Exodus Series, Part 1 | Crushed by Slavery | Randy Garcete

Thank you, paul.

Well, good morning everyone.

It's good to see you all.

It seems like a long time since we've been here We've missed the past several Sundays and just feels right to be back here again and be worshiping with you all.

Go ahead and open your Bibles to Exodus, chapter 2.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention

So the last time I had preached we just worked our way through Exodus, chapter 1.

Exodus 1 · chapter mention

And I've decided to preach through the book of Exodus.

It seems a little bit like a daunting task for me, but it's such a wonderful, wonderful book that's just really, I guess, tells a story of the formation of God's people into a nation and into a people.

And I think one of the reasons I think Exodus is so good for us to study, to look at, to dig into, is because so much of who we understand about Christ, about Jesus, is rooted in the story of Exodus, in the story of God's people and how God revealed himself to his people.

Jesus said, after he was resurrected and he was walking on the road to Emmaus, he appeared to the two men and he says that they didn't recognize him as Jesus.

But he said he basically opened up the scriptures to them and it says, starting with Moses and the prophets.

He revealed to them who he was and says their hearts burned within them and Jesus understood Exodus and the story of Exodus as the story that pointed forward to him, as the ultimate revelation of God to his people.

So we're going to be looking at Exodus, chapter 2, this morning and I want to start off with two stories.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention

Maybe first, hearing the cry is what I've entitled the sermon this morning, and I'm sort of borrowing this from Ray Van der Linde.

I wanted to disclose that.

I think it just really encapsulates the message or the idea behind what we're going to talk about today.

In 2015 or 2016, I had the privilege of going to Southeast Asia with Igo for about four months, and one of the aspects of that was that every week we would have a night of ministry and I signed up for the evangelism team, and so every Tuesday evening we'd go out to the city of Chiang Mai and go to a place called Taipei Gate, and it's this big plaza filled with food shops, souvenir shops, and it's just teeming with people from all over the world who come as tourists.

You see trekkers and you see expats.

You see people who see old men who were sort of left over there from Vietnam, people from all over, and we would just go and start conversations with people and try to share the gospel with people who would listen to us.

One evening it was a warm summer evening, it was hot I was just walking around looking for people to talk to and I saw this old white man sitting on a bench.

He was fairly overweight.

He looked like he was in his late 60s, early 70s, and so I just asked him hey, excuse me, sir, Do you mind if I sit here?

And so I sat down and I just started asking him questions about where he's from, what's he doing in Thailand.

And over the course of that conversation I found out he was a Vietnam War veteran from the United States that after the war ended he moved to Thailand and just made Thailand his home.

He was very quiet and very sad and broke and looking man and we started talking about God and Jesus.

And I just said we're here this evening, we're just talking to people about Jesus, and towards the end of our conversation he looked at me.

He said, son, if you had experienced the hell that I saw in Vietnam, you wouldn't believe in a God either.

And it was a very sad sort of sad moment for me, seeing the brokenness that he was in the life of sin that he was chasing and the sort of final, just the brokenness that he was in.

The second story I want to share is around the same time there was another team that went to Cambodia and over the course of their time there they interacted with people who worked with human trafficking and child trafficking.

And one of the people told the team there.

They said that people come to Cambodia it was talking in context of human trafficking, of sex trafficking.

He said people come to Cambodia for the little girls and people go to Thailand for the little boys.

And that stuck with me till this day just the deep, deep darkness and brokenness that our world is in.

We live in a world that is enslaved to sin.

We live in a world that is broken.

We live in a world that is crying out for a savior and for a deliverer Rescue from their own fleshly impulses, rescue from oppression, rescue from injustice and from the slavery that Satan has enslaved the world in.

We live in a world that is crying out for a savior.

Jumping back to Exodus last time Exodus chapter 1, we saw how God brought Jacob and his family to Egypt and how.

Exodus 1 · chapter mention

Jacob's family settled in Egypt and they prospered and they multiplied and they grew exceedingly so strong that the pharaoh, the king of Egypt, became felt threatened by that growth and decided OK, so decided to enslave the people of Israel and use them as slave labor.

And that escalated to the point of him trying to kill the baby boys.

I showed this picture I don't know if that's up there.

Hope you can see the contrast there of the Nile River and how lush and green and fertile the region right around the Nile River is Compares to the wilderness, the barren wilderness, a dry desert outside of those boundaries.

And this is the land that Jacob's family came from, from this dry, barren desert into the land of Egypt and settled in this fertile, lush region.

