Nick Ferreiro - La Esperanza Permanece

What's going on Church by the Glaze, how we doing? We're in a series called Breaking Bad Habits and for a few weeks we've been studying that change is possible against popular belief even if you feel like you can't show an old dog new tricks transformation and change are possible because the power that is in us, Christians is the Holy Spirit of God that allows us to transform from inside to outside and that change is possible that's why every time we get together we read this book, the scriptures, the Bible every time we get together because it has the power to transform not only in the reading but in the application there is something in applying the word of God that makes a transformative effect in habits and even in nature itself here is the gospel at the beginning of our sermon it says that transformation is possible in the name of God so if we are in this series, our prayer has been that as we read the scriptures we can learn how to break patterns, cycles and habits that have influenced our lives and that many times the cycles that we need to break are the direct result of bad decisions we have made whether they are financial decisions or vocational decisions something relational or emotional or maybe even spiritual a decision that you have made that has caused you a bind or a load in your life but I have also learned that sometimes sometimes the bad thing that we have to break is not even something that we have caused

but something that we have found maybe something that the parents did or not or stopped doing that marked you in a negative way or maybe because of budget cuts you lost your job or now you are in trouble or someone close to you caused something and a fracture in the relationship or maybe a label that a mentor or teacher put on you and stayed with you I don't know exactly what it is for you but my point is that not everything that hurts us is caused by us but since this is the truth it does not mean that we have to wave a white flag and give up without fighting because my belief is that God has more saved for you that has more for your life that is not the end of your story that has freedom and victory with his name on it but you have to counterattack you can't just lie down and accept these things so today I want to observe a woman little common in the scriptures that literally changed the trajectory of an entire nation simply because she refused to participate or remain in a negative conduct that surrounded her her name is Hocabet and her story is in Exodus chapter 2 if you have the Bible with you a copy of the scriptures open it in Exodus chapter 2 if you have a paper Bible wave it in the air look at all the real Christians I see them

it's not a joke I'm really making a joke if you don't have a paper Bible it's ok I'm going to put the verses here on the screen so you can read with me Exodus chapter 2 if you are ready for the word of God say yes starting in verse 1 this is the word of the Lord the Pharaoh's daughter came to bathe in the river while the young woman was walking by the river she saw the basket and she sent to see and when she opened the basket she saw the child and the child was crying she had compassion for him and said this is one of the Hebrew children My sister said to the Pharaoh's daughter, I can call a Jewish woman to breastfeed the child for you. And the Pharaoh's daughter said, go. So the girl went and called the child's mother. And the Pharaoh's daughter said, take this child, breastfeed him, and I'll give you your payment. So the woman took the child, and when the child grew up, she brought him to the Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son, and she called him Moses. That name sounds familiar to you? Because he said, I took him out of the water.

So this woman, this unusual woman, maybe you've never heard of her before. Her name is Hocabeth. You're going to see her again in chapter 6. She was Moses' mother. And here we see that very early on, Moses has a fascinating launch in his life. To understand the whole story, we have to take a step back and look at the book of Genesis, because we will learn that the people of God found their way to Egypt because it was the only region in the area that had food, provisions, and resources in a huge famine. And this was largely due to the leadership of a man named Joseph, that Hebrew boy who came to be the second in command in the whole nation of Egypt, and under his leadership, the whole people of God came to Egypt. So while he was in the leadership of Joseph, the people of God exploded. They grew exponentially and multiplied in population and number. But for Exodus chapter 1, Joseph dies and all his influence with the Pharaoh goes with him because there is a new Pharaoh who comes to power, and this new Pharaoh no longer remembered Joseph. This new Pharaoh did not even know Joseph because of the influence and impact he had made on the nation of Egypt. So when he saw the growing population of the people of God in Egypt, this new Pharaoh became more insecure because he thought, tell me if they outnumber us and if they try to escape from Egypt.

So because of this, because he was so insecure, he thought of oppressing the people of God. And we see how he tried to do it in chapter 1 of Exodus, verse 10. It is the Pharaoh and he says, we are going to treat them rudely so that they do not multiply and join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the earth. Verse 11. That was the justification for verse 11. It says, then they placed people who afflicted them with hard work. And if you look at the story of Exodus, this was how the people of God originated towards the Egyptian captivity for decades and decades. Verse 12. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they were distributed. I love that. The more the Pharaoh tried to oppress the people of God, they grew more. The more the enemy tried to work against them, the more God worked in their favor. I don't know who needs to hear this, but be very careful to curse the afflictions that are happening to you today because that may be exactly what God wants to use to bring you to grow in this time. There is something about handling suffering in the right way that has a multiplying effect on your life. It tends to multiply your faith. It tends to multiply your capacity.

