Ex 2:23, Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. 
	In our last considerations we dealt with the fact that God uses all things to work together for the good of His people. He is caring and effective and efficient in the manner of what He accomplishes for the sake of those who love and trust Him. In everything, we can count on God to manifest Himself and His grace and His mercy as He instills into us that living relationship with Himself. 
	This morning, let us reflect on a great spiritual truth that many of us may have inadvertently set aside as we have faced the trials and the dilemmas of our walk in Christ. It is an attitude of silence in the suffering that is a part of our lives on this earth. The distinctly sad aspect of this is that it shows a side of our hearts and minds that is not at all honoring to God because it places us into a sullen and self-assured manner of facing the tribulations of life with the idea that we can make it through on our own. We will voice the content of Romans 8, and yet we think that we are honoring that reality in our defiant silence as God is at work.  
	We need to be very careful on this point because we are not referring to a nagging and a complaining and a disparagement of what God is in the process of completing. Neither is it a matter of our going to everyone and talking about what God is doing to make us a better believer. We do not brag about the fact that we are suffering for the sake of our spiritual growth. When we are under the mighty working hand of God in operation to accomplish all that is His heart and His plan and His purpose in our lives, it is a good thing to talk to Him and to cry out to Him and to seek after Him to manifest Himself in the midst of our ordeal and distress. We should freely and whole-heartedly know that God hears and listens and responds to our calling upon Him. This is one tremendous way in which He makes Himself known to us, as we call out to Him to save us.
	It is not our place to silently suffer in resignation. There are times that we keep our mouths closed for the sake of not bringing any earthly touch upon the spiritual activity of God in action. That is absolutely true. But it is also absolutely true that we can call out to God in the midst of every activity that He is undertaking in our lives. We are to seek Him and talk to and with Him and ask Him to make Himself ever more known as our Savior. We do this in the midst of the fiery and purifying means of what He is accomplishing in our lives. It is in those times of intimate communication with Him, as we call out in our distress and our earthly anguish, that He can so minister and make Himself very real and very much more the whole focus of our lives on this earth. 
	We begin with the recorded words of God, Himself, as He was listening to the cries of His Chosen People in Egypt. Ex 3:7-9, And the Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. And now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. 
	Note the fact that, as God heard the cries of His people, He worked to deliver them and to fulfill His covenant with them. He was going to bring them into the land flowing with milk and honey. It was not just the matter of hearing their voices and wishing that He could somehow alleviate their pain. No, God was moved by that constant communication with His people to the point of making a miraculous manner of their deliverance that would fully manifest His over abiding love and goodness for them. 
	God is moved when we cry out to Him. He opens His heart of love and compassion upon those who call forth unto Him. He does not put us into situations which will twist our arms and force us to think that He might do something about our circumstances if He is so inclined. God absolutely makes Himself a part of our lives by working into our hearts and minds and thoughts and prayers and actions those elements that reveal that He is Our Savior and Our Comforter and Our Protector and Our Sustenance that He is Our Everything! 
	When He was dealing directly with His people through the giving of His Law by Moses, please note how God made Himself clearly understood with the matter of how the people were to deal with those in need, those who would call out to God in their dire situations. Ex 22:22-27, You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you afflict him at all, and if he does cry out to Me, I will surely hear his cry; and My anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless. "If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to him; you shall not charge him interest. If you ever take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, you are to return it to him before the sun sets, for that is his only covering; it is his cloak for his body. What else shall he sleep in? And it shall come about that when he cries out to Me, I will hear him, for I am gracious. 
	Notice the fact that God, Himself declares why He will respond to those who call out to Him …I will hear him, for I am gracious. God is gracious! He will help those in need as they open their hearts unto Him to seek for His deliverance and His manifest ruling and overruling in the every aspect of life on this earth. We come into a greater and expanding living relationship with God when we call out to Him and lay our burdens and our stresses and our ill-treatment and our oppression before His throne of grace and mercy. 
	Have you ever noticed that God chooses to reveal Himself in our hearts through our communication with Him long before it is evident in the delivery from our circumstances? He works in our minds and hearts to the point at which we become settled in the peace that He has all things well in hand, no matter how it might appear to our natural eyes! Then, as we trust Him to do what is needed, it becomes a simple matter of just watching Him work miracle after miracle in the manner of our deliverance. Often, those trials and dilemmas just seem to disappear in the light that God knows us and loves us and is holding us securely in His eternal grasp of protection and safekeeping. This realization develops as we cry unto God and seek Him with all our hearts and talk with Him and admit that we are utterly lost without Him. 
