In his sermon 'God's Frustrating Detours,' Phillip Kayser explores the concept of divine guidance through life's unexpected obstacles, drawing on the biblical narrative of Exodus 13. He highlights how God led the Israelites on a longer route to teach them dependence and faith, rather than the fear and discouragement that a shorter, war-prone path might have induced. Kayser shares personal anecdotes of seeking a new house and experiencing detours, emphasizing that these are opportunities for growth and trust in God's providence. He argues that God's guidance is certain for believers, albeit perplexing at times, and that it requires a willing, cheerful submission to His will. The sermon underlines the importance of recognizing detours as part of God’s perfect plan, not as frustrations but as blessings that refine faith, discipline, and dependence on God. By embracing these divine interruptions, believers can transform frustrations into opportunities for spiritual growth and deeper communion with God.

If you want to follow along, please turn to Exodus chapter 13. This is another passage, like Numbers 31, that is designed to stir up fear of God, trembling at his word, but also an incredible gratitude for his salvation and all of the provisions that he has given to his people. Exodus 13, beginning to read at verse 17. Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.

So God led the people around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, and The children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt. And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of Israel under solemn oath, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you. So they took their journey from Succoth and camped in Etham at the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people.

Amen. Father we thank you for your word and as we study it it is our desire to have this word transform us to work in us. We know that it is not simply an outward word, but your spirit connects that objective word to our hearts and changes us. And it is sharper than any two-edged sword it brings healing it it does many works in your people and I pray that you would continue to sanctify us by your word your word is truth we love it and we bow before it We're thankful for it in Jesus name. Amen Maybe seated Well Kathy and I have spent six months last year looking for a new house for ministry.

And that's for us the only thing that a house was good for. Well, I guess it's good to not be sleeping out under the stars. But it is a tool of ministry for us. That is first and foremost what a house means to us. And we really did know, I won't get into it, but we really did know that the Lord wanted us to sell our old house and to look for a new house just outside of town.

And yet as we looked for six months we could not find anything. We probably looked at over a hundred houses and over and over we realized this is not a house that is suitable for our ministry. And we said thank you Lord for guiding us. This is a no answer from your hand and yet we would find houses that just seem like they were perfect for the ministry that God has called us to And yet before we could even get there, it would have been snatched up. It's a really hot market.

Within two to four hours of it being listed, houses many times disappeared. And so we would thank the Lord that for some reason that was not His house for us. Thank you Lord for this guidance. There were times where we were driving around town where we would get into a detour that would slow us down. And one of the things that I have done over the years is to look at the faces of other drivers when we get into traffic jams and detours and roadblocks and things like that.

And you can tell a lot about people's character by how they respond to these things. Do they look frustrated and beginning to get cantankerous, you know, over these detours? And I used to be that way. I'm a very goal-oriented person. You get me in a car going somewhere, I want to get there now, fast, you know, and that's why I'm really thankful for cruise control or I'd have tickets because just unconsciously I would just be driven to get there.

But over time God has gradually enabled me to put off frustration and to begin to see and recognize these detours, flat tires, things of that nature as being a good gift from His hand. It's a part of His divine guidance, not a frustration to that. And this morning I want to look at how we should respond to God's detours. All of us face these detours from time to time. Maybe one of you was felt called by the Lord to go on a missions trip and you got your money together, you got your visas, you're all excited about going and you get appendicitis right before and you cannot go on this mission trip, and you wonder, Lord, why did you even put on my heart to go on this mission trip?

What is this about? Maybe your detour was you wanted to go to camp, And for some reason, providentially, you were hindered from being able to do so. Maybe you've wanted to have a close friend, somebody who was a bosom buddy that you could share your heart with. And for some reason, the Lord's not enabled you to connect with others. There's many different kinds of things that we have on our hearts, and it feels like there are these frustrating detours and obstacles and roadblocks that get in the way of accomplishing that.

And it is only as we correctly respond to God's providence in the fear of the Lord that we will benefit from those detours. Psalm 25 verse 12 says, Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him shall he teach in the way he chooses. And so this morning we're going to look at the subject of frustrating detours. Hopefully by the end of this sermon you will be motivated to put off frustration and to say, Lord, I thank you for this detour.

