Exodus - How to be a Part of Changing the World

This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.

Father, we acknowledge today that who we are flows out of who you are.

We are created in your image.

The Bible says very clearly and without apology that in his image God created them, male and female.

And so there's a there's a purpose to creation.

There's not just uh this off-the-chance uh or by chance happenstance to it.

You're very intentional.

And we are very purposed into existence today.

And so we take that with it with some sobriety and with some gladness, with some gravity and with some gladness both, God, so we don't fall off on either side of the extreme.

So we're not here today as activists.

We're here today to increase our understanding of what it looks like to be the people of God in a culture that is going further and further away from the light and into darkness.

And they're doing that not because of their own choice, but because you're the God who, when we exchange the truth of God for a lie and we worship and serve creation instead of the creator, you give us over to do things that ought not to be done.

And so, Holy Spirit, we come and we bow before the Father today and we say, Speak, Lord, your servants are listening.

We don't want to avoid the world in which we live, we want to engage the world in which we live.

We want to be a part of what you're doing to reconcile the world and to yourself.

That's what the Bible tells us, Jesus, that God was not counting men's sins against them.

That doesn't mean that sins don't count.

It just means that while we have opportunity, we can be we can herald the gospel.

And so, God, I pray that you would equip us to further participate in what you're doing to redeem the world this morning.

From your word, Lord, and by your spirit.

We ask these things in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

If you got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Exodus chapter 3.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

And I understand we have some special guests with us at Pinecoat staff.

Where are you?

Are you here?

There you go.

There you go.

Don't make noise.

I'll come out there and slap you, okay?

Uh I just like to say crazy stuff to the visitors.

We're glad you're here.

We're looking forward to a great week.

If you need anything, let me know.

If you want to go to the Waffle House late at night, I got some white trash in me and I'm addicted to the Waffle House.

I'll take you, okay?

And it'll be on me because I'm loaded, alright?

I pastor this mega church full of people.

They're looking at me like they walked out of Walmart and forgot where they parked.

Uh dude, we're just kind of tired, okay?

We've just done our fourth camp of the summer.

Uh anyway, if you're a guest, we're in the book of Exodus and we're going episodically to the book of Exodus.

We come to kind of an apex of the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 3.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

And I want to talk to you this morning about how to be involved in changing the world.

How to be involved in changing the world.

Because if you're not careful, the older you get, the angrier you get, and the more you shake your fist at the world, and the more you withdraw from the world.

But as Christians, the Bible calls us, and God, you're God's agents of redemption in this culture.

He says in Philippians, hey, you you you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life in the midst of this crooked and depraved generation.

And if the the circumstances of this past week and the Supreme Court decisions of this past week don't magnify that all the more.

But look at me.

Don't go home and narc up on Fox News and just get angry.

That's not gonna make you more redemptive, that's gonna make you harder to listen to.

You hear me?

I just came from doing youth camp.

I've been slapping fools all last week.

That's where I was last Sunday.

A kid walk up to me and he goes, Hey man, I just think that you know the gay community is gonna take over the world.

And I said, Let's just follow your logic.

I'm walking to the cafeteria and I'm like, you want me to put it on stun or you want me to put it on keel?

And the guy's like, Bring it, man.

I'm not intimidated.

Listen, I pity the fool.

I'm gonna bring back Mr.

T.

And I say, okay, so if the gay culture overtakes the world, I got one question for you.

How are they gonna procreate and perpetuate the species?

And we're walking to the cafeteria, and the guy stops and he says, What do you mean?

And I said, the cultural mandate of Genesis 1, God says to Adam and Eve, who he made male and female.

It's kind of like y'all trying to correct God's flawed creation.

But how are you gonna procreate?

Because he says, Hey, be fruitful, multiply.

You know what that means?

You mean explain it to yourself?

No, I know what that means.

How are you gonna be fruitful and multiply?

You can't because it's not natural.

I ain't hating on anybody.

