Letting God Shape Your Identity

Wow, how you doing crossing church?

Isn't that like an incredible song?

Absolutely incredible song. And I don't know if you know

this or not, but that's like that's a crossing song.

And I had some friends, I've had some friends here this weekend

and we were up in Macomb, shout out to Macomb.

And, and we were, of course, when Allison goes to Macomb, she

has to go to thrift store. So, so we went to the thrift

store and Hunter Escobar was in line buying something at the

thrift store. And he's the guy that wrote that

song. And I said, Hunter man, that,

that that song just gets me. And I can tell by the way you're

singing, it gets you too. That's a great, great song.

And I want to welcome all of the locations of the crossing all

across this region, 12 of them this weekend because they're

having service in Weaver, Arkansas.

Weaver, Arkansas. Yeah, no, Weaver, Iowa as well.

So that's awesome too. And if you're inside or online,

so thankful for you. We pray for you, those of you

that are inside and praying that God lets you be that light that

shines in that place for him. And if you're online, we're

really thankful for you. And if there's ever a time

you're in this space of the world, it's we're like 3 hours

wide. Come and share with us at one of

our locations. Give us an opportunity to get to

know you. We would absolutely love that.

So last week we started this new sermon series, and it's called

Decisions in the Desert, Walking with God in Trial and in

Triumph. And it's about the life and

experiences of Moses, particularly as he's leading the

nation of Israel. Moses is a person who has

extreme conflicts in understanding his identity.

I think there's a lot of us that have similar crises and

problems, understanding that they happen in the various

stages of his life. And then we get to see as we

read about him, how those conflicts affect his walk with

God. You see, what we learned last

week is that God had already provided everything that Moses

need, needed to be the person that God called him to be.

All that raw material was inside of Moses.

And by the way, all of the material that God needs for you

to be what He's called you to be is already inside of you.

You see, God would never call you to something that He hasn't

prepared you for. And God wasn't going to call

Moses to something that he hadn't already prepared him for

yet. Moses needed to submit to God

and walk in that identity, even though we had that calling from

birth and what we find out as we kind of go through life with

Moses, which is divided up into 340 year periods in this first

40 years, he was not looking for God to instruct him and counsel

him as to how to walk in that identity.

And there are like specific things that happened that divide

these 40 year periods. Moses from birth to 4040 to 8080

to 120. And last week we learned that

that first 40 years was marked by his mother and father putting

him in a basket made of reeds and putting him out on the Nile

River where he floats down and the daughter of Pharaoh finds

him and adopts him into the family.

And then we're going to see where that 40 year period ends

shortly. We actually read about it in

verse 11 of Exodus 2. So where it begins, it says one

day after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people

were and watched them at their hard labor.

I want to stop right there. Moses wasn't doing hard labor.

He was a Hebrew, but he wasn't doing hard labor.

He just went out from the palace and all the palatial area and

saw that the Hebrews were doing this hard labor.

So he went out and saw that he saw an Egyptian beating a

Hebrew, one of his own people. So he obviously knew he was and

where he came from. But of course he was living a

very privileged, privileged life, glancing this way and that

and seeing no one. He killed the Egyptian and hit

him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw

two Hebrews fighting and asked the one in the wrong.

Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?

The man said, Who made you a ruler and judge over us?

Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?

Then Moses was afraid and thought what I did must have

become known. When Pharaoh heard this, he

tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to

live in Midian. So let's just start

understanding this is that is the moment that defines the end

of this first forty year period in Moses's life.

And it's tragic. It's a horrible story.

What was Moses thinking? What was why was he doing that?

Well, the raw material of his heart that God had placed in his

heart was speaking to him. God designed him, built him,

gifted him to deliver his people, but he was not seeking

the counsel of God. He was trying to do that in his

own power. I know that a lot of people like

in Hollywood, like on film or TV, they want to depict Moses as

this great man when he was a young man.

I really don't think the Bible reflects that.

I think the Bible reflects a very different Moses, a prideful

Moses, an egotistical Moses, a self-centered Moses, a Moses

that was all about Moses. So here he is trying to

determine his own path, his own identity without the counsel of

God. And what does it make Moses into

a deliverer? No, it makes him into a

murderer, a premeditated murderer.