I don't know what you have in mind through it, but I know it is a blessed detour, not a frustrating detour for me. God did not lead Israel by way of the shortest possible route that they could have gotten on the way to Palestine. There were actually four different ways that they could travel. He took them on the longest route. If they'd gone on the shortest route, it'd be about 11 days to get to their destination.

But the way that they went, They took some months to get there, and then a later story shows why God even there detoured them and say, no, you're going to be wandering for a while. And we won't get into that part of the story. But we're going to examine why God did this, why it is that he allows us to be detoured from things that he himself has put on our hearts to accomplish. Point one says that those frustrating detours are God's perfect guidance. God's guidance can be seen very simply and plainly in the phrase in verse 18, God led the people around.

God led the people around. Verses 21 through 22 show exactly how God led the people. He went before the people with a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. And what would happen is when he wanted them to move, the pillar would pick up and it would start moving forward. And so the people would quickly pack up all of their tents and their goods onto their animals and they would start following after the pillar.

And then there would be a time where it would park for a day, maybe several days, maybe even months, and they would just stay where the pillar had parked during that time. This was God's method of guidance for them. Now determining God's guidance, I believe, is always possible, yes, even today. Now it's not going to be the same method. And by the way, it wasn't the same method for them throughout Israel's history.

The moment they went into the land of Canaan, God stopped guiding them with that pillar of cloud. He stopped the manna as well. So his method for them of guiding them changed. But God does indeed always guide his people and he does so primarily through the scriptures and through his providential arrangement of our lives. But guidance is possible and yet I want to qualify that statement of it being possible by a couple of sub points.

The first one is that only believers are led by God. God providentially works in the lives of everybody but only believers are led by God. In chapter 12, we saw that these people were redeemed by God. They put the Passover blood on the doorways of their houses. And at least outwardly, they were in the covenant.

They were led by God because they were a redeemed people. In chapter 15 verse 13 it says, you and your mercy have led forth the people whom you have redeemed. You have guided them in your strength. So his guidance was for a redeemed people. That was certainly not true of the Egyptians that were left behind.

Now, God was working in the Egyptians' lives. Every detail of their lives was still controlled by Him, but He was not working all things together for their good. In fact, he was working all things together for their damnation. The only thing that enables us to be led is if we are sons and daughters of God. If you're an unbeliever, you don't need to worry about God's lessons of detours that are in this chapter because you are not even on the pathway until you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

But all believers are led by God. Here's what Romans 8 verse 14 says, As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. If A equals B, then B equals A. Sons of God, all sons of God, are led. All those who are led by the Spirit are sons of God.

This is something that is the heritage of God's people. He guides them. He leads them in different ways. Now there is a second qualification for guidance and that is that God's guidance brings comfort only to those who follow him. And we only sense really his guidance in our lives more and more as we willingly follow after the Lord.

God led his people, his people followed. There was a spirit of willingness to be led. Now periodically in the wilderness God's people rebelled and God's people had doubts and they lost the comfort and he had to chasten them into a learning spirit. God exhorts his children in Psalm 32 verses eight through nine to follow rather than having to be dragged. Let me read that.

Psalm 32, eight through nine. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with my eye to not be like the horse or like the mule which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle else they will not come near you." So he's saying don't make God have to put a bit and bridle into your mouth and drag you around. That's so uncomfortable. God's going to lead you one way or another but he'd much rather that you follow, willingly follow, with just the light reins on your neck, rather than having to be drug through the mud.

Now one other qualification that I would add is that God loves it when his people cheerfully submit to his will. They say, yes Lord, whatever you want me to do, I'm here. I'm here for you. I want to follow after you. When these people went into the wilderness, they had to trust God completely to provide for them and to protect them, to care for them in every way.

They were called to rest, rest in him, to realize that His guidance was that good and perfect and acceptable will of God. And yes, they were slowed down. And for those of you who are like me, getting slowed down, It can easily cast off faith and begin to be a frustrating thing for you. We want to get there and we want to get there quickly. But God has had to teach me that relationship with Him is far more important than service.

You know, God does not need us. We think we're so important that we've got to serve and and yet God gives us the ability to serve him so that we can become conformed to his image, so that we can learn his character, begin to develop relationship, develop what John Owen called communion with God. Some people speak of it as intimacy with God. I've had to learn that relationship is far more important than my service and that how we get there is more important than when we get there or even that we get there. He has all the time in the world to work with us and He's more interested in our growth in Him than how much we produce.

