string(7) "m-66998" Burnt Hickory Baptist Church

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Aug 01, 2021

A Desire To Follow

A Desire To Follow

Passage: Exodus 3:1-12

Speaker: Matt Petty

Series: Ignite

Category: Sunday Sermons

Keywords: sermon, repent, ignite, repentance, follow jesus, exodus 3, follow god, how to be saved, experience god, moses and the burning bush, burning bush story, why is god holy, what does repent mean, desire to follow, how to follow god, salvation from sin, how to experience god, burning bush experience

We begin our new sermon series called Ignite by exploring places where we see fire in scripture. Fire can represent many things, and this week, we are looking in Exodus 3 where Moses encountered the burning bush, a tree literally engulfed in flames, but not ever burning up. Just as God physically spoke to Moses through that burning bush, we can learn that while God's presence is personal, His holiness deserves our undivided worship. We are also reminded in that fire that God’s timing is not our timing, and as we hone our patience, we should not grow weary waiting on God because our desire to follow Him should be what’s ignited in us as we grow as Christians. The question for you is, are you positioned in your everyday rhythms of life to experience God? He is patient with us, not wanting us to perish, but to come to repentance. Take time to pray this week that God will ignite in you a desire to follow Him. Do you have questions about who Jesus is, or why salvation from sin is so important? Then feel free to reach out, we’d love to answer any questions and pray with you – burnthickory.com/next

Well, good morning church. Before we jump into today's message, we recognize that this is one of the biggest, most exciting and depressing weekends of the whole summer. But we do want to just take a minute today, and we want to pray over some specific people, we want to lift up some specific people in our community. And that is all of the people who do have a part in either educating or keeping our students in line, whichever way that might be. So, we want to do something, and I know you love this stuff everybody does. If you are a teacher, an administrator, if you are on a staff of a county or a private school in any capacity, or if you are the Dean of the homeschool Academy, at your house. We want to just invite you just to stand for a moment. Let us just say thank you to you and then I want to pray over you. Would you do that really quickly? I know you love it. I know it. I know. Ready? Go. Please stand. Thank you, guys, for that. Wow. There's a lot of you. Oh, amen. Don't sit down. No, no, no, don't sit. It doesn't count if I pray over you if you're sitting. I'm just kidding. Let's pray. Lord, we love you today. God, thank you for these people. Thank you for their passion to impact the next generation. God, we ask a mighty movement in your name, Lord from their lives. God, we know that their role in the education system is to teach, but God we also know that you can use them. God, would you give them supernatural ability to hear needs to meet needs to speak into people's lives for the rest of this year Jesus. And we asked to hold this in your holy name. Amen. Now you can be seated.

The year was 1999. I know there's a lot of you that are like, whoa, you were alive. Yes, I was. And I was a youth pastor at a small church in Carrollton, Georgia. And we decided that year that it was going to be the first international mission trip that that church or the students of that church was going to take, and I was incredibly excited to lead this endeavor, except for the fact that we were poor. And now when I say we're poor, we couldn't even put the R on it. We were just poo at that point. We didn't have any money. I mean, we were a small church, the people in the church didn't have a way to make up the monies that it was going to cost to do this. So, we knew we were going to have to do something to help the students raise some money to go on this trip. And we were just so excited about, so we decided to come up with a way to do that. And the best way we could do it was to leverage someone that was inside of our church that worked for Tyson chicken. He worked for Tyson chicken; he was way up in chicken. There's a lot of chicken out in that side of the state. And so, he told me Matt, I got an idea for you. How about I donate to you 1800 Chicken halves and you guys can have a good old fashioned chicken que and I was like a what? A good old fashioned chicken que. I don't know where you came from, but where that came from, I don't know what that meant. I was like, well, you're going to have to explain what that means. He said you cook them slowly over fire all night long. The next day you sell boxes that are like a premade lunch to all the businesses to all the peoples and everybody buys them, and you will make millions I was like well I'm in. Let's do it. So, we did. He said show up at this time, at this place, pick up the chicken. I pulled the truck up, he unloaded off of a pallet 1800 chicken halves which I might add is a lot of boxes of chicken of gooey salmonella chicken in the back of the truck. I drive it back to the church. We have the coals ready. We have the grates on top that are two cinder blocks high about 50 yards long and we are ready at that point for a long night of chicken queuing, that night. So, we get in our camp chairs. We have a great time all night long just slowly grilling this chicken over fire smoking it. Well, the next morning the sun comes up glorious morning. It's December so it's freezing actually. So, you sat really close to the chicken all night long. And we get up we start taking the chicken off putting it in boxes in coolers ready to go deliver 1800 plates of chicken, which God showed up because somehow in Carrollton Georgia, we sold 1800 boxes of chicken.