We saw that pharaoh, like Satan, enslaved God's people to a world of tyranny.

Here's just a picture of Pharaoh holding a stick beating a slave or another person.

And this picture is what I wanted you all to take away last time that Satan has this world in the grip of his power, a world that is crying out for help, for rescue.

So that brought us all the way to the end of chapter one, where Pharaoh commanded all his people, every son born to the Hebrews must be cast into the Nile.

Basically, we need to exterminate these people.

They're going to take us over, and we come now to chapter two.

I'm going to go ahead and read this.

It's pretty lengthy, but this is basically the arrival of the Deliverer, the arrival, the birth of Moses, and so we're going to look at his birth and his early years and how God chooses to use him.

Let's read chapter two Now.

A man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman.

The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.

When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and dobbled it with bitumen and pitch.

She put the child in it and placed it among the Reeds by the riverbank, and his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him.

Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the river while her young women walked beside the river.

She saw the basket among the Reeds and sent her servant woman and she took it.

When she opened it, she saw the child and behold, the baby was crying.

She took pity on him and said this is one of the Hebrew's children.

Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?

And Pharaoh's daughter said to her Go.

So the girl went and called the child's mother and Pharaoh's daughter said to her Take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give you your wages.

So the woman took the child and nursed him.

When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son.

She named him Moses because, she said, I drew him out of the water.

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

He looked this way and that and, seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid 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.

Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flocks.

The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them and watered their flock.

When they came home to their father Ruel also insert Jethro here.

Ruel is another name for the word for the name Jethro he said how is it that you have come home so soon today?

They said, an Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and drew water for us and watered the flock.

He said to his daughters Then where is he?

Why have you left the man?

Call him that he may eat bread.

And Moses was content to dwell with the man and he gave Moses his daughter, zipporah.

She gave birth to a son and he called his name Gershom.

And he said I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.

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 Amen.

So I'm going to sort of split this chapter up into three different sections.

First one, we're going to look at Moses' birth and adoption.

Secondly, we'll look at Moses' flight to Midian and the murder of the Egyptian.

And thirdly, we're going to look at how Moses intercedes and stands up for the seven daughters of the Midianite priest.

So sort of divide the chapter up into those three parts and I'm going to basically make some comments and observations from the text and then maybe three lessons I'd like for us to take from the verses today, and then we'll end with maybe three really practical ways that we can actually apply this lesson here.

So chapter one ended with Pharaoh issuing an edict that all the sons of the Hebrews were supposed to be tossed into the Nile.

And chapter two opens up with the marriage of the Levite woman and the man, the conceived and the son he's born.

It says that she saw that he was a fine child.

She hid him three months.

I was thinking about this how that so often when we read these Old Testament stories and accounts, because we've heard them so often and because so much time has passed, we can sort of just like gloss over them and lose the almost really huge the impact of what this actually was like.

So I was thinking about it.

I have a little son, oscar.

I pick on my children a lot.

Mom, I'm going to ask you to bring him up, if you don't mind.

I want you all to imagine that.

I want you all to imagine what this was actually like for the people who were suffering under this.

So imagine, and maybe those of you who have children, two or younger, could you like just stand up, just sort of putting you on the spot.

Okay, all right, so we actually have quite a few of you.

You can be seated Now.

Imagine that President Biden issued an edict that said basically all Amish and Mennonite and maybe Anabaptists' babies need to be destroyed and we're going to kill them by putting them into the Tuscaros River.

Tossing them into Tuscaros River.

Imagine what you'd feel the fear of maybe child protective services coming to your door and taking away your little son.

And imagine the fear that you would feel, the urge to protect your baby, to hide him.

These were real moms and dads who had the same emotions as you and I.

They had the same type of deep love for their little sons and the same fear that you and I would feel they felt when Pharaoh and the Egyptians would take away their children.

So you can understand why Moses' mother would make a little basket and place her little son in the basket and hide him among the reeds of the Nile River.

I'm going to hand him off again.

Thank you, mom.

So, essentially, moses' mother takes him, puts him in a basket, hides him in the Nile River and one day Pharaoh's daughter and her attendants come walking along the river to bathe.

And I'll be honest, I don't.

This has been.

This is hard for me to understand this.

I don't get this.

Why, why trying to picture this?

Why would Pharaoh's daughter, she's royalty, why would she go down and bathe where the common people are at, where the slaves are at?

Why would she?

How was she even here?

