Preached · June 29, 2025
Series · [[What Lies Beneath Moving from the Clouded to the Clear as Disciples of Jesus]]
Text · Exodus 3
Good morning, Table Church. It's good to see you all. Today you will notice that our kids are in the room with us. Today is the fifth Sunday of June, and on fifth Sundays our kids are in the room with us. So let's welcome our children. It also means that it behooves me to preach a more fun, more entertaining, and shorter sermon. So you all can be happy about that as well.
Let me do a little bit of introduction, and then we'll do some fun things together. We're in the middle of a series called What Lies Beneath, and we're talking about moving from clouded to clear as disciples of Jesus. We've been using this metaphor of the iceberg: 10% of our lives are what we see—our actions, our behaviors, our language—and then 90% of our lives are below the surface, just like an iceberg, where our thoughts and our feelings and our values and our fears and our insecurities are all underneath. And as disciples of Jesus, it can be easy to focus on that top 10% of the iceberg, just the stuff that people can see and visualize. But we want to spend some time talking about what lies beneath. We've been talking about 2 Corinthians—Paul says that when we gaze at God, when we look at Jesus, we are transformed from glory to glory, being transformed into the image of God. We've talked about language about the wilderness, that God often seems to send people out into the desert or the wilderness, and that's where God does some of their best work.
How Do I Know God's Will?
I want to ask you all: what do you think one of the most common questions I get as a pastor is? If somebody is going to set up a pastoral counseling meeting with me, what is the question that they want to ask?
I'll repeat the answers so our livestream can hear. "Are gay people good in the eyes of God?" That actually is a pretty common question. People will come to The Table Church, and they may be wrestling with whether gay people can be not just allowed but celebrated. "Is hell real?" That's a real question, a very common question. "Why do bad things happen to good people, or just at all?" Yep. Any kids want to make a guess? My daughter Audrey: "Why did God make mosquitoes?" That's a great question. It's a wonderful question. And Ryan: "Am I living according to God's will?" That is the number one question. How do I know God's will?
As a pastor, I know that we could set up a class or course, and we could fill that class every single time if we just did a class on God's will, hearing God's voice. If you're anything like me, this is a question that I wrestle with. I've been a Christian since I was 12 years old, and I still don't have perfect answers for this. And I think lots of us do lots of interesting things to try to figure out God's will.
Anybody ever play Bible roulette? You open up a Bible, you flip through it, and then you point your finger at a verse, and you're like—okay: "There is no God." Oh, "The fool says there is no God." Okay, that's not right. Flip through it. "You will surely die this day." Dang it, that's not the one I wanted. Bible roulette.
Anybody familiar with the game Padiddle? Beck? "Maybe it's a country thing, but you drive on the highway, and if you see someone with just one headlight, you tap the top of your car and say Padiddle." That's exactly right. If you see someone with one headlight coming towards you, it's a race for everybody in the car to hit the top of the roof and say Padiddle, because you saw somebody with one headlight.
Now, I was pining after a young woman named Emily Vey, and I had asked her out earlier that summer. She had told me no. I've told that story before, but I still didn't feel like that was the end of the story. So I was taking a walk along the perimeter of our college campus, and I was just begging God: God, tell me, am I going to date and therefore marry Emily? God, if it's your will that I'm going to date and marry Emily, when I turn this corner onto McKinley Highway, if I see a Padiddle, that means that I'm going to date Emily. And did I see a Padiddle? You bet I did. Now, is this a particularly theologically deep way of pursuing God's will? No, it's pretty questionable. And I'm not sure how many cars drove by first before I saw that Padiddle. I remember throwing darts at a dartboard—if I hit a bullseye. I remember doing all these things. We move into these desperate measures. Can we hear God's voice? Can we know God's will? That's what we're going to talk about today.
The main thing I want us to take away is that God created us for friendship with them—both now and forever. Friendship with God is not just something that happens in the future. It's not just something that happens in kingdom come or heaven. Friendship with God can start now.
