't had the testimony time, I think we would have got out earlier this day. The Lord planned it to be like this.

God Leads Israel Into a Dead-End Trial

Chapter 14 now. Let's keep going. We will be here until 1230. God leads Israel into a dead-end situation. As soon as he got them free from the Egyptians, he boxed them in. Actually, they go marching.

They are heading for the wilderness. And he takes a cut and they come right up to the Dead Sea. Well, the thing about being parked against the Dead Sea is they can't go that way. But there are two mountain ranges right on each side of them.

And so they are boxed in there. The only way out is to go back out the way they came. And the scripture says that God led them into that position on purpose. And Pharaoh, maybe when I come back I might pick on Pharaoh one more time.

That old boy has got a lot of juice in him for stuff. And preach on pride. I've got some more stuff here on his pride. He was a broken man. His country was broken. His people were broken from all those plagues.

And then his own son, the heir of the throne, to be the next Pharaoh. He's killed. He's a broken man. Destroyed. And Pharaoh, after all of that, hears that they are in that position. He says, I'm going to go get them.

Revenge. And so Pharaoh is actually set up by God for a trap. And so he comes and he brings his army to get them. And here they are sitting there. And then they look and they see, here comes the Egyptians.

If you are in chapter 14, you look at verse 9, it says, The Egyptians pursued after them. All the horses, chariots, and pharaohs, and horsemen of his army overtook them and kept them by the sea. So here they are sitting between the devil, Pharaoh, and the deep blue sea.

Someone has a sermon. Between the devil and the deep blue sea. They are sitting there. I wrote that note in there. I wouldn't have remembered it probably otherwise. But they are in a hard spot. You ever get in a hard spot?

Well, God specializes in it. It seems like since revival last year, and especially the last few weeks, it's just been hard. Everything is hard. But in that hardness, there's just been tremendous freedom and victory.

God, you just have to do it. And we'll just continue to keep our mind on the Lord in that hard spot. He does it. He does it. He does something. He always does it. Maybe God has brought you to a spot in your life where you just stuck to the end of yourself.

And you just need to trust Christ. And get rid of this self-control idea and let God lead your life. The devil has fed us such a lie that you let God have your life and you're going to be miserable. The opposite of that is you take a hold of your life, you keep a hold of your life, and you're going to be miserable.

You want to see a miserable Christian? He's the one that's trying to lead his own life. So let God. A miserable person is one that has not let Christ take over his life. I've never known such joy and peace and all of the stuff I wanted before I trusted Christ, before the Lord took over my life 20 years ago this July.

I was miserable because Christ wasn't in my life. He wasn't a trick in my life. Now if there's any misery, it's because He has taken over my life, but I'd like to get the reins back. So here they are.

Moses Calls Israel to Stand Still and Trust God

You know what they start doing? God has done all this. He's plagued. And they look up and they see the Egyptians and they start crying. A bunch of crybabies. Here's Moses out there. Man, bring on the Panthers.

All my crybabies are crying. You know, two or three million people. Oh, but Moses has really grown, hasn't he? He grew in his own personal wilderness. For 40 years God had him out there. And after God got him out of the wilderness and brought him to the cross, the burning bush, and He completely slew Moses.

Almost. We're going to see that self-life pops up a couple of times in him. But Moses was really wiped out to the point to where whatever you want, God. You want us here, right here at the Dead Sea with the Egyptians coming?

Moses' heart was, it's fine with me, Lord. I'm just going to see what You're going to do. He'd gone through enough to know that God didn't fail. God doesn't make mistakes. We make mistakes, but God doesn't.

So Israel gets scared. And so, what do you do? When you make a mistake, you start blaming somebody. So, here they come. They're all pointing up there at Moses. Whoa, she got us into this jam. And the Scripture says, they said unto Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, has God taken us away to die in the wilderness?

This is what Satan always says. You're going to die in the wilderness. It's going to kill you. No, the only thing that will kill you is when you don't come to Christ and when you don't let Him lead you.

