From Fear to Commission | Journey Up the Mountian: Exodus 1 of 9

If you don't know what the context was, you can easily misunderstand really

any communication. I heard about a florist who got a flustered phone call from

a lady who was very upset.

She said, I ordered these flowers to be given for a retirement party for my

friend who's retiring and moving to Florida, but I got him a card and it didn't

say the right thing at all.

Right on the flowers, it said, we're sorry for your loss as you grieve together.

And she was thrown off by this and the florist was very flustered wanted to

get off the phone immediately because he said ma'am somewhere around here there's

a funeral where the flowers have written on it good luck in your new location I hope it's not too hot,

you know without context it is easy to misunderstand what was said and this

is going to be abundantly true as we come to Exodus we're going to be studying

that this summer hopefully you have signed up for a book and you've picked up your study already,

there's a place in it to take notes on the message or maybe questions that you

have as you go through this morning.

If you have not signed up, we are really, we had a huge, the first service people,

they were not responsible.

They didn't sign up, not like you people, but they didn't sign up.

So we had a lot of books we gave out first service.

So what we're gonna have to do is we've printed out week one,

which will still be available.

So even if we're out of books, we would love for you to take one,

even if you haven't signed up until today.

But as we approach a book like Exodus, I don't know what your relationship was

like with church growing up, but it's hard not to have seen at least some of the stories.

And maybe what comes to mind for you is that Prince of Egypt,

where a slightly younger and debonair version of Moses then is reflected in

the biblical canon goes and leads God's people.

And you've got the stories of the plagues, and there's something about the Red

Sea parting people know about.

And then, of course, it comes right in the middle to this mountain where God

has everything kind of revealed about himself that most of us think are everything

we don't like about the God of the Old Testament.

Right? It is coming down and there's rules and there's judgment and there's

thunder and there's darkness. And we're like, ooh, that was pretty heavy.

And for a lot of us, we kind of picture Moses coming down with those tablets

who look suspiciously like Charlton Heston. And he's coming down to communicate

to humanity that God is really disappointed in you all. I mean,

you guys got to get your act together.

And for a lot of us, that's sort of like what we feel like is the pinnacle of the book.

And as we're going to read, though, Exodus, instead of what Hollywood says or

what this person says or what a college professor who's trying to take shots

at Christianity says, we want to engage with that story for ourself.

Because the story of Exodus tells a very different story.

It's not at all like what you're going to see when you kind of see it being redone.

Because where we pick it up in chapter three, right, Moses is already a very

old man, could be as much as 70, maybe even 80 years old.

So I want you to picture somebody who's out, who has been watching after sheep

for upwards of 40 years, right?

His face does not have the look of wonder. It has the hard run lines that have

kind of been etched in by wrinkles. This is what my face looks like now.

That he'd have a staff with him that he would use to shepherd sheep,

to ward off predators, to help kind of break up the monotony.

Moses has already gotten married. His wife's name is Zipporah.

They've been married for many years.

He has a great relationship with his father-in-law, Jethro.

I mean, in all things considered, Moses is like a really solid guy.

Nothing going wrong in his life. And yet right here in chapter three,

Moses, as an old man, comes across, sees a bush that is on fire, but it is not consumed.

It's burning and burning and burning, but it's not getting any dimmer.

And so Moses goes to investigate and see this, and he finds this voice that calls out to him.

And it says, Moses, Moses.

And Moses responds with the awkward, here I am, present, if you're taking attendance.

But this is the opening line of God to Moses.

And it's not something of, you know, let's talk about theology and I'm looking for a few good men.

Instead, it's surprisingly personal.

It's as if God is saying that his particular name is known, that God knows you personally.

It's this story that we're going to be following through this summer where we

have to ask ourselves, what kind of story is this?

What kind of genre is it? Because whether you've heard the word hermeneutics

or not, that's the art of studying the Bible, you guys are all experts in hermeneutics.

When you watch the news, you know that it's not the same thing as watching an action movie, right?

When you see a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, you do not write in saying,

those children look like they're going to kill themselves with laser blasters.

You know that it's a comic strip. You guys are experts in hermeneutics for everything

except the Bible, where we try to flatten it out to where it's all the same.

But the books of the Bible are very different, right? And so when it comes to

the Old Testament, a lot of us, whether we thought it or not,

kind of has a version of the Bible that's a little bit more like a fable.

You know, a fable is one of those stories like the story of the boy who cried wolf.

And a boy is out in the field watching sheep, and he cries, there's a wolf.

