Exodus: When Our Responsibility Fails | Guest Speaker: Brad Respess

Jill and Bill Full Love are leaving us in a I guess a few weeks.

And they're they're going back four weeks, they're going back to uh the DC area where Bill's going back on staff at McLean Press.

And while we're very sad to lose Bill and his girls, we're very sad that Jill won't be reading for us anymore.

Thank you very much.

She is great at that.

I'm Brad Respus.

I'm an elder here at the church.

I've been an elder since we began the church.

And this is my last, I don't know, I've got six or seven months being an elder.

And I was thinking this might be my swan song, but Russ may get me to preach one more time before the year's out.

But I wanted to kind of let you know what we're doing and why I'm here.

Uh, and then I'll talk about Exodus.

Russ preaches and he also leads and shepherds and pastors our church day in, day out.

And prior to us even starting having public services, we said we've got to make sure that we protect Russ and the church in two ways.

And one of those is Russ needs sabbatical.

He needs some time away.

And so this summer he'll take four or five weeks where he's not preaching, and you'll have guest people like me who are not very good preaching.

But we'll come and we'll talk a little bit.

And the reason for that is for Russ to be able to get away and take the burden of having to preach every week off of his plate.

And that way he can be refreshed.

It's not just so Russ can have some long vacation and go and play and enjoy the sun.

While we do want him to do that, Sundays like then and Sundays like now are for Russ to have a chance to have a week just to rest.

And the second thing is we do not want our church to be pastor-centric.

And Russ has said that as well.

I think it's very important.

Whether we're a small church or a big church, we don't want this church to be about Russ.

It's about the Lord.

And it's a church about a community and a body of people.

And Russ is our leader.

He's done a great job as our senior pastor.

But when I come and talk, the reminder to us is this is not about the guy who's talking.

This is about the Lord and what he's doing in our community and the love he's shown us through his son Jesus.

And so that's what I'm doing today.

We've been in Exodus for a while now, and Russ even talked about Exodus last week, the same passage, this Exodus 32, 33, 34.

And if you remember last week, if you came, he talked about cell phones.

Remember that?

He said, Man, and this is me all day long.

I'll be honest, I don't go to the bathroom that I don't pull my cell phone in.

I'm reading emails or checking text messages.

And so this whole idea of impatience was very good for me last week.

I got to hear Russ's sermon on our podcast this week.

But I'm going to talk from the same passage, but look at a little different angle and think about what's happening between Moses and God and what's really going on with Moses in the story.

But to go there, I want to go back to the beginning of Moses and understand and remember his life.

If you remember Moses, he was born in Egypt.

And he was born at a time when the king of Egypt was frustrated because the Israelites were growing and they were prospering.

And so the Israelites were these Hebrews who come to Egypt when they had a famine and they were saved in Egypt.

And they did well and they prospered and they helped, I think, Egypt be stronger.

And the king of Egypt got pretty frustrated by that, and he said, Let's kill all these baby boys of the Hebrews and slow down their progression.

And so he made this edict to kill all these baby boys right at the time that Moses was born.

And you know the story.

Moses is born, his mom puts him in the basket, he floats down the river, and he's found by the daughter of the king.

And she says, Let's save him.

And she gets her servant to find a nurse to nurse him, and the nurse is Moses' mom.

You remember that story, right?

And it's almost interesting to me that when we start with just Moses' beginning of his life, you see there's something special for him.

That you think this guy's got to be somebody special.

That this is a weird, crazy story, and that he's nursed by his mom at a time when he should be dead.

Well, Moses goes on and he grows up in the house of the king of Egypt.

He grows up in Pharaoh's house 40 years later.

He's out in the fields with the workers, and he sees an Egyptian soldier being harsh on the Hebrews.

And what does he do?

I think I'm thinking, I'm putting words in his mind, but I'm thinking he's like me.

I see an issue, I see an injustice, I see a problem, and I want to jump on that problem.

