Acts 27:13 “When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.”

The Apostle Paul was not living in the calm before the storm. He was suffering through the turmoil in the heart of the storm. For a couple of weeks, he and 275 other passengers were stuck on a ship driven and battered by a storm at sea. The crew had lost control to the wind and the waves. They were just trying to keep the ship together. They started to believe that all was lost.

Luke describes the battle with the storm in detail: the unfavorable winds the crew could not fight, wrapping ropes around the entire vessel just to keep it from coming apart, throwing the cargo overboard, then the ship’s tackle, to ride higher and keep from being swamped. The sailors used every strategy they knew just to keep the boat together and afloat.

But the storm was clearly bigger than they were. Passengers and crew lost hope. Not every storm takes us so far to the end of our own abilities and resources. No doubt these sailors had ridden storms out before, storms that didn’t stretch on and on like this. But when they had nothing left, no more ideas, no more tricks up their sleeves, they began to resign themselves to their fate. They would be lost at sea. They had lost hope.

Floods in Texas, New Mexico, and North Carolina recently have destroyed much property and taken many lives. Storms brought incredible amounts of rain in a short time, leaving people little opportunity to escape. Many of those who died were children. Catastrophes like this can be soul crushing. What hope do we have against such powerful forces?

Less literal storms batter us, too. Sometimes I hardly recognize the country in which I live. Some of our best friends and neighbors growing up were people whose political yard signs were exactly the opposite of the ones my parents would have put out in our front yard. So we disagreed politically. That never stopped us from looking out for each other, playing on the same teams, going camping together, or standing up in each other’s weddings. No one would have ever dreamed of vandalism over the difference.

Now the polarization in our country has grown so deep, so strident, so resentful that some family members can’t bring themselves to spend holidays together because of their differences. Some political scientists claim that the competing worldviews are so fundamentally different, so starkly opposed that there can be no more friendly coexistence. One side must win or the other. As the political storms rage in our country, is their hope for our future as the United States? Some think not.

In the sermon at a seminary graduation, I heard the preacher observe that the Lord has a regular habit of bringing his people to this place of no hope, to the very end of their options, to a complete dead end in life. If you and I have experienced it in our life’s storms, we are hardly alone. Abraham and Sarah were well past their child-bearing years when God was still promising them a son. Joseph had no reason to hope he would ever be a free man after years as a slave and then a prisoner. Moses and the children of Israel lost hope of surviving when Egypt’s armies had them pinned against the Red Sea. Jesus’ disciples obviously lost hope in their own storm at sea when they asked Jesus, “Don’t you care if we drown?”

Until we come to this point, we may not fully appreciate, we may not even want, God’s remedy for our lost hope, his answer for our dangerous storm. But here is God’s promise: “Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will glorify me” (Psalm 50:15). He wants to deliver us. The storm makes it possible for us to want his grace, and to see it when it appears. No storm, no matter how big, puts us beyond hope when the God who raises the dead and saves the world is on our side.

Exodus 3:7-8 “The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.”

No one should be shocked if the holy God had told Moses, “I have indeed seen the wickedness of my people in Egypt, and they are getting what they deserve.” No, he sees and hears the misery, the cries for help. Though sinful humanity has made a mess of our world, the Lord hasn’t abandoned us to a world where we devour each other. He hasn’t even left us to suffer the consequences of our own rebellion and foolishness. He is moved by our plight, whether inflicted by others or self-imposed.

“So I have come down to rescue them.” In a moment he will tell Moses that he is sending him. But before that he tells Moses that the Lord himself has come and will rescue. Moses was just the spokesman. The Lord himself showed up here on Mount Sinai, and later in Egypt, with the plagues that forced Israel’s oppressors to set them free, with the dry path to freedom through the middle of the Red Sea, with the waters that drowned their enemies. Moses spoke. The people watched. But the Lord rescued because he is gracious, and he loves his people in a way they could never earn or deserve.

This has always been God’s M.O., hasn’t it. For us, too, “I have come down to rescue them.” For us he didn’t clothe himself in a burning bush, but a baby’s body. He didn’t inflict devastating plagues. He reversed the plague of human misery by healing the sick, raising the dead, and freeing those possessed by demons. He drowned sin and death in a red sea of his own blood shed on the cross, and those enemies of ours are dead and defeated. He leads us out of our tombs to a better promised land, not occupied by Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, but saints and angels gathered around God’s throne.