I'm just telling you, once you get it your way and you rule the world, you're one generation away from extinction.

So you go back to your cabin and bring some better logic and bring a ding-dong or some Twinkies, because I'm hungry, okay?

Get your mom to make some cookies.

You're a scarecrow coming to a bonfire.

You're bringing Kool-Aid to a gin party, okay?

So get away from me.

And so, hey, the next day, he wasn't.

This is what I mean by engaging the culture.

Don't put your kids in private school and say, oh, we're gonna have to escape from the world and buy land out in the country and grow our own vegetables.

No, we cannot withdraw and let the world go to hell.

We don't get to do that.

And so this is a great place to be in Exodus chapter 3.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

We talk about how to be involved in changing the world.

Exodus 3, verse 1.

Exodus 3:1

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian.

Let me stop right here.

This is the Moses, because the first two chapters of Exodus took 400 years to unfold.

Do you realize that?

And the rest of the book of Exodus, starting in chapter 3, all happens in one year's time.

400 years, a lot of historicity, and now God gets involved and things get going a little faster.

It's like the roller coaster clicking up the hill.

Click, click, click, click, click, gets to the top.

Woom! All of a sudden things begin to move.

Moses, and the Bible says now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro.

Moses could.

How many ask a question?

We'll just play a little honesty game.

I never do this, Pineco people, so this is just rare.

How many of y'all look back in your past and you got something in your past that you think that wasn't my best moment?

I kind of hope no one ever finds out about that.

If you got something like that in your past, let me see your hand.

Hold it up.

Yeah, we got some sinners leading camp this week.

This is good.

We're doomed.

Yeah.

Well, this is Moses that the Bible talks about.

By the way, Moses had killed a man, buried him in the sand, and he was ruled by fear.

That's how he takes off to the wilderness.

He meets a woman in a well, defends these women's honor.

They take them home to the dad, and the dad says, Hey, you seem to be a man of integrity and honor.

And he stays there and he gives him one of his wife, one of his daughters as his wife.

So Moses is living in the far side of the wilderness.

He's got a past that he's afraid is going to come.

That the winds of sovereignty are going to blow the sand off this dead body and who he really is is going to come out.

Why do I tell you that?

Because some of you have already excused yourself from being used of God to do what God wants to do in the world because of something in your past.

Here's a great thing about redemption: God has the power to take that which you are humiliated of, the thing that you cannot seem to forget, God can't remember.

And he says, I want to use you.

Don't write yourself off.

So Moses, the murderer, the person that's ruled by his fear.

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he held and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness, and he came to Oreb, the mountain of God.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him 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?

Now when the Lord saw he turned aside to see, God called him out of the bush, Moses.

Moses, and he said, Here I am.

And he said, Do not come near.

Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you're standing is holy ground.

And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

And then he said, I've surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cries because of their taskmasters, and I know their sufferings, and I've 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, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

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 oppressed them.

Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

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

And he said, But I will be with you.

And this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you.

When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God or worship God on this mountain.

How to be involved in changing the world involves four things that rise out of the text this morning.

Number one is stay curious.

Stay curious.

Every once in a while, when I say goodbye to people I've met for the first time, like this past week, I said goodbye to people at this camp I spoke at.

And I and I was walking away, I said, Hey, stay curious.

And they're like, what does that mean?

I just walked off.

Because the older you get, the less curious you are.

And after a while, your curiosity just kind of goes away, and your life is flat and one-dimensional.

I go to work, I come home, I pull in my garage, I put the garage door down, I go in and put my soft clothes on, which are if you're putting your pajamas on at five o'clock at night, we need to talk, okay?

I I got a friend that calls them her soft clothes.

My wife and she says, Oh, I put my soft clothes on.

I'm like, it's 4:30 in the afternoon.

Those are pajamas.

But but if you're not careful, if you don't be intentional, then your life will get like that.

It'll get flat and one-dimensional.