The Moses that we see in this biblical picture is not the

deliverer who stands in front of Pharaoh and says let my people

go. He's a man who looks this way

and that to make sure no one is looking, sneaks up on an

Egyptian from behind and murders him.

That sounds a lot more like a modern day terrorist than a

deliverer. Murders this man, buries his

body in the sand, doesn't think anybody sees him until the next

day. Does that sound like the kind of

delivered that God wants? Does that sound like the kind of

person that God designed Moses to be?

No, it was his pride that got the best of him.

And you know what? Pride is the thing that tends to

get the best of a lot of us, our personal pride and the ego that

comes from that pride. He wants to be a deliverer, but

he wanted to do it in his own strength.

He wanted to do it outside the power and the wisdom, in the

direction of God. And he ends up being a murderer.

His violence and his ambition is instantly recognized by his

fellow Hebrews as we listen to their response.

You going to kill me like he killed the other guy?

So Moses runs for his life now He's a coward.

This is a defining moment for Moses because he realized that

the identity that he was built, that was that was built for him

wasn't what he was walking in. He was, he was walking in an

identity he built for himself. And it was completely wrong.

And he lost everything except his life.

How about you? Are you here just to hear a

lesson about Moses? Or are you here to apply this to

your life? Am I here to apply it to my

life? Even though you have all the raw

material that God has already placed inside of you to fulfill

His plan for your life? Do you get in the way?

Some of you are questioning that, Maybe you weren't here

last week, but the Bible's very clear about the truth of that,

that God doesn't just have a general will for the world, He

has a very specific will for your life.

Ephesians 210 says that you're his workmanship created in

Christ Jesus unto good works. Listen that God prepared

beforehand that we should walk in them.

King David in the Old Testament said all of my days were written

in your book before one of them came to be.

Hebrews chapter 12 tells us that we are to run a race that has

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

been marked out for us. That doesn't sound like a a

general will. It sounds like a very specific

will. But the problem isn't the plan.

The problem isn't the raw material.

The problem is us. We're the ones who get in the

way. We try to do it ourselves.

Have you ever noticed that the most important prayers you can

ever pray aren't hard ones, at least to say?

They're pretty easy ones to say. But the simple prayers that are

easy to say and easy to understand, they're the hardest

ones to actually live out. Maybe if we put a lot more three

and four syllable words in them, then we won't understand them

very well. We won't live them out.

Here's a simple prayer for us to pray.

Ready. God, Get Me Out of the way.

Get Me Out of my own way. Now you may think, oh, OK, I

could pray that before you do. Understand that simple prayers

are dangerous prayers and you need to understand the

implications of a prayer like that.

Doesn't it seem that things in our lives get messed up when we

start stepping in and trying to control them?

As long as we keep our hands outside of the manipulation of

ourselves and others in the circumstances, things go pretty

good. But when we try to serve

ourselves and manipulate those things, things get worse.

That's what happened to Moses. He got in his own way and we do

the same thing. I would imagine there's a number

of people that are listening to me right now that are feeling a

lot like Moses at the beginning of this second period of his

life. You had this great idea, this

great plan. You were walking in this plan

and you were thinking, man, this is going to be great.

It's going to work out. Check out how I've got this hall

envisioned how this is going to work out.

And you were just so right and you were just so with it right

up until the wheels came off. And now you're sitting in the

the wreckage of what used to be your life.

And you're saying, what in the world has happened?

What have I done? What have how do I make this

mess? Now I'm going to tell you why

that prayer, God Get Me Out of the way is such a bold prayer.

And there's a lot of prayers that you pray and, and God hears

all of our prayers. God hears all of our prayers.

And when we say these words, God answers prayer.

That's true. What's false is God doesn't

answer all prayer the way you want him to answer prayer,

right. I think, I think that there's a

lot of prayers we pray to God and we're praying our own

agenda. And God's hearing that prayer

and he's going, yeah, that's not happening.