But when you let Him have your life, you make it, we're going to die in this wilderness. You've taken us away to die in the wilderness. Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us? Why did you do this? Why did you carry us out of Egypt?

You know, is not this what we said in Egypt? We said, leave us alone. When you first showed up, we said, leave us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians. Then they come out with this lie. It had been better for us...

1412, where I'm at. It had been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness. That's a false lie. They were under severe bondage. They're now free. They said, it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to come out and die in the wilderness.

But actually, this is what God wants them to do. He wants them to die to self. Just die to self and just say, ok, God, whatever, you want me to be killed here by the Egyptians, you're fine with me if it's fine with you.

But we value it. We don't want what God wants. We think that something terrible is going to happen all the time. Isn't it? Don't you think? Your whole world is going to collapse tomorrow. It's not collapsing today, but tomorrow.

And then it's not been the day after. But how are you doing today? Well, we can make it through today, ok, but tomorrow I'm worried about. You get in tomorrow, it's the same old thing. He keeps you off.

Instead of looking at the Lord, He keeps you looking off at circumstances in the future. Tomorrow you're going to die. Tomorrow you're going to starve to death. You're going to have to go out and eat your ass and die.

You know? It's all over. Well, here they are. You know Moses? He's up there, looking around. And the Lord says, What's all this crying about? And Moses said unto the people, Moses was living victorious.

I believe he was. He said, Fear ye not. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will show to you today. For the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them again no more. They're no problem.

Problems were problems. All I see is God. It says later on when we get to Joshua and Caleb, when they get to the land and they want to go in. And the ten spies come back and say, There's problems. And Joshua says, What problems?

All we saw was God. He can take care of those giants. Well, Moses sees God. And God says, What's all this crying about? Take off. Step out into that lake. Step out into that ocean and go. But before you go, let's get something done, Moses.

Let's party. He taught him that. The Lord said unto Moses, Word for a triathlon to me, speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward, but lift up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea and divide it.

And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the middle of the sea. Okay, and what happened? He held it up and the sea parted. Now, the liberals say that that sea is only six inches deep right at that point.

But then that just makes a greater miracle because God then drowned the whole Egyptian army in six inches of water. That's even better. But they went out and they crossed over to the other side. And as they stepped forward, the cloud went around to the back and guarded them in the back and held up the Egyptians because they were in chariots.

And they had two or three million people on foot and in carts and stuff and they're going across. And so he held them up and when they got to the other side, then he'd come up and old Pharaoh says, Hey, now's my chance.

Because they're still coming out on the other side a long ways across. And the scripture says that they took off after them. Well, God said he'd finish off the Egyptians and he did. We know how the story goes.

They went in. You look at it. God did miraculous things. He said he took off their chariot wheels so they couldn't catch up with him. He had to drag the chariot along without the wheels because they were making so much speed so it just popped off the wheels.

And then when they were all out in there, he said that's it. Boy, we're going to zip it up. And he just zipped the ocean back up on top of them. That's it. No more problems with the Egyptians. The only problems they're going to have on their own is their own heart.

Their own heart. They're going to have a little skirmish with the Amalekites. We'll see that later. But that was it. God showed them that he was in control. And I want to read something to you. In verse 29 it says that the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the middle of the sea.

In the midst of the sea. And the water was a wall to them on the right hand and on their left. It says that two times. That's a key thing. And I want to bring this out. The water was a wall to them. The water was safety to them.

But the water was death to the Egyptians. The water at first to them was a barrier, wasn't it? God always seems to work in reverse. It seems like we always get into a difficult situation and we think it's impossible and man it's just so hard.

But for God that's nothing. He just specializes in impossibilities because he's the God of the possible. And so he just took them through there. Now I want to make some observations here. What did the sea represent?

The Red Sea as a Picture of the Cross

The sea represented the cross. Because it was a type. The Red Sea experience is a type of the death, burial and resurrection cross. When they got up to the sea it was death. They were done for. Right?