And I say, stay curious, you say, What do you mean?

Look at verse 4.

This bush catches on fire, and Moses kind of looks.

It's one thing to look and observe, it's another thing to go over because the the law, the laws of nature are being suspended because this bush is on fire, but it's not being consumed.

And Moses looks, but then the Bible says he goes over to take a look.

And look at verse 4 in your Bible.

Look at what it says.

And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, in other words, when he interrupted what he had had going on to go over and see what possibly may be going on over here, God said, I got somebody I can work with.

Why?

Because this cat is still curious.

Let me give you some questions to think about on the drive to work tomorrow.

Are you what are you curious about these days?

What what what kind of what kind of makes your brain itch in a way that you're kind of like, you know what?

I want to think about that some more.

Because I think we've lost curiosity.

Matter of fact, Albert Einstein said this.

He said, it's a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

I wasn't a disruptive, misbehaving kid in school.

I was just curious.

That's my new understanding this week.

Because like I would be in class in third grade and they had recess at different periods, and I didn't know what the gift of prophecy was, but I knew they had a strict sense of injustice because there were people outside on the playground, and I was in class, and I couldn't take it.

I would just stare out the window, and my teacher, Miss Acker, could say, Neil, pay attention.

I was like, But why they get to go outside?

It's not our period yet.

Why not?

I got sent to the office at least twice a week in the third grade.

So much so that Miss Garrison, because they they didn't really want to whip you back then, but she would, uh, because it's old school.

She would get a list of things for Neil to do because she knew I was coming.

I would sharpen pencils.

I this was so long ago they didn't have copy machines.

They had a lithograph machine.

That round canister thing you put fluid in and you crank the handle.

I got to run that bad boy.

I felt like Stephen Jobs inventing the Macintosh.

I was in there.

My friends go, what'd you do?

Because they thought I got in trouble.

I was like, dude, I'm changing the world.

I'm like Eli Whitney.

I got interchangeable parts down there.

I'm making stuff.

Y'all are sitting in class watching people swing on swing sets.

I'm down there where the teachers are.

And they're like, wow, I wasn't a bad kid.

I was just curious.

Yeah.

Yeah, you say, I don't know what you mean.

Let me give an example because I promise you, God is looking for people who are still curious, who look at the world and kind of go, by the way, the kid that came up to me on the way to lunch came up to me and said, Hey, can we, can we, can we have lunch tomorrow?

Can we talk?

Oh yeah.

I'm I I'm not mad at you.

I just I just think that dialogue is an essential part of spiritual formation.

And when in the age of email and text and Twitter, we don't know how to dialogue.

We just kind of throw little little little verbal darts at people and then get back in our house.

And I'm like, Matt, you just keep talking because I think I want to learn from you.

And if you're open to learning from me, I want to learn from you so we can talk every day this week at camp.

And every day he'd come up and go, you know what, you made me think about some things.

And I would say, stay curious.

He was like, Why do you keep saying stay curious?

A, because I know it frustrates you, but B, one of the best ways to grow spiritually is to stay curious.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Back in 1991, a man named Hou Khan was walking in the air around the Laos Vietnam border.

Uh, and he was just walking, and he knew everybody knew there was a cave.

I'll give you a picture of it here.

There was a cave there, everybody knew, but no one would go in because in that cave right there, they could hear this roar coming out of it.

And the locals were afraid that some god lived in there and he was angry.

And so they were kind of like, man, I ain't going in there.

And so in 1991, a guy named Hokan said, you know what?

What captured his imagination was the foliage right around the opening to the cave was moving, the wind was blowing it.

Here's the beauty and the power of curiosity.

He realized, hey, where's that wind coming from?

If that's a cave, if it's just a hole in the side of a mountain, that wind can't be coming out of there.

But there's got to be another source where the wind's getting in there.

And so Hokan in 1991 walked into that entrance and kept walking, and this is what he found.

It's known now as Han Sundong.

It's the largest cave in the world.

