The LORD Plays for Keeps

Transcript

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

Let's turn, we're gonna be in Exodus chapter four today. And this is our series that we're doing, it's called Meet God, Meet God. We've been working through how different people meet God, how different people understand kind of what it is to walk with the Lord. And Moses is going first, Moses is kind of first and foremost, and we started in Exodus three whenever God approached Moses through the burning bush. We've kind of learned some things about that. Today we're gonna be in Exodus four. We're gonna be doing a little bit of catch up, but we've been working through this process where, and we'll keep going through it, so I don't feel the need to put it up there, just kind of listen. This process where God initiates, we respond. God reveals kind of who he is, he reveals, and then we worship, and that's kind of our first response. So like whenever we go to God,

if you're going to God and you're pretending like you're supposed to be there, then maybe just take a second to worship, right? So when God reveals himself, we worship. After that, God reveals more, and the more he reveals, the more kind of some stuff comes out of us that is revealed. So last week we saw that Moses' skepticism was revealed. So God's revealing more, he's revealing more about his plan, he's revealing more about who he is, and then Moses' skepticism is kind of popping up. I want to look at that, just quickly review his first two protests. So Moses is putting up protests against the Lord, and so I just want to look at his first two from last week very quickly, Exodus 3:11. I know I said we'd be in Exodus 4, it's fine. We can just kind of follow along here very quickly. It says, but Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?

So Moses' protest here, and really we're gonna look at all five of his protests today. What we're gonna see is that his protests show the edges of what he believes. They contour what he believes is reasonable or possible. His protests show us that. So even here, when he's saying, who am I, who am I that I should do it? Moses believes that God cannot use him. This is not Moses being humble, this is not Moses being polite, this isn't ancient Near Eastern culture coming out. This is really just Moses believing a lie that God cannot use him. Look at his next protest in verse 13, it's up here. It says, then Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your Father has sent me to you and they ask me what is his name, what shall I say to them? We looked at this last week in depth, but I would encourage you, we're gonna see another one today.

There's an untranslated word, it's in a couple of different versions. If you look at KJV or NIV, you're gonna see something like, suppose I go to the people of Israel instead of if I come to the people of Israel. And what is happening here, Moses is saying, look, they're gonna think I'm delusional. Like God, you don't totally understand what is happening. I don't know God if you thought this all the way through. And that word at the beginning is hane, and like I said, we looked at it last week, and it just means, literally it just means look. So sometimes it'll say behold, okay? And like King James, it'll say behold. And that word, just like we use the word look, sometimes we use it for emphasis, like look, I didn't drive all the way down here just to turn back around, okay? Like that's, we don't want them to see anything, we just wanna emphasize the fact that we're not turning around,

because we drove all the way down here, and we're gonna get our free buffet for crying out loud. We're gonna do it. Moses is believing in this moment, whenever he's saying this to God, he is believing this lie. He is saying that God cannot convince people, that God cannot change hearts on this, okay? That's the active lie that it's kinda coming out. So Moses is protesting in real time. He's got questions, he's pushing back, he's saying I don't know if you've thought this all the way through, but what I wanna, I just wanna uncover kind of his, the things that he believes in that, that God cannot, so God can't use me, God can't convince people or change hearts. Today I wanna look at Moses' next three protests that we see in Exodus chapter four, and I wanna note that they gain steam as we go.

And I wanna note that we're gonna just cover Moses' protest first, and then we're gonna kinda go in reverse order and go through what God has said to, how God responds to these protests. But I just wanna look at the protest first, okay? So first protest is Exodus four, verse one, okay? We start with the protest in Exodus four one. It says, then Moses answered, but behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say the Lord did not appear to you, okay? Now if you notice, it says, but behold, there's another henna there. So this probably is for emphasis, right? Like, look, they're not gonna believe me, okay? So Moses is getting a little honest here, which is good. They're not gonna believe me. And what Moses is actively believing right now is that God is not going to break through their suspicion. That the people that he's talking to have a wall that God can't scale, okay?

