God Hears Our Cries and Sends Our Savior // Noah Schutte

It's like it's situated.

We're gonna stand as we read the Word of God together.

I'm teaching on three chapters today, but I'm not gonna make you guys stand for all of that because I would be exhausted by the end of it.

So we're gonna read from Exodus 3, verse 7 through 8.

Exodus 3:7–8

It says, Then the Lord said, 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 have 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.

Jesus, we just pray that your word would bring life this morning, that we would receive it and apply it.

God, I pray for open hearts, good soil that your word can be planted in.

And God, I pray that no word would be spoken from my mouth that is not from you, and no word would be heard that is not from you, Lord.

May you get the glory this morning, Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

You can be seated.

Good morning, 614 Church.

Good morning.

Oh, wow.

I didn't even have to ask for you guys to say it.

Um my name is Noah Shooty.

My wife, Abby, and I serve on the eldership team here at 614 Church, and we can truly say that this place is home.

It is an honor to worship here.

It is an honor to raise our daughter, Asa, here.

Um I can't get on stage without showing a cute picture.

So here's Abby and Asa at the zoo.

This is, she's obsessed with the zoo.

It's all she talks about.

Asa, that is, not Abby.

Um sorry, that was confusing.

Um, and if you're worried that's not a real rhino, that's a statue.

So it's very safe, but love them.

Um but yeah, who who's been enjoying this Old Testament series?

I've been absolutely loving it.

It's so good.

So good.

And I I love it because it's not like we're learning new theology, right?

It's each story we're seeing a consistency with the New Testament.

Where in the New Testament we see these amazing letters from Paul, these stories of Christ with this rich theology.

And then we go to the Old Testament, we see these incredible stories where the same things are being taught.

And the book of Exodus, where we find ourselves today, is actually my favorite book in the Bible.

It's amazing.

It's this central salvation story of the Bible.

It introduces so many themes that are going to get fleshed out throughout the rest of Scripture.

But it also is calling back to Genesis, where the beginnings of everything that was foundational.

And so here we find ourselves just after Genesis.

We studied two weeks ago Joseph, who was the son of Jacob, who got kicked out of the family by his brothers, sold into slavery in Egypt, and through God's miraculous power and Joseph's obedience, he ends up saving his brothers and the entire nation of Egypt in the process.

And so that's where we find ourselves in the book of Exodus.

Are there any uh Stranger Things fans in the room?

Anyone like that show?

It's a good show, solid show.

Um, if you're watching it now, just plug your ears, because you know, maybe a slight spoiler, not really.

Um, but Abby and I loved Stranger Things, and when the final season was coming out, we were like obsessed.

Like as soon as it came out, we were watching it, and every every episode, right after we would finish, we would go watch like YouTube videos to try and break down all the little hints and the clues that were coming.

Uh I would just kind of watch that, but but Abby went full conspiracy theorist.

Like all she was watching was these theories to try and predict the ending to this show, right?

And it was like the most minute details were gonna like blow up and be this incredible ending.

And the show ended and like none of it came to pass.

Like, literally none of it.

It was like just kind of a you know, an ending to a show, right?

And she was so disappointed.

But the conspiracies continued even after the show ended.

She was convinced they were gonna drop another episode after the finale because of how sure these things meant something that they never ended up meaning anything.

Um, but I want you to tell you guys like that's not how the Bible is, right?

You can read this text as deep as you can, and there is still deeper truths to be found.

Everything means something, and nothing means nothing.

The each word is this incredible story that God has woven together.

So I hope that I can whet your appetite a little bit today.

That I can give you the spark notes, give you a little bit of that YouTube breakdown for this story, but I hope you actually go watch the movie yourself.

That you go read these scriptures and understand the depth of what God is trying to teach us here.

All right, my main point for the day.

I'm giving it away.

It's this God hears our cries and he sends our Savior.

We're gonna learn from Israel's experience in Egypt.

It shows how God sees our affliction and it is working for our good even when we can't see it.

And we're gonna learn from the life of Moses.