He's much more interested in our holiness than He is in our comfort. When we begin to understand those principles, it's more likely that we will get on board more quickly. And it's taken me a while to get to the place where I trust God that His perfect purposes are being lived out even when I get interruptions at work. And I get lots of interruptions at work. I try to protect myself from those interruptions because I work much better when I have these blocks of times I'm able to accomplish those things.

But I've learned to trust God even in those detours. Now one caveat on this promise is that God guides His people, that he does so in a way where we do not have the sense of his guidance or comfort of his guidance when we are double-minded. Double-mindedness is the opposite of faith And it's the opposite of prudence. You know, there are four types of knowledge. There is just knowledge where we're memorizing facts of Scripture.

There is understanding where we understand how those facts relate to each other then there is wisdom knowing how to apply those That knowledge and that understanding to real-life situations And then there is prudence that is the wisdom of actually doing it Solomon had a lot of wisdom but he did not have the prudence to follow through on that wisdom and a lot of people are double-minded. They have the attitude, okay Lord, I'll follow but I want to know first of all why you're leading me, where you're leading me. When I understand all of that then yes I'll get on board. That's being double-minded. God wants us to give him a blank check, sign it ahead of time and say, okay Lord fill in whatever it is you want.

Even if it's my death I'm willing to go where it is that you want to lead me. So God guides those who gladly rest in His will. His guidance is definitely possible to those who are believers, who willingly, restfully, cheerfully are following Him and that's when life begins to get downright exciting. Now guidance is not only possible, that was the first sub point, But it is also progressive. The Israelites didn't always know what was coming ahead of them.

In fact, they probably wouldn't have wanted to know. It would have scared the daylights out of them. If I knew everything that I was going to go through in ministry at age 30, Wow, I think I might have been like Jonah and wanted to flee from ministry. But God prepared me just step at a time, and over time matured me to be ready for the next challenge that came in ministry. He did not do it all at once, step by step.

Remember that the pillar of cloud led them only one step at a time. It didn't lead them months at a time or years at a time. It was one step at a time And God does that for us as well. Psalm 37 verse 23 says, The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.

He doesn't reveal, you know, the whole pathway we're going to go into in the future, because again, He wants us to live by faith. He's taking us a little ways and we wonder, okay, Lord, what are you going to do next? But as we begin to get comfortable with God's providence in our lives and realize He never lets us down, He's a good God who always does that which is perfect for us and perfect for His glory. We begin to develop a trust level for the Lord's work. And by the way, that verse that I just read, The steps of a man are ordered by the Lord implies we're stepping.

We're walking We're following after the Lord when he leads us, you know when When I was a kid very young kid there were a lot of wild animals out in Ethiopia And when I went out to the outhouse, I was really scared. So I remember sometimes my dad taking me with a flashlight. I stuck real close behind my dad in that flashlight. And you know, when there's the Lord giving guidance from His Word, if we're not sticking close behind the Lord, we're left in the darkness and then we say, Lord, how come you're not guiding me? Or look at it in terms of what they were doing.

If somebody got lazy, I really don't want to pack up my tent again and be following after this. I'll come a little bit later and two days later they're feeling left out on the lurch and they're asking, Lord, would you guide us? Why are you not guiding me? The Lord will say, repent. You know exactly what I've told you to do.

You need to catch up to the caravan. They're two days ahead of you. And that's the way it is with the Lord. Why on earth would the Lord give us more guidance if we're not following after the guidance that He's already given, right? So the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.

It implies that we are indeed stepping after him. But back to this point, we do not need to know what we're going to be doing 20 years from now in order to follow the Lord a step at a time. It's a life of faith. We just follow where he leads. So guidance is possible.

Guidance is progressive. Thirdly, guidance is sometimes perplexing. It is sometimes perplexing. Don't be frustrated when you don't understand what God is doing in your life. Your life maybe is getting topsy-turvy.

This teaches us faith. I'm sure these Israelites who knew their geography were wondering, why are we going south when Canaan is northeast? This seems a little weird. Lord, let me correct you a bit. Aren't we going to Palestine?