And a couple months ago it was on Good Morning America.

If you saw the lady, and it just goes on and on.

It's got its own ecosystem.

This is me and some of the staff.

We're on a staff retreat.

That's where we went.

Thank you for paying for that, by the way.

And it just goes on.

It's got two forests, it's got a raging river that runs through it, it's got some of the world's largest stalagmites anywhere in the world.

It's got cave pearls.

That's our children's pastor.

Just reclining.

All of this came into be, by the way, because one man got curious.

He pushed past his fear and said, Hey, there's a burning bush, but I'm going to go over there because the laws of nature have been suspended.

I'm going to go over there and check this out.

And boom, a whole new world opened up.

For this man in 1991, he named Han Sundong, which is big mountain, uh, excuse me, big river cave.

Uh but for Moses, he walks over in the story of redemption.

And God reconciling the world to himself.

God says, I got somebody now.

Why?

Because Moses was curious.

Let me just give you what I call the fruit of curiosity.

Four things.

Number one, it promotes exploration and discovery.

It promotes exploration and discovery.

Here's why you got to stay curious.

Whether you're seven or you're 77 or you're the age of my friend Gracie, and you're curious about things, the older we get, our curiosity just kind of gets worked out of us.

But curiosity, uh it promotes a sense of exploration and discovery.

What do you mean?

I'm old now.

Uh uh and so I don't watch a whole lot of TV.

I like, well, like today I watch the golf tournament because that's God's will.

Uh and I watch 60 Minutes on Sundays because I'm an old man and I'm into that.

Uh and now I have the National Geographic Channel uh and I watch it religiously.

My new favorite show is American Genius.

And so I just fill up my DVR because basically it's a story about I watched one last night about Steven Jobs and Bill Gates and their competition and this, that, and the other.

And when Apple was at the bottom and about to go bankrupt, Steven Jobs called Bill Gates and borrowed$130 million.

And Bill Gates said, sure, I'll help you out.

I don't want you to go bankrupt because you're my competition and you drive my creativity.

And so on that note, I need to see some of you after the service because you're my competition.

No.

But the one that fascinated me, you say, What do you mean?

The curiosity promotes this sense of discovery.

I watched one on the story, the rivalry between Colt, the guy that involved the Colt revolver, and the Wesson brothers.

And you probably knew this.

I didn't.

One of the Weston brothers was on a ship, and he was watching the captain at the helm, and he was steering the ship with this big wheel.

And that's where he got the idea for the cylinder for a six-shooter revolver.

And it changed the Mexican-American War.

And it changed that's that's what won the Civil War.

And so it just, you know, it just this sense of curiosity about how things, and every one of them said the same thing.

Ever since I can remember, I love taking things apart and putting them back together so I can understand how they work.

You should not give your kids toys that are powered by batteries.

You should give your kids toys that are powered by their imagination.

Why?

Because it fuels curiosity and that will serve them well as they get older.

The second fruit of curiosity is it produces questions.

It produces questions.

We're trying to teach answers while the world's asking questions.

Third fruit is it produce it produces persistence.

Persistence.

You can't stop until your current curiosity is satiated.

So by staying curious, you're in you're engaging the best parts of you to kind of push through just the status quo and kind of see, hey, I wonder about this.

And what if we did this?

What's the here's another question I want you to give you.

What's the best question you could ask yourself right now in your life?

What's the best question you could ask yourself?

Like I had lunch with a friend of mine on Friday, and I asked him, I said, hey, at this point in your marriage, has your wife got a better chance of being bored or being overwhelmed?

And he's like, Well, I think maybe both.

I said, I want you to go home and ask her.

He goes, I think I will.

And I thought to myself, you might want to give yourself a couple hours after you ask that question.

Because she may pull out a flannel graph and say, Let me show you all the reasons here.

Give you the pros and cons.

Another fruit of curiosity is simply this is just involvement.

It provides involvement.