He serves two purposes.

First, he's an example for us to follow as we step into the call of God on our lives.

And secondly, he's a foreshadowing of the true and better Savior, Jesus Christ.

Alright.

Number one, we find ourselves in Egypt.

Egypt.

There's this incredible relationship between the nation of Israel and Egypt at the start, because Joseph saved them both.

So they are collaborating, they're in total unity, and we see the nation of Israel is expanding.

They're they're multiplying just as God intended.

But then we get to verse 8, and everything changes.

And as I was practicing this, um, I'm a lead, I'm reading a lot of scripture today.

I was like dying.

My voice was going, so I got my boy Ryder who's gonna read the scriptures today.

So he's just helping me out.

Give it up for Ryder.

Thank you, man.

You're saving my life up here.

So Exodus 1, 8 through 14, take it away.

Alrighty.

Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph, and he said to his people, Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.

Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.

Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens.

They built for Pharaoh sore cities, Abithum and Ramses.

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread abroad.

And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.

So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves, and made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field.

In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

Thanks, Ryder.

So here in these scriptures we see that Egypt is established as being symbolic of sin.

So anytime through the rest of the Bible you see Egypt mentioned, think that that is they're an embodiment of sin in our life.

We see a new king, a new Pharaoh comes to power and doesn't remember the blessing of J of Joseph on his country.

He doesn't remember that this nation literally saved his nation.

And this is the essence of sin.

We forget the blessings of our past and choose to live in our own way.

Adam and Eve forget the blessing of God, that they had everything they needed from God, and so they sin in the garden.

And this is the human condition, that we forget the faithfulness of God and choose to go another way.

We see that Pharaoh has contempt for God's people.

He fears that they will rise up and be a threat to his own nation.

And this kind of establishes Pharaoh as the embodiment of Satan in the story, who has utter contempt for God's people, who wants to see them destroyed and wants to see God's kingdom destroyed.

So out of this disdain, Pharaoh oppresses God's people.

He enslaves them.

He forces them to do hard labor, just as sin oppresses us in our lives.

He forces them to build cities that are not their own.

They're just Egyptian cities that they have to build.

So they won't enjoy them.

And this is just as sin forces us to do things that we don't enjoy.

They won't last.

They're things that will fall apart.

And he gives this, the author gives this callback to the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 by saying that they were forced to build with mortar and bricks.

So they're forced to build things that do not honor God.

And then finally we see a callback to Genesis 3, where they're forced to toil in the fields, this thorns and thistles of Genesis 3.

So we see that sin and the Pharaoh, they're seeking to reduce us to simply potential for their nation, rather than have us having freedom to serve God's kingdom, to serve in the nation of God.

It goes on even further in verse 22, and it says, Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, every son that is born of the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.

So Pharaoh's disdain does not just stop at oppression and slavery, it goes all the way, all the way to death, just as sin ultimately leads to a physical and a spiritual death in our lives.

So we see Pharaoh tries to recreate the flood of Genesis 6.

He tries to cast all the baby boys into the water to see them destroyed.

And this shows us that this the symbolism of water that we've already established but is continuing is water equals death in the symbolic sense that he's trying to recreate this.

And so we see that that sin is not just the bad things we do in our life, right?

It's not just something that we bring upon ourselves, it is also something that we are subjected to.

It is a state that we are born into and need liberated from.

It forces us hard labor for things that won't last and ultimately leads to our death.

So the the Israelites are in pretty rough shape.

This is this is not a good time.

We're gonna get to some good times, but right now is rough.

Now we get Moses is born, and I would I would point you back to last week's sermon.

David really broke down the faithfulness of Moses' mom, this incredible feminine hero who truly cares and shows compassion to this little baby boy and sees him saved through it.

Um but I don't I don't have time to break that down.

So we're going to start.

Moses has been saved as a baby and he's grown up as an Egyptian.

So as a prince in Egypt, he would have received education and training to be a leader.

And so we find Moses now, he's a prince in Egypt, a full-grown man.