Multiply your strength, your grip, your wisdom, your experience in life. Multiply your empathy. It tends to multiply your perseverance and even multiply your proximity and your dependence on God. Listen to me as a pastor. You almost always ask me the same question. Why does God allow negative things to happen? And I will be honest with you. There is no time in our conversation today to give you all the theological principles that have an adequate answer to this question. And even more honestly, I'm not 100% sure of the answer myself because I'm not God. So I don't think as he thinks. His paths taught me that they are higher than mine and that I don't think like him. And I don't know what he knows. So we can only see this part of the picture. But he sees the beginning and the end. And he knows everything. So I'm not God. I don't know the answer. But what I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt is that one of the reasons why God allows suffering and that bad things happen is because he knows that suffering God is producing something in you that you need for what he already has in store for you. I'll say it this way. God produces the strength that you need for what he called you to do tomorrow in today's suffering.

That's what the book of Saint James tells us. That we are considered blessed, we are considered blessed when we confront proofs in different ways. The apostle Paul says that we glorify ourselves in our suffering because suffering produces something. Suffering produces perseverance, it produces resistance, it produces character, it produces hope. Your suffering is producing something, but when all you do is curse your suffering, it tends to keep you stagnant. Stagnant in why? Why God? Why do you allow this, God? Why? It keeps you stagnant in the past. It keeps you stagnant in the same way of thinking. Stagnant in the same patterns, habits that you are confronting. But when you have an appropriate understanding of the theology of suffering, you begin to ask better questions. It is no longer why, but what. What, God, should I learn in this season of my life? What, God, can I get out of this hard time? How can I have more strength from you? How can I elevate my faith in this season of my life? Because suffering always leads to higher levels of faith. As Christians, we were never told that we had to live isolated lives. Jesus told us, you are going to face trials, you are going to have difficulties, but be encouraged because I have overcome the world, I have overcome the world. This does not mean that you are going to be in a spiritual bubble, out of problems or out of pain. We were never told that we would have isolated lives, but lives of faith, a proven faith, a faith that has been put to the test. In other words, as we consider ourselves the people of God, we must learn how to suffer well. Because suffering well can be exactly what depends on our growth, our freedom. And here is an example in terms of the narrative of Moses' birth. Because if we continue here, the Pharaoh, when he sees that his oppression is not working, then he escalates his evil even more and makes a new edict of immediate effect. And it is that every male baby born from a Hebrew mother, from that day on, must be thrown into the Nile River. And it is at this point in the history of humanity that Moses is born. Talking about suffering, talking about trials. He was born in a child genocide. He was born in the worst possible moment in the history of humanity for a Hebrew child to be born. In a situation and circumstances that was not the best for him, but the worst for him.

But here comes the mother of Moses. I love this. I love her because she did not simply accept this Pharaoh's edict as a death sentence for her son, but she fought. Some of us are stuck in patterns and habits because we have accepted things for which we should have counterattacked. We have relational dysfunctions, afflictions, financial problems that we have accepted as death sentences and that determine our future. But if that is you, if that is the word of God for you, stop allowing these things to direct your destiny and start counterattacking. She fought back. And she counterattacked. Scripture tells us, hiding her baby when she should have thrown him into the Nile. She hid him for three months. Let's humanize this story. You can imagine how difficult it is to hide a newborn for three months. I don't know about you, but I have a newborn. And they're loud. She screams and cries and we try to calm her. And many times it is unbearable. So for three months she hid the baby Moses with one eye open. Every night she was probably exhausted, terrified, that the soldiers would hear the baby cry and come to take it away. So for three months. Moises hid him, he hid a baby, that's crazy, and the Bible tells us that when he couldn't hide him anymore, we don't know why he couldn't hide him anymore, but he couldn't, then he built a little basket, he made it waterproof, he made it floatable, and he put the baby Moises in the basket and sent him to the Nile River, probably praying that God would have compassion for his son. It's a moment that breaks the heart for this woman, but at the right time, when the Pharaoh's daughter was bathing in the Nile River, she sees this basket that is floating, and she tells one of her servants to bring the basket, and she sees that the baby is crying, and her heart moves with compassion, so she looks for care, and at that moment, the sister of Moises, Miriam, who was following him, because she positioned herself in the right environment, in the right place, to look for an opportunity, and that's the word for you, maybe you need to position yourself in the right place, in the right environment, so that when the opportunity comes, you can look for your moment, to take the freedom that God has for you. Miriam was in the right place, at the right time, and when she saw the opportunity, she took it, and she asks the question, she says, I see that you have no children of your own, and you can't breastfeed this child, and I also heard you say that he was a Hebrew boy, would you like to look for a Hebrew woman to breastfeed this child for you? And to her surprise, the Pharaoh's daughter says yes. So Miriam goes and looks for Moises' mother to breastfeed the baby, and in verse 9, we have a fascinating detail, and in this conversation, I want to share with you, in verse 9 of Exodus 2, it says that the Pharaoh's daughter, when she saw Jochebed, and sent for her, she said, take this baby, and breastfeed him, and I will give you your salary, your payment.

