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[ Silence ] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC - "LONG LET US WORSHIP"] ♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪

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♪ In the beauty of holiness ♪ ♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪ ♪ In the beauty of holiness ♪ ♪ Give him the honor ♪

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♪ Give him the praise ♪ ♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪ ♪ Let's give Him the praise ♪ ♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪

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♪ In the beauty of holiness ♪ ♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪ ♪ In the beauty of holiness ♪ ♪ Give him the honor ♪

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♪ Give him the praise ♪ ♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪ ♪ Let's give him the praise ♪ ♪ Worship him ♪

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♪ Worship him ♪ ♪ Worship him ♪ ♪ Give my God the glory ♪ ♪ Give my God the glory ♪

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♪ Give him all the praise ♪ ♪ Give my God the praise ♪ ♪ Worship him ♪ ♪ Worship my God the living ♪

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♪ Worship him ♪ ♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪ ♪ Let's give him the praise ♪ ♪ Worship him ♪

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♪ Worship him ♪ ♪ Praise should my God today ♪ ♪ Praise to him ♪ ♪ Give my God the glory ♪

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♪ Give my God the glory ♪ ♪ Give him all the praise ♪ ♪ God the praise ♪ ♪ Worship him ♪

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♪ Oh worship him ♪ ♪ Praise to him ♪ ♪ Come let us worship ♪ ♪ Come let us worship ♪

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♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪ ♪ Come let us worship ♪ ♪ Come let us worship the Lord ♪ ♪ Let's give him the praise ♪

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- Amen. Our scripture is in First Corinthians

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the 10th chapter, reading the first five verses. Let me remind you, my friends, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all of them passed through the Red Sea.

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So they all received baptism into the fellowship of Moses in cloud and sea. They all ate the same supernatural food and all All drank the same supernatural drink, for they drank from the supernatural rock that accompanied their travels.

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And that rock was Christ. most of them were not accepted by God, for the wilderness was strewn with their corpuses. Would you repeat after me? Let me remind you, my friends, that our ancestors were all under the cloud.

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The subject of the message is "Under the Cloud." We have been considering a series of messages based on Corinthians under the title "Trouble in the Church." Paul has dealt with issues raised by the congregation, and we're considering in this message his

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response. He says, "Our fathers were all under the cloud." When I was a boy, I would often hear my grandmother say, "There's a cloud in the sky. Prepare for rain."

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That was a word of admonition. It was a word dealing with being prepared to meet the challenge of the hour. Some weeks ago, I was on a plane, continental flight from Houston to Austin. time it was a very pleasant ride high in the sky floating among the clouds.

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People were relaxed some were drinking beverages some were reading some were engaged in chatter, but we were all enjoying the ride. But suddenly there was a tremendous sound as if there was a wreck up there in the sky. And then there There was sullen silence.

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And we were rather quiet for most of the rest of the way. We were somewhat restless. Some would describe it as rough flying because we had encountered some clouds. Some would describe it as air pockets that were hit by the planes.

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Whatever it was, it had to do with the clouds. And I use it as an introduction to my message here this morning. All of us will encounter some clouds. all under the clouds. We were born under a cloud. The work that we do is under a cloud.

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And many times we see the signs because clouds have to do with signs. They have to do with symbols and they have to do with signals. You see a cloud, it's a signal that something is happening or about to happen. So people move from the south to further in when the word goes out that there's a hurricane,

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that there's a storm on the way, that we want to be safe and secure. Paul says in his letter that all our ancestors, one translation says father, another says ancestors, all our ancestors, not only are we under the cloud, but all our ancestors are persons who were under the cloud.

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We have to deal with some confusion. We have to deal with misunderstanding. We are under a cloud. So as he addresses this word to the Corinthians, so is it a word addressed to us here in the

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21st century that we are under a cloud and that we travel underneath a cloudy sky. When I was a teenager we'd sing, "Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky, stormy weather.

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Many times we dance to that, but the kind of cloud, the kind of stormy weather that we find ourselves in today deserves our prayerful and our consecrated attention. I walked into a home some time ago and I listened to the parents say to the child, "Don't play in that room."