When we learn to follow our curiosity like Moses did, all of a sudden we find ourselves are getting swept up.

Our story, our little story of us is getting swept up in the big story of God.

That's what happens in Exodus 3.

So stay curious.

Secondly, how do I be involved in changing the world?

See your life as a blank check before God.

See your life as a blank check before God.

What do you mean?

Verse 4.

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush.

Moses.

Moses.

And he said, Here I am.

All Moses knew, just mark that.

Here I am.

All Moses knew was, This God knows my name.

Not only knows my name, he says it twice, which is an expression of endearment.

This God not only knows me, but he is favorably disposed towards me, and I'm available.

That's all God's looking for.

He's not looking for perfect people.

He's not looking for people who've never screwed up or never sinned or blah, blah, blah, or who grew up in church.

God's looking for people that are just like, hey, here I am.

Here I am.

So let me ask you this question.

Another question to think about in your drive to work tomorrow.

Could you ever get to the point where you see your life as a blank check just kind of laid down before God where you just say to God, here I am.

Whatever you say goes.

You guys that are 19, 20 in your teens and 20s over here, it's a great opportunity in life.

Don't look around and figure out what makes the most money.

We got enough computer engineers in the world.

We got enough oil and gas people in the world.

What we don't have from your generation is some people that kind of look and get up every day when they're 20 and they're so lonely, their bones ache, and they just lay their life down and don't say, Oh, God, I need a boyfriend, I need a girlfriend, I need somebody just to get with to self-medicate.

No.

They just lay their life down and say, My life is a blank check.

I just signed it, you fill it in, and I'll do whatever you say.

That's when life gets interesting.

Our life is predictable because it's not a blank check.

We filled in, there's no blanks left.

We filled in all the blanks and we're running our plan, and guess what?

God will let you.

He'll just stand back and kind of go, okay, knock yourself out.

But if you read the Bible, the more you read the Bible, you see people kind of laying their life down.

Again, Moses, all he knows is this God knows my name, and he's he he speaks favorably towards me about me.

Here I am.

What else do you need to know about God just to lay your life down?

And now, by the way, as I'm talking to you about this at about 10.52 a.m.

on a Sunday morning, there's a 62-year-old man.

He and his wife, his name's Don Minton.

His wife is Debbie Minton.

They packed both their vehicles, left the rest of their stuff in their house in Florida, which is not sold yet, and they are driving on their way to Sugarland right now to join our staff on Monday and be our next spiritual formation pastor.

62 years old.

I called him on Friday and said, How you doing, buddy?

He said, I'm good.

People have been taking us out to dinner, and we we hadn't, we hadn't eaten, we hadn't cooked.

We've been eating out.

I don't get to.

Why do churches wait till you leave to be generous to you?

I don't get that.

That's backwards, that's jacked up.

He said, Man, people are giving us stuff and taking us out to eat.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I'm kind of like, Are you glad the guy's leaving?

I mean, shouldn't you be glad he's coming?

I mean, what we we got this thing backwards here.

But again, a blank check before God.

We're talking, and I said, How's it going?

How are you feeling?

He said, Well, we had we had dinner with Debbie's parents, Debbie's mom last night two nights ago, and we had dinner with my mom last night.

His mom told him when he said, Hey, I think I'm being called to go from Florida to a church and take.

She said, Don, you're too old for this.

And he said, Mom, you're never too old to obey God.

62.

Just later.

So that's the kind of man that's coming to be your spiritual formation pastor.

And so, why do I tell you that?

Because I've heard some of you in this room say, Well, you know, I when I first came to church, I volunteered in preschool in the nursery, in student ministry, and blah, blah, blah.

It's time for some of these younger people to step up and do their Part.

Who told you you could be done doing your part?

See, when you say, Here I am, God gets to determine the scope of your involvement.

You don't get to say, well, now it's just time for me to come and listen to the preacher and leave.

That's not a blank check.

That's a poor excuse.