Like, didn't she?

Didn't they have their own place to bathe in the palace or maybe a designated area?

I don't really get that.

But for whatever reason, she stumbles across this little basket with the baby Moses floating in the river.

She says there's a basket.

Her servant woman takes it, retrieves it, they open it up and she saw it was a little Hebrew boy and her heart is moved with compassion.

She probably knows what her dad has been up to.

She probably understands that this baby was meant to be killed.

And I wonder, why didn't she?

What caused her to actually have compassion on this little, on this little baby?

Why didn't, why didn't she hand him over to to the authorities?

Why doesn't she?

What made her actually keep him?

So Miriam Moses' sister sees this, runs up to her and says hey, I know somebody who can watch, watch for this, this little baby, and do you mind if, if we take, if we take him to her and she can nurse him.

So they do that and that the irony I love the irony of this is that she gives Moses to his mom to nurse him and then she tells the Pharaoh's daughter tells her, I will give you your wages.

So essentially, moses' mom gets to raise him or or feed him and get paid for it.

So it's like that's great.

They make a deal that after he grows older she will bring him back to Pharaoh's daughter and she will basically adopt him.

Now this whole, this whole section right here, this little little story is, I think is so, so ironic, in that the idea of the, of the Nile River being this place that was meant to destroy life.

Pharaoh meant to meant to kill off the Hebrew boys, and here we see that Nile actually became, became a place to keep Moses safe.

Pharaoh wants to kill the baby boys.

Instead, his daughter wants to save Moses.

And I think that the lesson I think that I want to draw from this is is lesson one is that what, what man means for evil, god turns into good.

What man means for evil, god turns into good.

Moses plan, or Pharaoh's plan, was to destroy life and through this very means of God turned the situation into good.

And I think God was in control.

And there's a truth at play here that that I think you and I understand, and and we see and and sometimes we do struggle to understand this that the difficult and impossible situations, the hard situations that you and I go through in this life, they often look insurmountable, they look dangerous, they look scary.

I think God, often God takes those very same scenarios and situations that we go through and turns them into the, into the vehicle to accomplish his purpose, into the means to accomplish his purpose, the thing that that to you and I looks just like this is a crisis, this is I don't know how we're going to we're going to overcome this or I don't know how I'm going to get through this.

God uses that very situation to accomplish his purpose.

We see that in the life of Moses.

It's almost an echo of the story of Joseph.

We saw Joseph was thrown into the well, his brother sell him into slavery, and God uses that very situation to bring him into Egyptian royalty to save his people.

What man means for evil, god turns into good.

So verse 10, when the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and she became, he became her son.

She named him Moses because she said I drew him out of the water.

And between verse 10 and verse 11 is basically a 40 year gap.

So he's a baby when, when, when, he is adopted by Pharaoh's daughter.

And verse 11, one day when Moses had grown up.

Now Exodus doesn't tell us how old Moses was when this happened, but in the book of Acts, when Stephen is recounting the story, he says when Moses was 40 years old, he went out and saw an Egyptian beating the Hebrew.

And there's this 40 year, your window, that we don't have.

We don't have much information on like between verse 10 and verse 11.

And I was really struck by this idea I had.

I've really, when I think of Moses, like when you picture Moses, how do you guys picture him through?

Maybe, yeah, just like, how do you visualize Moses?

Okay, okay, charles and Heston, the movie Ten Commandments, so yeah, in there I think they fill in the gap a little bit.

But you either.

How do you picture Moses?

Old man, okay, sorry, what's that as an Egyptian?

Okay, interesting anybody else, how do you picture Moses?

What does he look like?

Old man leading the Israelites?

I don't know.

Many of you know Robert E Miller, andy Rod, I, every time I look at you, you're like that's great.

Okay, I would echo what dad says.

I don't know this guy, but I would.

Basically, if I show up at the Mount Hope auction on a Tuesday morning or whenever they have their auctions, and I see some like 60, 70, 80 year old Amishman, that's how I picture Moses.

We either picture him as a baby in the river or as an old, white-haired, long-bearded Moses.

What's interesting and I've really, really been struck by this thought and it's that we're not told much about what Moses went through in his growing up years.

He's adopted by Pharaoh's daughter as a baby, I would assume, or as a young child, and the next time we see him he's a 40 year old, grown man.

Conrad Schrock, do you mind if I pick on you?

I'm really Okay.

You just turned 40 this year and forgive me for divulging that information.

Do you mind coming up here?

