INTRODUCTION

Expectation and reality, hope and fulfillment, the now and the not-yet.

Ditch Anecdote: How many of you have gone into a ditch this year?

How many of us have ever felt powerless? Or specifically, been given a task that you felt powerless to actually accomplish?

Feeling powerless is scary, but for many of us it has become status quo. We feel powerless against our schedules, our routines, our careers (or lack of careers), our relationships. Many of us have admitted defeat and said, I guess I can't change a thing.

But what if you were empowered to do whatever it is you've dreamt of doing right now. What would you do? How would your life look different?

Take 30 seconds and discuss that with someone next to you.

Powerlessness is scary, but sometimes even more scary is when we're actually called to make a change or make a difference. Sometimes being stuck is comfortable. But God never wants us to be stuck.

SCRIPTURE

**[[Exodus 3]]:1-12. **

Background

  • The people of Israel are in Egypt enslaved.
  • Moses born during a time when Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is killing children.
  • Moses is rescued from this and is raised by the Egyptians, Pharaoh's daughter!
  • As an adult he sees his people being oppressed, he kills an Egyptian, fears the wrath of Pharaoh, exiles himself to the desert; marries a Midianite.
  • Lives like this for 40 years.
  • Moses' Situation
  • Murderer; Exile/Refugee
  • Marries outside of the norms
  • No family (raised by Egyptians, ticks off Egyptians)

REVELATION ELICITS RESPONSE

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.

We have the advantage of knowing what's happening: God is speaking, Moses will respond, but imagine that you don't know any of that. Imagining that it's happening to you (you're traveling for work; tired; see something strange on the road...)

Illustration: Road trip with my mom; see a barn that had smoke pouring out of it; we decided to stop; turned out they were smoke curing tobacco.

How many times do we pass by a burning barn, a car accident, something that doesn't look quite right, and we think, "Eh. Someone else will take care of it"?

Application: Do you think we ever do the same thing with God? Do we ever so separate what "The Holy" and "The Mundane" is that we actually miss out on the Holy Mundane?

The Shrub-On-Fire. A thorny bush, nonetheless.

Is it possible that in the places you feel resistance or boredom or the mundanity of life...that's where God is speaking to you? (Day-to-day job; marriage; motherhood, fatherhood)

Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight---why the bush does not burn up."

Moses paid attention. It required more than a casual glance, but observation. Observation led to investigation.

We must not only have eyes open to God's presence in our lives, but we also must have the faith to respond, to move towards God.

MISSION MEANS CALLING

The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have **come down **to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

God reveals Himself to Moses. Moses pays attention to God and moves closer. Then God speaks and is about to reveal His character. Listen to the verbs God uses:

I have seen the misery.

I have heard them crying.

I know their suffering.

I have come down to rescue.

I will bring them out to a good land.

This is not a static God, a far-away, distant God who that doesn't intervene, doesn't care, just lets people go about their merry or miserable ways.

This is a God who acts, who feels, who senses, who comes down and rescues. This is a God whose purpose is redemption. This is a God on a mission.

Application: This is a God who feels, senses, knows, and acts for you. This isn't just the way God used to be a long time ago. This is still the way God is. We know this because of Jesus. When God says He knows our suffering, He doesn't mean it in just some weak intellectual way, like the way I know that someone on some continent somewhere is hungry or doesn't have access to clean water.

No, Jesus is the embodiment of this text. He knows our suffering because He is the Suffering God. He literally came down, as a human, felt our pains, cried our tears, battled our temptations, died our death.

But the story goes on. Moses hears the voice of God speaking out of the holy and out of the mundane - out of the Thorny-Shrub-On-Fire - and hears the good news that this God is a God unlike all the other gods of the world. He isn't distant, capricious, arbitrary, or far off. He feels, hears, sees, knows. This is a God who comes down and will bring out. And how will he do it?

10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

This would be the part of the movie where you hear that record-screeching sound and Moses goes, "Whaaaa...?!?!"

This was the part that Moses didn't see coming. It was a huge enough deal that God had revealed Himself to Him, had declared His character to Him, had announced His intentions to deliver the people of Israel from slavery and bondage. But what Moses didn't bargain for was that God was going to use a human being to accomplish His will.

But this is our God. We believe in a God who sees, hears, knows, and acts. And the way that God does that is through His people.

Remember our God is a Community within Himself. He is a Triune God.

God was the first Missional Community.

This Community is not closed, it is not sealed off, it is not exclusive or cliche-y. It invites, it calls, it beckons, it woos us to join in what the ancients called the perichoresis, the Divine Dance.

This means that we are called to participate in the divine nature, to partake of the love, acceptance, and fellowship that only a loving God can offer. This also means that God's mission, God's intentions, God's redemptive purposes for the world become our mission, our intentions, and our desires.

No one is excluded from this. No one has to miss out. If you know the love and fellowship of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit, then you are invited to participate in His mission.

This is what God says to Moses: I see, I hear, I know, I am coming down, and I am bringing out...therefore go, because I am sending you!

IDENTITY DEFINED IN CHRIST

Now, Moses' response to this call takes up the next chapter and a half; twenty-eight verses of Moses declaring his doubt to God and God responding to Moses' doubt.

11 But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

What did Moses ask? He asks the question, we all ask: "Who am I?"