And so Moses kills this Egyptian soldier.

I think he realized that was not very smart, so he buries him.

But I think in his mind he's thinking, this is the way for salvation and relief for the Hebrews.

That maybe God has put me here.

Maybe I'm special.

Maybe I was saved for a time like this when God can use me to bring salvation.

Unfortunately, when he tries to take control in his own hands, the Israelites say, I don't want it, I don't want you.

Who are you?

If I do something wrong, you'll kill me.

And the king of Egypt says, That guy Moses, I'm going to find him and I'm going to kill him.

So here, Moses, he's 40 years old, right in the prime of his life, tries to bring salvation and relief, and he's booted out.

He's kicked out.

The Israelites don't want him, the Egyptians don't want him, so he flees.

He goes to Midian.

He lives in Midian for 40 years, and that's about the time that the burning bush happens.

When God comes through the burning bush and says, All right, Moses, it's time for you to go back to Egypt, and it's time for me, not Moses, but for God to bring salvation and relief for the Israelites.

And so Moses, this time I think, in a much more humble spot, he even says, Why me?

Who am I?

I can't even speak well.

But I'll go.

And he goes back to Egypt and he goes back to the Pharaoh, and God, through all those crazy plagues and the frogs, and the locusts and all that stuff, Pharaoh finally says, All right, let's let these guys go.

And so, so God through Moses brings relief and salvation for the Israelites, and they leave.

And they go and God protects them.

You remember the Egyptians, they follow, they said, Ah, we changed our mind, we're going to come after you.

And the Red Sea parted, and the Red Sea fell back together.

God provides for them food and water and a way to live, and they and God provides them direction.

And they get to this mountain, and this is where Exodus 32 really kind of goes back about 15 chapters.

And Moses goes up on the mountain and he gets these Ten Commandments.

It's Exodus 20, it gets the Ten Commandments.

And then he's given a few other rules, and he comes back down, and he does what every good leader would do.

And you've got to think about this.

Moses had 600,000 men with him.

So this the Israelites were 600,000 men plus women and children.

And so I would assume that there are at least as many women and children as in my family.

And so there's one man, there's six people in my family.

So there's probably three million people with Moses.

Maybe there's not three million, but we have a lot of kids in my family.

But three million people are with Moses.

And he comes back down, and I'm thinking about the responsibility that's on Moses at this point in his life.

But he's a good leader.

He leads well, right?

He goes up to God himself and says, God, what do you want me to do with these people?

What's my responsibility?

How do I lead them?

How do I guide them?

What are the rules that we should have for our nation that we're building?

And God gives them some pretty clear rules.

These are rules that are as clear as if you go to the dentist and he says to you, hey, your kid, don't put them in bed at night with a sippy cup full of juice because they'll get cavities.

That's pretty straightforward, right?

And that's like, hey, have no gods before me.

That's a pretty straightforward rule.

God gave them very clear instructions in the Ten Commandments.

And then Moses doesn't just take them and put them in his head.

He comes back and he teaches the people, these are the ten, these are the rules that God has set for us.

And then Moses goes on and he builds an altar and he worships God.

And my bet is that he prayed for them.

Because he had a great responsibility.

Now I'm in business and we've got a little chicken business.

We have a bunch of employees, and there's hardly a day that goes by that I don't think about and remember that my responsibility is not just for me and an income and money that we make and to do well in business, but we've got employees who work for us.

And our responsibility, my responsibility, and sometimes it feels like a great burden, is to make sure that we provide for them.

If the business goes away, then we've got 1,500 people in their families that are looking for work.

And if we can do well and give bonuses and pay raises, then their families can do well as well.

That burden's pretty big.

As well, I come home and I think about when I get back to my house, my responsibility is not just for me and for what I'm gonna wear today or what kind of car I'm gonna drive.

My responsibility is for my four kids and how I'm gonna teach them and raise them and grow them.