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And I stayed for a number of minutes in the home and the child was still playing in that room. was a sign, prepare for rain. There's a cloud.

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Wherever there are discipline problems, there's a cloud in the sky. And parents need to prepare for rain. Many times this is true of marriage.

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We get into marriage and many times we're not ready for it. From time to time I look at Judge Joe Brown and then there are two ladies that are also judges and the people that come to the divorce court to secure separation, official separation.

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And the cases and the reasons that they want are astounding. They tell us something about culture, that there's clouds in the sky and we need to prepare But we don't have to look at something in the distance. We can look at ourselves.

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And we know we are black. And black is a symbol of oppression in our culture. It's a symbol of not only oppression but exploitation. It's a symbol of suffering.

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That if you're black, you're just in this culture going to suffer certain things. All of the signs have not been removed. There are those that are still with us. All our fathers were under the cloud and we who are their children still face the cloud.

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We are under the cloud. So it was when the children of Israel left Egypt, Pharaoh had second thoughts about their freedom and he quickly marshaled his military leaders and set out to overtake them. They were marching through the Red Sea and Pharaoh was at their heels.

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And they had place between them and the Egyptians, a dark cloud. They could see the Egyptians, but they were hindered by the cloud. Not only did they march through the sea following that cloud, but they marched from Egypt through the wilderness following that cloud.

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It was a cloud that was a pillar by day and a pillar of fire by night. It was a cloud that went before them and a cloud that followed after them. It was a cloud, cloud. So they marched onward following this cloud.

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And after they got through the sea, they had other needs. And these needs were met by the one who provided the cloud. Whenever they stopped for a while, the cloud stopped. So there is the cloud before and the cloud after.

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You know, you hear you say to somebody, "I've got your back." Well, God has not only our activity which we are yet to perform, but He also has that which we have already done. He covers, He goes before us and comes behind us.

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All our fathers were under the cloud. Isn't it a wonderful thing to know that at night, the darkness covers us, that there There is someone in the darkness who provides for our security. And not only in the darkness, but in the day, we still need someone to see.

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Certain things, even though we have daylight all around us, there are certain things we just don't see. Certain things we don't understand. surrounded by a cloud. So that's why we sing, "By day and by night, He is with me all the

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way. Cloud, cloud. William Cowper was under a cloud. He was depressed. He was heavy hearted. He was discouraged with life and he thought seriously about committing suicide. So he had his chauffeur to take him for a ride with that in mind, but the chauffeur took him a different route and brought him back home again.

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And Cowper wrote the words of this song later, "God moves in a mysterious way. wonders to perform, he plants his footsteps on the sea and rides upon the sun. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take. The clouds, yes, the clouds you so much dread are big with mercy and shall break with blessings o'er your head. We don't know how

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long it'll be, but we know that whatever time we have, we're gonna be spending it under a cloud. We don't fully understand what God is doing. We don't understand many times the purpose that he has for us. We're searching and searching and search under a cloud, under a cloud. So we travel on as did the children of Israel.

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Wonderful thing when you read that passage is they traveled through the sea. They traveled through the sea. Sea is place where life is threatened and we wonder about our safety in the sea, but they follow the cloud, they travel through the sea.

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Pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day, they travel. They got out of Egypt. we've gotten out of Egypt, but we still have not fully possessed the promised land. We have our problems.

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We have the problems in the church, denominations are separating. paper revealed that one minister not only lost his job, but he has lost the respect of his brothers and sisters because of the marriage question. same-sex marriage, abortion, unemployment, all of these are problems that let us know.

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Bombings in London, bombings here in our own nation, under a cloud, under a cloud, under a cloud. Well, God has put a dark cloud and the Lord does that. He controls the clouds.

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We don't create them, but we have to deal with them. We're expected to travel in spite of the fact that they're clouds. We're not to give up traveling because the clouds. We are to travel through the clouds, through the sea, with the clouds overhead and the

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sea below, travel on in spite of the cloud." Well, Paul in writing to the Corinthians says, "Now brethren, I want you to know that all of our fathers were under the cloud and all of them passed through the midst of the sea And all of them were baptized in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual meat.