If you want to be involved, just see your life as a blank check before God.

Thirdly, get a grasp of the nature of God.

You still with me?

Get a grasp of the nature of God, because if not, and put a start by this one, if not, then you're going to misrepresent the fullness of God's nature.

Let me just read from the Bible.

Look at verse 5.

Moses says, Here I am.

And then God said, Do not come near.

First thing God says is, That's far enough.

Matter of fact, do not come near.

Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

And he 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.

I told you I was at camp last week with a group of students that I love.

I love that.

I've been speaking to that church since 1991.

And I kind of got this concern in me about student culture today.

And here it is, because I don't think we have a grasp of the nature of God.

I think we kind of gravitate to the parts of God that are really therapeutic, that we like, but we don't have a balance as to who God is.

God says, do not come any closer, take your shoes off.

The ground is not holy of its own accord.

It's holy, God announces, because I'm here.

And wherever I am is holy because I conform my environment to my nature.

And so you are an offense to my nature.

I'm holy.

You by nature are not holy.

So you can't come any closer and take your shoes off just to acknowledge the fact that you understand that I'm holy and you're not.

And Moses takes his shoes off.

As a matter of fact, the text goes on to say that Moses wouldn't even look at God.

Now, juxtapose that against my experience last week because I might need a little coffee to get through this.

Last week I noticed great guys was leading worship at the camp, but there's this one song we kept doing every night.

And I was like, first time we did it, I was like, uh.

Second time I was like, third time I was like, I can't sing this anymore.

Because it crystallized for me.

And here's what we would say.

And the students seemed to know it because I mean when the first click on the guitar, they would start getting their worship bob on.

I didn't know if I was at an Eminem concert or Lil Wayne or whatever.

I was like, what is this?

Can you imagine Fannie J.

Crosby doing this?

This is what we would say.

This is what I mean by an overemphasis on one aspect of God's nature and a total disregard for the terrible aspect of God's nature.

And I said, terrible.

I said, and by the way, someone reminded me after the first service.

Uh any of you ever heard of the old Bible teacher, Jay Verney McGee?

God that has a voice like that.

He would not let people call him reverend because the root of the word reverend is terrible.

And he said, only God should be revered like that.

And that's what I'm talking about.

When I say he's terrible, I don't mean he's bad.

I mean it's just Moses wouldn't even look at him.

We would sing this You are good, you are good when there's nothing good in me.

Your love, you are love on display for all to see.

Your light, you are light when the darkness closes in.

Your hope, your hope, you have covered all my sin.

Wrong theological statement.

Jesus doesn't cover our sin, he takes it away.

So you can sing and say all this and still sleep with your girlfriend.

This this doesn't this this doesn't limit you at all.

You are peace, you are peace when my fears crippling, you are true, you are true, even in my wandering.

I'm not sure how God is glorified by us just saying, Hey, I like to wander and sin, and you like to forgive.

This makes for a great relationship.

And then we get to the course, and this is where the old man in me just kind of said, unamen.

Oh, I'm running to your arms, I'm running to your arms, the riches of your love will always be enough.

Nothing compares to your embrace, light of the world forever rain.

Now, I know it's a hill song song, and for some of you that means it's in the Bible.

But let me just say this.

Here's my concern.

Stay with me, okay?

Stay with me, Pinecove.

Don't write your parents and go, this man's grumpy and needs therapy.

Here's my concern, okay?

That all of our worship songs are written about Jesus during his earthly ministry.

You say, uh what?

Because see, when Jesus came to earth, he gave up some of his glory.

Not all of it.

That's why if you read in John 17, Jesus is praying his high priestly prayer, and he says to his father, now give me back the glory I had with you before the world began.

And so he's got all his glory back.

He was fully God and fully man here.

But now that he's ascended in heaven, he's got his glory back.

And this is the way the Bible represents the nature of Jesus.

Because here's my concern.

Here's what I'm saying.

I'm just putting my cards on the table.