And the people of the town come running out, and he says, ha,

ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. you guys are so foolish.

And they go back. And again, he cries out wolf and the town comes rushing out.

And he goes, you guys are so gullible. And he sends them back.

But that third time, he cries out wolf and the town refuses to come.

And the boy, I don't know, gets eaten or something. I mean, and the moral of

the story is, right, your integrity matters.

These are stories we tell in order to help children behave better,

in order to help people kind of be responsible. And a lot of us,

when you're reading through Bible stories, we kind of got a version of it where

every Bible story had an important lesson to be learned.

And those weren't not true. They are true. This is how God expects us to live.

And this is important truths like obey your parents.

And there's a lot of truths in there, like obey your parents.

And by the way, you should definitely listen to your parents.

I think I heard those ones growing up.

But when you read through the Bible, though, on your own, as you kind of move

past that childhood way of looking at it, there is a lot there that is a bit

tricky to figure out how to read devotionally.

Let's look at this one from the opening chapters of Exodus. One day,

after Moses had grown up, this is Moses the young man. He went out to where

his own people were and watched their hard labor.

And he saw an Egyptian beating one of the Hebrews.

And looking this way, and that, and seeing no one's around, he killed him.

He killed the Egyptian and hit him in the sand.

So as you go about your work this week, if Jesus did ask you to kill somebody,

where would you hide the body? I want you to be praying and meditating on that.

Like, where are you going to go with that devotionally? Like,

I mean, that's just, it's hard. There's a lot of passages where you're like, this isn't Paul.

I'll tell you that. This is not Paul where we're over there,

you know, have the same attitude as Jesus.

I can do something with that. But what about these weird stories in the Old

Testament where there's just a lot about it that seems very unusual?

Even within the story itself, that God appears to Moses with the bush that's on fire.

And just so you know, he hadn't done that up to this point.

It wasn't like God prefers flammable shrubbery, and so you need to be on the

lookout for it. This is the only time he does that.

And going forward, he never does it again either.

This isn't a thing where there's many things that God does in the Old Testament

that are unusual, even on its own terms,

almost as if God doesn't want us to get into a pattern where we miss what is

important going on because we get overly caught up in the details. What kind of story is it?

Well, if it's not a fable, then some of us, as we got to high school,

me at the front of the list is a very zealous WWJD bracelet-wearing teen.

I thought the Old Testament as sort of a problem to be solved.

And so with some archaeological evidence to prove the historicity of the Old

Testament, we could verify that the prophecies pointing to Jesus were valid,

and that's why we can trust in Jesus.

And really, the main point of the Old Testament is we pray to God,

and thank heavens we're not living under the Old Testament, because they seemed

to have it really hard back then, not like we do in the New Testament.

Really, it was mostly just about validating the coming of Jesus.

And while it is true that the Old Testament points forward, the early church

and throughout Christian history, the Old Testament has been a much richer basis

for giving insight into what it looks like to live out the gospel.

And so we're going to look at this story, Exodus, because the New Testament

assumes this is a story you're familiar with.

In the book of Exodus, it opens up with this wicked king and he's on the throne

and he makes an edict to kill all these babies.

And eventually Moses is going to lead the people out of Egypt where they'll

come to a mountain where the law will come down and teach people about what

it means to be a people set apart for God and what it looks like to live a life that honors God.

And if you look at the book of Matthew, it opens with a king who wants to kill

all the babies who then Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt.

So Jesus starts his ministry by coming out of Egypt and he goes up to a mountain

and he sits down for the Sermon on the Mount and he gives the teachings on what

it looks like to be part of the community of God's people and how to live a life that honors God.

It looks surprisingly similar as if they're expecting that in order to understand

that story, this isn't just a prequel.

This gives us insight into what the gospel looks like.

This is a story, as we kind of walk through it for just a little bit this morning,

we're going to have to kind of back up and learn about this story of interruption.

Where Moses was kind of going along

and had just kind of assumed that his relationship with God was fine.

He's not a prodigal son. He did not go off to a foreign land and make choices

of self-harm, where he has to come back and tell people he's sorry.

He doesn't believe wrong things about God that he has to have straightened out

because he's got the wrong idols in his back pocket. He is just going about

his life that is terribly small.

So what Exodus wants to open up is tell you how we got to this situation where

we're going to need Moses.

It opens up by saying these are the names of those who went down into Egypt,

the sons of Jacob, and it lists them out.

In fact, the name of this book in Hebrew is the names, Shemot.

This is the names because that's the first line in this book.