Hearing God Is Hard
But hearing God is hard. This is what Dallas Willard wrote about hearing God:
Among our loneliest moments is the time of decision and the need for guidance. The weight of our future life clamps down upon our hearts. Whatever comes from our decision will be our responsibility and our fault. Good things we have set our hearts on become real only as we choose them. But those things or other things yet undreamed of may be irretrievably lost if our choices are misguided. We may find ourselves stuck with failures and dreadful consequences that we must endure for a lifetime. Then quickly, second thoughts dog us—and third and fourth: Did I do the good and wise thing? Is this what God wanted? Is it what I even wanted? Can I live with the consequences? Will others think I'm a fool? Is God still with me? Will God be with me even if it becomes clear that I made the wrong choice?
Anybody resonate with this? Hearing God's voice, making choices for our lives, is tough.
So to illustrate this, we're going to play the telephone game. Two teams—this team and that team. I'm going to go in the back and whisper to you a phrase, and you're going to go row by row, passing that phrase back and forth until we get to the end—Antonio up here and Miriam up here. And we're going to have some music playing to make it that much harder to hear.
Team left, what is the phrase? "God loves you. God doesn't love cats. God loves your children." Team right? "God is yours. He doesn't love cats." Okay. Put the phrase on the screen. The phrase was: "God adores you, doesn't like cats, and has something fortuitous to say." Who was the last person to hear the word fortuitous? Yeah, over there, way in the back.
The Game of Telephone Between God and Us
So very quickly, this is for the adults in the room: my theory on biblical inspiration. God speaks to creation. God speaks to God's people. But there are layers of confusion between God speaking and us hearing. Layers of confusion: history, and culture, and bad intention, and sexism. All of those things get in the way between God's good voice and God's good plans for our lives, and then what we end up hearing. I think we end up playing this massive game of telephone between what God says and what we receive. Which means our work, as people who want to hear God's voice, is to begin to dig through those layers and get closer to the lips of God.
The world is really noisy. The world is super noisy. Even right now, there's noise—we've got music playing and all that stuff. I got a text saying, hey, can we turn it down? It's a little bit of sensory overload in here. Which is—yes, I understand that from an accommodation perspective, and also, that was the point. There was a little bit of sensory overload. We spend most of our week and most of our lives hearing things other than God's voice. And then we get to the 10 minutes in the morning or at night when we pray, or the 75 minutes that we're in a worship service, and we're like, what does God have to say? Let me hear it now. And of course, all that sensory overload is still bubbling around in our soul.
The Burning Bush: God Speaks in the Ordinary
Our Scripture this morning comes from Exodus chapter 3. I've got two kids who've already volunteered to come up and read Scripture—Audrey and Nia, come on up.
One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire in the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn't burn up. "This is amazing," Moses said to himself. "Why isn't that bush burning up? I must go see it."
I'm being upstaged.
The main thing I want to say about this passage is that God often speaks in the middle of our ordinary and everyday lives. Notice what Moses is doing. Moses is not at a church service. He's not at synagogue. He's not at temple. He's not at the tabernacle. He's working. He's tending sheep. He's not saying prayers. He's not reading his Bible. Moses is just at work. And as he's at work, he notices a burning bush. He sees this burning bush, sees that it's interesting, stops what he's doing, and he pays attention.
Now, Trevor's going to be talking more about the art of paying attention next week, but I want at least for us to notice the action of paying attention. Going into the world, going into our days with some sort of belief that there are things worth paying attention to. And that God can speak when we begin to pay attention. God can speak in the ordinariness of our lives, even when we're at work. Not just in these created moments that we make together—which are good and holy and beautiful and I love—but also in the so-called mundane, the so-called secular, the rest of our lives. We have to think of ourselves—this is Dallas Willard again—as it even being possible to have the same kinds of experiences as Moses and Elijah and Mary and Deborah or Paul. That we don't opt ourselves out because we think of ourselves as normal or ordinary. Having that belief—that I can have the same kinds of experiences as the folks of the Bible—can be very mind-altering. We can believe that that's not just for back then, but for now as well.