He's about 40 years old.

We pick up in Exodus 2, verse 11 through 15.

Exodus 2:11–15

One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.

He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand.

When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together.

And he said to the man in the wrong, Why do you strike your companion?

He answered, Who made you a prince and a judge over us?

Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?

Then Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known.

When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses.

But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

Alright.

So we meet Moses as an adult, and the first thing that's very clear about this guy is he already has this call in his heart to set the people of God free.

He doesn't need to be convinced of it.

He's willing to murder someone just to try and set one Israelite free.

And you're you're probably asking, why is Moses so connected to the Israelites?

If he grew up as an Egyptian, and in in Hebrews 11, um it says this.

It says, in verse 23, it says, By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater than the wealth than greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

So Moses chooses God over riches.

He chooses to be faithful to the people of God than the empire of Egypt.

But he goes about it in the wrong way at first.

He goes about it by using his own strength.

So we see he has the heart to free people from oppression, but he tries to do it like an Egyptian by inserting his own force, his own power, his own will, and it ends up that nobody wants to follow him.

You see that he comes in the next day and someone says, Who appointed you a prince over us?

He doesn't have the right authority to be ready to leave, to lead God's people.

And this reminds me when I was leading a high school ministry when I was in college, and I had such a heart to see these high schoolers meet Jesus, to see their lives change.

They had so many sin patterns they were wrapped up in.

And I remember all summer I was cutting grass with them and doing mulch to try and raise money for them to go on this camp trip.

And I was so tired.

I was so burnt out, and I was like, okay, if we can just get there, it's gonna be incredible.

They're all gonna meet Jesus, it's gonna be amazing.

And I remember the the first night we were there, one of the guys brought a um uh we'll call it a substance um that he should not have brought uh to a to a Christian camp.

And one of the guys had already been calling his mom to come pick him up, even though it was like seven hours away, to he wanted to leave, and nobody was listening to me, no one wanted anything to do with the program or with anything I had to say, and I was just crushed because I had given it my all and it it nothing was working.

Nothing, I I felt like Moses here, where I gave it my best shot and no one wanted to follow me.

And I'm sure everyone in the room has has been there where you feel like God's put something on your heart, but and you give it your all and it just goes nowhere.

There's it just leads to this burnout and this desperation for more strength in your life.

You feel like, Lord, I can't do this on my own.

We're gonna get to the answer to this problem.

In Exodus 2, 15 through 21, we we see Moses gets exiled out into the wilderness because he he murdered an Egyptian, so Pharaoh's upset with him.

And while he's out in the wilderness, he he finds himself a wife by feeding some camels.

So, fellas, you know.

You see some camels, you know, you know what to do.

And ladies, if you have any camels, keep an eye out, keep an eye out.

Um yeah, all right, writer.

Exodus 2, 23 through 25, please.

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.

Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

God saw the people of Israel, and God knew.

And God knew.

Amen.

So we see God now claiming that all this time I've seen your affliction, I've seen your oppression.

But if you go back and you actually read this, these two chapters, I would encourage you to do after, God is only mentioned twice.

The the Hebrew midwives are said to have feared God, and then God blesses them.

Other than that, God is totally absent from the story.

It's just simply like a history book of what happened to this nation.

It's been 400 years at this point.

So you could easily ask the question: God, if you heard their cries, why did you let them sit in slavery for 400 years?

God, if you remembered your covenant, why'd you let the little baby boys drown in the Nile?

And these are fair questions.

And I'm sure you ask similar questions of the broken things in your life all the time.

God, where are you?

Do you hear me?

Do you see me?

And these are fair questions, but I want to question this question to was really God absent in this story?

Pharaoh tries three things to kind of oppress and destroy the Israelites.

The first thing he did was he tried to enslave them.

And if you go back to chapter one, you see that when he enslaves them, the Bible says that they just multiplied even more.

They grew even more when he tried to enslave them.

So that didn't work.