So it's not just that God is unable, it's that they are putting up such a resistance that it's impossible to overcome. So he's kind of looking at them going, look, they're not gonna believe there's too much suspicion there. And we know, like, we can kind of see Moses' mindset here. He's letting fear dictate what he's saying because he hasn't even gone. He hasn't even stepped one foot toward Egypt to go see the Israelites. And he's already made up two things they're gonna say, okay, he's already made up. In his mind, he's like, they're gonna say this. Well, if they say this, then God answers that. And Moses, again, his protest in 4-1, well, they're gonna say this. What about this? He's making up narratives. He hadn't gone yet. He didn't know these people. He hadn't seen them in 40 years. How does he know what they're gonna say? He doesn't, but he's afraid. And in that fear, he's writing that narrative.

He's spinning a yarn. If I do this, then this bad thing's gonna happen. You didn't plan for that, God. What's gonna happen next? You don't know. We're gonna look at his final two protests here. Here we go. Exodus, skip down to verse 10. Exodus 4, verse 10. But Moses said to the Lord, oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue. This is a really great little line here, slow of speech and tongue. It literally means my lips and tongue are fat. It's kind of a funny euphemism, right? I just got fat lips. You ever get like dental surgery and then you can't talk after that, right? That's how Moses thinks he sounds. Moses thinks he sounds like he got the plaid, plaid, plaid, plaid, plaid, plaid, plaid, plaid, plaid. That's his imaginings of what he's gonna sound like to these people. If he goes in front of everybody and opens his mouth,

it's gonna say, the Lord, the plaid, plaid, plaid, plaid, plaid. It's gonna sound silly. He's worried about that. Moses believes that God is bound by his skill level. He believes that God can't use somebody of his low skill level. Moses is saying, I'm not an orator. I'm not a leader. I don't do this. I'm not, right, I'm not equipped. I'm not skilled this way. I don't do it. So far, what we have seen from Moses in the first four protests are excuses straight up, right? So like, I'm unworthy. They won't like me. They won't believe me. I'm ill-equipped. But this last one is just real. Look at verse 13.

But he said, oh my Lord, please send someone else. This is Moses' final protest and it's kind of the core of what he's saying, right? Just send somebody else. I don't wanna go. I just don't wanna go. I don't wanna do it, God. My life in Midian is on track. Zipporah's pregnant. The flocks are doing well. We're gonna have a good yield this season. Like I'm just gaining steam here. I'm just getting established here in Midian. This is my home. I've been here 40 years. He needs something. Bless him. The lie that Moses believes in this moment is that it's not worth it.

It's not worth it. It's not worth my time. It's not worth my effort. It's not worth my energy. It's just not worth it. It's not worth breaking up what I got now. It's not worth losing momentum on what I got now. It's not worth it. Is this not us? Can you deny, I can't. Is that not us? Are these protests not the sum of the things that we say to God? Like Moses, God comes to us. He initiates, He calls us. He calls us from death to life. And when He does, when He calls us from death to life, there is a redemptive plan that is in motion. We're gonna see that in a second, but we've even already seen it in Exodus 3 last week, where God's like, hey, Moses.

Let's go, let's do it. Here's the plan. I'm gonna send you to save my people. And that's whenever Moses' protests start, okay? They start in 311, and Moses has just, sorry. Yeah, Moses has just received God's plan, God's whole redemptive plan. And like Moses, you and I have a calling. And it's not a calling that starts after we graduate seminary. And it's not a calling that starts after we've, like been established for a decade into something, or at a church, or anything like that. It's not. It's a calling that starts immediately. It doesn't matter how old you are. I don't care if you're 12 right now. The Lord is still calling you on this. I don't care if you're 88 or older. The Lord is still calling you on this. We have a calling to disciple people. And Jesus is very unapologetic with this. Jesus, whenever He came on earth, what did He do? He discipled people, 12 guys,

and some more people even around that. Most of those guys were teenagers. Okay, Jesus in his 30s dealing with some knucklehead teenagers, okay? Sorry, teenagers, you're a knucklehead. It's okay, nobody hates you for it. Nobody hates you for it. We love you, but man, you know, a bunch of teenagers being like, hey, we're gonna go follow this guy. You know, he's like 32. Where are you going? I don't know. What are you gonna eat? I don't know. You know, like it's a weird endeavor is what I'm trying to say. Whenever Jesus comes and He's discipling people like that, it's not like it's just some established pipeline of anything. It's just Jesus discipling people. It's messy, it's weird. And He goes 11 for 12, right? I mean, Judas, okay? He's got Judas. Look, you and I have that same calling to disciple people. Right? It's gonna look different, but the calling's just the same.

