The Burning Bush

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Man, those words just hit me kind of at the end that we were singing there, like, all my life you have been faithful, all my life you've been so, so good. Man, just remembering God's goodness. And if you're, you know, if you're new at this this morning, or maybe you just don't have a whole lot of experience with the Lord, and that's okay. But man, if that's you, whenever people just declare at the top of their lungs that the Lord has been so, so good, that doesn't mean that life has been so, so easy. It just means that in the midst of that, in the midst of that difficulty, in the midst of just life, life happening, life kind of being off or feeling off, that the Lord is good in the middle of it. Amen? Yeah. And so, man, it just spoke to me. we're going to continue our Bible World Tour. We are going to be at the burning bush. We're going to be at the burning bush today in Exodus chapter 3. And this is a very common story,

or actually it's actually something that we allude to very often without reading the story. And so in Exodus 3, I wanted to kind of just look at it. We're gonna spend most of our time kind of on the first half up until about verse 15. And so if you look at verse one with me, Exodus 3 verse 1, says, now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. So today, whenever we are reading this story, we're gonna be looking at it from Moses' perspective. And by the time we get to Exodus chapter three, verse one, there have been two whole chapters of Exodus that have happened. And in those two chapters, Moses, we go from the birth of Moses, which was kind of this really kind of crazy ordeal, it's really interesting. And then we go all the way, in two chapters,

We go all the way that Moses is actually raised in the Pharaoh's house. He still knows that he is an Israelite in some capacity. And so by the end of chapter two, he has escaped or fled Egypt. He killed an Egyptian to protect an Israelite. And then everybody got mad at him all at once. The Israelites were like, thank you, we can take care of ourselves. And the Egyptians were like, why are you killing the slaves? And so then he ran. He was in Pharaoh's court and he ran away. And by the time we get to Exodus 3 verse 1, it is 40 years, roughly 40 years after that incident. And where is he? He's herding sheep for his father-in-law really far away from Egypt, okay? So remember, let's read these verses from Moses' perspective. So that's kind of where he's at. next two verses, verses two and three. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him, Moses, in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.

He looked and behold the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight why the bush is not burned. And so all Moses sees at first is something curious. That's really all he's, Moses is minding his business. He's near Horeb now in Midian. And he sees something curious. Look at the next verse, verse four. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush. Moses, Moses. And he said, here I am. So it's interesting, verse four tells us that God waited for Moses to turn before calling him. Interesting, keep that in the back of your mind. When he does turn, look at verse five, when he turns, Moses then said, or sorry, when Moses turned to him, God then said, do not come near, take your sandals off your feet for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. So Moses, he's looking around, he sees something curious,

he goes to that curious thing to kind of see what it's about. And then in the midst of that, God calls to him out of that bush, and he's like, oh, okay, I should come. And then immediately he gets a warning. No, don't come, listen, don't just waltz over here, Moses. Take your sandals off, because where you're standing is holy ground. God explains this a little further when he introduces himself in verse six. God said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Man, what a picture, right? These few verses, what a picture of coming to the Lord. This is, right? You see something curious, and you turn, and you look at it, but then God was in control of it the whole time, and in control of that moment, and even kind of where you were looking at, and then God reveals himself, and then immediately,

You know, you get a warning, you're like, it's kind of a whirlwind, it's kind of a herky jerk. It's a weird introduction, but I really wanna focus on two things. I wanna focus on the fact that God is inviting Moses into something personal. God is inviting Moses into something personal. And maybe it's to say it this way, that God could have been more obvious, right? Why all this cloak and dagger, right? Why is God going through the trouble of burning a bush and not consuming it just so Moses would look at it, just so he could call him out of the bush? What's going on? Well, God is hiding in plain sight. He's hiding to be found. He's hiding in a bush so that Moses can notice so that they can begin a relationship. It's a very strange way to go about it, but it's what God does on purpose. And look, we have other times in scripture where God like, I mean, pretty much opens the gates of heaven