We can stop for a moment and enjoy the irony that Jochebed was compensated to raise his own child, by the same administration that had thought of taking him away, something that Jochebed would have done without anyone paying him, something that he would have had to do with fear, now he could do it without fear, and without any repercussion, freely, and this does not stop there, because if you know the story of Moises, you know that Moises continues, and is the great emancipator of the people of God, that God is shown in a burning bush, to take him to the ministry, to take him to the freedom of the people of God, and he would go to the palace of the Pharaoh, and he would demand to release, to free the people of God, and he would come out of there with two million people, behind him, through the Red Sea, divided in two, to the Promised Land, and this is what Moises said, but before he did this, he was raised in the palace of Egypt, and he was trained and equipped as someone of royalty, because he was the son of the daughter of the Pharaoh, so this is the irony, the Pharaoh was so concerned, that the people of God outnumbered him, and he could escape his leadership, so he sought to oppress them, but the same system that the Pharaoh created, to remove the people of God, was the same system that God used to build one that would free the people of God, and this oppression of the Pharaoh, is exactly what led Moises to the palace, where God would force the Pharaoh, to provide the education of the man who would seek and achieve the liberation of the people of God, if God, could not make such a perfect story like this, if not God, who would take the weapon of the enemy, from his hand, and would defeat him, with this same weapon? Nobody but God. The enemy thought he could take you down with this depression, but he did not know that he was leading you in the arms of God, and making your dependence on him grow, the enemy thought that this divorce was going to defeat you, but he did not know that he was growing a resilience and a strength in you for the future that he had for you, the enemy thought that this disappointment was going to defeat you, but he did not know that he was preparing you for God to do much more than you could have dreamed and imagined, the enemy thought that this disappointment was going to defeat you, but he did not know that he was preparing you for God to do much more than you could have dreamed and imagined, something in you and in your life, not only for your own benefit, but for the benefit of those around you. And I want to make myself very clear. I'm not saying that your suffering is not painful, or that it won't be painful. I know it's painful. I know it's something that breaks your heart. I know it keeps you awake at night. I'm just suggesting that you don't allow that pain to control your life. Allow that pain to take you to the right place. If we can learn something from the example of Jocabeth, it's that she certainly experienced pain. We're not going to spiritualize the story too much. She experienced the pain of not knowing what was going to happen to her son. The pain of seeing him float through the Nile River without the possibility of seeing him again. And then she had to let him go a second time and see that another woman, who perhaps didn't have a better interest in mind, raised her son. But as a father, that affects me. It affects me because I think of my own children. I can't talk about other mothers, but my wife Stacy is very aware of how time goes by in terms of our children. They are now five or three, and we have a newborn. And this means that my children talk a lot. They talk a lot. But they haven't quite learned how to talk either. So sometimes they say, if we give them spaghetti, they say, thanks for the pasqueri. My daughter, specifically, Everly, goes to her school here at GCA. It's a great Christian school. Not only daily care, but they teach about Jesus, the word of God.