And then when it opened up they went down into it. That's burial. They were buried in the middle of the sea. And when they come up on the other side they were raised. It's a picture of death. They came to the end of themselves which is what you have to do if you're going to get saved from the end of yourself.

Admit it. If you win the battle of arguing against God and refusing Christ in the end if you win against God you actually lose because you lose your soul Jesus said. Mark 8, 36, 37 What shall it profit a man even if he gains the whole world?

Lose his own soul. But they were dead, buried and resurrected. Beautiful thing isn't it? It's cross, death, life and resurrection. Now what does the cross represent? Death, burial and resurrection. Well, we are to live in the shadow of the cross.

Every time something comes up that would irritate us, bind us, pin us, or break us we're to die right against ourselves. Mark, I'm just dead. To my efforts, to my will, to what I will I'm with you. And under the shadow of the cross there's victory.

Living in the presence of the King there's victory. Now, the sea was also burial, which represents death to your old life rising to walk a new life. And the resurrection when they come up on the other side it was to walk a new life with Christ.

Beautiful illustration. Beautiful illustration. But also, let me tell you something else. Since the sea represented the cross it was also death to the Egyptians. The sea was nothing but death to them because they did not believe.

And so what was life to a new life to the Israelites was death to the unbelievers. And because they tried to fight the cross they tried to fight against God it drowned them. You never do fight against God again.

You always destroy yourself. They actually destroyed themselves in trying to do that. Well, remember in our study when we started out 21 weeks ago what does exodus mean? Remember that? I could almost start over again.

It means the way out. Exodus means the way out. God was showing them the way out of their old life into a new life. And he's leading them into really what is now the type of the Christian life. But we're going to see also a type of the carnal life.

The life that is lived in the power of self. Out of what? The way out of bondage. Remember? We covered that in chapters 6, 6 through 8. God said I'm going to take you out of this bondage. And he promised them all these good things.

He would be all they needed. That is a blank check. They come out on the other side they're free from bondage to live a life with God. Well, that was it. That's why we're doing this series. So that we would see that we have been delivered out of bondage and into a new life with Christ.

Dying to Self in the Wilderness

Now then, what will the devil tell you in the desert? They went over this and said you're going to die in the desert. You're going to die in your trial. You will die without Christ because that's a half truth.

We have to die to self to have victory. Is that right? Just do it. Live in the shadow of the cross. If we don't die to self then we will die in our trial. We'll have defeat. We'll have discouragement.

We'll be despondent. Despair and all of that. In chapter 14 in verse 11 it says remember this thou hast taken us away to the road of wilderness to die. God never takes you to the wilderness to kill you but to make you better.

He takes us to the trial to do that. If we die to self there's victory. If we die in the trial then there's defeat. The choice is ourself. You know what? The cross is what you make it. The cross is what you make it.

If we live in the shadow of the cross we make it victory. If we move out of the shadow of the cross out of the realm of the blessing of God then we just make it a symbol that we think is really good. It's nice but I'm not going to live under the power of it.

The cross is what you make it. To those of us that have trust in Christ we've made the cross to be what God intended it to be. Freedom. Freedom of the spirit. Freedom of the soul. Freedom. Freedom is only at the cross.

Satan says man you come to God you go to church and that stuff that's no good for you. You're going to lose your privileges. You're going to lose life. Actually the opposite is true. You lose life by not staying under the cross.

So my trial is either a stepping stone to victory under the shadow of the cross or even my trial is a stumbling stone to defeat. My trials are no problem to God. God allows them to be there. And actually this whole book of Exodus just does nothing but show you that God is sovereign and I either believe it or I don't.

Moment by moment. Well I believe if we don't learn to see God in our deserts then we just won't see the purpose in life. Really. If you don't have Christ you look down the road and you'll see there's not really much purpose in life.