Okay, thank you.

So I think this actually would.

This helped me to understand the drastic change in Moses from the baby to the grown man and how much that shaped him.

So imagine Conrad.

Here was one of those little babies that the president had commanded you need to get rid of him, throw him into the Tuscarawas River.

But for whatever reason, one day back in 1983, ronald Reagan and his wife were touring through Amish Country and they find little baby Conrad floating in the Tuscarawas River and they take him to the White House and they adopt him or somebody from the White House.

And imagine that for the past 40 years he's been living in the White House he's been there through the presidency of Ronald Reagan, george H W Bush, bill Clinton, george W Bush, barack Obama, Trump and now Biden and imagine all the things that he was at the White House, for he was there when the Berlin Wall fell down.

He was there when the 9-11 attacks happened.

He was there when bin Laden was killed.

He's experienced all of these monumental crazy things in the world in the protection and the security and the prestige and the power of the White House.

Imagine what kind of education he got.

He probably went to the most prestigious schools.

He had connections and access to the world's most powerful leaders.

He had access to incredible wealth.

But now he's left the White House and basically we go from little baby Moses to Conrad, to Moses as a 40-year-old man in this next section.

Imagine how much that influenced him, the person that he was.

He was raised, he was taught all the wisdom of Egypt.

Stephen says in Acts you can go back to your seat.

Thank you, conrad.

And I think the thing that was interesting to me about this is that Moses' identity, I think, was that must have been confusing for him.

He knows he's this Hebrew boy or man, but yet he's the son of an Egyptian royalty.

He probably thinks like an Egyptian, he probably talks Egyptian.

And then we come out.

We see him leave, go out to his people in verse 11.

We're going to go to that section now, verses 11 through 22.

Moses comes out, he's grown up and he goes out to his people.

And this is really interesting, that it's as much as he felt like an Egyptian or must have I'm just really reading into that but as much as he must have struggled with his identity.

He goes out and it says he went out to his people.

He looked on their burdens.

He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.

I think it's really interesting that the scriptures tell us that he identified with his people, with God's people.

He was one of them.

He saw their suffering and he identified with them.

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

We could ask the question was this killing of the Egyptian, was this justified or not?

And I'm not going to focus on that today or try to figure that out today, but we can learn a lot about who Moses was as a man in this little account that he is sort of his first moment on the stage in a sense, and he's a lot of things I think we can tell from this story.

He's maybe a little rash, I think he's maybe impatient, hot-headed, I don't know if I almost think of him as Peter in the New Testament, just like he sees something and he acts, and however rash it was to kill this Egyptian in our eyes today, I think it does tell us one thing about him that Moses was not apathetic.

He was not apathetic.

He saw this man being mistreated and it moved him to action.

He saw the cry, he heard the cry of the oppressed and he acted on that.

He was moved by the injustice that he saw and I think, however God or however we think of Moses doing this, killing this Egyptian, I think God saw that this is somebody who has my heart and who I can use.

This is somebody who sees the cry of the oppressed, who hears the cry of the oppressed and is moved by it, and I think God looked at that and said that's a man I can use.

That's somebody who sees the brokenness in this world and who is not content to just sit back, turn a blind eye, go back to his Egyptian palace.

This is somebody who has my heart and who's moved to action.

I think the second lesson I want to take from this is this that God uses imperfect people who have his heart.

God uses imperfect people who have his heart.

I know many of you very, very well and I know that all of you are not perfect people.

We make mistakes, we struggle, we fail.

But I think that the beauty of this story is that God, despite all of our mistakes and our failures, god uses us if we have his heart.

God uses people who have his heart, who are moved with the heart of God when they see, when they see the brokenness of the world.

He uses imperfect people to accomplish his will in the world, people who aren't perfect but who have his heart, who aren't content to just sit back and watch a turn of blind eye to the world and his brokenness.

Right after Moses kills this, the Egyptian hides him in the sand.

He goes 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?

At this point, moses realized that what he had done was found out and that he was in danger.

And so he flees.

And he must have been so afraid that he flees, not to some hiding place in Egypt.

He flies, he flees to Midian, which is nowhere near Egypt, and he goes from going back to this picture here.

He goes from this green, lush, fertile, wealthy region of Egypt and flees out into the desert.

He gives up everything that he had the royalty, the wealth, the power, the prestige and flees for the wilderness.

Granted, it was to save his own life, but these are the things he gave up.

He basically goes from the green area to the brown area wilderness, barren, desert.

