Pressed

Pressed

 

 

Deuteronomy 4:30-36 NKJV

[30] When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the Lord your God and obey His voice [31] (for the Lord your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them. [32] “For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like it has been heard. [33] Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live? [34] Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? [35] To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord Himself is God; there is none other besides Him. [36] Out of heaven He let you hear His voice, that He might instruct you; on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire.

 

 

 

One of the greatest questions in every person’s heart; WHY.

 

Why the tragedies in this world, in our lives. Why does a loving God allow such things to happen?

 

We search for answers sometimes that just end up giving us more questions.

The answers sometimes don’t fill our hearts with comfort.

Life is lost. Hearts are broken. The livelihood once had gone.

The physical grip of death. The emotional manipulation to loss. The Spiritual let down.

 

Where is this Mighty, Wonderful all knowing, all loving and merciful God at!

 

There is no easy answer.

We can talk about the depravity of our sin.

We can talk about the Judgement of a Just God.

We can blame Satan. We can blame politics and policies.

Sometimes we just can’t understand the why when it comes to the reasoning of GOD! I have to remind myself that my thoughts are not His thoughts. His thoughts are so much higher than my feeble mind could attempt to understand.

 

We can give Him Glory when He gives us His Grace and peace to endure.

Not a perfect answer to why.

It almost feels like when a parent tells their child “because I said so”.

Well, He did say so. Scroll back up and re-read the promise of God to His people.

It’s easy to turn our hearts away.

It’s easy to veer off in the sight of trouble.

How many shake their fists at the Creator to curse Him.

 

Why!

Why isn’t always easy to answer.

But what I can say is we have a choice to make.

 

I want you to picture how God parted the Red Sea. Picture how a Nation of people stood at the banks looking at those massive walls of water on each side.

Picture the whole army of Egypt moving closer and closer.

Panic,anxiety,fear,hopelessness,doubt, worry. All possible emotions running through your body all at the same time.

Hard pressed on every side.

Moses encourages them to start and pass through the dry ground God has created and made possible.

The walls of water were so high and the other side of the bank so far. Seemingly unreachable.

Moses encourages them to focus on the other side and move forward.

We have to remember this was a WHOLE nation! If the calculations of scholars are correct it would have been between 2.5 to 3 MILLION people to cross the Red Sea with Moses!

Fear of death in their hearts surely made it hard for their feet to cooperate.

But what are the choices?

 

They start to walk through the path that the Lord has made.

At times I’m sure there was strength and encouragement. Having faith in Moses to lead and faith in the God of Israel that has parted the waters to give them place to walk!

 

Fear creeps in. Fear is the antidote to faith!

Now they’re stopped in the middle.

They had a decision to make.

Would they turn back to face the consequences of Pharaoh?

Would they be crushed, possibly, by the walls of water crashing down on them.

Or would they trust in The Lord our God and His promise that He will never leave us or forsake us. To have faith in what He says is true.

Which way would you go?

Believe the promises that our mighty God gives to us!

 

II Corinthians 4:8‭-‬9

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—

 

 

Tribulation is a form of pressing.

 

In the Greek language tribulation means to press, to be afflicted under pressure.

In the ancient world the olive tree was vital to life. Through the pressing of the olives they would get oil.

What’s interesting is how they would take these olives and what they did to extract the oil out of them.

They would go and gather the ripe olives. They would place the olives in cloth. And the old way of doing this is they would stack stones on top of them to crush them. Then more stones would be placed on top, one after another. This was done until the olive was completely crushed and all the oil was extracted.

When we go through trials and tribulations in our lives, we are pressed just like an olive! Oh and how it feels as such!

Crushed in every way until there is nothing left that can be poured out!

It feels like No one understands. No one knows what we are going through.

This is when we can now be filled to the gills with the Lord!

WHY LORD!

Why does it have to be so!

Why is not an easy question to answer.

But Thank you Father for loving us so much that you gave Your only Son Jesus to save us.

 

Isaiah 10:27

It shall come to pass in that day That his burden will be taken away from your shoulder, And his yoke from your neck, And the yoke will be destroyed because of the anointing oil.

It always has to point to Jesus and His suffering for us.

He has to be pressed and crushed in order for His anointed healing to come out.

As He knelt down to pray for every single one of us in the Garden of Gethsemane,He felt the pressure of what He was going to have to endure. He Had to be pressed just like the olive.

I can’t even imagine what He prayed for on my behalf. I do know that He prayed so hard and felt so much pressure coming down on Him realizing what He was going to have to go through to ensure that we would never have to be so far gone. So low, so lost that we would never be far from His reach so that He could heal us and anoint us with His Blessed oil that was being pressed out of Him in Gethsemane as drops of Blood Thank you Jesus!

 

I can’t give reason to why the Lord does what He does.

What I can say is that this world is not our home. I can say that the Lord is still Good.

We can declare His mercy, grace and live over our lives.

I can say that He dies for our sins and is preparing a place for us to dwell with Him forever.

 

Try to focus on these today.

 

Pastor Ed