Now, the Scripture goes on. It says the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look. So the bush is burning no matter what. God is there no matter what. Moses pays attention, turns aside off the road, and the Lord sees this. And God calls to Moses from the middle of the bush: "Moses! Moses!" "Here I am," Moses replied. Verse 5: "Don't come any closer," the Lord warned. "Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground. I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." When Moses heard this, Moses covered his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
And then the Lord told him—and listen to all the verbs, the action words, in the sentence:
I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey. Look, the cry of the people has reached me, and I have seen how harshly the Egyptians abuse them.
So notice the progression here. Moses saw something unusual. Moses investigated. And then God speaks. Moses sees, he turns aside and investigates, and then God speaks. And I believe that God often wants us to pay attention before revealing more. God wants us to actually turn the attention of our own senses—our sight and our hearing, even what we smell and taste and touch—so that then we can hear God more, to see what God is going to reveal.
It's like—we don't do this a lot anymore, so this metaphor is dying—but like trying to tune a radio, or trying to move the antenna for an old television. Or, you know, the boats that would sail through the ocean, and they would have a compass on the boat. And as the friction of the water moved against the boat, the compass would begin to get more and more off track—this was actually the metal of the boat getting magnetized by the friction. And so you'd have to do something called degaussing the boat, which was to get the compass to turn back towards true north. And so paying attention, listening to God, stopping, being willing to stop and investigate, is like re-attuning, degaussing the compass of our own hearts, so that we can pay attention to God.
What It Looks Like to Pay Attention
What does it mean, what does it look like, to pay attention? It's the stuff that nobody likes when I say it to them in those pastoral counseling appointments. What would it mean for us to be silent, and still, and alone, and—dare I say—bored for a little while? Kids, do you like boredom? No. Guess what? Adults don't like it either. And my kids are very good at this, always pointing out: Dad, why do you always have your phone in your hands? Oh yeah—because I hate being bored. I'm afraid of all the fears and anxieties that are going to come top of mind. To be still, and to be silent, and to be alone, and to let the waters of my soul settle—one of the hardest things I can do. It's so difficult to just stay still. But that's one way to pay attention.
Another way to pay attention is being super familiar with God's character and God's voice, so that you can recognize them anywhere. We believe that every single person, every single human being, is created in the image of God—the imago Dei, as Genesis 1 says. Which means that every single person has the ability to show me something true about God. Which can be really tough to believe. Almost as hard as being still, in silence, as bored—believing that even the person that I don't like can show me something true about God.
Now, some of us might be thinking: hey, this is great for Moses, who had a literal burning bush, but God doesn't speak to me like that. And you're right. Most of us don't get burning bushes. But what if God's voice comes through a friend's encouragement when we're struggling? Or a verse that jumps out while we're reading—and not just Bible verses, but fiction and nonfiction? A persistent feeling that, yeah, I should text that person, I should give them a call? Or a sense of peace about a difficult situation? I think the way that we begin to hear God's voice is that silence, and that solitude, and that boredom, and being so familiar with God's voice that we would recognize it anywhere, and we wouldn't confuse it with anything else.
Movie or Bible?
Alright, so let's play another game. Audrey, come on up. You're going to be my quizmaster. And this game is: is it a movie, or is it a Bible verse? We're going to do this super casually—we're not going to keep score or anything. Audrey's going to read out a quote (not the answer—don't read the answer), and you're going to guess, with a show of hands or shouting it out: is it a movie or a Bible verse?
"Time is the fire in which we burn." Movie—Star Trek Generations.
"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long." Movie—Blade Runner.
"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." Bible. You all know too many Bible verses.
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men." Some uncertainty on this one—it's a movie. It's a fake Bible verse in Pulp Fiction. Samuel L. Jackson quotes Ezekiel 17, but then says something that is not Ezekiel 17. Gotcha.
"A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." Bible. That's right.
"Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration." A movie—Dune. That's right.
"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Movie—A Streetcar Named Desire.
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why they call it the present." Kung Fu Panda. That's right.
I think we're good. Thank you, Audrey.