We have a calling to disciple people. And whenever Jesus is leading all these disciples, He's telling them to do the exact same thing. And this is the light burden that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 11. When He says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Right, this is part of that light burden, part of that yoke, part of that calling. And in the face of that call, we have our own version of those protests where the words might change, but the heart is the same. I wanna just list a few here. It might not be exactly what you think. It might be close. First excuse, you can't use me to disciple someone. And it sounds really humble, like who am I? Right? Who am I that I should have influence on someone's life? Who am I that I should be looked up to and imitated? Right? And you guys feel that way? You feel like if anybody lived life like I lived life, they'd be a total wreck.

Right, you feel that? Okay, I want you to know everybody feels that. I feel that. I feel that all the time. Okay? And so, you know, if I'm feeling that, there's no hope for you. You're just all, you're gonna feel like that all the time. There's no point at which you graduate, what I'm trying to say is there's no point at which you graduate past that feeling. It's always there. It's always there. Pastor Daniel can tell you. Amen, oh man. Sometimes when you're sitting at a pastor's meeting and we're just talking, we're just like, what are we doing? Oh my gosh. We gotta pray. We so have to pray. Who am I that I should be looked up to and imitated? Look, it sounds, it does sound super humble. It's a cover up. It's a cover up. It's an excuse.

Second one, no matter what I do or say, it won't make a difference. It won't make a difference. I don't have like this super big, you know, base of Bible knowledge. You know, I can't sway them with some awesome facts. You know, I can't, I can't, I don't know enough. And I don't know anything new. I don't know anything that's gonna chip away, right? Number three, they've already heard and they already don't like Christians. Right, you ever thought that one? That's there. Right, you think like, well, okay, you know, I would disciple people, but I don't have some amazing testimony. I don't have some miraculous survival story where, you know, I was in this situation and there was no way I was gonna survive, but miraculously I survived. And if only I had a testimony like that, it would be so convincing and then I could disciple people. Wrong. Number four, I'm not very eloquent.

I'm not very eloquent. My tongue and lips are fat. If you're not saying that to yourself, you're missing out. It's funny, it'll make you laugh. You might think I'm not a salesman. I don't have the gift of evangelism. I don't, I can't talk to a stranger. I can't, right, like a lot of things you can't do, right, and you're kind of full of what you can't do. And the Lord, we'll look at his response here.

It's pretty good, but let's just focus on the protest right now. The Lord uses all kinds of people to disciple other people, all kinds. At this church, we use something called Mars-Briggs type indicator. It is not, you know, we didn't find it in Ecclesiastes. Like it's not, you know, blessed by the Lord. It's just a way to figure out how people are made. It's imperfect, it's fine. What it does though is it helps you understand how you're made and maybe how the Lord is calling you to disciple others, okay? I'll just give you an example between me and my wife. I am a little bit more like relationally oriented to where I could meet a stranger at a coffee shop, have a 45 minute conversation and show the gospel. That is, it's not no sweat, but I mean, it's, that happens. Okay, that happens. That will never happen to my wife, probably. Okay, my wife ain't built that way, which is fine.

What my wife has seen fruit in is working alongside people to where they're both focused on like a thing together and then she's able to share her life, answer questions, supply information and help people process. She's seen great fruit in that. But if it's just her and somebody else across from the table and they both have coffee, she's sunk, okay? That's not how she's made. And it's actually stupid, unwise for me to say to her, hey, babe, if you're gonna make disciples, like it's, I need like three coffees this week, okay? Not that I'm doing that anyway, but I'm just saying, it's not a good strategy, because it's not who she is. And that's okay, because who she is is still made by the Lord. And so some of you are just like, no, no, no, hey, I'm totally, like I freak out around people. I don't know, I don't like strangers.

