Preaching Series: Detours (Intro)

Here is a four part series based on my most recent message at Hope Missionary Church, where I serve as Pastor of Engagement and Young Adults.

This is part 1/4.

If you are interested, you can watch the message HERE.

The text was Exodus 13:17 - 14:31.

Detours: Dealing with Dead-Ends

Some time after Rebecca and I were accepted as missionary candidates with One Mission Society, we were in a conversation with our mobilizer, Margo. We were still discerning with OMS leadership where our family would move. You see, we had a sense that God was calling us to missions but we really had no idea what that meant at the time. Now, Margo was an incredible mobilizer for several reasons. But one reason was her ability to discern past what could be seen on the surface. We weren’t the first couple she had helped mobilize into the field. As we were struggling through the process she looked beyond what was visible and said something that turned out to be quite prophetic. In fact, as she said it, I was internally bothered by the comment. But there was something about it that grabbed my attention at the same time. She said something along these lines,

“Eric, it isn’t about the destination. It’s about the journey.”

You see, I was bothered because in my mind it was about the destination. That was the very thing we were trying to figure out in that season. It was stressing me out much more than it needed to.

The thing is, Margo was right.

Often, we are too focused on the destination, when the whole point is the journey we find ourselves on. And in that season for us it was a literal destination. Where would we move? Where would we live and serve God? After we accepted the job here at Hope Missionary Church, another destination was trying to find a home to live in. In a different season of my life, a destination could have been college graduation, paying off student loans, finding a wife, climbing the corporate ladder, or getting healthy physically so I could run again.

What about you?

What’s your destination?

Maybe your destination is the birth of a child. Or maybe you are struggling to get pregnant, so your destination is conceiving a child.

Maybe it is a new job. If you could just find the right job, at the right company, with the right pay, everything will be better.

Maybe it is retirement. You’ve worked your whole life, you are ready to rest, you are prepared to be financially independent, but you still have a month, a year, or five years before you can do so.

Destinations come in all shapes and sizes. But what if it isn’t about the destination at all? What if Margo is right? What if we put so much of our focus on the destination, that we completely miss the journey God has us on. Because, you see, destinations change, don’t they? I mean, I’m no longer in Catania, Sicily am I?

I said earlier that I was so wrapped up in discovering our destination. Yet, we ended up leaving our “destination” only a year later.

It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with much of the Old Testament, I want to give some context leading up to where we find ourselves in this Exodus passage. The Israelites have just spent 400 years in captivity. They have been living as slaves to the Egyptians. Making bricks. Building monuments and towers. And who knows what else. At one point in the story, Pharaoh even tries to kill off the Hebrew people by ordering all male children ages two and under to be killed. Miraculously, one of these babies, we know him as Moses, was spared and even grew up in the house of Pharaoh. He was raised as an Egyptian. In time, Moses made a decision that would change the course of his life, and ultimately, the Israelite nation. He murdered an Egyptian worker who was treating one of the Hebrew people harshly. The murder was found out, and Moses fled Egypt where he lived elsewhere for 40 years. Eventually, Moses would meet Yahweh (the God of Israel) in the midst of a burning bush and be given a task that was all too crazy to understand. Moses, in obedience to this task, went back to Egypt in an effort to get Pharaoh to release God’s people. Pharaoh constantly said no, even as God sent ten different plagues on the Egyptians, their land, their animals, and their crops. Ultimately leading to the death of every first born Egyptian male, including the first born son of Pharaoh, who would have been the one in line to take the thrown. Fed up with defeat after defeat, Pharaoh finally lets the Israelites go. And this is where we pick up in the narrative.

The Israelites are on their way out of Egypt, out of slavery, and in pursuit of the Promised Land. They have a destination in mind, but a long journey ahead.

If they focus on the destination alone, they will miss what God is doing on the journey.

There are three specific moments, we will call them “detours,” in their journey out of Egypt that I want to expand on.

Stay tuned for part 2 of the series…