I don't know if there's even 1800 people that work in Carrollton, Georgia, but somehow God multiplied and divided the fish and loaves and it worked. We sell all the chicken; we start to clean up and we realize there's only one problem with cleaning up. It's all these gooey boxes of chicken. What are we going to do with these boxes? We had piled them up in a pile out behind the church. And we decided somewhere around three o'clock in the morning that we would just burn all the chicken boxes the next day at some point. So that's what we did. We got everything together. I'm cleaning up and there was this one kid that all night long, just begged, Can I be the one, can I be the one, you know, the kid that I'm talking about? There's always one, Can I be the one that sets the fire, can I be? Finally, I gave in and I'm like, yes, you can do it. That's where things went bad. I said yeah, go for it. Just get it done. I handed him a half gallon of lighter fluid. I said, just put some of this on the boxes that will help you get it started. You know where the story is going at this point, right? He said, okay, great. He runs off for the lighter, he runs off with the lighter fluid. Little did I know that during the night, they had gone and found about a gallon of other lighter fluids. And they had been presoaking and getting ready for this fire event that is about to take place. He goes up to the boxes, he squirts a whole other half gallon of this lighter fluid on the box. And the rest of the day was not as calm as the night that we sat. I still remember to this day it was 1999 in my mind, watching this blaze get set. It didn't start as fast as I thought it would. But I looked down, saw him put the lighter into the boxes. And the next thing that I saw was about 25 yards in the air. The top box like a firebomb blew off the top of the whole pile of burning boxes at this point and landed in some December dried field grass that was about chest high. Yes, this is where the story goes really bad. One box went to the left, which I might add Melissa and I at that time we're living in the pastorium about 25 yards from where the field grass caught on fire. So, I'm thinking well, that's fabulous. I just burned down the 12 things that I own. It's gone. It's leaving at that point, the other side started burning towards this field that caught on fire faster than anything I've ever seen on the Discovery Channel. I did not know fire could do this. I mean, I've seen the California fires burn. I've watched people but all I could think was well ministry was fabulous. We had a good run, right? At this point. It is, I mean, it is going so fast. It was like there's nothing we can do. All of the students start running around, it looked like California fire like jumpers, like all over they had coats and they were trying to beat it out. And I'm thinking I might just leave. I don't know what to do at this point. I mean, they're on their own. I don't have that much stuff in that house anyway. I've could just go right now. It starts burning so fast. I'm thinking well, uh oh, that's a problem because it's reaching our property line and going into this 100-acre field that was backed up by Woods. And I'm like, well, it is what it is. That was the good part. The bad part was the whole pile of boxes at that moment got so hot, they fell over the other direction into the grass going the other way, which I might add is the church cemetery. At this point, I told you it got worse. It got worse. Hey, that field burned up, my house burned up, I can deal with, but when you start burning dead people, you are in trouble.