What's the reason for making money and getting a job and working so hard and going and getting in debt and paying all these bills and having a family and everything when at the end you get died you get old and decrepit and broken down and then just die and go to hell.

There is no purpose without Christ in life. I wonder why some people hang on even as long as they do. You know I was listening to something about the POWs over in Korea. How they I think there was 8 ,000 of them in this one camp and 3 ,000 of them almost half of them would just die.

They had plenty of food they had plenty of everything they needed but they they were just dying and the reason they were dying they found out they just gave up hope. They just gave up hope. Without Christ there's just there's not much.

I know I came to the end of myself 20 years ago. Well we don't learn to see God in our deserts though. We'll give up hope and we'll preach the gospel. What's the purpose of all this? You know? If you don't have God as your object for everything then it's going to get pretty dark in your desert.

The Law of Redemption and Belonging to the Redeemer

You know when they went through the Passover they came actually under a new law. You know what it was? It was beautiful. It was the Law of Redemption. You know what the Law of Redemption is? The Law of Redemption is that the redeemed belong to the Redeemer.

The redeemed belong to the Redeemer. The blood of the sheds that I bought you by my blood you belong to me. I can do whatever I want to with what I own. Can't you? You can do whatever you want to. Say you own something.

Say you own a vehicle it's yours. It's paid. It's got a clear title. You can go out and take a sledgehammer and beat the thing to pieces if you want. You can do whatever you want to with yours. Well God says that about us.

If I'm yours I can do whatever I want to. And we say no you can't. God says yes I can. Well I can see. But the thing is he says I don't want to hurt you. Everything I do will be for your good. Everything that I allow in your life I will purpose.

Even some cut fingers. I can stop that machine. Just to show you that I have control in your life. Well, that's a beautiful thing. The law of redemption the redeemed belong to the Redeemer. The one who lives under the shadow of the cross says in his trial it is the Lord let him do what seemeth to him good.

1 Samuel 3 I like that so much. You know, spike a ball want to dump water all over my head at Bible camp I wouldn't name his name even if his name was Dan. It is the Lord let him do what he wants to to me.

But the preacher come alive and got some revenge. We had a good time. But, you know, really, if I'm not God-centered I might get angry. So I just put my hat on to cover up how dumb I looked with that one big wet spot in my head and went after Dan.

We had a good time. The cross is what you make it. Living under the shadow of the cross brings victory. It is the Lord let him do what seemeth to good. You know, Paul in Acts chapter 8 I'll close it down on the illustration here.

Scattered Believers Preach the Gospel

There was a great persecution. You know what, the church, they figure maybe 25 -30 ,000 Christians right after Pentecost that were saved in that area in the Samaritan area alone. And it says that Paul went up into that area and he was killing those Christians.

And it says that they were scattered everywhere. You'd think that was a real problem wouldn't you? You know what it was? That wasn't the problem. The problem was they were congregating together. And God says, I want you guys to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

So it says they were scattered and they went everywhere preaching the word. So if God wants to scatter some of us, let's preach the word as we go. Whatever. Let's let him do what he wants to do. Well, I think I'm going to close down here.

I had some things on this area and close it down. But I think we're just going to close it down right here. The gospel church. Father, your spirit writes. Your spirit says hold up and so I will. We'll get those other things next time.

I think you've given us enough to feed us for today. To get us through the day. Maybe we need to just get some time to sit down and look at our life. Maybe even right now to just say oh, spirit, you take over my life.

I've been trying to hold on too tight and all I do is put creases in whatever I hold. All I do is mess it up. Maybe God allowed that very thing in your life to just show you that you are trying to control your life.

See, I let her take over your life and you never did even consult me about it. I'm your savior, I'm your lord, but you're trying to do the lord. I thought to you, let me do what I want to do. And father, I found that when I let you do what you want to do, I find that, actually, I find out everything that I wanted you to do for me.

And everything I tried to do to get myself by you, I guess that's what I I found I let you do what you want to do, I find out everything you do what you want to do, everything out want to do. I.