I think in a sense I had to think of this as almost a foreshadowing of Jesus, in that Jesus left the glory of heaven and came to earth for our behalf.

Philippians says that he did not count equality with God as something to be grasped for, but that he took on the form of man and gave himself for us.

Moving on to verse 16.

We see Moses flee the land of Midian.

He sits down by a well and the seven daughters of a Midianite priest come with their flocks, with their father's flocks, to give them water by the well, and they draw the water, they fill the troughs.

And we live in a world of indoor plumbing.

We just raise a little handle and water will come out hot water, cold water.

But in those days I should ask, has anybody here lived in a place where you had to actually draw your own water from a well?

Okay, quite a few of you actually.

Is that easy work?

No, okay, it's hard work, and especially if you have to draw enough water to feed your father's flocks or to give them water too, in the desert.

And these seven daughters we see them.

They fill the troughs a lot of hard work.

And these shepherds come, drive them away.

You just think of them as just like it just takes you off.

They're just cruel.

They drive them away.

Not only do they drive away these seven daughters, but they steal the hard-earned water.

They let the daughters basically fill the troughs and then they drove them away and let their own herds have it.

And Moses sees this.

He says he stood up and saved them and watered their flock.

I love if you can actually just picture him.

It says they thought he was an Egyptian.

He was an Egyptian, far away from home, at this little desert well, and he stands up, he saves them, he drives the shepherds away and then says he watered their flock.

To me that's amazing that this Egyptian man, who was used to having everything probably catered to him, was humbled himself and basically did servants work, slaves work, drawing water from the well to feed a flock of sheep.

And we see his heart was moved with compassion for these seven daughters.

He was under no obligation at all to do this.

He could have told him hey, come back, I chased the shepherds away.

You guys can water your flocks now.

He actually went the second mile, drew the water and watered their flocks.

And you see, in this, like Moses' heart that is moved by injustice, that is moved by the brokenness and just the sin of other people and how it affects people, and Moses was just moved by that.

I think this is another little glimpse into like why God chooses him later on to lead his people out, so somebody with God's heart.

And that little story there ends with Moses meeting their family and marrying one of Jethro's daughters, zipporah.

She gave birth to a son and he called his name Gershom.

For he said I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.

Moses here is experiencing what it's like to be a foreigner.

He's experiencing what it's like to be somebody on the outside.

And we come to the three I think three of my, like my favorite verses in the Old Testament.

It's just such a powerful, powerful account here.

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.

I think these are some of the most dynamic and powerful words in the Old Testament and it's almost like I almost read this, like it's almost like a soundtrack of a movie where it's like like for half or three, fourths of the movie, you see the bad guys getting away with whatever they're getting away with and you see the victim struggling under that.

And all of a sudden, like maybe a little bit before the movie ends, you hear the sound of music change and it's like the hero is on his way, Like the bad guys have gotten away with it too long and now is time for justice to happen.

And you hear it in the music or whatever.

It changes and it's almost like things start heating up and you see that here with God, like he heard their groaning, he remembered his covenant, god saw the people of Israel and God knew, and we're going to end with that in chapter two.

It's almost like a cliffhanger and you know that things are going to change.

The enslavement of God's people in chapter one, chapter two, like you know, that's not going to last, because God sees that and he's going to act.

That's.

The third lesson I'd like to take away from this is that when God hears the cry, he responds.

When God hears the cry, he responds.

We live in a world that is so broken and filled with sin and in a lot of ways it feels like we're still in Egypt under Pharaoh's tyranny.

But we know that that cry is going up to God and that God sees it and he knows and he will respond.

He will respond and he will rescue this world and he ultimately has rescued this world through the death and resurrection of Jesus and that's ultimately what happened on the cross and at the resurrection that Jesus ultimately defeated Satan and is through him, through Jesus, that you and I can be saved from the brokenness and the sin of this world.

So God hears a cry, he responds and he looks for people that he can use as his hands and feet in this world to continue working that out.

In the world today.

We saw that Moses.

He used Moses.

Moses had his heart and he used Moses and he wants to use you and I today to hear the cry of the poor.

Now, a question, I think, for us today, for you today, is do you see the brokenness and hear the cry of the oppressed in the world today and does it move you to action, like it did Moses, or are you just content to stay in the security and comfort of your palace and turn a blind eye?

I think God looks for people who are moved by the cry of sin and brokenness in the world today.