But the Lord knows best. And a lot of times when we get perplexed as to how God is providentially forcing our direction to change, that it's because we have faulty insight, maybe foolish interpretations of His guidance, or it's just the finitude of our mind. And we have to have a trust in the Lord. I know one time my mother was frustrated because on a physical plane, this very literally happened, her plane got delayed and delayed in Buffalo, New York. And finally they said everybody's got to get off and find other transportation because the wings have iced up and we're just having a hard time getting all of the ice off.

So she quickly ran to the phone, got a bus ticket and on her way out of the airport she heard over the announcement system that they had changed their mind. Everybody was getting back on the plane. She's got these tickets and she's thinking, oh man, I'd way rather be on the airplane, but it's too late. If I go onto the airplane now, I'm gonna lose the money I spent on the bus tickets. She just decided, I'm gonna go on bus.

It's not that much further. She was visiting her parents for Christmas break during mission school. When she got to her parents, she heard on the news that the airplane that she would have been on crashed and everybody on board died. So she realized, oh thank you Lord for giving me this frustrating detour. I'm no longer frustrated.

Now, she should have known already, everything God does is for our good. There should not be any reason for frustrations in our lives. But At least the Lord opened her eyes to realize, okay, there was a good reason for this particular detour. Now, many times we will never know the reasons for God's detours in our lives. And that's okay.

That's okay. We just need to have an absolute confidence that the Lord knows what he is doing, even when he's brought those detours into your life in this past year that have slowed you down so much and frustrated you so much. Think of Joseph. God had guided Joseph through dreams two times very very clearly that he was going to be leading his whole family, right? They were going, even the parents were going to be buying that.

He didn't know what to do with it, but he knew in some way God was going to bring him into leadership. And what happens is that his brothers strip the robe of leadership off of him, which his father had given to him, sell him down to Egypt. In Potiphar's household, he begins to see a direction and say, well, maybe the Lord's going to do something through this. And then he gets another detour into jail. And in jail, he begins to gain favor.

And then the butler, he thinks, oh, maybe the butler will remember. No, the butler forgets and there's another detour in his life there was detour after detour and Yet he had a confidence that God was working all of this together for his good and the good of his people. He said, you intended this for evil, but God intended it for good. And actually, if you look through the story, I've got a book, not my book, it was a book written in the early 1900s that goes through all of the providences of the scripture. It's just an amazing, amazing book.

He shows detail after detail in Joseph's life that could have been frustrating details, even before the time of Joseph. Just think of that dry cistern that Joseph was thrown down into Well, probably lowered down into with ropes It was probably a well that people had spent maybe a couple, two, three weeks digging, digging, digging. Who knows? Maybe the Lord had even led them to dig in that spot there and say, there's no water. What wasted effort.

Two or three wasted weeks. But in God's plan nothing is wasted. If it had not been for that dry well, Joseph probably would have been killed. God was preparing detail after detail in his life, bringing them to a place where he realized, you know, there is nothing wasted in life. Nothing.

And God can put together all of the little frustrations in your life, working them together for your good and for the advancement of His kingdom. Maybe your detour was a sickness or a financial setback or a fall through on a house or something else. And the guidance in your life may not always be a mystical guidance. You know Joseph had those dreams. I think God can sometimes mystically guide us but more often than not that's not the way God guides us.

He just guides us through the scriptures, through providence. He mentioned earlier, you know, sometimes you got two choices. Okay, Lord, we have to make a decision. Both of these follow all your biblical principles. Let's flip a coin.

I don't know how you throw a lot because there's eight sides, six sides to a dice, but anyway, flip a coin would be a same kind of a principle and you trust God in those details. So people often have told me, pastor I wish God was guiding me. Now, there is a way in which we can grow in our understanding of guidance, but I'm quick to tell them that God has already been guiding them every day, every minute, every moment of their lives through his providences and he wants us to have open eyes to see his hand in absolutely everything and to be ready to serve him in every circumstance. Say, okay Lord, What are the divine opportunities that you've opened up for me in this new situation? Having eyes to see.

You are privileged. That's the first point. See those frustrating detours as God's guidance in your life. You are privileged to be guided by an awesome God. Now there's a second thing that God wants us to know in this passage, and that is that God always has a good goal in mind for every circumstance that comes into your life.

There's always a good goal, a good outcome. Here Moses spells out why God took them on this long circuitous detour, verse 17. Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt. So here then is part of the answer stated negatively. God did not want His people to abandon their purpose through fear or through discouragement.