We were going over to dinner in Roswell last week with some friends, and on the way back, we had about a 30-minute drive back, and I asked the mom in the car with us, there's two couples, us and another couple in the car, and I said to her, Hey, what's so hard about having four kids?

And she said, you know, I think for me probably it's the physical demand, the physical needs that they have of us.

And she looked back to me and she said, Hey, Brad, what about for you?

What's so hard for you?

And I said, Well, probably for me the hardest thing is that it's hard for Megan, my wife.

Uh I mean, our four kids are great, but they can be hard sometimes for a mom.

And then later I started thinking about that.

I think it was at night, about two hours later, I was thinking, honestly, the hardest thing is that they're my responsibility.

And one day they'll be 25 or they'll be 30 or they'll be 35, or really they'll be right now.

And what they do when they go to school and how they act, and what kind of grades they get, and what kind of friends they make, and what kind of a baseball player, or a soccer player, or a tennis player they are, that responsibility, really, I feel that burden.

And if you've got kids, you probably felt that burden, or you feel that burden now.

If you've got a workplace that you're in, if you if you run a business, or if you're just part of a small group, or you got a uh a team that you lead, you understand that burden that you have.

But I think we've got burdens across our life like that.

It's funny because we were at this middle school deal last week and we were talking about this community garden that they have in the neighborhood down the street.

And the community garden is one lot, and everybody can have a little box, and you plant your tomatoes, your cucumbers, your grapes, or not your grapes, your your uh your apple, you plant your vegetables in your garden.

You plant your vegetables in your garden, and your responsibility is to maintain your garden area.

So if you you've got weeds growing, you go and you you maintain them, and then once a summer, you go and you mow the common area.

You kind of mow the grass and make sure it's the trash is picked up.

And I was thinking, man, the burden of having to deal with my garden that's not even at my house, to walk down there and remember and to weed it and to make sure I water and I fertilize correctly.

There's so many burdens already in my life that it just feels almost overwhelming, like Moses.

And three million people that depend on him for his guidance and his leadership.

That's nothing different than the ivy that grows on your house that you're thinking about right now.

Gosh, I got to go home today and I gotta trim that ivy off that that the house.

Or you're thinking about the grass that I haven't mowed because it rained yesterday.

I gotta go home and mow the grass, or my car's gotta be washed, or my clothes have got to be folded and put away.

You're thinking there is some burden right now that's going on, and it is stressful and it's burdensome and it's overwhelming.

And I feel that, and I know that Moses felt it as well.

And what's so hard is Moses does everything perfectly right, doesn't he?

He's not going to some crazy new age guy and figuring out these are like the five things I gotta do, and I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna tell our folks you gotta try this trick or do this latest gimmick.

He's not he's not gonna bribe these people.

He goes to God himself and says, What do you want us to do?

And God gives him clear instructions, and Moses comes and teaches those instructions, and then Moses worships.

I mean, it's a very simple, straightforward, he does the right thing.

And what happens?

When he goes back up on that mountain to go back, and he goes back for 40 days, and he goes back to get more instruction from God.

More.

What do you want me to do here?

Help give us some more.

We're building this nation.

How should it look?

And he goes back, and what happens?

They failed, didn't they?

Utterly failed.

That guy was telling me about his garden.

He said, Yeah, I think it was him who was telling me this one, it might have been his neighbor, was saying, Yeah, last year I got an email from another neighbor who said, Hey, your weeds are growing into my garden.

What are you gonna do about it?

When he walked away from that garden and he doesn't go back and maintain that garden day in, day out, what happens to the garden?

The weeds grow out and they they they bring destruction for other people.

And I think about that.

As a parent, how many times have I gone and said, okay, this is scripture.

This is how God lines out my role as a parent.

I'm gonna go and I'm gonna teach to my kids.

I'm gonna pray for my kids, I'm gonna do the right things with my family, and I walk away, and all heck breaks loose when I walk away.

You've seen this before, I'm sure.

You've seen it here with my family.