You and I are the spokesman. Tell the story faithfully. But the Lord rescues because he cares about our suffering, he is gracious, and he loves us in a way we could never earn or deserve.

Exodus 3:4-6 “When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, ‘Moses! Moses!’ and Moses said, ‘Here I am.’ ‘Do not come any closer, God said. ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’”

Perhaps we are surprised to hear God say, “Moses, keep your distance.” I thought he loved us. Don’t we sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus?” Doesn’t he pick us up in his arms and carry us in that “Footprints in the Sand” story posted on plaques in a million living rooms? What gives?

There is the little matter of human sin. In Psalm 24 David observes: “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart…” But that is just our problem. We have dirty hands and a polluted heart. We do things that make God mad. We want things that defy his will.

This is a problem for a holy God. We can no more ask him to be okay with this than we can ask him to stop being God. A god who ignores sin, who accepts it as merely a different choice, who shrugs his shoulders and says, “Do whatever you want,” is a god that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else should or could respect. If someone else takes your things, should he just say, “That’s okay.” If someone else took your life, should his reaction be, “Who am I to judge?”

A holy God acknowledges, “Sin is a problem. It puts a distance between you and me. If something isn’t done about it, that distance will be as far as heaven is from hell, and it is going to last forever and ever.”

So God demands respect. “Keep your distance, Moses. Take off your shoes.” If you visit my house, you can wear your shoes all over the house if you like. I don’t care. I do it. But you know that many people expect you to drop your shoes at the door. They don’t want what’s on the bottom of your shoes tracked all over the carpet. For some cultures, like the Japanese, taking your shoes off inside is a general matter of respect. The Lord, too, was impressing on Moses, “I don’t want what your sandals have picked up from tramping around with the sheep, and living in your filthy world, tracked into my holy presence. You will respect my holiness and purity.”

Moses got the message. “Then he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ At this Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.” The Lord is not a one dimensional character from a cartoon. There is more to him than this holiness. But we have to reckon with his holiness, too. And Moses did so when he covered his face.

This is the God who sends us to serve him, and there are a couple of things to take away for our own lives of service. We approach serving God with a sense of seriousness and awe. Being a Christian isn’t a hobby. It is a high and holy calling. It demands our highest and our best.

If the Lord takes his holiness so seriously, we have no right to compromise his holy standards. We are called, all of us, to uphold them all. The world won’t like them. We will fail to keep them. That’s not okay. That’s a call to repentance, repentance we all need every day. But if we decide to fudge on God’s holy standards instead, and let things slide, and won’t confront sin in ourselves or others, that serves no one.

Because God’s holiness is accompanied by his love, he not only demands holiness, he gives it through the forgiveness of sins. “Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:25-27). So cleansed, we are qualified to stand in God’s holy presence and serve him with holy lives.

Exodus 3:1-3 “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, ‘I will go over and see this strange sight–why the bush does not burn up.”

Negative skeptics of the Bible sometimes try to explain away the miracles Moses did in Egypt with naturalistic explanations. The Nile River turning to “blood” was the result of a mud slide of red clay upstream. This drove the frogs out of the river and they became a nuisance in the Egyptian homes. Away from the water the frogs died, and their decaying bodies produced first the plague of gnats, and then the flies. You get the picture.

The burning bush is not the biggest miracle the Lord ever performed, but it pretty much defies naturalistic explanations. The bush was engulfed in fire, but the fire was not being fed by the bush. The branches were not charred, and the leaves did not wither and turn to ash in the heat. A voice speaks to Moses from within the bush. Unless one claims that Moses had schizophrenic episodes, this is an example of God’s supernatural power to suspend the laws of nature.

Moses did not immediately connect the dots between this display of divine power and his call. He later tried to convince the God who could suspend the laws of nature like this that somehow Moses’ own talents were too limited for the mission he was giving him. Moses failed to put two and two together. But we shouldn’t. One of the reasons to be confident we can fulfill the mission God gives us is the power of the God who sends us.

That’s not to say that miracles are guaranteed. One of our country’s first really big prosperity preachers used to say, “Expect a Miracle.” The problem is, part of what makes a miracle a miracle is that it is relatively rare.