and like you see all of his glory and people think they're just gonna die. Okay, God can do that. God does do that, not here though. God is inviting Moses into something special, something in particular. So I want you to kind of see the second thing that I wanna notice with just the progression that we had is that the deeper Moses goes, the more he worships. So at first he's just looking at something, and then he's like, oh, okay, I need to take my sandals off. And then whenever God reveals kinda who, I'm the God of your father, Isaac, I'm the God, I'm that God, when Moses understands that, when God has revealed that to him, Moses hides his face. So Moses goes from being curious to taking his sandals off and now he's hiding his face

because he's afraid to look at God. And that's really what I wanna focus on this morning. I wanna look at this whole thing about coming to God because when we do, it's always this move away from self-confidence. When Moses is approaching God, he's not growing more sure of himself in that process. Okay, and maybe he was sure of himself at the beginning, knows. But he starts just by investigating something curious. But whenever we come to God, it's this move toward being humbled and being invited in at the same time.

Sometimes we think about being humbled, you know, maybe it's like we were trash talking and we lost, you know, the basketball game we were playing. I don't know. You know, we think about being humbled as in like being wrong, shown to be stupid, things like that. But that's That's not what I'm talking about here. Whenever Moses is humbled, he's met face to face with his own kind of inadequacy. He kind of sees it viscerally. He understands that he is beholding God himself. There is no room for self-confidence when God is revealing himself to you, and he's saying, I am the God of your fathers.

I'm here. I'm the one that all of these people that worship, I'm revealing myself to you in a particularly personal way, Moses. Moses is not thinking to himself like, I got this. This is gonna be great. That's not what's happening. If we keep reading, God begins immediately to tell Moses about his plan. So remember, they just met. They just met. Verse seven. Then the Lord said, I have surely seen affliction on my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know they're suffering. So God's plan here, it's both here and all the time, God's plan involves redeeming people, always and forever. And it's not just some strategy. This isn't like the best way to save the world or anything like that. I mean, it is, but it's not like we would conceive of it, it comes from the heart. It comes from the heart. Listen to the next couple of the next verse. 3-8 says, I have come down to deliver them out of the hand

of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. The desire here of the Lord is to redeem and bless His covenant people. Look at verse 9, and now behold the cry of the people of Israel has come to me and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them." So God isn't saying, hey this isn't fair, I'm gonna go make this right. God's saying my heart bleeds for these people who are being oppressed. This isn't ending oppression just to end oppression. This is God's covenant people being oppressed. This is God's covenant people living under harsh taskmasters. And God sees that and his heart is moved toward redemption. God wants to redeem these people. If you're wondering, if you are wondering this morning about what God's plan is for your life, look, I have it. I have it. It's right here in Exodus

3, okay? I bet you didn't know that you were going to find this out this morning, but it's right here. God's plan always involves redeeming people, always, always, always. And your part in that is you having a hand in God redeeming people. You don't redeem people, because you and I, we can't do those things. God can, though, and he invites us into that process.

God's plan always involves redeeming people. Ephesians 1, 17, it says, "'In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins.'" Galatians 3, 13 says, "'Christ became a curse for us to redeem us from the curse of the law.'" 1 Corinthians 1 30, Jesus is our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption. 1 Peter 1, 18 and 19, says we are redeemed from the old way of life with his blood. Colossians 1 14 says in him, in Jesus, we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. This idea of redemption is all over the New Testament. It's also all over the Old Testament. And whenever God is coming to Moses, when he calls him out, when we go to God, We are going to hear about how God wants to redeem people quickly. It's not like an afterthought only for missionaries and pastors to take care of later whenever they have all their life all sorted out and they know kind of what they're

no, no, no, no. If you've been a Christian a week, then you are part of God's plan for redeeming people. God's plan always involves redeeming people. When we, when we, when God gets our attention and we start growing closer and when we start coming to him, our hearts become attuned to people's needs. His plan for redemption becomes your own plan for redemption. Look at the next verse, verse 10. It says, come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. So for Moses and for all of us, this plan for redemption gets very personal very quickly. Okay. Oh, oh, okay. Like, uh, God, I understand that you have a heart for lost people. I understand that you have a heart for people that are far from you. I understand that you are bringing like comfort to people that are, are downcast and that you want to encourage the brokenhearted,

that you want to visit the sick that you want. You want all those things to happen. Oh, you want me to do those things. Okay. I just thought that was your heart, God. I just thought that stuff that you really cared about. I didn't know that that meant that I have to rearrange my life. I didn't know that that meant I couldn't binge watch whatever I want, whenever I want, or I couldn't doom scroll whenever I want, whatever I want. I didn't know that somehow this was going to adjust my life personally. I didn't know that whenever you said God, that you are close to the brokenhearted that you're calling me to go to people that are actually brokenhearted and give them comfort. That's kind of news for some of us. That's kind of something that we can forget over time.