He tries to kill the baby boys and he succeeds in some, but him doing this also leads to Moses being raised up as an Egyptian and receiving this training and equipping to one day become the man who leads the people out of Egypt.

And then finally, the Pharaoh tries to kill Moses, the man who is equipped to do the work, and it sends him out into the wilderness.

So you can imagine Pharaoh's like, all right, got rid of the threat, right?

But actually, that's just what Moses needed, as we're gonna see.

He needed to go to the wilderness because he needed to encounter God.

And so it's not like the things that Pharaoh did just went slightly wrong.

They were actually the catalyst for God to do the work, for God to save the people, to bring them out of Egypt.

And so, whatever you are experiencing in your life, the weight of sin, the oppression that it can be on your life, I want you to know that God sees it, he hears it, and he is working all things for your good.

It does not mean what you are experiencing is good, but it means that God is with you, turning it for good in the end.

So while I was preparing this sermon, I uh I just put it it was on my heart that people feel abandoned by God, oppressed by the sin in their life.

And I want you to know that he sees your pain, he hears your cries, and he wants you to know that the Savior has come and is coming still.

My uh little girl Asa, she's she's getting to the age where she can kind of understand that she can do certain things to get what she wants.

So one of them is at night, she'll just cry.

There's nothing wrong, there's she's totally fine, but she just cries out for her mama or her dada.

And, you know, you can imagine in this moment she feels like she's all alone.

Like we're not hearing her, we're not listening to her, we're not available to her.

But then you go one room over, and Abby and I are on the baby monitor, like six inches away, watching her, being like, oh my gosh, this is so hard.

We just want to go in there.

But we know it's best for her.

We know that she needs to learn and grow.

Um so even though she feels totally alone, she is not at all.

We are right there with her, and it's the same with the Lord.

Now we get to the wilderness where Moses encounters God.

We were gonna read um chapter one through six, but at this point, Moses has been in the wilderness for 40 years, so this is not like a quick thing, he's been here a while.

All right, take it away.

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, 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 while the bush is not burned.

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

Moses, Moses.

And he said, Here I am.

Then he said, Do not come near, or 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.

Amazing.

So we see here Moses encounter the manifest presence of God in the form of a fiery bush.

And from now on in Scripture, you're going to see that fire symbolizes God's presence.

Fire is beautiful, it brings life, but it also consumes anything that is not worthy.

And so from this story, we're going to learn the three keys to encounter.

The first is ruined.

Since meeting Moses, he's gone from a prince in Egypt to now a shepherd in the wilderness for 40 years.

Quite the drop-off.

He's been at this a long time, and he finds himself on Mount Horeb.

And Horeb means desolation or dryness.

He's not in a good spot.

And this might seem like the last place you would want to find yourself in the entire world, but it's the perfect place for you to encounter God because it's where you will finally be desperate for him.

Secondly, we must be responsive.

Moses sees the burning bush and decides to turn and go see it.

He's amazed that the bush is burning yet not consumed.

And so it's this depiction of God's presence being in the world in a way that we can interact with.

Because just like fire usually burns up whatever it touches, so is the same with God's presence.

So the fact that Moses can come near is enticing to him, and he goes to see.

We see that when Moses investigates this sign from God is when God calls to him.

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

So it's not just when Moses is walking along doing his own thing, it's when Moses takes a step of responding.

And then when he responds, God calls.

And Moses says, Here I am.

Moses makes himself available for God.

The final thing that's important to encounter is reverence.

We must be reverent.

When Moses finds himself in God's presence, he chooses to abide by God's rules.

This is key to remaining in God's presence.

Moses stops and takes off his shoes and doesn't come any closer out of because he acknowledges that the space that I'm in right now is not like the space I was just in, because God's presence is here.

It's just like when you go into someone's house and you take off your shoes to honor their space and their authority in that space.

This is God's house where Moses finds himself.

So he he honors God's rules as holy ground.

And so my question for us today is: are you ready to encounter God?

Do you recognize that you are totally ruined without him?

That on your own strength you have nothing to offer?