It's just another version of my lips and tongue are fat. It's just an excuse. We'll talk about God's answer in a minute, but I just wanna just call it out for you. It's an excuse. I've seen people who aren't salesmen, who have had great ministry. They've discipled dozens of people throughout their life. It's amazing stuff. Last one. Maybe I will later. You know, God, I'm gonna do that later. Let me finish this series on Netflix. Let me make sure I do that job transition. Let me, right, maybe I will later. This is the polite way to completely refuse God's call on your life. It's the polite way to run the opposite direction like Jonah. It's polite. It sounds very respectful of God. It's not respectful in any capacity. God's not on your timetable. God has perfect timing. You don't. Maybe I will later. And these protests that we trot out, like Moses, they display the edges

of what we believe is reasonable. In other words, you and I might agree that God is all-powerful, that he can do anything, that he could, but in practice, that power stops just before it gets to us, discipling people. Just before it starts to hit our lives, our everyday, our calendar, our checkbook, our free time. Now before deep and abiding discouragement sets in, okay, because I know this has not been uplifting Sunday. I get it, that's fine. Before that sets in, I wanna tell you that what I just described and what we see here in Exodus 4, the end of three and the beginning of four, is exactly, exactly how all of us grow and learn and mature in Jesus Christ. This is how we become mature. In other words, we'll put it this way, following God is finding our edges, taking another step, and finding God faithful. Let me say that again. Following God, the essence of what it is

to follow the Lord God in heaven is not some magical route that is just up and to the right all the time and you never deal with any valleys or any frustrations or anything. That's stuff for movies. That's not real life at all. Following God is actually finding our edges, finding the places where we believe that God doesn't exist or doesn't care, finding those edges, and then taking another step into the unknown, into the thing that you're unsure of, into the thing where you're like, surely God's not there. Surely that's not what God's calling somebody into. Surely that sounds nuts. I would never do that. And then we find God faithful. We gain confidence, not by just reading our Bible and praying every day. We gain confidence by finding the edges of what we believe is possible, hearing the Lord call us, take a step on that. We take that step and we find God faithful.

This is what it is to grow as a Christian. To grow as a Christian is actually to unearth some of those protests that you have. To be honest about some of those, you think God doesn't know? You think God doesn't know about your protests? He knows everything about you. He knows exactly where you, he knows them better than you do. God knows your protests. And here's kind of the big problem is that we, so often we go to the edge of what we believe is reasonable or expected of us, or like whatever is Christian. I don't know how you, however you define it, but you come to the edge of what you believe. And when you find that edge, you're ashamed.

You're ashamed. You think, I shouldn't have these questions. I shouldn't think this way. I shouldn't believe this lie. I shouldn't, whatever. Like I shouldn't, like you, you cover, you bathe in shame and rejection. And you run, or you just rebel. Like you go to the edge and you're like, you know what? I can't, I can't do this. I'm not even gonna pretend. I'm gonna be honest with myself.

I'm gonna be honest with myself, it's what you say, it's not true. But I'm gonna be honest with myself and I'm just gonna go and run the other direction. I'm gonna just do what I'm gonna do. And you rebel against the Lord. Plenty of people, plenty of people. Have come to the edges of what they believe and have said, you know what? I'm just, I can't do that. I can't take that step. I can't believe that anymore. I can't, it's to whatever, right? Like whatever kind of things you have, whatever checklist that you have that God's supposed to somehow be, like God's supposed to be nice and grandfatherly and not hate anybody and all, you know, like God's supposed to be this way. And whenever God doesn't start checking those lists, you bail. You think, you know what? If God's not like what I thought he was, then I'm not gonna do what he expects me to do. This is why this, all this mess