I think there's a lot of prayers that we pray and and God, you

know, says those immortal Southern words, bless your

heart. And you know what that really

means, right? And He's not going to answer in

the affirmative to a prayer that you're praying, that's going to

hurt you, that's going to keep you from realizing this

wonderful eternal identity that God has created for you in the

upper story. He's not going to do that.

And then you know what God will do when we have gotten in the

way, what He does with Moses and he'll do with us, He will

deconstruct your life. So you built this life.

He's going to deconstruct that life and He's going to

reconstruct your life according to his plan.

Moses has completely failed. He's become prideful and

arrogant. The deliverer has become a

coward and all that is left to do is run away and escape and

he's a complete failure. The 2nd 40 years of Moses's

life, he begins to learn from God and what is happening is

he's being deconstructed. He's living in in the mountains

of Midian. We would call it the wilderness.

And he has adopted this very humble form of life.

He's become a a shepherd. He gets married there and we

catch up with him as he's naming his son.

It says in Exodus 221, Moses agreed to stay with the man who

gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.

Zipper gave birth to a son and Moses named him Gershom, saying

I have become an alien in a foreign land.

The word Gershom in Hebrew means alien.

Moses named his son Alien. That sounds like something Elon

Musk would name one of his kids. I want you to meet my son Alien.

This is my daughter Alien. Really, I think just him naming

his child is helping you to see a little bit of Moses's

personality, a little bit of his character.

I mean, if you're a kid and you get named Alien and you go to

school, one of the kids are going to beat you up, right?

I mean, yeah. So this isn't about that child.

I mean, I mean, we name a child and we go, I'm going to name

this child Joy. Or I'm going to name this child

June. Or I'm going to make the, you

know what I mean, like this because it's June and it's

beautiful. Or, or I'm going to name you

after my mother because I love my mother so much.

Or I'm going to name you, you know, like that, right?

Something beautiful, something to live up to.

Not Alien. Because Alien wasn't about

little Gershom the boy. Alien was all about Moses

feeling sorry for himself. What a selfish thing to do.

Again, it tells you a little bit more about the personality of

Moses that God is deconstructing.

Moses is realizing that he's a failure.

He lost his status as an Egyptian.

He was part of the House of the king of Egypt.

He now he's even lost his status as a Hebrew.

He's living in a foreign country.

God is bringing him low. He's bringing him down.

He's deconstructing old Moses so that he can build a new one

through repentance and in humility.

And you hear the pain and the regret along with the pollution

in him naming his son. Maybe some of you are dealing

with the reality of decisions you've made in your past life.

And the words of Moses as he's naming his son reflects your

feeling. That's what you feel like.

I have become an alien in a foreign land.

I just don't feel like I fit in anymore.

I'm ashamed of myself. There are people sitting around

me in church today that don't know who I am, but if they did

know who I am, they would move to another section.

Everything that was important or valuable to me is all gone.

You see, sometimes God has to get down all the way to the

faulty foundations we have built our lives on.

And I'm going to give you a personal story that illustrates

this. Allison and I have lived in two

locations in Quincy for the 26 years we've lived here.

Eleven of those years we lived on S 23rd St. kind of in the

more historic district. And you can take beautiful walks

in that neighborhood. And then we've lived 15 years on

the edge of town. But when we were living in that

11 years, there was a lot about our house that really needed

some love. First of all, I'd had the siding

on the side of the house that is that, that asphalt shingle type

siding. You know what I'm talking about.

It's like really gross. And you really can't paint it

because it's like granular. Just there's really nothing you

can do except just look at it and wish it was something else.

And so I got the idea of can I put vinyl siding on it?

So me and a friend put vinyl siding on the House.

It looks so much better now. I also had a garage.

It was A2 car garage detached but it was a very small two car

garage. It was so small that trying to

put, you would have to grease the size of the car to put two

cars in that garage. And on top of that was a very

old garage and someone, I mean it was built on a concrete slab,

but someone had cut expansion joints up close to the outside

walls of this garage. And the garage was low in the on

the topography, so water kind of would pool in there.