And it gives us the specifics of those sons of Jacob.

Or if you're not familiar with the Joseph story, you can go back and read Genesis.

Or you can watch Andrew Lloyd Webber to have a zestier musical version of it.

But the long and the short of it is Joseph was sold into slavery,

but then he raised up in Egypt to help save that nation.

And eventually all the sons come down into Egypt.

Now, each one of those sons becomes one of the 12 tribes of Israel.

So now they represent tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands,

depending on the group of people.

And you may have heard the phrase, the 12 tribes of Israel. this is where they come from.

They were originally the sons of Jacob, Levi, Simeon, Issachar, Asher, Gad, and others.

And there's lots of them that are listed out there. And if you read through,

you're going to be like, there's 11.

Last time I checked, 11 is not the same as 12. And that's because a couple of

verses later, it will talk about Joseph, who is the 12th son.

And it gets a little complicated because Joseph has two sons who also become

tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. We'll save that one for another day.

But the issue is there are 12 tribes coming in, each with a little bit of their

own kind of slang, their own way of talking. It's enough that they recognize

when a person is not from their tribe. These are people who have the same heritage,

but they're not all identical.

And they're going to be led on this journey out of Egypt. And so that's where

it starts. It comes down and a Pharaoh was raised up who knew nothing about Joseph.

This is 400 years later.

This is a long time they have been down in Egypt, passing on these traditions about what God is like.

And then it tells this story. And Pharaoh issued a decree that all the male

children would be killed.

And then we meet the first two named characters in the book of Exodus.

And they're both women, Shipra and Pua.

And the grammar here at least suggests that these women are probably not Hebrew.

It just says midwives of the Hebrews, meaning they're over them.

They might've been Egyptian.

They could have been Hebrew. But Pharaoh goes to them and says,

listen, we don't need to cause an uprising, but there's too many of them.

So what you gotta do is, I just want you to kind of kill the baby and just make

it seem like an accident.

And here's what these women decide to do. They refuse to enforce Pharaoh's command.

Pharaoh, who represented the highest form of authority and morality.

There is no morality in Pharaoh's world above himself.

And these two women say no.

And I love the way that they do it. They don't form any protests or speeches.

What they do is if you're trying to resist somebody who's a tyrannical empire,

just lean into prejudice just because they're going to buy it hook, line, and sinker.

So these women say, well, you know how Hebrew women are. They're so strong.

They just pop that baby out before we even get there. Like, what are we supposed

to do? And like Pharaoh hears that and goes, makes total sense. Absolutely.

Like he just accepts that, of course, that's true because he's like,

well, they are really strong. so I guess that makes sense.

So you have these two named women that will start a trend. You're going to see

in the book of Exodus five other times, people who are not part of the nation

of Israel, people who are Egyptian

or people they meet as they wander are actually going to be grafted in.

They're going to be allowed to go with the Israelites if they are willing to.

That's going to be the same principle if you read the book of Joshua,

which again is about this conquest of Canaan.

But God makes sure to open it with a story of Rahab, who is a foreigner,

who is grafted into God's people.

So you don't misunderstand that in this story where God is forming a people,

the purpose was always to be a nation that blessed all nations,

where people of every tribe, tongue, and background would come together and

form God's people. And we see that already starting.

But Pharaoh is not satisfied with that plan because they are having way too many children.

And so Pharaoh says, forget the secrecy, just throw them in the Nile River,

just take babies and chuck them in the Nile and it's right because I'm Pharaoh and I say so.

Now, the Nile is going to have some pretty heavy religious and spiritual kind of background to it.

We'll see that next week when we look at the plagues.

And each of the plagues are kind of targeting the way that Egyptians thought

about power and about God.

But Pharaoh is going to make this command to kill all the male children.

But one mother, Jochebed, she devises a plan to resist this.

She makes a small, your translation might say basket, but in the Hebrew, the word is ark.

The same word we're going to use, you're going to take, make an ark and cover

it in pitch, which we can't help but think there was another guy who was saved

on the water when he went into an ark and his family was watched for.

It's almost like as he's telling this story, he wants you to know that it goes

back to Noah. Moses is like a baby Noah.

I mean, I'm not saying it's Grogu and the Mandalorian, but there are echoes

in which as you kind of look at it, where it wants you to hear that there's

a story before this one that God is continuing and has never given up on saving

and rescuing his people.

She puts this baby into the basket and she puts it into the Nile River and Pharaoh's

own daughter sees the child and takes it out and Moses will be raised in Pharaoh's household.