Maybe you've been led here by life circumstances that have just beaten you down and you're feeling the oppression of sin in your life, or maybe God's just given you the revelation that you are ruined without him.

That's the much preferred method to getting to this space.

And secondly, are you going to respond when God calls to you?

Or are you going to just continue on satisfied in the dryness?

I think this story is so interesting because you're kind of like, of course, if I saw a burning bush, I would go.

I would respond.

But I've been asking myself, would I?

I go on walks a lot, and a lot of times I'm so buried in my phone and listening to something and dealing with the kid and talking to Abby that I think I might walk right by a bush that was on fire, not even notice.

And so my my question is: are you so distracted, even in this room right now, that if God wanted to call you, if he was giving you a sign that you would miss it?

And my prayer is that that would not be the case.

That when God calls, we are responsive and we make ourselves available.

And lastly, are you reverent of the glory of God in such a way that you will respond based on how he wants you to.

Not based on your comfort level or your experience or what I say or what Kathy says, but based on him.

Because maybe he wants you to do something uncomfortable.

Maybe he wants you to take off your shoes.

I'm not going to tell you to take off your shoes, but if God did, would you?

Maybe he wants you to come up for prayer.

Maybe he wants you to sing a little louder or lift your hands.

I'm not going to tell you to do that stuff, but is he?

There's rules to encountering God, and it's having reverence for him that what he says goes.

So Moses fulfills these requirements, and he's encountering God, and this is what God says to him in Exodus 3, 7 to 10.

Then the Lord said, 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 suffering, and I have 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, of 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 oppress them.

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

So after all this time, God responds that he's seen it and that he's coming to set the people free.

And this is where you would expect God's gonna send a couple lightning bolts and blow up Pharaoh's king uh castle, or maybe he's just gonna go Thanos style and snap them out of existence.

But his actual plan is not those things, it's uh it's Moses.

Moses is his plan.

The murderous shepherd lost in the wilderness for 40 years.

That's his plan.

And this is totally consistent with the pattern of Scripture.

God chooses broken and sinful people to set his people free.

So if you're here today and you you know the Lord, you've been walking with him, God has heard your cries and set you free, and now he wants you to be the answer for someone else.

It carries on in verse 11.

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

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 on this mountain.

Then Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name?

What shall I say to them?

God said to Moses, I am who I am.

And he said, Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.

So we see here, Moses asks the only logical question in this scenario.

Who am I?

It's the only logical question that when God comes to you and says, I want to do something with your life for my kingdom, you would ask, Who am I to plant a church?

Who am I to lead a life group or shepherd people?

Who am I to share the gospel with somebody?

These are proper questions because they're so much bigger than we can do on our own strength.

But God comes and he assures Moses with two things: his presence and his name.

He assures Moses that he will be with him, that he's not going to be alone, that the presence of God will go with him.

And then he gives his name, I am that I am.

And that might be a little bit confusing to us, but it it points to the power of God.

He is unhe's unreliant on anything else to establish who he is.

He is Almighty God, pre-existent from anything else.

He doesn't need to use anything else to describe himself.

He is.

He is, and he is.

You can imagine this giving confidence to Moses.

I'm imagining if I came to basically anybody in this room and said, hey, I need you to sub on a high school varsity basketball team today.

Most people in the room would be like, heck no, I'm gonna embarrass myself out there.

I would too.

I'd I'd I'd start off a little bit well, and then the hammy would go about the second quarter.

Um but now imagine that instead of me coming to you, LeBron James came and said, Hey, I need a fifth for my high school basketball team, and I'm playing.

Prime LeBron.

You could just sit there and watch, right?

He's not 41 like he is now, right?

He's gonna have like 70 points in a million blocks, and you can just stand there and watch.

What an experience, right?

Who's coming with you and who they are matters a lot, right?

And so God comes to Moses and says, I will be with you.

I am who I am.

So now Moses is ready to lead God's people.

But what's changed?

One encounter with God.

On his own, Moses killed one Egyptian, nobody followed him, and he had to flee to the wilderness.