It's really cool to say that like, oh God cares for the needy and the broken. God's so great, yeah, God is great, yes. But that greatness, that's a plan. That's not just a feeling God has. God's not like, man, I wish that hungry people would be fed, that'd be nice. No man, he's God, he doesn't do that. He makes it happen. That's his plan for redemption, and our part is in that plan, just like Moses. Moses, of course, is not super excited about his role in that plan as we see in the next verse. Okay? Exodus 3, 11, Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? Moses has a question of identity, and surely at this point, because we're reading it from his perspective, surely at this point, his past is running through his mind. Surely he's thinking about the fact that he is an exiled killer. Surely, surely he understands

that he has been in the wilderness for 40 years, that he has passed his prime. Moses has passed his prime. Some estimates are that he's 80 at this point, okay? And he might be thinking, I mean, this is just speculation, this is not in the word. He might be thinking, isn't there some other young Hebrew that you have made grow up in Egyptian royalty? Isn't there somebody else, Scott? Isn't there somebody else that you've kind of brought through in the pattern that you brought me through but that didn't kill another Israelite or that didn't kill, excuse me, didn't kill another Egyptian? Like, that isn't an exiled murderer? Isn't there somebody else who's more qualified than me? Because I kind of think I ruined this. I'm out here, I've been out here, Where have you been? Because I've been here, God, for 40 years tending sheep. And now, now, now you want me to go.

Okay, who am I? And surely, surely, surely, it is not difficult to see ourselves in this, right? This is our move. Moses' move is our move. Easy, easy. Regardless of our past, right? Our first response, whenever God called us do something as me? You don't know what I did. You don't know what I've been through. I've done too much to myself. I've wasted too many years. I've wasted too many second and third and fourth chances. I don't know enough Bible. I don't even go to church that often. Like God, you're not going to use me. You need to use somebody else. Isn't there some like 20 year old missionary who's like bright eyed and bushy tailed? Can't we just Throw it on that guy.

Isn't it their job? Can't the pastor do it? That's what he gets paid for. I get paid to do religious stuff that you don't have to do, right? I mean, that's part of my job. It's not, I'm being facetious. Okay, I don't ever want you to quote that to me. That conversation will not be a good one. Okay, how does God respond to that? How does God respond to Moses saying, and us saying, it's, hey, I think you got the wrong guy. What does he say? He says, but I will be with you, and this shall be a sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain. Now look, I don't know if you thought that a sign worked differently than all that, but that's how signs work. A sign, it's almost like, It's almost like, you know, if you have a child and you tell your child, like, hey, clean the room, you're like, I promise if you clean the room, this is going to happen.

And they'll say, well, how do I know what's a sign? He's going, this will be a sign. When you've cleaned your room. Okay. That's kind of how this is. He's looking, he's like, I'll give you a sign. When you've done what I've told you to do, then this is going to happen. That's your sign. But I don't want to concentrate on that. I just wanna look at the first part whenever God says, I will be with you. This is like a little kid scared to sleep at night, maybe in their own big boy bed for the first time, or maybe because they watched a scary movie that your wife told them not to show them some version of that.

And they're scared. They're scared to sleep at night. And what do you do? You just yell at them. You're like, obey me, go to bed. I mean, no, you should not do that, especially if they're little. What do you say? What do you say? Well, you go in there. You go in there with them, make them lie down. You open their closet, nothing in here. We're good, close that closet door back because don't leave a closet door open. That is not okay for a little kid. They don't want that closet. I don't want my closet door open.