My son, at four years old, already knows about Jesus and can read. So this is a surprising school. But my daughter comes from school and talks about her favorite teachers and says, how much fun she had with Miss Vivian and Miss Susan. She sounds like a 50-year-old Latin woman who is learning English as a second language. And I hear this and I say, oh God, it's so sweet. They're playing there. But my wife, on the other hand, says, if this is the last time you say pasqueri, how about if this is the last time you say Miss Vivian? And I wasn't thinking about that. But now I'm thinking and I'm depressed. Thank you, dear. I appreciate it. But she's right. She's right. Our children grow up and begin to make decisions on their own, to think on their own, to make their own lives. And this passage from Scripture is a reminder for me that we don't keep our children in our home forever. In addition to having to recover her son, she had to return him to the Pharaoh's daughter so that he could be trained with a pagan Egyptian education. But in this time, this time that she spent with Moses in her early years, was what established the course of the rest of her life. And I don't know what they taught her. I don't know what she taught him. I don't know what he told her. But I can guarantee you that she showed him the ways of God, that she taught him that despite his future adoption in the palace of Egypt, that he was a son of God, and that this God was the only one who had to be worshiped, that the only one who could bring him completion, peace, that only this God could bring him joy, that only this God could bring him purpose, that only this God could give him true satisfaction and fill that gap in his heart, that only this God loves you. And that this desire of God for your life is freedom. So she didn't have a forever with Moses, but she had influence over Moses and used her influence to instruct him in the ways of God, so much so that her testimony became one in which she rejected the powers and the pleasures of the palace to remain in the plan and the purposes of God. And we know this because there is a hall of faith in Hebrews, and there they select biblical characters and how they operated by faith,

and Moses is one of those examples. In verse 24 it says that by faith, Moses, when he grew up, rejected being known as the son of the daughter of the pharaoh, and chose to be mistreated by the people of God instead of enjoying the pleasures of sin. He saw the misfortune of Christ. as a greater value because he was looking for a real reward. Moisés because he was raised as a character of royalty, he could have been a dictator, but due to the influence of his mother, he was a liberator. And this, this same power of influence is in our hands, we do not have a forever with the children, they are going to go to the universities, they are going to join the workforce, they are going to build their own families, they are going to start thinking and acting as individuals. So while they are with us, we are going to do what the book of Proverbs tells us, which is to train a child and the paths they must go so that when they grow up, they know the path they have to go. That is why we have to cover the children with constant prayer, to saturate them with the word of God, in the house of God, surrounded by the people of God, because at some point in their lives they will be surrounded by people who do not think as they think, and that is a good thing. But trust me, it is not the pressure, it is not that the pressure will come, or the temptations, the pressure will come, but let their testimony be

by their influence the testimony of Moses, that they prefer to follow and listen to the ways of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin, because they are not looking for an earthly satisfaction, they are looking for an eternal reward, and this reward is to listen, well done, good being, faithful servant, enter into the rest, into the rest of your Lord. Fathers and mothers, do not discount investing in your children, it is not a minor thing, it is the most important thing. That is why here at Church by the Glaze we are passionate about creating spaces for your children, for the age group in which they are, so that they find their home here in the house of God. We are passionate about these ministries that we have, such as the ministry of children, of young adults, of students. We have a camp called Kids Night, it is not just a daycare, my son went last year and came to the house talking about Jesus in ways that I had not taught him, and I was as grateful as his father, not as a pastor, but as his father, to know that my son was learning about the Lord in a fun and safe environment, it is a great place for the summer, and for high school students it is called United Nights, four nights of worship,

fun environments, it is something incredible, it is the best thing you can do all summer. They have nothing to do, so they can get into trouble, so this is the place where they can be safe and have fun, and what I'm trying to tell you is that we have all this for you, and I'm not going to sit down and tell you how to be a father of your children, because the truth is that I don't know how to be a father of mine, but what I would tell you is what I know I have done well, and that is that I have raised my children in the house of God, it is the most important thing I have done. So after the service, go to the lobby, write to your children for Kids Nights, for United Nights, ask about Rally, Rally Loud, it can literally be the catalyst that transforms the trajectory of their lives, in a way that you did not think was possible, and they will begin to see the work of the Holy Spirit, much beyond what they thought was possible in the lives of their children, because they trained a child in the paths they had to follow, so they never left him, so this is a good place to applaud. But as a father, when I investigate the actions and movements of Jocabet, I can't help but notice all the things she did, hiding her son for three months, in a very difficult moment to do it, but then the task of building this basket, to make something that was waterproof, that could float, and then this strategic placement of Moisés in that section of the river,