I don't think we're going to want to run and get in Jesus' arms.

I think there's going to be some some some holy maybe this helps us get at.

Romans says this there was no fear of God before their eyes.

Therefore, everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

That's what happened in our country this week.

There's no fear of God.

And I don't mean servile fear, like, oh, please don't beat me.

I mean, I mean filial father-son, father-daughter relationship.

My dad's in his early 80s, and I go to his house and I don't talk much.

They say, Why?

He's a bad man.

And I say, Yes, sir, and no, sir.

I was talking to my dad on the phone about four months ago, and just in a moment of just whatever, I said, huh?

And my dad went like Clint Eastwood, Grant Torino, get off my lawn.

He said, What'd you say to me, boy?

I said, sir, that's more like it.

In my mind, I'm thinking, I'm 50 years old, old man.

I still got my real teeth and my real knees.

But I know my dad.

My dad would come cruising down here in his Dodge Ram pickup, and I'd wake up, he'd be on my front porch with a cane and a clown mask.

You're gonna disrespect me on the phone.

I just, here's my concern is that we've got this overrealized therapeutic view of God and lovey Jesus who wants to hug us, and we're gonna run into his arms.

Yet the Bible speaks of Jesus this way.

This is Revelation chapter 19, verse 11.

Revelation 19:11

This is a picture of Jesus coming back.

He says, and I saw heaven open, and behold, a white horse.

The one set it on and is called faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.

His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems or crowns.

He has a name written that no one knows but himself.

He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the word of God.

And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses, and from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.

He will tread the wine press of the fury on the wrath of God the Almighty, and on his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Now, now hey, let's don't go all let's not go to that extreme either and kind of like, yeah, Jesus come to kick tail, I'll tell you what.

I know, because hey, look back here, you still with me?

Look, look in Exodus 3.

Look at verse 7.

See, there's always balance in the nature of God.

Verse 7, then the Lord said, after God says, Hey, don't come any closer and take your shoes off.

Then God says, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.

I know their sufferings, and I've 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, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me.

God says, I'm not some hard-hearted despot.

The cry of the people of Israel has come to me.

If you got kids, remember when they were a baby and you had to let them cry it out?

Remember that mom where you had to not go in there and get them every time?

We set a timer in my house.

Started off two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes.

Finally, we got up to an hour.

We let our children cry as babies for an hour.

And I remember one day my wife, as I couldn't find her, went back, she was sitting on the ground against the door to the nursery, waiting for the timer to go off.

And like an idiot, when the timer went off, I reached for the doorknob.

And my wife yanked my arm out of its socket.

This is a prosthetic, you can't tell.

I was thinking, I'll go in there and pick the baby up.

No, no, no, not on Marcy's watch.

Girlfriend ripped that door open, and I mean, just been tears flowing down.

Madison was crying, she was crying, I was walking away.

I don't want any part of that.

And I walked by 15 minutes later, and Madison was sound asleep in her mother's arms.

And my wife was going, just patting her.

Baby sound asleep.

And I just, it was so holy, I just pulled the door to.

So why do I tell you that?

Because I don't want you to think, oh, yeah, God's terrible.

He's no, no, no.

There's balance.

He says, I surely I've heard the cry of the people of Israel.

It has come to me, and I've seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.

See, there's balance.

When I say get a grasp of the nature of God, you can't fall off the other side of the donkey.

You can't say, Well, we're too therapeutic, so I gotta go over here and make God out to be angry so people be scared.

No, no, no, no.

Represent the balance of God's nature so people will understand what God's really like.

It's what Jesus says in John 1, or the Bible says of Jesus in John 1, it says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word uh uh became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory as the only begotten of the Father.

Hear this part.

And what is the only begotten of the Father like?

What is the only Son of God like?

What is the highest expression of God's nature?

So much so that Jesus would say, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

What is he like?

He's full of grace and truth.

Now, if you're an engineer, tell me this.