Scary, it's weird in there. What else do you do if they're still afraid? What do you do? You lay down with them, right? I mean, it's not rocket science, man. This is basic parenting. This is one-on-one stuff, right? You lay down with them, and you don't have to say anything. You don't have to, you don't have to, it's not some cool, pithy rhyme or anything like that. You just lay with them, and you lay with them long enough, And what happens is, in theory, I mean, this doesn't all end up, most of the time, they feel calm enough to go to sleep because you're there. Nothing's going to get them because you're there. Your mere presence casts out all fear. To a six-year-old who's afraid of the dark, your mere presence casts out fear. Mac is still remember, you know, knocking on my parents door, you know, it's like, I don't know, well, I don't know, it's maybe, it feels like it's like three in the

morning, it's probably 1030, because I'm very young at that point, and I'm, you know, I want them, I'll say something like, oh, I just want a glass of water, or I say, I don't remember, I made, I made things up. All I wanted them to do was to like, say something to me, to tell me everything was gonna be okay, to maybe get in the bed because I was scared and this is God's response to Moses, right? It's like, hey, Moses, I know you don't feel up to this but I'm here. I'm with you. I've checked the closet. I'm here with you. Moses is not done protesting. Next verse, verse 13, Moses has a second protest. Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them the God of your fathers has sent me to you and they ask me what is his name, then what shall I say to them? Now this question is not exactly sarcastic like you and I would think of maybe sarcasm, but I will tell you just because I've done like Hebrew word

studies on this and I'm not gonna bring you through all that but I will tell you Moses in this statement Moses thinks he has a point okay Moses thinks he has a point have you ever asked the question to make a point like I just did okay Moses's question, his point here, is saying, hey this is kind of far-fetched. Hey God, I don't know if this is gonna go very well because they definitely remember me. I'm the Egyptian ruler who killed another Egyptian for them and they rejected me. They didn't want my leadership. Do you remember that? they will. They will remember that God. And won't they, won't they God, won't they be a little suspicious? Won't this look a little strange or contrived to them? Isn't this super convenient that it's me going back to them to lead them after they rejected my leadership?

With this question, Moses kind of thinks he has a point because he's not just asking for information. He's not just asking for procedure. He uses that kind of question, and the question actually boils down to acceptance and insecurity. It boils down to acceptance. Like, will they accept me? And Moses, based on this question, is pretty doubtful that they're going to accept him. Moses is deeply insecure. I'm going to be rejected by these people. I'm going to be rejected by these people of my heritage. This will be the nail in the coffin. This will be the legacy of my life. And it will go horribly. This is a common reaction to God revealing his plan to us.

Am I enough? Do I know enough? What happens when? What happens when they ask me a question that I don't know the answer to? What happens whenever they bring up my past? What happens when, right? What happens when I do all this? Look, it's scary to share the gospel with people. It is scary to share your testimony. And the reason it's scary is not because you have questions of protocol and information. The reason it's scary is because of our insecurity.

It's because we don't wanna look dumb. I don't wanna look dumb either, okay? I have notes up here. If I just get up here without notes, I'm gonna look dumb, okay? If I'm just supposed to like, kinda just parlay for 30 minutes while you, you know, like, hey, I think the scripture said, look, I get it, I don't look dumb either. I go through great pains to not look dumb. But there's a difference between preparing and acting out of insecurity.

Because you and I might have factual difficulties with God's plan for us. you might actually doubt or feel way under qualified. You might honestly wonder what to say or how to start. You have those questions of information, those questions of procedure. Yes and indeed. But laced through those questions is insecurity. Driving the heart of those questions is, I'm not gonna be okay. And let me just tell you this morning, full-throated, clear-eyed, that is wonderful to admit.

That means you're like the rest of us. Giving a sermon is not like sharing your testimony in the grocery line. Teaching a Bible study is not the same as being vulnerable with a coworker and telling them what you've been through in the last six months and how you've had to depend on the Lord. It's not the same. It takes a little bit more, And it's okay to admit that. In fact, I'm just gonna challenge you. I'm gonna challenge you to pray. We looked at a strange prayer last week, and I challenge you to kinda pray through that. I'm gonna challenge you to pray through this too, and just be like, hey, Lord, here's my insecurities. Here's things that I feel dumb on. Here's things I don't wanna look dumb on. Here's all these things I feel like I don't know, or feel like things that I need, but I know that you're calling me, God, I know that you're calling me to invest in people.