And over the years, there'd been some erosion and those, those

expansion joints had cracked and it had kind of twisted what,

what there was of a foundation. And the fact that matter is, is

my garage was sinking kind of slowly and, and it just looked

terrible. So now I have this house, it's

got an ice siding on it. And I got this ugly garage.

So I, this is how big of an idiot I am.

OK, So just going to be honest, I thought, you know what, I'm

just going to buy some more siding and I'm going to put it

on my garage. And so that's what I did.

I sided the garage. I got to tell you, I was so

proud of how it looked because but you know, the house, the

outside of the house just looks so bad and all of a sudden it's

just completely transformed and it looks so good.

Except for I I just didn't even consider that that garage was

sinking because it had no proper foundation on A year later, all

of the siding all the way around at the bottom was buckling.

The doors wouldn't open. I brought somebody in.

What can I do? Well, there's really nothing you

can do except tear it down. So I had to bring in one of

those big rollback dumpsters, tear that entire garage down.

And you know how dumb I felt while I was tearing brand new

siding off of this old garage. And I had to tear it all the way

down until there was nothing left but a broken slab.

And then bring in a backhoe and break that up and haul it away

as well till there was nothing but the earth.

And you're going. Well, Jerry, you know, you said

you're kind of an idiot. I'm agreeing with you.

Praise the Lord. Yeah, you are kind of dumb.

That was pretty dumb. Oh yeah, I agree, but not as

dumb as some of you. I may do it with a garage, but

you've done it with your life. You know what I'm talking about?

Your life's a mess, falling apart, sinking down, and you go.

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put lipstick on

this pig. You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to side this baby. It's going to look good and

maybe it does for a little bit, but it your sins find you out,

man. It just keeps going down and I

would a whole lot rather put a garage in a dumpster than my

life. Maybe I should have the

invitation. Let's just start singing just as

I am right now, without one plea.

But that dumpster was prepared for me anyway.

You and I have very similar experiences here.

We try to build, but we build on a faulty foundation.

A foundation that we build ourselves is not a sure

foundation. In First Corinthians chapter 3,

1 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

the apostle Paul says for no one can lay any foundation other

than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.

If you're building your life on anything other than Jesus

Christ, you're building on a faulty foundation.

And if you build your life on a faulty foundation, you're going

to have to either you're going down with the ship or you're

going to have to deconstruct that life all the way down to

and through that foundation so that the foundation that Jesus

has for you can be laid. Some of us, well, all of us,

just a little while ago, we watched, you know, we were

singing that great song and there's that baptism video.

How awesome is that? Watching all these people come

to Jesus? And I've told you so many times,

do you ever see a person who comes to Jesus and regrets it on

their face? You never see that.

You just see this incredible joy, euphoria.

You know, my sins are gone. It's great.

But let me tell you, all those people that think that the

crossing's an inch deep and a mile wide and all we do is feel

good sermons, you listen to me now.

It may start out feeling good, but if you give him a chance,

God will wreck your life because he's going to look at your life

and he's going to go. That isn't going to work.

That isn't going to work, and that isn't going to work.

And piece by piece, part by part, room by room, stick by

stick, he will deconstruct you. And some of you are going to

say, wow, I thought this Christianity thing was going to

be great, but my life is terrible.

I hate this Christianity thing. Why?

Because God's taking everything in your identity that you've

constructed for yourself apart so that he can achieve his

potential for your life. All that hard work can be built

on a bad foundation, and he has to get below it and start over.

And that's exactly what he was doing with Moses from the time

he was in the wilderness, from 40 years old to 80 years old.

And I guess Moses was a pretty egotistical, proud man, because

it took 40 years to get down to the earth, piece by painful

piece. Now I want to show you a

different Moses, and this is Moses at 80.

And when Moses was eighty, he had another one of these

Seminole moments, kind of like killing the Egyptian and running

for his life, kind of like being in the basket in the Nile River

when he's 80. Has this other moment sees in

the mountains of Midian and he's tending sheep.

And he sees something off in the distance.

He doesn't know what it is, but it's in the daytime.

And yet there's something glowing on the mountain, like

something like, what is that? And he's too far away to really

get a beat on. And he gets closer.

When he gets closer, he sees that it's a it's, it's like a

tree or something growing out of the wilderness.