All I can remember is I don't really panic. I can just remember going this is a moment you should panic. And so, I grab a hose and I'm running through the side yard of the church, and it's one of those that are just out in the middle of nowhere. It's a hose pipe. I didn't know the hose was that short, and I ripped the whole spigot out of the ground running. Now it's squirting in the air. And I'm like, what, what do I do? What do I do? It's going towards the church at this point it is in the cemetery. At this point. I'm not even kidding. I mean, those waxy flowers are melting into the cups at this point, the fire is going across the Williams family has met the Smiths. I mean, it is all over the Maxwells at this point. And I'm going, Dear Lord Jesus, I will never ever teach the Bible again. I will be banned forever. I find the hose on the backside of the lawn, I'm laying on the ground, squirting this fire like it's doing anything at that point. And all of a sudden somebody taps me on the shoulder. I'm like, go away, I'm busy. And the guy says to me, hey, we've got this. And it's the fire department. It's the Carroll County Fire Department. And I was like, Thank You, Jesus. We only burned nine families. Thank you. But it didn't get into the rest of the cemetery. And they put out the fire and all was well except for the fact that I got a phone call really quickly after that saying that I needed to meet with the pastor the next day and meet with the deacons the next day, and so is like, well, it's the Green Mile at this point. Let's just go and walk on in. And so, I walk in there, and they're like, well, would you explain kind of what happened? Yeah, I mean, the whole place is burnt. I'm talking 25 acres, cemetery, it melted some of the soffit of the church. It's bad. And they said, what happened? I was like, Listen, I don't know what happened. All I know is your son, he lit the fire. And that was all I knew. And I was like, come on. That's what I'm talking about. Well, listen, I did that was not the best moment of my life, but I threw him totally under the bus. I learned something that day, I learned something that day. I learned that on one side, fire is incredibly useful. It's an incredible tool. But on the other side, fire is incredibly destructive. And it can absolutely change your world really quickly. You know, fire is one of those things that since the beginning of time has kind of had that balance, right? In moments it's useful, in moments it's scary. If you think about fire, I mean, from the beginning of time, we've used it. We've used it for cooking, we've used it for illumination, we've used it to help us in situations, we've used it to protect us from things but also fire is just mesmerizing.

Have you ever found yourself just staring at a campfire for some reason, and you look up 45 minutes later, and you don't even know what's been going on? It totally is. It's just mesmerizing for some reason, but it's also intriguing. You never have to teach your kids to play with fire. Nobody ever had to teach us to go out in the woods when matches, did they? No, you didn't do that. Come on. I mean, really? Nobody had to teach you to do that. But fire is incredible. And it's so incredible that I want you to just to see something for a minute, that from Genesis chapter 3 on God uses fire over and over and over and over in Scripture. And ultimately, one day he is going to use it supremely to create the new earth, he's going to do it. But here's what we're going to do over these next weeks. As you kind of saw in the intro, we're going to look into some moments where God uses fire to ignite something, ignite a moment, ignite a movement, ignite a trait in our lives. And we're going to look at some incredibly epic stories all through the Bible because God uses it all the time. And we can pull some incredibly beautiful truths of things that God wants to ignite in us. This morning, we're going to start the series that we're launching into for the next couple of weeks in Exodus chapter 3. Now, Exodus chapter 3, is one of those stories in the Bible that as soon as you hear what it is, even if you don't remember the time and location, you'll go, oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about right there. Exodus, chapter 3 is Moses and the burning bush. But let me just warn you a little bit. Don't let the familiarity of the moment kind of just wash away the truth that God gives us because this story is epic. In fact, it's so epic, that Matthew, Mark and Luke, in their gospels mentioned part of this story or mentioned this story happening or mentioned that the story took place. Exodus 3, as you're finding it, let me just give you some context to catch you up on what happened in two chapters. Moses is born in Egypt, he is a Hebrew, they are in slavery, God's people have been enslaved by the Egyptians for a long, long, long time. Well, God blessed the Hebrews, so much so that they were multiplying in number so fast that the pharaoh decided, hey, we need to do something about this. We need to begin to control the population God, or something is happening, and these people are multiplying too fast. So, he proclaims this edict that all Hebrew male babies should be killed as they were being born.

