Putting the LORD First

Given to us by the Holy Spirit and that we're able to receive sound teaching in this place. It's not like that in many places and we're grateful we want to take it for granted in Jesus name. I want to start in Psalm 91.

Psalm 91 verse 1. He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God and him I will trust. Surely he shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence which is disease.

He shall cover you with his feathers and under his wings you shall take refuge. His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of terror by night nor of the arrow that flies by day nor of the disease that walks in darkness nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand but it shall not come near you only your eyes shall look and see the reward of the wicked because you have made the Lord who is our refuge who is my refuge even the Most High your dwelling place. No evil shall befall you nor shall any plague come near your dwelling for he shall give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways and in your hands they shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against the stone. You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra the young lion and the serpent and you shall trample them underfoot because he has set his love upon me therefore I will deliver him.

I will set him high even because he was known I will set him on high because he has known my name. He shall call upon me and I will answer him and I will be with him in trouble and I will deliver him and honor him with long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. To make the Lord your refuge to make the Lord your dwelling place you know the greatest commandment in the new covenant Jesus says it others repeat it to love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your strength and with all your might and your mind and out of that comes love for our neighbor.

To think that we're going to have love for our neighbor without having the Lord preeminent in our life it can't happen. If you're wondering why we don't have the love it's because you don't love the Lord. We say that we love the Lord but it says the haters of the Lord would pretend submission to him but their punishment is forever.

So he said oh well I want to love people more well then you need to love the Lord because out of having the Lord first rank in your life that out of that flows the love to others. We can say we love him we can spend our time with him but we cheat on him when we go to all the other things that we love more and even if we love only one thing just a little bit more the love of God will never flow. And what happens is in the last days it says the love of many are going to wax cold.

Because men are going to be out there buying and selling, marrying, giving in marriage, you know and doing all these things. We're going to forget the Lord. It says seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all the other things we do.

If the Lord wills we'll buy and sell. If the Lord wills we'll marry or be given in marriage. If the Lord wills we'll do these things.

And you know what many times we don't see the order. We don't see that our order is off and the Lord is not blessing us and we're wondering why there isn't the protection. Wondering why we don't have peace.

Wondering why we're not walking in his rest. We can quote the verse you can memorize it because they've made the Lord his refuge. But where's the the fruit of that? Because it's only true in him and in you.

It's not true just because we quote it. It's true when it's true in him and in you. Is Christ first rank in your heart and out of that flows? And you're going to see the fruit of it.

The people followed Jesus because they knew love flowed from him. And wherever he went he healed many many many people. He had compassion on many many many people.

And what happens is we lose compassion. We we lose our love for people. People don't come to us.

Not because of them because of us. Wherever Jesus was going the crowds were following. And then people specifically pharisees got envious.

Oh it's all about him. And they became so envious to the point that they wanted to take him out. That's the spirit of Cain.

Became so envious of his brother who had a love for God that he decided to take him out. This spirit of competition among the brothers has to die. That's what destroys fellowships.

That's what destroys relationships. The Lord said to Cain if you bring up a wholehearted sacrifice. If you do better won't you be accepted? Oh it's never good enough.

It's not good enough. All it is is more straw and more bricks. No it's not.

To love the Lord with all your heart. Maybe it's not much. Maybe it's just two mites.

The Lord sees that's your all. Then give it to the Lord. I'm not speaking in monetary terms.

I'm talking about a wholehearted surrender of those things that you once held dear built your life upon. Because you're going to come to a place where it's spent and worthless. And you're going to have a revelation that it's only you Jesus.

Knowing you. And that will be your one desire. So in him we move and breathe and have our being in Jesus Christ.

And sometimes it has to get very hard until we cry out to the Lord. You have to end up in the hospital maybe. That's where I ended up one time from stress.

You come to the end of yourself. You have no money. Couldn't even pay the men one winter at Christmas time.

Couldn't even give them their wages. First time ever happened to me. You have to till you drop to your knees and surrender to the Lord.

Though you slay me Job said. Yeah well I trust you. We have to live like that.

We're the Lord. We make the Lord our refuge. That's when the pestilence will not come by night.

And that's when the arrow flies by day. We don't have to fear. Because we made the Lord our refuge.

We found our shelter under the shadow of his wings. Under his pinions he's hidden us. Like a chick comes underneath the hen for warmth and comfort and safety.

Jesus even when he came into Jerusalem he said how I long to gather you as a hen would her chicks underneath her feathers. But you were not willing. Are you willing? Are you willing to come to him? That way? Needy? Dependent? Vulnerable? I think of the journey of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And how God had dealings in their life and how they made their mistakes. And then Joseph. And how God used Joseph and all his brothers hated him.

They were envious of him. Because the guy loved him more. Because he was first born of the woman that he loved.