God knew perfectly well the frailty and the feebleness of this people. He knew they desperately wanted to get to the promised land, but he knew they were not ready for that privilege. He had some more preparatory work to do in their lives. Psalm 103 verse 14 says, "'For he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust. This detour was because of their frailty.

If he had put them on one of the other routes, they would have faced warfare much sooner, and according to God, it would have been a disastrous outcome for them. They were absolutely not prepared for them to face that. So here's the principle. God never put those Israelites into a situation that they could not handle. Now frequently they didn't handle it properly, Right?

They sinned, they grumbled, they murmured, they didn't approach it with faith, but God never put them into a situation where they had to sin. You know what? God makes exactly the same promise to us. 1st Corinthians 10 13 says, No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man that God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. Now that's an incredibly wonderful promise when you think about it because he guarantees that he controls your circumstances so perfectly, all of your circumstances.

He controls your genetics, what home you grew up, the kind of abuse and difficulties that you faced, he controls your hormones, he controls your neighbors, he controls everything so as to guarantee you're never stuck in a box where you have to sin. You're never going to face an ethical dilemma. You know, it says in the scripture that Jesus was tempted in every way just like we were yet without sin. So if we face ethical dilemmas then Christ face ethical dilemmas otherwise we are tempted in ways that he wasn't tempted. Okay?

So you put this verse together with that other verse that Jesus was tempted in every way just like us, yet without sin, and you have to come to the conclusion there is no such thing as ethical dilemmas for believers. See Jesus if he faced an ethical dilemma is this if I I'm stuck with two choices A or B either one is a sin and so I take the lesser sin then Jesus would have sinned Because he would have faced ethical dilemmas. If he's tempted in every way like we are, right? He'd have to pick this sin or this sin. But no, he was never put into a situation where he had to pick a sin.

So we are never put into a situation where we have to pick a sin. Don't blame your circumstances for your sin. Don't blame your hormones, your PMS, your having stayed up to three o'clock in the morning, whatever it might be. Don't blame your tiredness for your snapping, you know, at your siblings or something along those lines. God makes it possible always to do His will.

You just need to see, have eyes to see those ways of escape so that you may be able to bear it. And this is why Paul exhorted us not only to be thankful in every circumstance, 1st Thessalonians 5.18. Now that's hard enough all by itself, you know, so we've got very very difficult situation but thanking Him in every circumstance is saying, okay Lord, I know this is tough, but I'm going to look at the bright side and realize I've got so many blessings. You have strewn tons of blessings, And so I'm going to take this along with it, but that didn't go far enough. That's thanking God in every circumstance I'm gonna give you an impossible scripture to obey.

It's Ephesians 5 Verse 20 which says that we are to thank God for every circumstance Have you thanked God for that sprained ankle Have you thanked God for that sprained ankle? Have you thanked God for that difficult home life that you grew up in? Have you thanked God for the neighbors who keep running over your lawn and ruining your lawn? Have you thanked God for every circumstance? It takes faith to do that.

It takes the Holy Spirit to do that. But once you come to that place where you realize, you know, there is nothing that God brings into our lives that is not for our good and for His glory. And if I respond rightly, I'm going to grow through this. I'm going to be transformed into His image. Everything begins to be thank worthy.

And I challenge you to begin to have that that attitude. Now there was a positive aspect to this detour as well. The negative aspect was without the detour they could have easily become a defeated fearful feeble people but the positive aspect was that God was going to use this detour to turn them into a dependent, developed, and disciplined group of believers. First of all, God was seeking to make them dependent upon him. Where did God lead them?

Well, if you know the geography of the area, it was not a very pleasant or happy place. The text says, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. Now, that was the place that Deuteronomy 32 verse 10 called a waste howling wilderness. He talks about the serpents and all kinds of things a waste howling wilderness. It was a terrible way to go.

That's why it was a less frequented pathway. That's why they didn't face any warfare. Nobody in his right mind would go into that place, you know, except for maybe a few stragglers who didn't want to face other people. God was going to teach Israel to be absolutely dependent upon Him for everything. He brought them to the place where they had to look to God for their daily food.

Where is my next meal going to come from? Oh yeah, that's right. The Lord is going to provide manna. He promised to do so. Where is our clothing going to come from?