So we don’t “expect” miracles. But we still depend on God’s power and fully trust his ability to help. “Pastor, will you pray for me?” my people sometimes ask. It’s not as though I personally have powers to cure cancer, heal injuries, or relieve heartache when they ask. But I know the God who does. He is the one who sent me to serve them. His power gives all of us confidence to pray even for the impossible. Then we see how he will answer, whether by bending natural laws or using them fully to our advantage.

What if we think we don’t fit needs of the people God wants us to serve? What if we feel we have been mismatched with our assignment? Perhaps our personal gifts don’t seem right. By any reasonable measure, most would consider us too old, or too young for the job. We have no experience with this kind of thing. What do we have to offer?

We have the gospel message God has given us. It is the key to every human heart. Paul calls it the “power of God for salvation.” It is the quintessential power of the God who sends us. Our callings are not about you, or me, any more than Moses’ ministry was about him, or Aaron, or the fickle Children of Israel he was sent to lead. It is about our powerful God. He’s the one who sends us. Expect him to make something of it.

Revelation 20:4 “I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life (literally, simply ‘they lived’ in Greek) and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”

In the previous vision, the binding of Satan lasted a thousand years. This scene, too, is said to last a thousand years. After seeing that the Angel is Jesus, and the dragon is the devil, and chain is the gospel, and the binding is the gospel’s success, we don’t suddenly become hyper literal when it comes to the thousand years. Like the rest, it is a picture. It is the complete period of time set by God in which these things happen, and it is the time we are living in right now. It began with Jesus’ ministry on earth. It ends when he returns for judgment. This is the spiritual reality we don’t see with our eyes, because we can’t see into the spiritual realm.

But it is a comfort we see through the eyes of faith. This second picture is gospel truth we celebrate every time a believer dies and goes home. It is a central message of every truly Christian funeral. The people for whom John originally wrote Revelation had seen their leaders beheaded because they refused to compromise their faith for the Roman government. Some of them may have had the grim task of gathering up the bodies and burying them. The death of someone we love and respect is always deflating and depressing. The loss of these church leaders felt a lot like defeat.

John wanted them to know, “They’re not dead. Jesus has delivered them. I saw their souls sitting on thrones in heaven. They live and rule with Christ, just like you and they have since the day of your new birth, the day you came to faith and your soul rose to new spiritual life. This first resurrection of faith goes on, and it will continue in heaven until the day Jesus returns.” In the Gospel of John Jesus tells us, “I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). Already in Jesus day, that time had come. The spiritually dead and unbelieving were hearing Jesus’ voice, and they were coming to spiritual life. That’s a resurrection, the first one we experience.

And that life doesn’t end when our bodies die. It accompanies our souls to heaven, like John sees here. Truly, “Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6). When we die the first time, it is no defeat. In heaven we keep on living. We keep on ruling. And for those who have risen to spiritual life and made it to heaven, there is no second death. We will not be condemned to everlasting judgment and hell. Jesus has delivered us from death’s defeat.

The Book of Revelation delivers its message through fantastic and even frightening imagery. God pulls back the curtain and lets us see the spiritual war going on between heaven and hell. These words are no exception. But they aren’t intended to scare us. They are given for our comfort. Jesus still delivers his people, and neither death nor Satan can win.

1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world–the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does– comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

I once had an opportunity to counsel with a remarkable lady who was in a dilemma about how to use the money which she had received from her brother’s life insurance policy. Since she was named as executor of his will, she originally thought that she must use the money in the same manner as the rest of his estate. All of that had been bequeathed to his church. When she later learned that benefits received from the insurance policy were not counted part of the estate, the freedom to use them in whatever manner she chose left her in a quandary.

This dear lady was by no means wealthy in a worldly sense. She lived in a small apartment with old, rather dated furniture. Her clothing was simple and fell out of fashion long ago. She owned no car.

Her uncertainty about how to use the money arose out of the encouragements of family members to spend a little something on herself for once. They suggested that she would be foolish to give it all away. Why shouldn’t she have something nice for once?

She, however, had learned to be content with the way in which the Lord had taken care of her. She had never had much, but she had never needed to impose upon others for help, either. Her Jesus had done so much for her. It seemed to her that the children suffering from leprosy in India to whom she intended to send this little windfall needed it much more than she did. If God had been so good to her to give her Jesus, and bring her to faith, and take care of her all these years, she was certain he would take care of all her needs in the future, too.

