Introduction
Three options in life: go forward, go backward, stand still. Latter is to stagnate. This is a great text, great thought, great theme in Scripture.
Man and wife traveling, wife keeps asking, how far have we come, how much further is it. Finally man admits he doesn't know, "we're lost," but we're making good time.
Go forward in style, emphasis on cars, transportation. Heard about a man who bought one of those cars that was supposed to get real good mileage. Kept careful records, but MPG not as it should be. Took it back to dealership. Car was perfect. Owner protested, not getting good mileage. Why not do what all others do? Lie about it.
Two principles as we seek to go forward, important to know where we are and where we are going, important to be honest about our situation. Are we going forward or not? What is progress? What is reasonable?
Text
Glad for these verses in Exodus. Reveal human nature. These are about a physical situation, but we make a spiritual application.
Bible is filled with accounts of those who went backward. Favorite theme and story of OT prophets. Jer. 7:22-26; 15:6; Ezek. 20:8,13,16; Isa. 1:4, 21-23.
Why would people go backward rather than forward? One answer in prophets: they did not know God.
Four important truths:
Faith
In his books, "Pursuit of God" and "Knowledge of the Holy" Tozer says "God is the most awesome word in the human language, the most important thought." All of life boils down to our conception of God. Everyone is a theologian, has some idea of God. The atheist is reported to have said, "Thank God I am an atheist."
All of life, progress, evaluation begins with God. God is the standard. Knowing God is essential to moving forward in life. Christianity is focused on Christ, but it is a religion of God. The Jews who thought to know God crucified the Christ. Ex 5:2, who is Jehovah? Still a relevant question!
The very fact that man has the capacity to know God, to imagine a being like God, makes God a personal problem. An older argument for the existence of God focused on the fact that man's ability to think about a being like God implies such a being exists, ontological argument. God is no mere conclusion to a syllogism. God is too big to be packaged.
To go forward, as in the case of Israel of old, we must know beyond doubt that God is alive. All of life boils down to God. Our concept of God is the explanation of our worship attendance, our patterns of life, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, Bible study, prayer life. There will be little evangelism until we know God is alive. There will be little commitment, little outreach, little conversation about God or with God, little of progress. All centers in God. He is the issue of life. When we see God clearly, we worship him. When we see God clearly, we pray. One does not pray "to whom it may concern." We pray to God. Incidentally, we do not pray to the brethren. Prayers are not announcements.
My point is that only with a noble, bold, Biblical concept of God, a strong faith, can we go forward. This is the problem of the prophets: Isa. 6:1-8. I saw the Lord...woe is me...send me. Isa. 5:13; Hosea 4:6. Then 100 years after Isaiah, Judah still did not know God, Her. 2:11-13; 9:6;24; 10:1,5,10. Jesus picks up this theme in the NT, John 6:45, quotation from OT prophets.
Will we go forward in the coming year? Will you advance? Do you know God profoundly? God is God. Does your head split at the thought of God? Mankind today would play games with God. In our studies and concepts, we must keep the character of God clean. God is not dead. He may be absent from prayerless lives and lifeless prayers, but as Bro Keeble often said, God is not even sick.
To go forward requires a faith that will plan ahead. God will be alive in 5 yrs, 10 yrs, even 50 yrs. I may not be, you may not be, but God will be.
Love
Mankind thinks to know about God is to know God. This is a great mistake. We do not love those we know about, we love those we know. God is a fact, not a fantasy. The great need of our lives if we are to learn love is to know God. The most revealing thing about a church is her idea of God. This is the explanation as to why we do as we do. If you love me....
All of life begins and ends with God. God in the home, in the marriage, in the family, God in his church, in our relationships, that is the solution. What the church will do in moving forward depends on our concept of God. We cannot love others with the gospel of love, cannot save others until we know the love of God ourselves and our own salvation. If God and his love is not worth 10c to you, you will not likely share him with others.
Listen
We must experience this God and his love to know what he wants for us. Some are miserable, melancholy, wanting to go to church and leave feeling bad, guilty, miserable. When a man finds Christ, God, the word is joy. It is not the case that the more miserable we are, the more religious we are. We listen gladly to his word. We keep that word. This is love applied. This is the key to going forward. Some want us to step on toes, but we are aiming for hearts. Help my heart listen to God so he can listen to my heart. Our neighbors have enough of problems, despair, difficulties. Take them good news and they will listen. This is knowing God and telling about him accurately. Someone says, we must put the fear of the Lord in them, threaten them, make them come. Kingdom does not come by force. The great power of God is based in who he is, and he will not push, coerce. He does not overwhelm, he is awesome, but he does not intemidate, force, or dominate anyone into Christ, 2 Cor. 5:14; Rom. 1:16.