God provided for them on that. Now we are so wealthy in America, even the poorest of us are so wealthy, that phrase in the Lord's Prayer, give us this day our daily bread, does not have the depth of meaning that it had for them. When they prayed that, they really meant it. Lord, we are utterly dependent upon You to give us our next meal. Now, God was training them during this time to depend upon Him even for their daily bread so that they would be depending upon the Lord when they were in a great place, when they were wealthy, when they had everything so that they would realize you know even this wealth God could take away in a snap of the finger.

I am dependent upon the Lord and that's why I thank the Lord for this food that I have out of my wealth. The Scripture indicates, we have a tendency to look upon dependence as weakness, especially in America. We are so fiercely independent in America individualistic and we we think upon dependent people as Less than whole people now. There's a sense in which that is true on the horizontal level. You know, in Galatians, he gives us two sides of the coin.

Every one of us needs to have the attitude, I'm gonna bear my own burdens and not expect other people to bear those burdens for me. And then, what is it, three verses later it says, and every one of us needs to have the attitude, we're gonna bear one another's burdens. You're not going to have users in the congregation if the people who are being helped want to help. You know they're both they're taking both sides of that equation. Why did I go down that rabbit trail?

I don't know. Had something to do with what I was saying, but give us this day our daily bread. Oh yeah, it's the whole area of weakness, dependence. People think if you are weak and dependent, then you're not going to be successful in life. God switches that upside down, doesn't He?

God says it's when we recognize our utter inability to do anything that is pleasing to God apart from His Spirit, apart from His grace, that we begin to depend upon Him for everything that we do. You know, the Puritans, one of the Puritans said he didn't want to so much as pick a straw from the ground apart from God's glory. He wanted to do everything in a sense of dependence upon the Lord. Do you have the strength? You say, oh yeah, I could do that easily.

Well yeah, you can right now because God's given you the strength, but He could take that away as well. A constant sense of dependence upon Him, and when we have that sense of our weakness that without Christ, I can do nothing, very literally nothing, because every cell of my body is upheld by the word of His power. It's then that we have the faith to claim more from Him and His power is made perfect in our weakness. So the first positive purpose was to make us dependent. The second positive purpose was to cause the muscles of their faith to grow.

Now it's to their discredit that the first test that comes along their way, they fail. They grumble. In chapter 14, when they see the Egyptian army gaining on them, they said to Moses in verse 12, Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt saying, let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness. But even though that was true initially, God gradually over a period of time strengthened their faith, especially the second generation that was growing up through all of these experiences. It was incredible for them.

By the time they got to Canaan, they had become one of the most faithful generations, faith-filled generations ever. No one, no enemy could stand before them. The way God has called us sometimes looks just as suicidal to us as going into this desolate area seemed to them. But God has tailor-made the situation to cause your faith to grow. You see, if God had destroyed the Egyptians as soon as they saw the Egyptians, they would not have had a challenge to their faith to grow.

There's so much I'm gonna be skipping over, but did you know that when they're going down, you know how the Gulf of Aqaba, when they're going down, they are crossing over, down, they are completely penned in. So the Egyptians are coming down here. There's the Red Sea They have nowhere to escape and God in the next chapter tells them to just follow him Where was God? God's pillar of cloud was out over the Red Sea. They were supposed to follow wherever the cloud went.

Now a later generation would do that and the Jordan River. The moment that their feet touched the waters of the Jordan River, the waters parted. I think if the Israelites had followed God in faith, the moment their feet touched the Red Sea, it would have parted. But instead, they freak out. Freaking out is never consistent with faith.

That's just a hint. Fear and faith are not compatible. So Moses has to part the Red Sea by, you know, smiting the waters or erasing the waters over them. But it caused their faith to grow over time. Thirdly, it caused them to enter into the experiences of God's grace in a far richer measure than if they had not had these detours and these difficult experiences.

At the Red Sea, God's grace was seen in His mighty deliverance and they would never be the same after that. Chapter 14 verses 30 through 31 says, So the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Thus Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done in Egypt. So the people feared the Lord and believed the Lord and His servant Moses." they believed the Lord and His servant Moses. They'd experienced God's grace.