that you and I have, the entanglement of actually following the Lord, when we find our edges and we're kind of wrestling through guilt and we're wrestling through all these things, this is why we need to understand God's response. We need to take a long look at God's response because it's written to help us understand a deep truth about God's character that's really gonna help us understand how to walk with him. I wanna look at God's first response. We're gonna go back into Exodus three again. God's first response, we're just gonna summarize the first two because we've been there before. God's first response to Moses's protest, 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. God gives Moses a promise. You're still doing it. You're still going to lead the people out,

but I'll be there the whole time and you're gonna serve me on this mountain. So the first answer, God's giving Moses specific assurances. Second answer to Moses's second protest. Look at verse 14. It goes on for a lot, but I'm just gonna stop at a 14. God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. God is not just saying I am who I am. He's giving Moses his covenant name. He's giving him his special name, his nickname. And this is, we covered this last week, but we said that God invites us to build a life on him personally. Not a, God's not inviting you to build a life on a set of rules.

God's not inviting you to build a life on a church or on a certain person's teaching or on facts and figures. That's not what God's calling you to build life on. God's not even calling you to build a life on how you feel about all that. The life that God's calling you to do supersedes how you feel about it. God's saying, I want you to build a life on me. I want a personal relationship with you where I know you, you know me. I talk to you, you talk to me. That's what I want. That's what I will not settle for otherwise.

The only thing I'm going to settle for is a personal relationship with you. God is insistent on that, painfully so. So God's second answer, give him his covenant name. He wants to know us. He wants to reveal himself to us. I want you to look at God's next response whenever Moses simply says, they won't believe me. So we're in Exodus four now, verses two and three. Exodus four, two and three. The Lord said to him, what is that in your hand? He said, a staff. And he said, throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground and it became a serpent. And Moses ran from it.

So God is not even responding to what Moses said, mind you, he's not. He's just like, what's in your hand? He's like, you're not answering my question. It's fine. Like, they're not gonna believe me. They're not gonna believe me. He's like, what's in your hand? Let's keep going, verses four and five. But the Lord said to Moses, put out your hand and catch it by the tail so that he put out his hand and caught it and then it became a staff in his hand. That they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has appeared to you. So God is graciously giving Moses a sign, but he's not done. Let's read the next two verses. Again, the Lord said to him, so Moses hasn't responded yet. All Moses said at this point is verse one, they won't believe me. God's still, he's still riffing here. Six and seven. Again, the Lord said to him,

put your hand inside your cloak and he put his hand inside his cloak and when he took it out behold, his hand was lepros like snow. Then God said, put your hand back inside your cloak. So he put his hand back inside his cloak and when he took it out behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. God is telling him, look, I can bend reality. Surely I can bend hearts. Surely I can make people listen. You worried about that? You worried about what they think? You worried about what you perceive that they will believe or not?

God's not done, let's keep going. Look, eight and nine right here. Says if they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign that they may believe the latter sign. If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground. God is giving him plan A, B and C. Just in case A and B don't work, here's C. I'm giving you overwhelming answers to your problems with signs in triplicate. One of those signs would have done. God's given him three. God overcomes every fear, not by saying, you know, hush little baby, don't cry. Like he's not saying that, he is saying, let me show you something that is way better than what you're afraid of. God is showing something, he's showing Moses something about his character.

We get preoccupied, we get preoccupied with God's wrath because it's super terrifying, amen? Yeah, scary. Anybody that can kill you with a thought is scary, right? And look, I don't think that fear's misplaced. I think when you understand that, when you are afraid of that, you understand who you're dealing with. If you think that you're praying to somebody that you can control, if you think that you're praying and God's not really gonna let the bad thing happen to you because God's your grandfather. Listen, God's way smarter than you. God understands exactly where you are, what you can take, what you can't. God knows. And sometimes you're praying for the thing to leave your life and God's like, I put it there. I want it to be there. I want it to burn. I want it to sting. I wanna dig even further. I wanna press even further into it because I'm using that thing that you hate

to turn you into the person that I've called you to be to answer the call to disciple people, to answer the call to become like Jesus. And we're praying, oh God, please take that away. Please take the way. God's like, I'm not taking it away. It's there for a reason. I put it there. It's not bad. You just hate it. God's character is something that is big and terrifying.