I know that you're calling me to be a part of your plan to redeem people. I know that you're calling me to do that, but I don't know where to start. I feel dumb and I think this whole thing's gonna be ham handed and I'm gonna regret this. It's okay to pray that. That's actually a really good prayer to pray. I've prayed those kinds of prayers. I've never regretted praying a prayer like that. because it helps me understand, it helps the Lord know, hey look, we're just, we're having a conversation here, we're talking, and this is some real stuff. If you just ignore God's plan, that's not a good plan. So this is Moses, Moses is kind of opening up about all this and here's God's response to him in verse 14. And God said to Moses, I am who I am.

And God said, say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. Okay, that is kind of cryptic if you don't know kind of what it's talking about, but God is revealing his covenant name. So whenever we sang, who pulled me out of that grave? Yahweh, Yahweh, right? So Yahweh is God's covenant name. It's four letters, Y-H-W-H. And that means I am who is I am. That's what Y-H-W-H means, basically. And that's where we get the name Yahweh from, from Exodus 3, 14, okay? God is giving Moses his covenant name. He's not just Elohim. Elohim's kind of the general name for God. So even whenever they're saying like, you know, the whatever, the God of, you know,

I can't think of another city in the Bible right this second, another God, a foreign God, when it says foreign gods, It uses the word Elohim sometimes, okay? In other words, it's how we use the word for God. We'll say something like the God that, you know, I don't know, somebody else worships, right? You know, the God of the Hindus, the God of whatever. So we have the generic word for God, but this is not the generic word, this is God's covenant name, revealed specifically, specially to Moses. And in that, by revealing his name to him, God is saying to Moses, you know me, and that is enough. You know me, and that's enough. Moses' first protest, who am I? God says, I'm with you. Second protest, I don't know enough, things are gonna go bad, this procedure is a terrible idea, This isn't going to work, and God says, you know me, and that is enough. And he doesn't stop there.

Look at the next, or look at verse 15. God also said to Moses, he just kind of repeats himself, right, God says, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, which is God's covenant name, Yahweh, the God, the Elohim of your fathers, the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, the Elohim of Jacob, has sent me to you, this God that you've been worshiping, and your ancestors, and everybody, his covenant name, this is who he is. And then God says, this is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. God did not just stop with giving him his name. God gave him a memorial. God gave him something to invite other people into. God says, you know me, but more than that, more than that. In fact, I'm gonna show you more. He meets his insecurity with knowing him, and he doesn't say, he doesn't say, hey, just stop sinning. Hey, fake it till you make it.

Hey, drop that act. He didn't say that. He says, you know me, and that's enough. And this is the God that we worship. This is the overflowing grace and glory of God's revelation to us, right? It's not just that we know Him in part or that we know Him just a little bit or that we know just enough to be in trouble or that we know, no, no, no. God says, I wanna know you. I want a covenant relationship with you. I'll share my name with you.

My covenant name, I'll do that. I'll give you more than you ever thought possible. It reminds me of Jesus' words in John 10 And he said, I've come that they may have life, and not just have life, but they may have life and have it to the full or abundantly. Jesus isn't just coming so that you can cope. Jesus is coming so that you can live abundantly. God's character isn't just to give a little bit. God's character is to give to the overflow. God wants to bless you to the overflow, and that doesn't mean your bank account most of the time. It means things more important than your bank account or how many cars you have in the garage. God wants to bless you to the overflow in joy, in peace, in grace, in mercy, in knowledge of him.

When we come to God, we don't just find a little bit, we don't just find like one little tiny thing and then maybe we'll get to the next clue and maybe we'll make it, or if we're smart enough, or if we're strong enough, or no. When we come to God, we find all that we need and more. And it melts our self-confidence. It meets our inadequacy. And so when you think about it, man, we talk about how God is love. And that's true. But man, God is so much more, right? God is, even in these verses, God is compassion, God is promises, God is intimacy, God is trust, all to the infinite measure. God is faithful to the infinite measure. All my life you have been faithful. All my life you've been so, so good. This is the God that we worship.