Depend
The great danger of this theme, let us go forward, is that we are tempted to put God up for sale, Prov. 23:23. Truth may perish, Jer. 7:28. We may sell out, find substitutes, idols, we may reject, diminish, or counterfeit God.
Will we go forward, or will we go backward? When we sell out God, we are moving in the wrong direction. It is the lesson of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Esau....Judas, the lineage continues.
Is Christ a prophet or a profit? Is he only a product we sell? Gain what I am telling you about the future of this church in the coming year and years. We live in a success-oriented world. What do you think of when you hear "go forward." Do you think physical, financial, in worldly terms, or spiritual? This is a spiritual concept. Our dependence on God moves us forward. We are not depending on self. Our sufficiency is not of ourselves. This is not success in the eyes of the world or on the values of the world.
There are over 30000 success and self-help groups. Books on self improvement. Positive thinking, pop psychology, but when you approach a person with God, with Christ, when you move forward in spiritual things, it is not like selling Geritol or Chevies or Cocacola. Jesus Christ is not a product we package for sale. I have heard people brag on youth, not high on drugs, but high on Jesus. Insult. One does not get high on Jesus as on a drug. Jesus does not put us out of touch with reality. That is not forward motion. Christ puts us in touch with reality, and that is a life of meaning and purpose and significance.
Thus there is no mass sales convention to oil the machinery of evangelism. Sometimes it appears we are more interested in statistics than in spirituality. What most in the church today need is a good dose of Christian maturity. Heb. 6:1, let us go on to maturity. If we fall into the traps around us, we are no better than the religious racketeers who rake in the money. Give and you will get rich. That is not Bible. We do not measure our Christianity by responses to the invitation. We do not know how to measure success? Am I successful, as a preacher? How is the church doing? Are they connected? We have promoted ourselves to death, fads, programs, gimmicks, gadgets, but need a good transfusion of NT Christianity.
Conclusion
The chief aim of Christianity is not the benefits of salvation, the chief benefit is Jesus Christ. Too many want what he can provide without wanting him. Such is an insult. It is the same mistake as the prodigal son. Can we not learn. Going forward in faith, love, listening, depending. When we have Jesus, we have the value, the benefits. We cannot separate the person from the benefits. We cannot offer the benefits without offering Jesus. Many want salvation, fewer want Christ, even fewer want God. To be like him, to trust him, to know him, to seek him, to listen and obey. What problems are solved if we can only see God, and thus move forward.
Question:
Would you want to go to heaven if you knew Jesus would not be there? Do we want heaven's gold or heaven's God. We want the gold, and I am telling you it is because we have not see God as he really is. We are not going forward toward the goal because we have not seen the value in the goal.
Look again. In the church. Who is the best Christian? We measure what he does, offers, talents, works. But this is not performance, this sells out the concept of God. What of the elderly? The inform? Are they worthless? Is it valueless to conserve the Christians we already have? What of those who want to place membership? Is this a profit/loss thing? What if one can't teach, sing, what if they are crippled, have a whole bunch of problems? Are these of non- value to God? Will we say, bring them on. Let us go forward! The beauty of Christianity is Jesus Christ because he is the very revelation of God. Christ in me, Christ in you, these are the only evangelism messages that are genuinely worthwhile. When Christ is in us, we will go forward.
Read again about the life of the church in Acts. It was not methods, talent, organization, but spirit-filled men. One cannot do church work with carnal, non-spiritual persons. One cannot do church work well with half-hearted people. In the year ahead, measure carefully how many times you are absent from the church here. Being elsewhere doesn't count. This family, this group, going forward, we want to go forward, together. Are you here? Regardless of how talented you may be, if you are not here, we cannot do the work of God. Better than human technique is to develop people of God. We think God needs help. Folks, you don't have to advertise a fire! It advertises itself. Try NT Christianity, it cannot be hid. We will go forward when the fire is in us. Fire advances. Fire never stands still. Fire never retreats.
My call is that we in the church might learn again what it means to serve. We are not here to be sovereign. When we are more interested in ruling than in serving, we have sold out. How do you suppose God looks at some of the stuff that seems so big to us? We must be humbled. May we serve. The gospel does not advance by arm twisting. Nor does the church, nor do we. Let God work. His is the power that moves us forward. Pray, see God. Faith, love, listen and obey, depend on God. Real prayer is hard work precisely because it insults us. It shatters pride, it says "I'm yours." I need you. I cannot do it without you. I'd rather say, Look at us. But we need to learn to say to the world, Look at God.
Let us go forward. Let us see God. Let us follow God. Let us obey God. That is the answer. God is the answer. Let us pray.