Who he is is terrifying. When you try to pacify that, you are now misrepresenting God. But if all you are is terrified, if that's it, if it just stops with terrified, then you're not reading the Bible. You're listening to people on YouTube. If all you're doing is being terrified of God, but you're not reading the Bible, you're not listening to him, then all you're doing is just listening to other people on TikTok. You're secondhand experiencing fear of God. You don't understand that that fear is a necessary bedrock for the love relationship, the covenant relationship that God wants to have with you. And I know, I get it, it's hard. I do, I understand. It is hard to grasp how somebody that can kill you with a thought died himself for you. He didn't have to, but he did. Because this whole time, as we've been reading this, this whole time, God has been patient and long suffering and gentle.

God is, God's nature, he's not taking a break to be long suffering. He's not making an exception to be patient. God is patient. God is long suffering. God is gentle. And you say, well, I don't know if it feels that way. Listen, I don't care if it feels that way, that only tells me that you're not paying attention. God is gentle. He is long suffering. He is all those things. Whether we know it or not, whether we recognize it or not, God is not harsh with us. He is patient with us. He leads us calmly.

In this conversation alone, I mean, just based on what we're dealing with with Moses and God here, God has listened patiently to Moses' protest. He has answered him abundantly. He hasn't even, he hadn't even gotten mad yet. But he has to overcome all of them. He has answered everything Moses has put out, everything. Something's about to change though. Let's look at Exodus chapter four, verses 11 and 12. This is right after Moses says, my mouth is fat. My mouth and lips are fat.

Then the Lord asked him, who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. What an answer. I made your mouth fat. I made your lips that way. I made you so sweet. I made, I know exactly how you talk. I planned how you talk. I'm undeterred by that. I'm the Lord. I get to determine who can talk and who can't, who can hear and who can't, who can see and who can't. He's kind of, the Lord's kind of like pulling back the curtain a little bit on his power to help Moses get the fact that he is making a complaint against the creator God of heaven and earth. And it is as if Moses kind of needs this attitude adjustment as he's going forward. And Moses is saying, look, I'm not, I'm sorry, God is saying, look, I'm not playing with you. I'm calling you to do this.

I made your mouth. Now therefore go. And you can kind of feel a tone coming on. You kind of sense that God is a little, like he's a little tired of it if we can talk about God that way, right? He's saying, no, okay, it's time. I've heard you. Heard you again, heard you again, heard you again. Let's go. Let's go. Let's get out of here. Let's do it. Do what I'm asking you to do. You have everything that you need. It's all at your disposal. And more than not, more than anything else, I want this to happen. You think anybody's gonna stop something that I want to happen? God is trying to help Moses understand who he is in that moment. Now he's being gentle, he's being long suffering, he's being patient, he's being all those things. But he's saying, I am not somebody who is deterred. I'm not thrown off by the fact that you think you can't talk good. It doesn't change my plan.

Then we get the last protest. When Moses says, please send someone else. In verse 13, and here's God's answer. Verse 14, Acts of 4.14. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. And he said, is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you. And when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. Okay, so very first part of that verse is then the anger of the Lord was kindled. His fire was lit. Okay, God's anger finally catches fire. Finally, he's ready to snap. Finally, he's saying, look, I've been patient long enough. I've been long suffering long enough. I've been gentle long enough. I've been doing all these things long enough. Finally, like he's just, he's getting mad. And yet, and yet, let me point something out that's right here in front of us. Let me just see. Even when God's anger is kindled,

read the rest of the verse. Let's pretend that anger part isn't there. Let's just read the rest of it. Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you. And when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. God is still overflowingly answering Moses' complaint with grace. Still, right here. That, I mean, that should be astounding. Because typically, when we read the first part of that verse, then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he killed him. Okay, that happens.