Explain this to me after the service.

How can you be full of two different things?

He's full of grace and truth.

That's the mystery and the majesty of God.

There's balance in his nature.

He's there.

Is he compassionate?

Is he loving?

Absolutely.

But he's also terribly holy.

And if we're going to be used of God in this culture of ours, we've got to have a balance.

Fourthly and finally, look through the right lens.

Look through the right lens.

Because God says all this.

He represents himself as a balance, which he's always been.

And he says in verse 10, Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

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

Moses, that's what we do.

He sees the promises of God through the lens of himself.

It's like looking through binoculars through the wrong end.

You know what you ever done that?

You look through binoculars the wrong way, and everything looks a million miles away.

It's just like impossible.

It's like, are you kidding me, God?

I mean, you me?

I'm the murderer.

I'm the guy.

Come on, man.

There's no way.

You got the wrong guy.

He's gonna go on and say, I can't talk very good.

I'm not eloquent.

I don't have a blog.

I don't write books.

Come on, God.

I mean, really?

I mean, I'm not even on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or Vine or whatever else is out there.

Come on, God.

And God just smiling the whole time.

I am going to send you.

Remember, I told you the first two chapters of Exodus covers 400 years?

400 years.

People have been crying out to God.

And now, starting in chapter three, to the rest of the book, it all covers just one year.

Let me ask you a question.

I want you to think about.

You ever wonder if you're the answer to someone's prayer?

Because Moses is the answer to 400 years of people who are oppressed and beat down.

He is the answer to their prayers.

And so sometimes when you're in a conversation and you're like, I should say this, but I don't want them to think I'm a bad person.

Just realize and embrace, hey, I might be the answer to this cat's prayer.

Let me just do what I know to be the right thing and let God handle the outcome.

Look through the right lens.

Moses says, Who am I?

And God flips the binoculars around and puts them up to his eyes and says, Hey, after he says in verse 10 and 11, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?

God says in verse 12, But I will be with you.

But I will be with you.

And this shall be a sign for you that I've sent you when you have brought the people of Egypt, you've brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve or worship God on this mountain.

Notice how God just flips it in verse 12, and he says, I will, this will, you will.

God speaks with absolute certainty about what is most uncertain and terrifying for Moses.

He says, I will, this will be assigned to you, and then you will worship me on this mountain.

I will, this will, you will.

I will, this will, you will.

God speaks with certainty about that which frightens us the most, which the fear creeps in.

Some of you need you're in relationships, you need to end the relationship, and you can't because you don't believe that God says, I will, and this will be a sign, and then you will experience this.

And we don't experience that because we don't believe that God, the God who says, I will.

And I will.

No, hey, I'm not just telling you I will, I'm gonna give you a sign.

Last question I want to give you this morning is if God gave you a sign, just as a little reminder that, hey, I meant what I said, what would you want him to give you a sign about?

Does that make sense what I mean when I say a sign?

I will.

Moses is looking to the oh Lord, who am I?

You're just the person I'm looking for.

I found somebody who's got a little holy curiosity left.

I got you over here in front of the burning bush.

I got your shoes off.

You're standing back, you understand that I'm holy.

That's that's who I am first and foremost.

So much so, as Alton read earlier in the Song of Moses, he he refers to God.

He says, Who among the gods is like you?

Majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, and working wonders.

I'm talking to you about the God who says, I will.

This will, and you will.

See, beloved, look at me, and I'm done this morning.

You will.

Whatever God has said, you will experience that.

You will do that.

Here's why.

Because I will, and this will.

You've got to have eyes and ears to see and hear the this, the sign that God kind of says, keep going.

You're headed in the right direction.

Don't give up.

You walk by faith, you don't walk by sight.

I will.

This will.

You will.

The world is changed by people who believe all three of those things.

Stand to your feet, I'll speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

Your father invites you.

Your life in the world.

And remember this.

In the word, indeed.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.