Think about the irony of that.

The household that signed the bill that was a death sentence for so many children,

that should have been Moses' death sentence.

The house that signed that bill was Moses' home address.

That's where he grew up in. He grew up at the very center of the same people

that were perfectly happy with murder because it helped to keep and establish and continue power.

That's where Moses was raised in, but he decided as a young man,

it's never said in the Bible that it was a secret that he was a Hebrew,

but he decides to identify with God's people.

Even though he had been raised in Pharaoh's household and participated in their version of education.

There was a part of him that just knew that this isn't right.

And so he reacts as a young man. And we read that verse where he kills an Egyptian

and it isn't really self-defense.

And it doesn't even describe it as an accident either.

It says he looked around and then he planned it and then he killed him and then he hid it.

And Moses commits murder and on goes on the run. God doesn't intervene in that moment.

God doesn't endorse that route to freedom. God says no.

So now we are many, many years later that Moses hears the voice that calls out and it says.

Moses, Moses, and Moses responds, here, here I am.

And he goes on to say, do not come any closer.

God said, take off your sandals for the place where you were standing is holy ground.

This is ground that obviously Moses had been shepherding on for some time,

and it wasn't holy until that particular day.

There's animal droppings and thorns around here. There's no granite cathedrals.

There's no mist and moment to make it feel nostalgic.

This is just outdoor wilderness.

And he's like, no, no, no. Can't you tell? It's holy now. You got to take off your shoes.

And the reason we're going to see in Exodus is there's going to be this theme

that holiness is wherever God shows up.

It doesn't stay put. God is what brings and makes something holy.

And so when they build a place of worship, there's gonna be this presence of

God right in the middle of it. And when God sets up here, that land's holy.

But if God decides, I'm done with that spot, I'm moving. And it just moves,

then they're gonna pack up the tent. We gotta go. It's not holy ground anymore.

God's on that side. This idea that holy space is not gonna be confined to a

single geographic location.

It's already started saying, no, no, no, Moses, this.

This is holy ground because I'm here, and I'm here to talk with you.

He tells Moses to take off his shoes.

This was not really part of the tradition that we know of, but in this moment,

this is exactly what God wants to teach Moses about something.

It's not something he made Abraham do, and it's not something he makes David

do later. He makes Moses take off his sandals, and he would step out as an older

man onto hard, thorny, stony ground.

And I don't know if you've ever been that guy who quickly runs out to their

car to get something, telling your wife, I don't need shoes.

And then you'd go out to your car like this, trying to get past all the rocks.

There's nothing dignified about it. It's painful. It hurts a little bit.

And here he takes off his sandals.

And now he's like, God, I'm making it, making it. There's something undignified

about walking through just bare ground. And Moses comes up and says, Here I am.

Then God says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham,

the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

And at this Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.

So God appears, takes off his shoes. Right, right, take off the sandals,

take off the sandals. And he comes close.

And then God continues to talk. And Moses, his response is to hide his face.

You may wonder why didn't Moses like fall to his knees on the ground?

And I specified he is over 70 years old. Like he's not, he's not an idiot.

He's not going down. He might not get back up. So he's, he said,

you know, we're just going to use the cloak and hide it that way.

But he knows enough to know that God's presence is, is terrifying.

Because God is here to interrupt Moses' life.

But there's a part of Moses that has known that this was not enough the whole way along.

Because Moses' wife's name is Zipporah, but his son's name is Gershom.

And the name Gershom is the Hebrew phrase for somebody who is a sojourner,

a foreigner, an immigrant.

And that is not going to win you any points in kindergarten. What's your name?

Not from around here. That's my name. Not born in this location.

I just thought I'd go with that.

Outsider. Person who doesn't quite fit in. He's like, Gershom,

I want you to take that name.

And the reason says, Moses says, the reason I want you to take that name is

because this is not my home.

This is not where we belong. We are not going to be the kind of people that

get stuck in a place and stay here.

Gershom, I want you to grow up. And if God ever says go, I want you to be ready.

And so you're going to carry on yourself the name that we were not meant to

move here and stay forever because God has a plan for his people.

And I plan to be ready whenever God says it. that there's almost a prophecy

when he names Gershom, even though this is 20 years before it happens,

where God says, if God were to call, I would want to respond.

And now that moment has come and God has said, I am sending you because I've

heard the cries of my people in Egypt.

And Moses goes, that's a big job.

I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I don't talk well.

And I mean, it does not seem like the right kind of guy.

He says, send someone else.