He's full of overflowing promises. When you read, and we're not gonna do right now because we don't have time, when you read verses 16 through 22, what you see is overflowing promises. God walks Moses through everything that's going to happen. You're going to go to Pharaoh. The elders of Israel are going to listen to you. Pharaoh's gonna resist you. I'm gonna send 10 plagues. You're gonna be on this mountain and worshiping me. Like, it's going to happen. God steals Moses' spine with his promises,

not self-confidence, not Moses, I believe in you, you're strong enough and smart enough and gosh darn it, people like you. I'm going to do this, this is going to happen. I'm inviting you to be a part of something that will happen. And at this point, Moses begins to experience what I would call gospel confidence. And I need to, I wanna give you some examples of this and I wanna encourage you toward this. And the only way I know how to do that is to kinda just show you a little bit more. Cause gospel confidence is not like self-confidence. It's not like self-esteem. It's not like feeling good about yourself. Sometimes, sometimes man, you can kind of forget about yourself or you can kind of like forget about self-confidence, but you have this gospel confidence. As God reveals more of himself to you, Gospel confidence is going to grow inside of you, right? Not how many victories you have,

not how many skins you have on the wall, but God's victory, his trustworthiness, his faithfulness, his compassion, his plan to redeem people. All of those things are way more important than however you feel about your past or your prospects for the future. And I get it, on an everyday basis, you care a lot more about how you feel than whatever you feel. You care more about how you feel than what God's done. I get that. I'm the same way, but it doesn't make it true.

What's true is that the only thing that defines reality is what God's done, not how you feel. This is gospel confidence. And you can grow in it because you're not looking at other things to make you feel okay. Here's how this plays out in real time, okay? If you're looking at other things to make you feel okay. And for these purposes, I'm going to pick on two people. I'm gonna pick on Heath Oster first. Heath, it's okay, it'll be painless, I promise.

Let's say that Heath is not a Christian and then he becomes a Christian later. Okay, he's not a Christian now, okay, let's just pretend. Where does Heath draw his confidence from? Well, I don't know if you've ever seen Heath play baseball, but Heath can draw a lot of confidence from playing baseball really well, okay? Okay, he plays better than Kenneth Harrington used to play. All right, that is, wow. I mean, I just said a mouthful. Am I right, Kenneth? Can I get an amen, brother? Okay, all right, okay.

When you are that good at baseball, it is easy to draw your identity from your athleticism. And so this is what he does before Christ. He looked at himself in a mirror And he's trying to figure out like who he is and how, like how's he supposed to carry himself and where's his identity. And he's maybe not asking these questions out loud, but these things are happening. And when he does, when he considers those things, he's like, well, I'm really good at baseball. I'm going to effectively, I'm gonna put my confidence in my athleticism. I'm really good at baseball and that's gonna define me. And even if I'm bad at downhill skiing, It doesn't matter because I'm good at baseball. Even if I don't know what to say in public sometimes over here, it doesn't matter because I'm good at baseball. So do you see it? It's confidence being kind of stacked into this identity.

I'm good at baseball. And look, I'm gonna quit picking on you, Heath, okay? Because it's not just baseball. It's being smart, like being good at taking tests. It could be good at your job. Maybe you're like Mr. Reliable or Mrs. Reliable at your job. You're the one who holds down the fort. First in, last out, that's you. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that. There is something extremely deadly about putting your confidence in that. Does that make sense? So whenever you are doing that, you outside of Christ, you are putting your confidence in that. But here's the problem, because sometimes, sorry Heath, I'm back on picking on you, sometimes you have a bad game. And so if all of your identity, all of your confidence is in the fact that you can play baseball, what happens when you have a bad game? Confidence in the gutter. I am worthless. I shouldn't even be on this earth.