So, in order to hear God's voice, we have to train ourselves to be able to recognize God's voice and God's character, so that we can understand it anywhere and not get it confused with anything else. So often in these pastoral counseling conversations—how do I know God's will? how do I know God's voice?—I encourage people to move into boredom, begin to confront the anxieties and the uncertainties of the soul. And when praying, when meditating, when contemplating, to—this is a Bible verse—fix your eyes on Jesus. Fix your eyes on the prize. And that means to begin to meditate on the character of God. If 1 John 4 says God is love, and that perfect love casts out all fear, well, that tells me something about what I should be hearing in God's voice. Should God's voice make me fear? No. If 1 Peter tells me to cast all my anxieties on him because God cares for us, well, if I feel like I'm receiving a voice or a message that feels like God doesn't care about me, or that is giving me more anxiety and less hope, well, that must not be God's voice.
God's Voice Reveals God's Heart
Now, listen to what God says in this passage. Before God says anything to Moses, before God asks anything of Moses, before God reveals God's will for Moses, God reveals their own heart to Moses. I have seen. I have heard. I am concerned. I will come down. I will rescue. God speaks what God's going to do, what God cares about, before asking one single thing of Moses. God's voice often comes after they prove that they've been listening to us. I have heard your cry. I have heard the cry of your people.
Some of us may have had somebody use "God's voice" as a weapon against us. God told me to break up with you. God told me you need to lose some weight. Did they? Did they? No. God told me that your lifestyle is a sin. God told me to tell you. But here's the test: God's voice will sound like verse 7. Full of compassion for those who are suffering. A voice committed to justice for the oppressed. I have seen, I have heard, I have come down, I will rescue.
When we truly hear God's voice, it calls us towards love. Love for God and love for others. The great commandment, right? Love God with all your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And so when we hear God's voice, it should be a voice that's moving us and calling us towards love. And it's calling us towards God's mission. Because God does have a mission for the world. A mission of redemption. A mission of removing injustice, of making a place where justice can make its home. As 2 Peter says, God has a mission of bringing people out of slavery and out of bondage and out of oppression. And yes, that will require work. And God does call Moses into that work: go before Pharaoh and say, let my people go. So don't take away from this morning's message that God's voice is always easy. Because sometimes God will call us to do hard things, difficult things. God will call us to stand up for what's right. But it's a voice that moves us towards love, not shame. Towards courage, not fear. It's a voice that moves us towards loving others well.
Where Will You Show Love This Week?
So we're just going to do a little bit of practice right now. I want you to pair up, or groups of three or four at most, and ask the simple question: what's a place where God might be calling us to show love this week? You could talk about work. You could talk about camp. You could talk about your family, your neighbor, the person that you walk by on the streets. Maybe some situation in your life where you know you need to show love, but it seems really difficult—you don't want to. Let's spend a couple minutes talking about that question.
Let's have a couple shout-outs. Where are you going to show love this week? California—family vacation. Great place to show God's love. Show love to your mom. Yourself—hallelujah. Yourself. Immigrant neighbors. That's right.
Look for God in the Ordinary
So, to wrap up. My encouragement this week is to look for God in your ordinary moments. Because it might be in the ordinary that you find something supernatural and extraordinary. When something unusual catches your attention, be willing to pause. Brian Regan has a joke about Pop-Tarts. He says, you ever look at the back of a Pop-Tart box and notice it has instructions for a microwave? You're supposed to put the Pop-Tart in for two seconds. He's like, if you don't have time to toast your Pop-Tart, you might be packing your schedule too tight. Are our schedules packed so tight that we don't have the ability to stop and pause when something catches our attention? God, are you trying to tell me something? They may not be. But you'll miss out on the moments when they are.
Remember that God's voice comes in a variety of ways. It's not just burning bushes, but through community, and Scripture, and prayer, and circumstances, and the unexpected. And there is a game of telephone going on. My own inner voice can get in the way. The culture. The things that I was taught. Distractions. And it's a lifetime's worth of work to simply begin to get closer to the source, so that game of telephone doesn't take 15 minutes.
A couple warning signs. God's voice will never contradict their character of love and justice. It will not contradict that. Be suspicious, on your own behalf, of any word of God that makes you feel superior to others. True. Thank you. Dang it—now I feel superior. Jeez. True discernment happens in community and not in isolation. That's the test. That's how you test the word of God. And when in doubt, you ask trusted friends to help you listen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