But God here is saying, there's another way. Let me help you do this a different way. He's angry, but he's saying, let's do it a different way. Even in God's anger, he is not giving up on Moses. Why? Why? Because he could. In fact, we have a whole chapter and a half to establish that he should have given up on Moses. Okay, right? We got a whole set of testimony right here that God's, he'd be more than justified by saying, you know what? I'm gonna take Aaron. I'm gonna take Aaron instead of you. You stay here in Midian where your flocks are awesome. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna just grab Aaron. God is intent on his redemptive plan moving through people's actions. He really wants that to happen. Through people who have a relationship with him. He doesn't wanna just use us like, like we're just walking down the street grocery shopping. Like we're in the aisle at the grocery store

and all of a sudden like we're just like taking over, you know, and then we just go and do something. Then we like, you know, show the gospel with somebody and then we have kind of this out of body experience. That's not what God wants to do, right? If God wanted to do that, that's what would happen. But it's not. Why? Because God wants us to have a relationship with him whereby we are listening to what he wants us to do. We are responding to that. We are learning about him. We are, more things are being revealed about us and we are growing in that process. God wants us in the process of obeying him, of doing what he's called us to do, to learn about him and to have a relationship with him. It's not as if God's like, who's gonna do what I want? Okay, none of you guys, okay. You know, I'll throw you all away. Okay, these two, okay, now we're talking. That's not how God works.

If it was, we'd all be in the pile. You know what I'm saying? We'd all be there. Every single last one of us would be there. What does God do? God calls us, he nurtures us, he's patient with us, he's gentle with us, amen? Yeah, we've all felt that. We all know that. Now is God still scary? Could he still kill you with a thought? Yeah, 100%. Is he gentle with you? Yeah. Way more often than you deserve. Right, I'm standing here because of grace.

We're a church together because of grace. God wants us to build our lives on him. But there's another reason, there's another reason that God is slow on this, that God insists on using Moses, and that is that God plays for keeps. Let me say it a different way. God's plan involves actually rescuing people. I know that sounds very on the nose. I understand, it's like duh, okay. But maybe just say this a different way. The Lord, God in heaven, whenever he calls you to disciple other people, it's not so that you can feel good, or you can feel like you're spiritually growing, or that you can feel restored, or that you can feel healed, or that you can enjoy life, or that you can do all that. All those things are great byproducts. That's awesome. You know why he's called you from death to life, and why he has called you to disciple people? Because people are lost and dying

and going to eternal condemnation. For real, that's happening. As I'm preaching this sermon, people have died and gone to hell. It's not a joke. It's not a training exercise. It's not something that just kinda happens, and we have to just wait until we feel good about it, or maybe we feel like equipped. No, man, it's for real. There's real stakes here. God is sending Moses, because people are actually dying in slavery in Egypt. We are sent for the exact same reason, because people are dying in slavery. They're just in sin. They're not in Egypt. God is not calling us for show, or so that we can post about it on Facebook. God is not calling us, because he's just teaching us how to listen. Yes, all those things are happening, but all those things are the byproduct, not the main point. The main point is, he's calling you to go into the harvest field. He's calling you to be a witness.

He's calling you to disciple people, to minister to people in need. He's calling you to do all those things. That's why we are a church. If we could all just, if the whole point of us becoming Christians was just to worship God in the woods, then yeah, let's all disband and go worship God in the woods. But that's not the point. That's not the whole story, right? The whole story is that God's called us, he's put a calling upon us that he wants us to respond to, that he wants us to act in. The real stakes, real people, real problems the Lord's calling us toward. When you and I make excuses and put up these paper thin protests, I guess what the Lord has already commanded us to do, yes, the Lord's anger will be kindled. But here's what I wanna encourage you with.

Sometimes, some traditions, at this point, will say something like this, that if you don't do what God wants you to do, then he's gonna leave you. If you don't do it the way God wants you to do it, go into hell. If you don't say it the way it needs to be said, you're condemned. But here's what I'm here to tell you. God, and it's here in the Old Testament, it's there in the New Testament, it's everywhere. God in heaven desires you to be changed in a loving relationship with him, where he draws you, he wooze you, he calls you into something greater, okay? And he's patient with you in that process.