His response is an accurate one. He's standing in the presence of a holy God.

Whose presence is pointing out all of our deficiencies, that sense of frailness

and weakness standing before God saying, God, you should just bust him out of

prison yourself. I mean, you seem pretty powerful.

And God is going to choose to use Moses. And he will use excuses like my mouth

doesn't work good. And God says, hey, you're talking to the manufacturer.

Don't tell me how good your mouth does or does not work. I know what I'm doing

here. And he's like, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to offend.

And then he's going to tell Moses to, he's going to take Moses through a series

of plagues where Moses puts his hand in his cloak and comes out and it will

have boils on it, a foreshadowing of the plagues later, and then it'll be healed.

And Moses is like, and God is kind of saying, if you didn't think you're going

to obey before, I bet you're going to obey now.

And then he has Moses throw his staff on the ground and his staff becomes a

snake. And God says, you see that? Now grab the snake by the tail.

That is not the place you want to grab a snake.

And he reaches down and he goes,

grab the snake, because he said grab the snake, but it's not the tail.

I mean, normally you pin the head, but whatever. I mean, what do I know?

And he grabs it and it goes back to being a stick, almost as if this fear and

this hesitation, God is like, I need you to trust me.

I think for a lot of us, when we think about what it means to evangelize people,

we kind of want to get them to this Exodus 3 moment, a little more respect for

God. I mean, that's the problem with this generation.

No fear in their life, no fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

They should realize how sinful and broken and fallen they are and throw themselves

down at the mercy and beg for God's mercy.

People just have no sense of their own brokenness. I mean, we should feel like

that's almost like the destination we're trying to get people to.

And yet this is Exodus chapter 3.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

That is a fine place to start because it is reality that the holy God of the

universe, his presence is truly terrifying for none of us could say that we've lived a sinless life.

But it's almost like in Exodus, that's going to be the immature place,

the place where God, maybe that's where it starts, but it's not where God wants you to end.

And if that's the message that you heard of the gospel, that I just thought

you're supposed to keep coming in every week and say, you know,

I'm not worthy and I'm a worm and throw myself down.

And it's almost like God is going to take Moses and do something radically different in his life.

And to where by the time you get to Exodus 33 and the people have sinned and

there was a golden calf and there's all this rebellion and that's kind of taken care of.

And God was going to send them away, but Moses talks him out of it.

And then God says to Moses, then Moses says to God, if you were to send us away

from here without your presence, then we wouldn't leave.

In fact, Moses says, now I ask you a favor, show me your glory.

Moses is looking up at God. He's seen the burning bush.

He's seen the parting of the Red Sea, the plagues, the manna,

the different diseases that God has done, all these miraculous manifestation.

And Moses's response in 33 is, it's not enough.

The same man who wanted to hide his face in chapter 3.

When God tells him in chapter 33 that no one will look on my face and live,

Moses is like, I'm willing to risk that.

And God will show himself to Moses. But it's almost like what God wanted to

do is lead Moses up this mountain to where Moses has an audacious and fearless

sense of confidence to come into God's presence.

Because now Moses doesn't just think, well, I've earned this place.

It's not about earning it. He's not become a more moral person by the end of the book.

What has changed is that his own heart is now so properly directed away from

all the distractions and say, God, I long for you alone.

And God gives it to him. God doesn't say, how dare you?

God says, that's exactly what I was looking for. This is a story of interruptions.

This is a story where Moses is going to be sent to rescue a people.

And God never once tells Moses that when he says, you know, I'm not worthy to

go and do this and I don't think I could do a good job.

Moses is never contradicted by God.

God goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, you got a point. It's just silence after that.

Like, you know, you think I could do this? And when your parents say nothing,

there's just a long pause afterwards. And you're like, okay,

I'm getting the message.

Because that's not the promise that God is going to make to Moses.

In fact, on the outside, it makes a lot of sense. Moses' response is just rational.

He is no Chris Hemsworth. He does not have chiseled physique and that swagger

of self-confidence that knows it's all going to work out. He's like the opposite of that.

If he's this blubbery in front of God by himself, then what is he going to do

in an entire courtroom of Pharaoh officials that want to kill him?

No, excuse me, Pharaoh. I was wondering if you could let the people go.

I mean, what's that going to look like? We need someone who's a little more confident.

But instead, God makes an entirely different promise. He's going to say this,

that when I go, well, I think I can bring it up.

This is God's promise. This is the answer to Moses's anxiety.