What would you have done?

We New Testament Christians live in real freedom to use the gifts God gives us in the way we think is wisest and most useful. Since Jesus has paid for every sin, and heaven has been given as a free gift, we cannot pay our way into God’s favor even if we were to devote every cent we have for the mission of his church. Nor has God delivered to us the exact budget he wishes each of us to follow. He does not outline exactly how much to spend on mission work, how much for charity, for savings, for rent or mortgage or groceries, etc.

But in that same freedom, Jesus has set us free from sin’s hold on our life. We are free from all the secret idolatries that compete for God’s love. The Apostle John calls them “the world.” Jesus referred to our “treasures on earth” in the Sermon on the Mount.

It is good for us to examine our hearts each day and seriously consider the hold his world has on us. Do we really mean it when we sing in A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:

And take they our life–
Goods, fame, child, and wife–
Let these all be gone.
They yet have nothing won.

Or are there, in fact, many items lying around our houses or garages whose loss would make our hearts sink? Letting them go might send us into depression, because they have become our own little idols.

Then it is good for us to remember how good our Jesus has been to us. Not only has he given us our many things. He has given us his very self. He has literally loved us to death, and his love is never stolen, it never breaks or wears out, it doesn’t become outdated or obsolete. His love sets us free to love, not our things, but to love our dear Lord Jesus and the people whom he has made.

Revelation 20:1-3 “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.”

Does it ever seem to you like the devil is winning? We know that God is supposed to be the most powerful being of all. We know that Jesus is supposed to have everything under control. But it doesn’t always look like that. In America, Christianity is shrinking. Among evangelical Christians in their twenties, 700 leave the faith every day. The rates of decline are worse for many other Christian groups.

We could cite other indications the devil is winning: laws that reject biblical morality, less and less tolerance for Christians to practice their beliefs, a society that seems to be unraveling on many levels. You see the news.

For the people to whom John wrote these words, it was active government persecution against Christians. John himself was writing in exile on a barren little Mediterranean island. Other church leaders were being executed. The church at that time wasn’t really shrinking, but it was in a battle for its life.

John’s vision lets us see behind the realities that trouble our faith. What he sees isn’t the future. It’s actually the past and present. It is a picture of what began with Jesus’ earthly ministry. Jesus is the angel in the picture. He is often referred to as the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. He isn’t a created angel, but God’s “messenger” (the literal meaning of “angel”), the bringer of God’s word.

The devil is a spirit. He is not literally a dragon or serpent. That’s a picture to teach us he is dangerous. He has no physical body or form. As a spirit he can’t be bound by literal chains. Forge the biggest, thickest chain you can make, like the chains that attach anchors to ocean liners. Make it out of the hardest titanium alloy. It makes no difference to the devil. He is a spirit and can’t be bound by chain or rope.

So what does this “chaining” mean? We have a clue in the purpose John gives, “to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore…” Until Jesus came, practically the entire world rejected the true God. They preferred gods they spun out of their own imaginations, gods they could manipulate and control. Only one tiny nation on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea followed the real God, and even the Jews didn’t like their God that much. They were constantly dabbling in the idols and religions of their neighbors.

Then Jesus came, and people heard and saw God’s love like never before. He came with power no man had ever shown–not Moses, not Elijah, not any of the other prophets. He loved rich and poor alike. He invited them all to follow him. He broke bread with public sinners and hypocritical holy men. He helped and healed until he had gone days without food or sleep and his own family thought he had lost his mind.

Then he did the unthinkable. He gave his life as a ransom–those were his words. He let his enemies arrest him, torture him, and nail him to a cross to die. He let his heavenly Father abandon him and leave him on that cross with no help, no love, and no hope. He suffered the hell sinners deserve as their substitute, so that they would not have to. Three days later he took his life back again as evidence that death itself had been emptied of its power to keep people in its grasp. “This is love,” the Apostle John wrote 70 years later, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

This message was unleashed on the world, and suddenly Satan was all tied up. The devil had no answer for this gospel, this story of incomparable love and hope. He could tempt people into thinking they wanted some sin or another. He still does. But he had nothing better to offer than the love that gave everything and died on a cross to save us. People embraced it by the thousands, and then by the millions, and then by the billions. Satan was chained, and faith in Jesus grew.