And the Lord allowed that woman to die after the birth of the second son. And those brothers sold their brother. This kind of thing in the family.

One against another. Brothers against brothers. Daughters against mothers.

Fathers against sons. And a man's enemies them of his own household. It happened to Jacob.

What a burden to his heart. One day those brothers sold him into slavery. They wanted to kill him from envy.

They sold him into slavery. But the Lord had a purpose in it. To redeem the people of God by way of Egypt.

He brought them there for a purpose because he knew 400 years later he was going to bring them out of there into a land that he promised to Abraham. Why did God do it? His ways are not our ways. They're higher.

Who are we to question him and his ways? But we can learn his ways and his dealings. And we can become humble. We can humble ourselves under his dealings so that he'll lift us up.

Now Joseph was not the victim. He remained faithful there as a servant sold under slavery. And the Lord elevated him to the top man.

And then he got accused falsely for a crime he didn't commit. And he went into prison for many years. And he didn't play the victim there.

But the Lord gave him favor there. And he was in prison for many years for something he never did. And the Lord elevated him out of there to become prince of Egypt.

And his brothers came groveling for grain. And he could have lorded it over them. I'm sure it was in his heart to do it.

But he subjected himself to what the Lord showed him. And the people of God went into Egypt. And the Pharaoh forgot the people of God.

And the people of God began to groan because they became slaves of the Egyptians. They were concerned because they were multiplying in number. You know, God's people, they always seem to multiply in number.

It's the blessing in the favor of the basket and the kneading bowl and the womb. They were concerned that the Israelites would become too numerous. So they brought them into a bondage.

And this is over hundreds of years that they began to cry out to the Lord to redeem them to deliver them from this bondage. Maybe you feel like you're trapped and you've come into a bondage. You need to start to cry out to the Lord to deliver you from your bondage.

And your bondage isn't your mom and dad. Your bondage is not your boss. Your bondage is not the yoke that you have on your back at the time.

The devil is the one who brings us into bondage. You can be like Joseph, you can be in bondage in the prison, and you can have the joy of the Lord there. We think, oh, just lift the bondage off my back and let me get into liberty and then I'll be happy.

This is not happiness. Happiness is in Jesus. So whether you are prospering and things, your load is light, or whether your yoke is heavy, and you need the Lord to lift the burden, you can have rest in your soul.

The scripture says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Have you tasted and seen the Lord's goodness? Scripture says, I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Yet at this time, the children of Israel are in bondage, and the Lord raises up a deliverer, and it seems good to him to manhandle some Egyptian and in the process kills him, sends him into exile.

You think, man, another 40 years could have been saved if he would have just done things the right way. But he trusted in his upbringing in that it was in the ways of Egypt. He was trained in war.

He was valiant in knowledge. He was skilled as a craftsman. He trusted in himself, and he thought by his own might, he might deliver the people of God.

He knew that he was special. He knew that he had a purpose and a call, but it was not his way. Our ways are not his ways, declares the Lord.

His ways are higher than our ways. So the great shall be the least and servant of all. That is where the river flows, at the lowest point, when we're little in our own eyes, when we're humble in our own opinion.

40 years passed, the guy marries a Midianite woman, a Midianite priest, some voodoo priest, marries this guy's daughter, and she won't let him circumcise the sons. She's got some something against that. I'm sure that's what it was.

And then the Lord calls him from the burning bush. And Moses is so done. He has no strength.

He has no ability anymore to do what he always knew was in his heart and the call of God. He said, send someone else. You know, I'm not able anymore.

I'm too old. I can't do this. And the Lord allowed him to take Aaron to be his mouthpiece, to go back to the Pharaoh, to deliver the people of God his way.

They come out from the wilderness with his wife and his two sons with the call of God and he's ready to go. And there stands in his path an angel with a glittering sword to kill the man. The one who has the call of God, the angel stands to kill the man, just like Balaam.

And the angel had him pinned to the ground and the woman knew the reason why. She took the boys and she circumcised the boys and threw the foreskins at the feet of the angel. And she said, you've now become blood to me, bone of my bones, so to speak, and flesh of my flesh.

You see, the order in the family has got to be right. I have a feeling that the woman who had the last say in Moses's house until she submitted herself to the man of the house, to the man of the house's God, not to her father's God, but to Almighty God. That is when Moses was ready to lead the people of God.

You can't lead the people of God if you can't lead your own house. Until the order is right, nothing will change. And he stands before the Pharaoh and we know with a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, with a staff in his hand, God performed awesome deeds to put the fear of God into that Pharaoh.

But he kept hardening his heart. In fact, the Lord hardened his heart because he was going to show his power to that Pharaoh and to all of Egypt. They suffered.