And it's not actually, if you saw yourself through my eyes, you'd realize how

wonderful you are. He said, the promise is that I'm going to be with you.

The invitation of Exodus is to one of presence, where the worship that God invites

us to doesn't solve our anxiety by making us feel that we're more amazing.

Instead, it redirects an entire culture that is so obsessed with looking at

themselves that they forgot you were meant to live a life directed towards something else.

And when we look at this book, it's a book where God's going to say,

I'm going to be with you. And this is going to be the sign.

Oh, this is going to be the sign, he says.

This is going to be the sign that you know that it's God who sent you. And here's what it is.

It's a sign that is meant to answer the question, well, maybe this is just Moses'

story. I mean, he's Moses. He's kind of a big deal.

But what God's going to say is, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to take all the people out of Egypt.

And when we're done, after all the fighting and the soldiers and the plagues

and all that, I want you to come back to this same mountain.

It's not another mountain. It's the same one that God sends him from.

The place where Moses was invited into God's presence.

I want you to bring everyone back here and you're going to worship me on this

mountain. It's an invitation that it wasn't just open the door for Moses.

But every single person in the nation was going to be invited to say that they

can come back and have that same experience where God wants to draw them close.

And he said, I am your God and you will be my people.

It is God's own presence, an invitation to do something radically different in life.

And so we're going to do this study for nine weeks. If you haven't signed up

yet, if you go ahead and sign up for it, it is going to help us because if we

need to order more books, we'd love to have them for you here next week.

So if you haven't yet filled that out, we would love to have you do that,

But even more than that, I think it's going to be this sense that if you're

sitting here in the pew and you're wondering, I just don't know,

my summer's kind of busy.

I mean, I'm traveling. I'm just not so sure. Plus, I don't know if I'm the kind

of person that goes deeper.

I just wonder if Moses didn't put this story in there.

So you could say, if you say, I don't know if I could walk in the footsteps

of Moses, I could hear Moses saying,

I don't think I could walk in my own footsteps when I read this book.

When I started this journey, I can tell you that I was not ready and I was overwhelmed

and I had no idea how it was going to go.

But I did answer the one way that you have to answer if you want to participate

in the story that we're telling.

He said, here I am. It was just a first step.

He doesn't know how it's going to work out when he goes to Pharaoh.

He doesn't know how possibly you're going to feed a nation of people without a farm.

And how are we going to, and the laws, and how is that going to work?

And God says, we're going to go together one step at a time.

All I need from you today is a willingness to say, here I am, God.

I'm willing to be part of your story.

I don't know where you guys are this morning. I can tell you that this is a

story for me when I first experienced the book of Exodus as a gospel. This was 2015.

I was back from the mission field in Zimbabwe.

I'm working in a small church where I'm preaching, and it's really, really good preaching.

I'm trying my best. I'm figuring things out, coming back off the mission field.

But I just felt like nothing's moving, and there's just all these people in

the church that are really theologically

correct, but they're like the opposite of excited about Jesus.

And then there are a few people that are excited, but they seem to say,

like, we need to be praying more. We need to be Bible study more.

We're not doing enough this. And there's not enough verses being quoted.

And you're trying to manage them.

And it just seemed like something was off. Because if I did that,

it would almost be walking away from a gospel that says we have sinned.

And God is the one who accepts us because of his sacrifice. And the other group

of people said, exactly.

That's why we're sitting on here in the back row. You know, Jesus said it,

and that settles it. I believe. I'm a sinner like you.

Just at least I'm saved. then it almost just felt a bit hollow coming off of

a field where there was so much heartache and brokenness.

When you look at poverty and whole communities and abuse and all these things

going on, and it just didn't feel like enough to say, well, if you just admit

that you're broken and accept God's love, then that'll be it, right?

That's going to fix it in these communities that said, I accepted Jesus,

but it's just still so broken. I remember having this summer where I thought

to myself, it just seems like the gospel is true, but it's thin. you.

And I heard this invitation to kind of start walking through what would it look

like to live a life of worship where we begin to come closer to following along

and walking with God, to follow in his presence.

And it was walking through this book, 2015, where I think I discovered the depth,

began to see how rich and how far and how deep and how wide is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

How it does have the power to interrupt and transform and redirect,

to reshape hearts and to reignite old passion, to put zeal in the right direction,

to confront systems that are so broken there is tyranny and abuse.

It's a story about what the gospel looks like, and I am convinced that if you

will walk this summer by that initial step, saying, I'm here,

God, and listening, maybe you're here saying, I've always wondered if there was a little bit more. I.