With God's presence, Moses will see the entire army of Egypt perish.

He will lead the entire nation, and he will bring them into the promised land.

This was my story that that first night at that camp where I was so burnt out on my own, crying out to the Lord, Lord, I can't do this on my own.

I need your spirit.

And in that moment, everything changed.

I learned what it says in Zechariah 4, 6 to be totally true, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.

The worship team can go ahead and come on up.

We see in these scriptures that the early life of Moses teaches us a roadmap of God's redemptive plan for each of us.

We start as these helpless babies subject to sin and death.

God hears our cries and saves us just as Moses is saved through the Nile.

God places a call on our life to push his kingdom forward, and we have to realize that on our own, this call is too big for us to accomplish.

And finally, we encounter God in the wilderness, and we are equipped to walk out the call on our life.

Now, Moses is an incredible example for us to follow, right?

But we're kidding ourselves if we think we are primarily Moses in this story.

We are not Moses in this story.

We are the Israelites, helpless, oppressed, subject to death, in desperate need of a savior.

We are the ones who need God to hear our cries and send our Savior, not from the Egyptians, but from sin and death.

And we see in Deuteronomy 18, Moses says this: The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers.

It is to him you shall listen.

Moses promises that another prophet would come from Israel that would be like him.

Not that he would just be similar to him and a little bit worse, but that he would be the true and better Moses.

The one Moses is pointing to, and the good news I get to share today is that prophet has come.

A little over 2,000 years ago, there was another prophet who was the king tried to kill him when he was a little baby.

There was this prophet, just like Moses was truly an Israelite but was raised as an Egyptian.

This prophet was raised as a human but was truly divine.

And just as Moses went 40 years in the wilderness to encounter the Spirit to free God's people, this prophet spent 40 days in the wilderness to be equipped by the Spirit to save all people.

If you haven't guessed it by now, this prophet's name is Jesus.

And he's heard your cries and he's come to set you free if you would let him.

With his life and his death and his resurrection, you can be set free from the sin in your life.

If you're here today and you have not placed your faith in Christ, all this trying to be like Moses, you have to start with Jesus.

You have to start by accepting him as your Lord and your Savior.

So if I could ask us all to close our eyes.

If you're here today and you want to place your faith in Jesus for the first time and say, Lord, you've heard my cries.

I want you to set me free.

Could you just slip up your hand and I would love to pray with you?

Not to join this church.

Thank you, ma'am.

Not to join this church, but to respond to Jesus.

Say, Lord, I'm desperate for you.

Can we pray this together, Church?

Say, dear Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God.

I believe that you have heard my cries and that you have come to save me.

I submit my life to you.

And I want to follow you forever.

Amen.

Amen.

If you prayed that prayer for the first time, I want you to know that all of heaven rejoices for you.

We would love to pray with you.

We would love to point you to some next steps in your walk with Christ.

But for everybody else, can we stand to our feet?

I want to invite the ministry team to come forward.

Apologies that we're running a few minutes long, but I believe there is a response for us here today.

For two types of people.

Firstly, people who feel abandoned by God.

You feel like he is deaf and blind to the circumstances in your life.

He has come to meet you.

He has sent a Savior and He wants to show you just how with you He has been.

And secondly, to people who feel burnt out from trying to do it on your own, are you ready to encounter Him?

Are you finally willing to say, Lord, I am ruined without you?

I have nothing to offer on my own strength.

I need you, Lord.

Are you going to respond if He makes his presence available to you in this time of worship?

Or are you okay to just kind of carry on doing your own thing?

And finally, church, can we please be reverent of the glory and honor of the Lord?

To respond to him, how he wants to be responded to.

Not how we're comfortable in responding to him.

He's the king.

So I'm going to have the team lead us in worship and the prayer ministry team's up, and that's one way for us to respond is coming to get prayer.

But another way is if the Lord is asking you to just get out of your seat and encounter him, to metaphorically take off your shoes and be in his presence, to acknowledge that his presence is here.

I would invite you to do that.