It still does. The people who first read about John’s visions in this book of Revelation needed the reminder that they may be persecuted, but they weren’t losing. Their faith was spreading even as their leaders were being assassinated. We need the reminder that America is not the whole world. We may or may not lose thousands or millions of members in the years to come. But each year the gospel reaches millions more in places like communist China, Latin America, or Sub-Saharan Africa. Jesus still delivers people from Satan’s deceptions.

Deuteronomy 5:15 “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”

The evangelical nature (in the sense of gospel-centered, not a reference to a modern movement in Christianity) of God’s claim on our time and concern for our rest, even in the Old Testament, is clear from his final comments to his people about the reason he gave the Sabbath. This opportunity for rest was provided by his personal intervention.

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.” Not much rest there. Is there any condition that more nearly approaches the opposite of rest than slavery? Not only did Pharaoh take away their freedom and force them into hard labor. Not only did he continue to make their work harder and add to their work when Moses asked him to let Israel go. He refused to allow them even to go worship God in the desert and come back. The very kinds of rest God intended to provide with the Sabbath–for body and soul–Pharaoh denied God’s people.

So the Lord intervened personally. He delivered them. He brought them out of Egypt and brought them to their own land. And he gave them a day on which to remember the kind of loving and saving God they had. Do you know what day God established the Passover, and sent the angel of death through Egypt, and set them free? It was the fourteenth day, the second Saturday, the Sabbath. In a sense, every Sabbath was a little celebration, a little remembrance, of the Lord leading them from slavery to rest.

It is for similar reasons we Christians rest from our work and gather on Sundays when we can. No rule forces us to use this day. But God personally intervened to set our souls free from sin and death when Jesus died and then rose again on the first day of the week, on Sunday. It is a day to remember the kind of loving and saving God we have–a little celebration or remembrance of the Lord leading us from slavery to rest.

You and I are New Testament Christians. We aren’t bound to a particular day of the week. But that doesn’t mean God has given up his claim on our time. We have plenty of time to work. Don’t let it come between you and God’s gift of rest.

Deuteronomy 5:14 “On it (the Sabbath) you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey, or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do.”

It doesn’t come out in the English like it comes out in the Hebrew, but the Lord lays this command on his people’s hearts, “You really need to do this” (or not do this, as the case may be). You need to lay aside your work. You need to rest.” He is making “mothering noises” at you and me.

And can we argue with him? We may overwork our bodies. We may skip church or miss Bible class. But we know we are doing ourselves no favors. We feel the effects in our bodies. Through the week we struggle to trust, to believe, to hope and to love.

And it is such an appealing order, almost more of an invitation. “Set down the heavy load and let me carry it for you. Stop all your busyness, pull up a chair, and just listen for a while. Have I told you, lately, how much you mean to me? Do you remember what I did to rescue you? Let me tell you again, before you get back to the grind that eats up all your strength.”

This claim on your time doesn’t stop with you and me. It extends to our families, “your son or daughter.” So God’s concern for rest is also a concern for Christian education. Don’t forget about the children. Certainly don’t exclude the children. Church is as much for them as it is for anyone else.

This claim on our time extends to all classes, all elements of society. He didn’t intend it to be a middle or upper class thing. Your servants are included, “so that your manservant and maidservant may rest as you do.” I am not in favor of blue laws, generally speaking, especially in a pluralistic society. And we Christians live in a New Testament freedom regarding the Sabbath day. But when Christian companies like Hobby Lobby or Chick-Fil-A exercise their freedom by closing their doors on Sunday, I think it gives a good witness. It reflects the spirit of God’s command, because people from all walks of life should have the chance to get their rest.

This claim God made on his people’s time to give them rest even had a mission emphasis. It applied to “the alien within your gates.” The needs of body and soul don’t change just because a person hasn’t come to faith yet. We force no one to believe. But we want the opportunity given to everyone. God made this clear by including the foreigner, the Gentile, in his Sabbath law.

We understand instinctively that morals generally apply to everyone the same. Right doesn’t stop being right because an individual is powerful or wealthy, or because he is weak or poor. God’s concern for individual well-being also remains the same for all. He loves the world. He wants all to be saved. His comments on the Sabbath commandment reflect his universal concern to give people rest.