I definitely shouldn't pick up a bad game. Who am I? undone because you've stacked everything in there. Everything. You can't get out of it. What happens whenever you're supposed to be the smart one and then you fail the test or you don't get valedictorian or some other horrible crisis, you get like an A minus on a test or something, your confidence goes down. And so what happens is you put your confidence in a different identity and you're confident, I'm sorry, you put, yeah, you put your identity in something else besides the Lord, in your intellect, in your athleticism, and anything, and your confidence goes up and down. And even if you don't do that, you might do it with a relationship. You're only as good as this person thinks about you. You're only as valuable as this person values you. That's just as toxic, because your confidence goes up and down,

depending on how they feel about you. And God forbid they break up with you. Because then you're in the trash. You're in the dirt, man. You're done for. Self-confidence is brittle. It breaks so easily because it's just going to be up and down. It's nothing to build your life upon. It is sand. In fact, many people live great lives, great lives. They are dependable, they are loyal, they are strong, they are smart, and it's because they put their identity in their performance, and they can look great. They can even look like a Christian. But they put their identity in their performance and they perform very well for decades.

But then something happens and their lives fall apart and their identity is gone. It happens. It actually happens all the time. Where people's lives fall apart, and it's not just that bad things have happened, it's that they don't know who they are anymore. Do you see the absolute travesty, the absolute nightmare that is? There are people all around you, all around, there's people in here like this, there's people all around you at work, there's people in your family like this that are dying on the inside because they believe in their heart that if they let go of whatever they're holding onto, they won't know who they are anymore. That they're gonna be lost and unseen and invaluable and forgotten if they let go. Look, I'm gonna preach for another 30 minutes if I keep going and so I won't. Because we gotta eat and you know. If I could encourage you on that front,

I would just say to you, I would say this, Letting go, in that moment, letting go is the scariest prospect ever because you don't know who you are on the other side of that door, right? You don't know who you are if you let go. You don't know who you are without this relationship defining you, without being good at baseball, without being good at acting, being good at whatever, right? You don't know who you are without this girlfriend, this boyfriend, this friend group accepting you. Here's the encouragement. And we see with Moses too, right? The encouragement is deal with God on it. Don't run and think the problem is going to go away. If you think I'm just gonna close my eyes and hold on even tighter and things will get better, they won't. Your confidence might go up because you're performing well or because somebody thinks highly of you or because you find something else that makes you feel okay.

But it's only a matter of time until your life crumbles again. Because you've just done this your whole life. And look, I normal, there's a normal ebb and flow to life. So like, if you feel like your life's on a rollercoaster, I'm not trying to say that like you're not a Christian or you're a horrible person or something like that. I'm talking about your identity rising and falling. I'm talking about your confidence being in a good, because your only confidence is in who you are.

I just wanna encourage you, whatever that is, I want you to consider letting that go. And maybe as I was talking about a few of those things, they came to your mind. That job, that person, that friend group, that attribute, that sport, right? Maybe something came to mind. My encouragement to you is to let that go. Because in the end, it's not gonna save you anyway. It won't save you. It's the worst kind of savior. It looks like it's going to save you and it actually doesn't. Sometimes holding onto Jesus doesn't feel like it's going to save you, but it actually does. Sometimes it looks like it's more pain and it's more trouble than it's worth, but it's not. Jesus says, whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel will find it. probably a more pithy way to say what I've been trying to say the last five minutes. We have a time of response, we end our services with a time of response.

I'm back there on the couches in the chairs. I'm gonna invite David up. We're gonna sing and just as we do and as we sing, I just want to encourage you to consider where your confidence is. Moses deals with it in a pretty straightforward manner and that's great. God comes to him, he says, I know who you are, here's who I am, I have a plan for you. Okay? And Moses the media is like, I'm not good enough and I don't, I'm insecure. Look, that's my encouragement. Start with that. I don't know if I'm good enough and I'm super insecure. That's great. You won't get points off for that. Okay? That's good. The scriptures say that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted that a contrite spirit, a broken spirit before him, is what he desires. That's my encouragement, man. Sing that, deal with that, begin that journey. That's the journey we're all on anyway. We're all on that journey of figuring out who the Lord has called us to be and trying to

figure out how to let go of these things that we want to define us. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for your word, for the way that you bring us out of guilt and shame, for the ways that you invite us to let go. Help us to do that and to trust you. In your name we pray, amen.