That's not an invitation to just take your time. That is encouragement to get on your horse. Because when you do, when you start doing what the Lord calls you to do, you will find unspeakable joy in that. You will find purpose, meaning that you've never known. You probably sleep better, okay? And look, don't hear me say, follow God and sleep better, okay? It's a byproduct, right? It's not on the front end, but the stuff that's the byproduct, the stuff that's on the back end, is just way more than you could imagine. It's like God answering Moses in triplicate.

And so if you're just sitting back, if you're like, I don't know if this is worth it, I don't know, maybe, I don't know. God's answer for you on that is going to be in triplicate. And you can hold out. You can cross your arms, you can do that. But we already have historical precedent for that. Jonah was swallowed by a big fish. You can say no, but God's not gonna chill on that. You can say, I don't want to right now, but God's gonna be like, well, okay, I'll guess I have somebody else. That's not the God we serve, guys. I wanna read this last part because it's the rest of kind of the concessions that God is making toward Moses, which is just strange to say. Look at verses 15 through 17. It says, you shall speak to him, this is Aaron, you shall speak to him and put words in his mouth, and I will be your mouth, and with his mouth, I will, and with his mouth, and will teach you both what to do.

He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. Talking about Aaron. Take in your hand his staff, with which you will do the sign. So he's taking Aaron's staff now. He's going to do signs with Aaron's staff, and now it's gonna be a tag team effort. I wanna just point out with this. And I wanna end this, I wanna invite worship team back up. But I wanna encourage you toward this end.

Let's put that piece of scripture back up there just real quick. God, whenever he is answering, fine, it'll happen in a minute, I have faith. God, whenever he is answering Moses, and Moses has given him protest, protest, protest, protest, protest, okay, he's done all of that, and he's answering Moses. At the end, he's making concessions. And he's saying, oh fine, fine, you'll take Aaron, and here's how this is gonna go, and it's gonna work this way and that way and this way, and you're gonna take his staff, and there's a new plan, right? Or at least new to us. Let me just point out, what's not said there, but is it meant implicitly? You're still going.

Moses, you're still gonna go. I'm gonna give you somebody. I'm gonna give you his staff. But you are still going. If you follow me, you are still going. Church, let me encourage all of us this morning. If we follow the Lord Jesus, we're going to go. We're gonna go kicking and screaming, or we're gonna go super happy about it, but we're going to go. A man reads what he says, God has plans for you that won't be derailed by you being weird. God's gonna call you out of the midst of that. He's gonna empower you, and you know what? If you're like, I'm not so sure, Drew. I don't know if you're saying what I think. I don't know. Listen, just start saying yes and see what happens. I have so much confidence in what the Lord wants to do with each of you individually, okay? And it's not just to look like me or something, or I've gotta be able to preach a sermon. I've gotta be able to whatever.

If the Lord is calling you, the Lord has equipped you. If the Lord has made you, the Lord knows how that equipping is gonna match with who you are. The Lord knows what steps you need to take, how you need to grow, how you need to change. You don't need to worry about that. You don't need to plot out the next five years of your life. You need to say yes to what the Lord is doing now. As we sing, I wanna encourage you to say yes to what the Lord is doing right now, right in front of you. And look, we don't have altar call. We don't have that. My encouragement, if you're gonna say yes to something, tell somebody that you're saying yes to it. Or you know what, I'll do you one better. If you're saying yes to something right now, just start praying about it secretly. Commit to praying about it every day. Ask the Lord to give you an errand if you need it, right? Ask the Lord to bring somebody next to you.

Ask the Lord to bring a group of people around you. Ask the Lord for that. Give it to him, he's gonna be faithful. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for errands. Thank you for your concessions toward us, your undying patience and long suffering, and just the way that, it just feels like we're just dragging our feet. We're just delaying the inevitable. We just don't wanna face what we need to face. And we feel guilty and we feel shame and sometimes we just run the other direction and we just, Lord, help us to not do that. Help us to know that you're not shocked, you're not flipping out that we're finding the edges of what we think is possible or good even, or beneficial. You're calling us into the unknown. I pray that you would give us the courage,

you would put within us the hope to call out, to ask for help, to take the step of what you're calling us to do. That's your name that we pray, amen.