And it's burning, which is, I mean, he seen things burn

before. Like that's nothing new.

Maybe he was worried about maybe that would, you know, catch fire

and maybe it would spread. I don't know.

But he gets closer. As he gets closer, he realizes

this is a Bush and it's burning, but it's not being consumed.

Now that isn't possible. Well, when you see something

that doesn't make any sense to you, you have to get closer,

investigate it. You wonder about it.

He gets all the way up to this burning Bush and he hears a

voice. And I want you to know he's 80

years old when he hears this voice.

And he has never recorded in the Bible ever heard God, never seen

anything as intimate as communication with God till he's

80 years old. And what he hears God say is

this, take your sandals off Moses, because the place where

you're standing is holy ground. And Moses immediately complies.

And God begins with that statement to tell Moses what

he's going to do, what he's going to be.

And this is what Moses was made for, He was designed for, he was

gifted for. But Moses has been completely

deconstructed. You're going to lead a nation of

2 million people out of slavery into the Promised land.

And Moses reveals just how deconstructed he is.

In verse 11, Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to

Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?

What's he saying to God? In case you haven't noticed,

God, I'm a nobody. I'm worse than a nobody.

If I go there, they'll kill me. The Egyptians wanted to kill me

before. I'm not the right person to do

this. In verse 13 he says, suppose I

go to the Israelites and say to them the God of your father's

has sent me to you. And they asked me what is his

name? What do I tell him?

What that tells me is, you know, Moses didn't even know who God

was. He had no idea who God was.

And course God says you tell them I am that I am has sent you

the self existent one, the ancient of days translated in

English Jehovah or in Hebrew Yahweh.

It's called the Tetragrammaton. But he's not done.

What? What?

What if they don't believe me or listen to me and say, the Lord

did not appear to you? God gives him the sign.

Throw down your staff, Moses. In verse 10, Moses says to the

Lord, I've never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since

you've spoken to your servant. I'm slow of speech and slow of

tongue. I'm not a good public speaker.

God says Who made your mouth? And then in verse 13, the

ultimate answer for the ultimate denial, Moses said in my

vernacular, just please send somebody else.

Go, go burn a Bush someplace else in front of somebody else,

because I just don't have what it takes.

This is a man who has absolutely no confidence in himself.

And that might sound bad, but it's actually good because when

a person has no confidence in himself, where are they going to

find it? If you don't have any confidence

in yourself, where are you going to find it?

Some of you don't. Some of you right now you're

pretty broken. You're pretty torn up.

You've got a past that you've got a present and you're going,

you know, send somebody else because I just don't have what

it takes. When you don't have that

confidence in yourself, you can start looking around and find

your confidence in the right place.

I mean, look at me, how can God use somebody like me?

Look at Clayton, how in the world is God going to use

somebody like that? If we put our confidence in our

self, we try to do things in our own power.

What are you going to get from that?

But if we put our confidence in God, God will release the power

that he put inside of you when He created you, and He will make

you into the person that you want to be, not for your glory,

but for His glory. And because you you don't have

that confidence in yourself, you've replaced it with

confidence in Him. And when you have confidence in

Him and then what he does comes about, you get more confidence

in him and then more confidence and then more confidence in him.

And when people look at you, they don't see you, they see

him. I see Moses at 80 who is a clean

slate, who is a fresh canvas. He's a new beginning for God to

work with. And it only comes through two

things, repentance and humility. Some people have a really wrong

idea about repentance. You know, repent, the word

repent means to turn. I mean, that's the that's the

literal translation of the word to turn.

And of course, we attach a lot of things to it in context, like

to be sorry for what you did, you know, and to change my

direction. But it actually means the

process of turning. And the only thing that keeps

you where you are is your pride, right?

And I've said this many times about pride.

Pride can't learn anything. It already has all the answers,

but when you turn from yourself and you turn from your pride and

you repent, it creates humility. And those two things actually go

together. You can't have humility unless

you have a repentant heart, and you can't have a repentant heart

unless your heart is a humble heart.