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We are led and we are fed by God as we travel on. And the most wonderful things happen to us when God leads us. We're not lost, we're not offerings, we're not left alone, we're not deserted. God is with us.

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So the mystery of our history is how God leads us onward and upward. So we're traveling on. We've left Egypt. We're still in search of fully possessing the promised land.

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But we travel on because we have the abiding assurance that someday, somewhere, we shall inherit a cloudless day. What the poet calls, "We shall enter into the uncloudy day." That's the hope that we have as the people of God.

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Oh, we have our pain, we have our suffering, we have our diseases, we have our disappointments, we have our defeats, but someday, somewhere, we shall inherit an unclouded day. Paul talks about his experience as he was journeying on to Rome and in the midst of his journey he had a shipwreck.

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And he says that there was darkness so that they didn't know when it was day and when it was night. Darkness everywhere. But he received the advice, the counsel from the great chief to stay with the ship.

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Stay with the ship. Stay there no matter what happens, no matter how the storm rages, no matter how the clouds overshadow your life. Stay there.

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Keep faith with the journey. And there came the time when they were ashore. And the Christian community that was sent to represent them, represent the church there came and there was a great reunion.

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We look forward to that, the great reunion. John gives us a vision of it. Out there on the Isle of Patmos, clouds. He had been accustomed to preaching to his congregation with his deacons and his choir and all that,

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but out there on the Isle of Patmos he had no choir, he had no deacons. He's left alone, left alone, all by himself. But John said, "I looked and I saw. I saw a host numbering 144,000." Well, we're not in that group. We're not Hebrews. We don't speak the Hebrew language. But he said, "I

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saw another host that no man could number. These are they who come up on the rough side of the mountain. These are they that have traveled with a cloud overhead. These are they who have followed the leadership of the eternal. These are they. And they ushered now into that unclouded day. No more pain, no more

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crying, no more dying, no more darkness for every day, every day, every day is Sunday. and Sabbath have no end. Thanks be to God. Oh, they tell me.

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Oh, they tell me of an unclouded day where there are no dark clouds. We can have that light of an eternal day as we walk with the master.

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Oh, they tell me of a land of cloudless sky. Oh, the land of an unclouded day. Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise. Oh, yes, they tell me of an unclouded day.

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So keep on traveling, my brothers and sisters, keep on. Keep on. under the cloud, but with the abiding assurance that God walks through that cloud to enrich our lives and to glorify His name.

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Thanks be to God that we who travel under the cloud will someday inherit that land of eternal light. We come now to sing and to extend the invitation. For those who would travel on with God as your leader, we invite you to unite with the people of God here at Ebenezer. It's an invitation to accept Jesus Christ as

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Lord of your life, come. [Music] [MUSIC] ♪ Oh, they tell me of a home far away ♪ ♪ Oh, they tell me of a home where no snow clouds rise ♪

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♪ Oh, they tell me of an unholy day ♪ ♪ Oh, the life of a mother's day ♪ ♪ Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day ♪ ♪ Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day ♪

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♪ Tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise ♪ ♪ Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day ♪ ♪ Of a home where my friends have gone ♪ ♪ Oh, they tell me of that land far away ♪

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♪ Oh, the trees of life in eternal bloom ♪ ♪ Shed its fragrance through the unclouded day ♪ ♪ O'er the land of the cloudless day ♪ ♪ O'er the land of the cloudless day ♪

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♪ O'er the land of the cloudless day ♪ ♪ O'er the land of the cloudless day ♪ ♪ Oh, they tell me that he smiles on his children there ♪ ♪ And his smile drives their sorrows all away ♪

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♪ Oh, they tell me that no tears ever come again ♪ ♪ Ooh, in that lovely land of unclouded haze ♪ ♪ Cloud and vane ♪ ♪ Oh, the rain ♪

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♪ On, on, on this day ♪ ♪ Oh, the rain ♪ ♪ On, on, on cloudy day ♪ ♪ Oh, they tell me of a home ♪

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♪ Where no storm clouds rise ♪ ♪ Oh, they tell me ♪ ♪ On, on cloudy day ♪ (woman moaning)

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Amen. [SIGH] [ Silence ]