They made the children of Israel suffer and now they were going to suffer. Finally, at the end of it all, let's read from Exodus about the end when God finally broke the Pharaoh. Don't be a Pharaoh.

Don't lord it over the people. Don't be stiff-necked and hard-hearted to do things the way that you've always done because you have power in your hand. Humble yourself and seek the Lord and say, you know, Lord, do I need to course correct here? You know, we were out on the ocean this week.

Small little vessel, but yet someone has to captain the ship. You know, and we seen one vessel almost run into another vessel because they weren't paying attention. People were screaming, but that didn't change anything because they were doing their own thing back there.

You have a responsibility when you're captaining a vessel, when you're leading your family. You have a responsibility to lead that family in a way that is right. And the purpose of it is that the children would learn to walk in the footsteps of a godly father and mother.

It says teach a child in the way that he should go and when he's older, he won't depart. But yet, you know what? We need to also question, Lord, am I taking good decisions here? Is this the right way to be dependent on the Lord, to set the Lord always before your face? We wouldn't just take decisions, but we would hear and then speak. Jesus never just took decisions.

He says, as I hear I speak. When he was waiting, you know, Lazarus was sick. He tarried another few days, couple few days, because his father didn't tell him to go.

I'm sure he wanted to go, but he waited. Because God had a plan to do it his way for the glory of God. Be patient and wait on the Lord.

Let him bring it to pass. Let's not be wise in our own opinion and choose the fear of the Lord. Now we look in Exodus in chapter 11 and the Lord, verse 1, the Lord said to Moses, I'm going to bring one more plague now on the Pharaoh and on Egypt and afterwards he's going to let you go from here.

The Lord knows, he knows what it's going to take to to change someone's mind for good. The Lord knows what it's going to take to break someone. You know, as a father and as a mother, when we discipline our children, we need to break their their will.

If you don't break your son or daughter's will, they will be a grief to you when they're old. You just let them run wild and watch what will happen. They will cause you grief for years and years.

But if you teach them with the Lord's help and the Lord's grace and you do it the word of God's way, the word of God says you spare the rod and you spoil the child. The rod and the staff, they correct us. It is important that while they're young, that they don't go wild.

Just like he prunes the grapes we spoke on last week, where the vines just grow wild and they're not bearing anything. They need to be trimmed. If they don't bear fruit, he takes them away.

And this wild nature needs to be subdued to come under the authority of Christ. It needs to become crucified. And while the children are young, they don't understand these things.

And therefore, discipline and correction is necessary. But now the Pharaoh is going to get not just correction. He's going to get a broken back.

God is going to cripple him and he's going to cripple Egypt. He said afterward, he'll let you go. And when he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of this land.

He's going to drive you out of here altogether. Now speak now in the hearing of the people and let every man ask his neighbor and every woman, her neighbor, articles of silver and gold. In the process of crippling them, the people of God were going to plunder them.

And you know what? God allowed it to plunder the Egyptians because they had reaped wages from those people for years. And they were slaves to those people for years. And now they were going to get their pay.

God wasn't going to let them get robbed. And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. And moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt because God's authority was with him.

And the Pharaoh's servants and all the side of people Moses said, thus says the Lord about midnight, I'm going to go out into the midst of Egypt and all the firstborn of the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on the throne, even to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the animals shall die. There shall be a great cry throughout the land of Egypt such as has not been like it before, nor shall be again.

But against none of the children of Israel, shall a dog move its tongue against man or beast that you may know the Lord does make a distinction between Israel and the Egyptians. The Lord makes a distinction between the people of God and the worldly people. Sometimes we become envious.

The one brother Sheridan, I think it was Psalm 73. He said how he saw the ungodly prospering in their way. It seemed like there was no pangs in their death.

Everything was going well for them. But then he saw their end, that the Lord set them in slippery places that in one minute, they should stumble and fall and not rise. And that he would look for their place and it would be no more.

But the Lord chastens us as his children. He disciplines us every morning. And we can have this heart, you know that this is really worth it to serve the Lord.

But we can speak so foolishly. David said it is good that I was afflicted. Before I was afflicted, I went astray.

When they were in affliction in Egypt, they were crying out to the Lord. When things go good for us, we don't need the Lord. When things are not going good for us, we need the Lord.

Oh, that we would need the Lord when things are good. Oh, that we would depend on the Lord when things are going smooth. May the Lord help us to remain thankful in the good times, not just the bad.

So it happened that all these servants shall come down to me and they shall bow down to me saying, get out, all the people shall follow. Then he went out from the Pharaoh in great anger, but the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not heed you. So that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.

And so Moses went with Aaron and did all these wonders before the Pharaoh and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. And he did not let the children go out of the land. Now verse chapter 12, I'll paraphrase this.