	God’s heart of grace fully covers those in need, be it physical need, financial need, emotional need, and overwhelmingly spiritual need. He came to this earth for those in utter need who were hopelessly lost without any means of salvation. 
Listen to the continued warning that was given to those who had the responsibility of dealing with the poor. Deut 24:14+15, "You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land in your towns. You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it; so that he may not cry against you to the Lord and it become sin in you. 
	Notice that God states that He would hear the cry of those who were cheated out of their due. He will listen and hear and count it as sin if the poor are mistreated and kept from the honest wages for which they were hired. 
	Consider just how much God has the poor and the needy and the despised in His Heart of Love and just how fully He will watch over them and hear their anguish. This was related in a most specific manner by Our Lord Jesus Christ in Matt 5:1-16, if you would please turn to it. Matt 5:1-16, what we call the Sermon on the Mount. Matt 5:1-16, And when He saw the multitudes, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And opening His mouth He began to teach them, saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. "Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. "Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is good for nothing anymore, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. "Nor do men light a lamp, and put it under the peck-measure, but on the lampstand; and it gives light to all who are in the house. "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. 
	Each of these elements show the heart of God for those who are so treated and so abused by the people and the powers of this age. In each of these aspects, we see that the means of deprivation and persecution and the disregard of those who are so ill-treated is dealt with by the manifest grace and mercy and blessing of God. He hears each one who trusts in Him and calls upon Him to be all in all. 
	Inherent in this blessing of God is the fact that it is during these times of tribulation that every avenue is open heart to heart and Spirit to spirit for the graciousness of God to be poured out upon His saints. We will know that He is with us through it all as we cry unto Him in the midst of our distress, to know His blessing in the every detail of our life on this earth. That is when we will be enabled to "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
	This was evident in the worship that was offered to God after the people cried unto Him and He delivered them. Deut 26:7-11, 'Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction and our toil and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and wonders; and He has brought us to this place, and has given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 'And now behold, I have brought the first of the produce of the ground which Thou, O Lord hast given me.' And you shall set it down before the Lord your God, and worship before the Lord your God; and you and the Levite and the alien who is among you shall rejoice in all the good which the Lord your God has given you and your household. 
	This is something that we should always do as the Lord listens and hears and responds to our cries. We have this tendency to get close to God in the midst of the trials. We lean on Him and we cry out to Him and we offer Him praise and worship in our distress. We sense that closeness and familiarity with Him as He walks with us in each hard time. Then, after the time of trial is past and we find ourselves in that place of rest and spiritual ease, we tend to forget about God and our communing with Him. We develop a sense of satisfaction that we made it through by the grace of God, but are now ok to go forth on our own. 
	Rather, we should be overwhelmed with the gratitude and the love for God that was instilled in the midst of the storm and continue to celebrate His goodness and His grace and His mercy. This heart-felt worship of God in intimacy should be such that all those around us will maintain their view that we are utterly reliant upon God for even each breath that we take in this realm. We should be truly thankful and rejoicing in the glory of God Who makes every way for us in this world. 
	It is as we repeatedly and persistently call unto God, both in our need and in our worship and in our adoration, that we will have established within our beings the rapport and the connection of closeness and intimacy that God desires with us. You see, it is not just a one way method of calling on God only when we are in need. Yes, God will respond and will make Himself known in His deliverance. But the reality is that we also touch His heart of love when we continue to bring before Him our praise and our adoration, not only for our needs and troubles, but because we so love and honor and cherish our time of calling upon Him for the sake of His glory on this earth. 
We will go on in this course next week, Lord willing, but let it suffice that we are to call upon God, not just in our need, but also in our joy of being brought into His very presence in Jesus Our Lord and Savior. Our cries unto Him are not just for our difficulties, but as well for expressing our heart of thanksgiving and honor unto the One in Whom we place our every trust and hope with every goal of bringing to Him the glory that He is fully due. So be it!
Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 95:1-3. O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, And a great King above all gods, Amen.