Craziness.

They'll be hanging from these lights up here if you don't watch out for them.

But I've spent so many times calling older men in our church and saying, tell me, what do you do with your kids at this place?

And they say, you know what?

It keeps going.

And it keeps going.

They do it, they'll be 15, 18, 20, 22, and that failure happens again and again.

And I think about it for me at work, I go to work and I do all the right things.

I follow all the right steps, and I and I obey the Lord in every way I know how I'm not perfect, but I obey.

And it doesn't always work right.

The outcome doesn't always work.

And so this stress and the burden of all these responsibilities, we strive and we try hard.

I try try to do everything right to make sure that I'm doing my part, and yet it still fails.

And that it brings me comfort that that happened for Moses.

Here's Moses, this special kid, baby, who is saved at birth, who God speaks to in a burning bush, who God uses over and over again.

God gives him, speaks to him specific instruction, and his care fails as well.

What does Moses do?

What's his response?

There's a little bit of anger.

You see that.

There's a little frustration.

And I I've I've done that myself.

It doesn't work very well, but I've had some of that.

Moses at this point is not the kid, the 40-year-old kid, who said, Let me control this myself.

Let me kill this Egyptian guy and let me take control of the situation on my own.

Let me control where we're going.

Let me let me put this situation in my hands and make sure I'm doing all my steps correctly.

No, Moses was more like the guy at the burning bush and said, God, I'm not worthy.

I'm not able to do this.

And Moses stops and he goes back and he goes back to the Lord.

And he says, God, I can't, I can't do this.

Of course, it's my words.

But he's saying, God, I cannot do this.

There's no way that I can handle this burden or this responsibility that I have got unless you are with me.

This verse has always been one of my favorite verses.

This Exodus 33, 14.

My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.

That's how God responded to him.

Moses said, I'm not going.

I'm not going to do this unless you go with me because I cannot do it.

The burden is too great.

The responsibility is too much.

It's overwhelming to me day in, day out, to have to face.

I cannot do it.

You must go with me.

And what's God say?

I will.

My presence will go with you.

And I will give you rest.

Rest is kind of the opposite of the burden that Moses felt.

Rest is a place where we know we can trust that God's in control.

Not us, not me, not you.

Not over my house, not over my kids, not over my family, not over my career, not over my job, not over, man, are these kids I'm teaching at school, are they going to survive?

Are they going to get what I've got to teach them?

Will they pass the standardized testing this year?

In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 16, Paul says, Do you not know that you are God's temple?

1 Corinthians 3:16

And that God's Spirit dwells in you.

And this is the great thing in my mind of being a Christian.

This is such a relief to me is that there's not some far-off God who created the earth, set things into motion, and walked away.

There's a God that Moses came back to and said, I cannot do this.

And that God who said to Moses, My presence will be with you, I will give you rest.

That's the same God that for believers, for those who are Christians who call Christ their Savior, He dwells in us.

That presence dwells in us.

And the requirement and the burden and the stress and the overwhelming nature of life that's too great.

His presence goes with us, and we can give that control to him as Christians.

So I love this verse.

I love hearing Moses say that.

Here is this great leader who's done so much and who frees the Egyptians, I'm sorry, the Israelites from Egypt, the one that God uses in so many ways.

He says, I can't do it on my own.

He can't do it on my own, on his own.

He needs God's presence with him, and that's the same call to us, and that's the place that I believe we teach week in week out at Redeemer.

That we can't do it.

We can't bring our own salvation.

We can't control our life and our future.

We turn that control and that burden over to the Lord and take on his rest.

So let me pray.

And Father, I thank you so much that you are the God who protected and provided and was present with Moses.

I thank you that you give your spirit to us, that in that place of burden and in that place of stress and of work and of too much going on and too many things that are nipping at us, we turn to you, whose presence dwells in us, and we find rest.

Father, I pray that you would remind us today that your presence is with us, and in you, in you, we find rest.

Amen.