where it was known that the daughter of the pharaoh would be bathing, and then instruct her daughter to follow, to see what was going to happen with the baby, and then to return Moisés after days of breastfeeding him, when she could simply find a way to escape, to escape with him and keep her in custody. All these movements show me how much hope she had in her. Let's not be mistaken, this is the story of Moses, yes, but it is also the story of the hope of Yochameth. She would never have acted this way if she had not had hope. She preserved the life of her son during a child genocide because she had hope. She rejected and did not accept the edict of the Pharaoh as the death sentence for her son because she had hope. And she ended up breastfeeding and raising the liberator of the people of God because she had hope. Hope that this was not the end of the story, hope that God had a plan for her son. Hope that God would somehow bring the freedom that he had promised her so long ago. And I understand that so many of us have accepted things and we have accepted them as a death sentence. We are going to stop and see it and I think this happens because we have lost hope. So that's why my prayer for you today is that you regain your hope because hope is something powerful. Hope is how you counter the enemy's attack and I will prove it to you. If you have hope, no matter how difficult your marriage has been up to this point, you can get stronger if you fight in a different way. No matter what happened to your children, but God still has a plan for them. You can pray differently. If you have hope that no matter how difficult your financial situation is, you have hope that God will provide for you. You will stop being so anxious and you will begin to anticipate how he is going to manifest himself. But if your hope never becomes action, then it is simply a good thought. Your hope must lead you to make movement. I ended your hope that God would preserve his son and yes, he did. After she went through a great effort to protect that hope that God had given her. And if Yocabet had not acted on her hope, if she had not just waited and had thrown Moises to the Nile with all the babies of his age, this would not have happened. Your hope must lead you to action. Hope is a question of your belief system, but faith is expressed through action.

You cannot have faith without hope, but you can have hope without faith. Do not allow your hope to be wasted because you simply did nothing. Allow your hope to produce faith because faith is the certainty of things that are expected and the confidence of things that are not seen. Yocabet's hope was the belief that God still had a plan for her son, but her faith was in hiding her baby and building this basket. And if her hope was strong enough to lead her to this action, how great must be our faith, our hope to lead us to a greater action. Because the hope we have today is not only situational, it is not circumstantial, it is eternal. It is an eternal hope that is anchored and that is firm and secure. It is a hope that stabilizes us in the midst of the fragility of life. And the name is Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. The majestic Son of God, who is Alpha and Omega. The Prince of Peace, who knows the beginning and the end, is Jesus. And in Jesus we have an eternal hope that there is no unfortunate circumstance or difficult time that can take us away. It is the hope that all tears will be taken away from us. It is a hope of no more sadness, no more death, no more tears, no more crying. It is the hope that brings meaning and purpose to our life. It is a hope of abundant and eternal life. The hope that our sins will be completely forgiven and that there will be a complete, total, holistic healing. The hope that when we stop breathing here on this earth, it is not the end of our story. That it is simply the beginning. Because the hope we have is the hope of glory. The hope of eternity with our Father in Heaven. The hope in Heaven. When we say to our Father one day, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, Almighty God. And the hope we have is for Jesus Christ. Hope kept Moses floating in the same river where he was supposed to drown. And I believe that hope will keep you afloat. You have to recover your hope.

Protect, fight for your faith and by all means, keep your hope and then turn it into faith. Because faith can save you. Only faith can save you. It is by the grace of God, through your faith in Jesus Christ, that he saves you. Scripture says in Romans 10.9, that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is the Lord, the word Lord has implications. Not just believing that God exists is not enough. The word Lord implies a surrender of your life by faith to obedience and to the commandment of Christ. Follow it every day of your life, even when you disagree. Surrender to the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Scripture says that you will be saved and that you will have faith. Because when your hope and your faith are rooted in the person of Jesus Christ, Scripture says, promise that you will never be put to shame, that you will never be ashamed. So recover your hope, maintain your hope and trust in the Lord Jesus.

Father, we bless you. Thank you for the hope that we have in your name. Thank you for who you are, for what you have done. Thank you because we are not alone, because we were bought and that by faith we accept the gift of your grace and that we can inherit eternal life and inherit peace, happiness, the purpose that brings meaning to our life. So God, help us to have hope, to believe and see that it is not the end of our story, that you are still working with us, that you are still working with the details of our life. And Lord, that this hope produces faith, that we act in a consistent way with what we act, with what we believe. We ask you to bless us, to favor us. We love you, Lord, and it is in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.