And it's one of the reasons why keeping a journal can be a helpful thing. Satan tempts us to forget and to doubt that God is at work in our lives. We look back over our journal, we say, wow, There's hundreds of times that God has come through for me, has blessed me, has ministered His grace in me. Why is it I become so frequently forgetful? But God's grace manifested in our lives gives us additional faith to follow after Him.

And then there becomes less need for God's detours of training and that's really what those detours many times are because we're walking in the spirit. They could have gone straight to the land of Canaan if they had been walking in the spirit but because they had not learned the lessons of detours, he kept detouring them and detouring them. Remember that God is more interested in how you get there than whether you get there or when you get there. He really doesn't need our help. He could send his angels and mop up everything.

He could convert people overnight. I mean, there's so many things he could do immediately. He has us struggle through some of these things for our own growth so that we will taste of his grace, so that we will become the stronger for it. And so the sooner we learn to respond in faith, the better off we will be. Now the last aspect of God's goal is that God wanted to turn them into a disciplined people.

He wanted them to be trained to respond to any emergency that they might face, not in fear, but in discipline and self-control. And this is one of the characteristics of our age, even in the Church of Jesus Christ that seems to be so, so missing. It is discipline, Self-control and discipline. There seems to be no discipline in personal devotions. There seems to be no discipline in evangelism, Discipline in church attendance, discipline in Bible reading, discipline in exercising our bodies, dieting, whatever it might be.

Self-discipline many times goes out the door. And God put the Israelites into wilderness detours to bring them to the place where they would become a disciplined people. So those are the lessons this morning of God's frustrating detours. And the more successfully you learn those lessons, the more your faith will grow and the more you're going to find comfort in walking in God's paths. In fact, you'll get to the place when you have a flat tire that's going to make you work late to a very important meeting at work, and you're thinking, I'm going to get fired.

And you're tempted to start freaking out about this flat tire to sit back and say, no, God was sovereign over this flat tire and I'm just gonna treat this like a Christmas present. I don't know what's inside because it's covered, right? God's not giving me insight but I know and I thank God that this flat tire was brought into my life for my good for His glory and perhaps to reach out to some other person. Maybe there is a tow truck driver that I need to witness to and he's going through difficulties and God's put me here to minister in his life. Maybe he gave me this flat tire to miss a car accident that's coming up a couple miles ahead.

Maybe you will never know. But based on the promises of a God who cannot lie, you'll be able to say, thank you Lord, I have no idea why you did this, but I praise you, I worship you, and I am not going to get frustrated over this flat tire. So as you come to the Lord's table this morning, I would urge you to relinquish your frustrations. Frustrations are incompatible with faith. And I want you to come to the Lord's table in faith.

Relinquish your frustrations and say, Lord, I want, instead of frustration, to have the joy of the Lord. I want to have faith. I want to have eyes that are open to seeing your hand in my situation. I want to have the kind of open eyes that seize opportunities. I want to live with a complete confidence that your eternal decrees cover every detail of my life including the mismatched socks that I put on this morning for some weird reason.

You are in control. That doesn't take you off the hook for your personal responsibilities. You do what you are responsible to do but you trust the Lord that His eternal decrees have been perfect for you. That Jesus has purchased everything you need for life and godliness and that the Holy Spirit can empower and provide for you. Those provisions should change those detours from being frustrating detours into being blessed detours.

May it be so Lord Jesus. Amen. Let's pray. Father God we thank you that you challenge our faith from time to time so that we are not lazy, so that we are not just coasting along. I thank you that you sometimes bring into our lives things that are so humiliating, so embarrassing.

But out of these things we realize, yes, you brought those to crucify our pride, to drive us closer to the cross of Jesus Christ, where we realize we must always be going on a daily basis to receive everything that Jesus has purchased for us. We thank you for your promise in Ephesians 1 verse 4 that you have blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Father, we are billionaires, trillionaires in Christ And all that you have required of us is that we ask in Jesus' name, we write our checks in Jesus' name, and we receive from your hand everything we need for life and godliness. And I pray that you would give to this people an increasing measure of faith so that they do not respond with frustration to the things that they face in life but with confidence, with joy, with hope, with faith. We love you, Father.

It is our glory to serve you. And as we sing this hymn of response to this message, we offer up every aspect of our being our inner fears we cast them at the cross of Christ our aspirations we leave them Father for your disposal we want to be sold out to you and so we give ourselves entirely to you and devote ourselves to you in Jesus name. Amen.