The Lord says, now you need to prepare yourself because I'm going to bring this last plague and I'm going to kill all these firstborn, but not so among the people of God. And so they were to prepare the Passover. And this is where the Passover is instituted and they were to prepare a lamb.

And if they couldn't afford a lamb, they would split it among families. It wasn't just a religious regimented thing. They would share it, whatever, according to their, what they could afford.

And they would be prepared and they were supposed to eat it in haste and ready to go. The lamb had to be sacrificed. The lamb couldn't be boiled or whatever.

It had to be roasted on a fire hole. And there was something else that had to happen. It had to be a lamb without blemish.

Do you see the picture of Jesus here? A male in the first year, you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the 14th day of the month. And you shall kill it at twilight.

Verse seven, they shall take some of the blood and you shall put it on the two door posts of your house and on the lintel. You guys who frame, you know what a lintel is. And on the door posts, we call them headers here in Canada.

And there you're going to eat it. And they shall eat the flesh that night, roasted in fire with unleavened bread, with bitter herbs. Don't eat it raw, don't eat it boiled with water, but roast it with head, legs and its entrails.

And you shall have none of it remain in the morning. Let your belt and your waist be girded, your sandals on your feet. In the New Testament, it says your lamps burning, watching for the coming of the Lord.

This is the coming of the Lord here. The angel of the Lord is coming to execute judgment in the land. And I will pass through the land on Egypt that night and I will strike all the firstborn of the land of Egypt, both man and beast against all the gods of Egypt.

I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. Now the blood shall be a sign for you and on your households.

When I see the blood, I will pass over you and the plague shall not come near you nor to destroy you to strike the land. When we read Psalm 91, he said a thousand will fall at your side and 10,000 at your right hand, but it shall not come near your house. Why won't it come near your house? Because you've made the Lord your refuge.

You've hidden yourself under his pinions. You've been in the house and the blood has been applied. It's not only that the lamb was to be slain, but the blood must be applied.

We sang that song this morning. Are you washed in the blood, in that soul-cleansing blood of the lamb? Are your garments spotless? Have you kept yourself ready? Have you made yourself ready for the Lord? Nothing is sanctified except by fire and by the blood. The lamb had to be roasted by fire.

There were the sufferings of Christ and the glories that followed and there was a redeeming that happened as a result of the power and glory of God. Here we see Jesus and for this reason he was born, that he would be God's lamb for you and for me to feed on Christ, to taste and see that he is good, to hide yourself under the shadow of the almighty. Then you can have confidence knowing that you love the Lord more than anything else.

To love God more than all created things. He gives us all things richly to enjoy. The one brother shared that they had the choice to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.

That's not entirely accurate. They could eat from every other tree in the garden, including the tree of life. Sometimes we think well it's either this or it's that.

No, it's not. He gives us all things richly to enjoy but we cannot eat from that tree that he said is not good for us. There has to be choice in order for there to be freedom.

If there's no choice there's no freedom and when choice comes many times people will run. We have to give our children an opportunity to choose at the right time. While they're young we train them up in the right way.

But then there comes a point in time where we have to release them and allow them to choose for themselves. We have to trust the Lord, not lean on our own understanding. In all our ways we have to acknowledge him and he said teach them in the way they should go and when they're older they might stray for a bit but we have to teach them might get misguided but we trust the Lord that they will return.

They shall come again rejoicing bringing their sheaves with them. We serve a living God. A God who is to be feared and also a God who is to be loved.

You know the servants in Israel there were servants there as well and they said that a servant after he would serve so long he should be given the opportunity to go free. But if he wants to stay he can put his ear to the doorpost and with an awl they would pierce his ear through and he would become marked as a slave for life him and his household because they have found it better in the house of their master. You've been bought with a price.

You have the freedom to do your own thing. But this morning would you put your ear to the doorpost and allow him to pierce you through like he did the apostle Paul. He said I am a bond slave of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am crucified with Christ and the world is crucified to me and I to the world. This morning the Lord is passing by. Seek him while you may be found.

Call upon him while he is near. And if you've been secretly sinning it says let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and return to the Lord for he is gracious and merciful slow to anger and rich in love and he's good to all and he has compassion on all that he has created. And when it comes to the sin issue as far as the east is from the west there is forgiveness with God so far as he removed our transgressions from us when we are washed in the blood.

We began well some of us but we become deterred from the course. We can repent and return to the Lord. He's torn us some of us but he'll bandage us.

He's wounded us but he'll heal us and bring times of refreshing again into our lives. Let's pray. Thank you Jesus for loving us giving your life for us.

Father grateful for the sacrifice. We're grateful for the shed blood of Christ. We're grateful for the Holy Spirit and the power of God to live as new men and women in Christ.

Help us to subject ourselves to your authority until you liberate us by your power. Thank you for your grace in Jesus name. Amen.