And a lot of times our heart has to be humbled, and that's what

Moses teaches us today. I don't know where you are in

your life, but no matter where you are, God has put that raw

material in your life. And God has an identity prepared

for you. And it's going to give him

incredible glory, and it is going to fulfill your life and

make you feel a purpose that you never felt before.

But you have to be willing to pray scary prayers like Lord

God, Get Me Out of the way. And when you do, that's a

prayer. I guarantee he will answer in

the affirmative. We're moving to a time of

decision. Some of you are here and and I'm

going to and I'm going to give an invitation.

This is called a time of invitation, right?

So you you'll be able to come forward, you'll be able to make

a decision. It's time inviting you.

Well, actually the person that we're inviting is Jesus.

The truth is he's already in the room.

He said we're two or three are gathered there.

I am in the midst of them. So he's already here and he's

got business to do with you. And I don't care if you're like

me and you've been a preacher for 45 years or if you're just

brand new. This is like your first weekend.

You're like, I don't even know what to make of this.

He's got a plan for your life and he's got an agenda with you

today. And it's a good one because

God's plan is an upper story plan.

It's not one to hurt you. It's not one to defeat you.

It's one to help you to experience all of the potential

that he placed in your life from before you were born, when he

knit you together in your mother's womb.

That's what he's about. And you're saying, well, you

don't understand. You just don't understand what

I've done, what I've been through.

No, I don't, I haven't got a clue.

You don't have that clue about me.

But God knows and and you know what?

He doesn't back off one bit. It doesn't scare him one little

bit. There's going to be somebody

over there by that baptistery in a little bit and you can make a

decision. You can make a decision to

follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

You can come into an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus

Christ. You can actually do that today.

And I don't think some of us have any idea what that actually

means. Not only does that change your

eternal destiny, but there are people that aren't even born yet

that are going to be eternally changed because you made that

decision. You don't know that.

You're not that smart. Neither am I.

But God does. He knows the names of those

people. And no matter how obstinate, God

has removed all the obstacles keeping you from doing that.

This is like basin freeze tag. Nobody's chasing you.

You have a moment right now, a peaceful moment.

God stationed his angels around this building.

Nobody can get to you. And there is absolutely no

created thing in the universe that can stop you from claiming

an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ

except one thing. There's only one thing then this

whole universe that can stop you from doing it.

You know what it is you, Unless you can get out of your own way,

and I know it's hard, Get up out of a seat, walk over there.

But take a look at the distance. Is it really that far?

And how far did he come for you? What did he give up for you?

What price did he pay for you? And the person that'll meet you

over there isn't any better than you are.

They're just a person that it's just a person that there was a

day and there was a time when they went, I need to get up and

I need to walk over there. You need living water and

they're just a person who found living water and nowhere to

drink it. That's it.

We need to give up all of the pretense.

You know, I should become a Christian because I know

Christian people. I should be able to be a

Christian because my parents were Christian.

I should be a Christian person because I'm affiliated with the

church. No, there's only one person.

You know, Christianity. It's all about a person.

It's not about a process, it's about a person.

Salvation is found in Jesus, and I invite you in a moment to go

over there and talk to someone about your next steps.

If you're here and you're a believer, you are.

You're here and you're in a relationship with Jesus.

That doesn't mean that you aren't getting often times

distracted with stuff, that you're losing the fire that's

inside you, that God put in you, that you're trying to manipulate

circumstances and and it's a humbling thing to come up and

get down on your knees, but you're not getting down on your

knees in front of the worship team.

There's only one people you're about, one person that you're

bowing to, and it's the only one that can help you.

To let the burden fall off, to turn it over to him, to cry out

to him, to have the expectation that he'll build humility in you

because you're you're repenting. Maybe you're carrying somebody

else's burden. That's what these steps are for.

And I invite you to meet Jesus today, either over there, up

here. Would you stand with me?

And I want to pray a bold prayer, Father, we have high

walls, we have fortresses, we have iron gates that protect our

hearts. But ultimately, Father, we're

just kids. We're just your children that

need their Father and I pray that you will just blow apart

all of those fortresses that we hide in just so that we can

encounter you. I pray in Jesus name, Amen.