So I want to end with maybe three ways to hear the cry, and I'll be honest, these three are ones that I've struggled with, so I don't come to you from a place of like, hey, I figured it out and just do what I did.

So this is an ongoing struggle for me Because of where we live, we're often so isolated from a lot of the brokenness in our world today.

And I think three ways that we can really gain God's heart or have his heart to hear the cry of the poor and the oppressed and the broken world is number one expose yourself to the cry.

Number one expose yourself to the cry Like Moses.

Sometimes it actually takes us stepping out of our palace to see the brokenness around us.

And I think of a couple of things that are super helpful for some of you young people.

I know that you guys went up to New York City a couple of weeks ago and I don't know what all you guys did there, but I know the focus was just missions, evangelism and interacting with the broken world.

I think exposing ourselves to the cry is a powerful thing.

Short-term mission strips I think they get a better app sometimes, but I think what God can work through in our own lives through that, going to another country for a week or two and seeing the plight of the poor, of the refugee, of the effects of sin in our world is powerful.

I think another thing that can be helpful is just inviting missionaries to give presentations at our church.

I think that's a great way for us to expose ourselves to the need and the cry of the poor and the brokenness around us, seeing what God is doing.

I think God can use that exposure to really spark a passion in us, I think.

Secondly, focus on one thing.

So I was looking at the news yesterday and you just scroll down the news articles and it's just like there's a term actually called for.

I think it's crisis fatigue, where we're so bombarded with so many big global problems that we just like, okay, what's the point?

I feel hopeless, I feel overwhelmed, I can't even do anything about this, and so the temptation for this is the one I struggle with is to be like I'm just going to take care of my own little family and the rest of the world.

Like that's the temptation is to be.

It's like such a big problem in the world, such a mess, I can't do anything.

It's hopeless.

But I think if we can all just focus on one thing right around you in your own little neck of the woods, I think can be really, really a way to start and to fight back that apathy.

I think of the Dover Moms group.

I know some of you ladies here at church do some training and mentoring with young single moms.

I think that's a great thing, to just focus on that.

You maybe can't solve world hunger, but you're changing.

You're hearing the cry of the brokenness of our world and doing something about it by that, finding your neighbors for a meal or interacting with your neighbors who aren't Christians and just befriending them, getting to know them and really pouring yourself into them.

The other thing is just mentoring young people or think of a lot of you businessmen.

Business is an incredibly powerful and useful tool to effect this type of change.

Young people who aren't Christians focus on one thing and be faithful in that.

And lastly, find others who hear the cry.

Find others who hear the cry.

Doing this type of thing by yourself is really exhausting and you can burn out very quickly.

But I think if you find others who have the same passion as you do for missions or for whatever it is, finding somebody else who you can do that with is a way of hearing the cry of the broken people in our world and responding to that and living that out.

How God did?

I'm going to close with one more story, I think, of a man I never met, but is somebody that I wish I could have met, and that is my wife's grandpa, raymond Barkman.

I think several of you know him, and he was a man, I think, who was moved, like Moses, by the cry of the lost as he was getting older.

I don't know if he was in his 70s, he was traveling and he met a young girl or a young lady she was maybe in her 20s, from Japan, and he started, struck up a conversation with her and over the course of his conversation he was sharing the gospel with her and talking to her about Jesus.

And she had no idea who Jesus was.

It was like you don't know who Jesus is.

He said no.

It was like you've never heard the word Jesus, no, not even as a swear word or a curse word.

It's like no.

This so moved him.

He came back home after his wife had passed away and he was asking his family, like saying I want to go to Japan to tell the people of Japan about Jesus.

And there's like, dad, you're too old, it's time to slow down and rest.

And he plead with his grandchildren would one of you, if I can't go, would one of you go to Japan to tell these people about Jesus?

And this was somebody who heard the cry of the lost and was moved with compassion, with a passion that I really aspire to have.

That I think that's what we see in the life of Moses, and God uses people like that.

All right, let's have a word of prayer and I'm going to turn the time over to Brother Paul.

Heavenly Father, we come before you in Jesus' name.

We thank you for this day and just for the blessing of being together as God's people.

Lord, I pray that you would just go with us today, keep us in your care, and, lord, I pray that you would ignite in us a passion to see you bring about change in the world around us.

I pray that you would give us hearts that are not apathetic or that are you give us hearts that are moved when we see the brokenness around us, and that we would long to see your kingdom grow and make a difference in the world around us.

We commit this day into your hands.

In Jesus' name, I pray.