Isn't this our primary question? Isn't this the number one question we ask in our lives? It's not always so obvious or blunt or clear, but this is the first and last thing we want to know. We are defined by our identity but we don't always know what makes up our identity.

Am I defined by my family? The ones that spoil me or drive me crazy?
Am I defined by my past mistakes? The failures I tell no one?

Am I defined by my success? By what I achieve? By whom I impress?
Am I defined by what others think of me?

Am I defined by what I make?

Remember who's asking this question: Moses. And remember Moses' past:

Born a slave, but raised by the slave masters.

Murderer. Exile. Estranged from any family he's ever had.

And now he has a dead end job: raising sheep in a desert.

If anyone had a reason to ask to God, "Who am I?" it would  be Moses. This guy was by all standard definitions an outcast and a loser.

And this is square one of human existence. We all have had a moments of doubt and despair and heartache and pain and the burning existential question, "Am I worth it? Am I capable? Am I loved?"

But here's the good news: No one is worthy...so everyone is!

That's right. Not a single one of us is worthy to do God's job for Him. Because, you know, He's God, and we're not.

But that also means that when God calls you to mission, it means you have no excuse. You have no grounds to say, "I'm not worthy of God's call. I'm not smart enough or trained enough or charismatic enough or have enough time or money." Because He has called each of us. You and me and the guy next to you and the gal behind you.

Because God doesn't need you. He could clearly do a better job without you. He's God after all.

But God's top priority isn't efficiency or the fastest possible solution or the most clear-cut answer.

God's point is relationship. With you. Now. And forever.

I honestly think that's the reason that God's will takes so long to see come to pass. It's not always because God is slow to act. It's because God has decided to work through someone slow and stupid and clumsy like me!

When we complain about God's will being so slow, I don't think we're so much complaining about God's will, but about God's people being disobedient, God's people being slow to do God's will.

But God would much rather be in relationship with a person than a robot. He would much rather equip and empower you for mission than ignore you just to get things done faster.

And so when Moses asks the question, "Who am I?" he is actually asking the right question. Because Moses is at a point in his life when he recognizes how far he has fallen, that he has no clue where his identity is anymore.

And God, in His faithfulness, in His love, and out of his infinite desire for relationship with His creation gives the best possible answer: "I am with you."

Again, if we were having this conversation with God ourselves, we might give a gigantic, "Huh?" Because it seems like a non sequitur, right?

Who am I?

I am with you.

That's not what I asked.

But that's the answer you need.

We spend our lives seeking out the answer to "Who am I?" What is our identity found in? What defines us? All sorts of other things clamor for our attention to define us. But here's the truth:

The abusive relationship you're in with a parent, a partner, a boss?

Don't let them define you.

Money troubles? Joblessness? Homelessness? Don't let them define you.

Crimes? Offenses? Court dates? Don't let them define you.

Affairs? Addictions? Abuses? Don't let them define you.

Every one of those is whispering in your ear, **"I **am with you." They want to hold themselves over you, weigh you down, enslave you and bring to you bondage.

Moses asks, "Who am I?" And God gives the ultimate answer:

I am with you.

God through Jesus is our identity. We are not what we do. We are not what we make. We are not what others think of us.

We are God's beloved. His treasured possession. His chosen and His elect.

Hebrews 2 says we are part of the family of God; that Jesus calls us his brothers and sisters!

[[Ephesians 2]] says that God has seated us with Christ in the heavenly realms and adopted us into His name.

Colossians 3 says that our lives are hidden in Christ with God.

We are called saints, God's holy ones, God's reconciled, perfected by Jesus' sacrifice.

In other words: what can be said of Christ can be said of you.

This enormous, earth-shattering idea transforms the very idea of mission and calling. Because remember where we've been thus far:

God reveals Himself to His people.

God declares His loving, compassionate character to His people.

God calls His people to accomplish His redemptive purposes.

And God empowers His people mission by giving them their identity in Christ.

Listen to the way Paul explains it to the Corinthians:

From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. (2 Corinthians 5:16-20)

Four Applications:

  1. Choose to pay attention to God. What is something that you can quit this week that is making you skip over the thorny burning bushes in your lives. The most recent sports craze? The news? Your smartphone? Your children's' 26 nightly commitments? Make the decision today to quit cluttering up your life and blocking out God's voice.
  2. Recognize that God's call to mission includes you. Yes, even you. Yes, even despite that sin, that mistake, that past, that childhood. God is calling you to be his ambassador to a world enslaved, a world in darkness.
  3. Filter all of your life's activities through this question: "Does this help accomplish God's redemptive purposes for the world?" Not just, "As long as it doesn't hurt anybody," but instead, "As long as it if God Himself were speaking through me."
  4. You live out the fact that, out of God's enormous love and mercy for you, He has reconciled you with Himself. You are a new creation, a child of the Most High God, a brother and sister of Jesus, the temple of the Holy Spirit. You are empowered not by your own accomplishments, charisma, or charm, but the very power of God Himself.

Remember my car stuck in a ditch? You know what I had to do; call a tow truck. Once that truck latched onto my car, I still wasn't done. I had to make a choice to put my car in neutral; to let go of control; to let something else empower my vehicle to move forward.

Let's stand together and pray...