Note to self that is a sin. Alright? We'll go on that later on another day. But then, not only that happened, but they also didn’t do that. He said, well, secondly, then just throw them in the Nile. Kill the babies. I don't want them to be had. Well, Moses's mom was having none of it. She put him in a basket after she had him, filled with tar and she waited till the precise moment that the Princess of the Pharaoh, the daughter of the Pharaoh was bathing one afternoon, and she set Moses out hoping that the humanity of the princess would see the baby floating down, have pity on this baby and adopt this baby into their family. And guess what? God did it. The sovereignty of the Lord was incredible. She finds Moses she falls in love with this baby. She can't bring herself to doing what her father said and kill this baby. So, she looks and ah, this is so beautiful. She looks at her Hebrew slave and says, "Hey, I need you to find someone to take care of this baby for me. Find a midwife. Find somebody that can feed this baby that can take care of this baby till it's old enough to enter the courts in a proper way." The Hebrew slave says, "Well, I've got just the lady." Yeah, you know where this story is going. She goes and finds Moses's mother, how beautiful is this? Brings the mother into the story and she legally gets to raise Moses up from zero years old all the way to 12 years old as his mother and caregiver. And then she presents him in the court to Pharaoh and he's adopted into the royal family. He spends 40 years in Egypt, getting to know the customs, getting to know the people, living the prince life, if you would, until one day he sees somebody mistreating one of his people. He sees an Egyptian mistreating a Hebrew, and he kills this Egyptian, hides this Egyptian in the sand, not one of his best moments I might add, but gets caught in the moment and he flees to a place called Midian, running away from the law coming after him, to which he spins, check this out, the next 40 years living in the wilderness as a shepherd to his father-in-law Jethro. So, 40 years catch up. He spends in Egypt learning how to be a prince. 40 years he spends in the wilderness being a shepherd learning what it's like to live as a Hebrew, a child of Abraham and learning what God does. He spends 14,600 days as a shepherd until the day we're about to look at today. He's 80 years old, he's in the backside of nowhere. And watch what God does in this fire moment. I promise you it's more interesting than some chicken boxes. Here it is Exodus 3:1, we're going to read it and pull some reminders. It says this, "Now Moses was tending," which means that was his normal job, he was a shepherd. "He was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law. Now pause there for a minute you need to know this. Jethro had seven daughters. Moses was running from the law. He was sitting by a well one day, he helped these ladies dip some water one day they go home and tell their dad and He's like, well bring that guy to dinner. And they did and he got married. Note to self-single guys, serve the ladies, you get married. Alright?

That's all I can see in the text right there. "He was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness." He went across the grassy land, when he went across the sand into the grassy land 30 miles from his house at the base of these mountains and catch this and "he came to Horeb, the mountain of God." If you read the Bible, and you see Sinai, Sinai in Horeb it's the same mountain, they just use it interchangeably. Now look at verse two, this is important. "There, the angel of the Lord appeared to him." Now I want you to write this down. This is our first reminder. Number one, I just want you to see in this story that God's timing is not our timing. In fact, if I had to do it again, and I put some other notes in there, I would have probably said God's timing is rarely our timing. It's rarely our timing. You see, all info points and most scholars would agree that Moses lived an incredibly faithful Hebrew life. When he was in the court, he lived as a Hebrew. When he was in the wilderness, he lived as a Hebrew among the people. And he knew God, he worshipped the true God. But now Moses is 80 years old. He's in the wilderness, he settled down into being a shepherd. And do you really think that at this moment, Moses was thinking that morning, hey, today's the day that God's going to show up? No, but can I tell you that's how God works. Can I tell you how God works most often? God works in the everyday mundane life, where we are just living faithfully day after day after day, and then all of a sudden God shows up. Look, I get it. This is hard. And this is why it's hard. It's because ever since the creation of the TV dinner, we've become the generation of the now. I mean, you say, well, not us Matt. Oh, yeah. Watch what happens when your internet goes out at home, and you got to rely on data on your phone.

We're the generation of the now. We don't like to wait. We don't like to sit. We don't like for things to take too long. We like, catch this, for God to be on our timetable. We like God to answer us when we want him to answer do what we want him to do and move when we want him to move. But many times, God looks at you and he looks at me and he says, hey, all I want you to do right now is just to be faithful. All I want you to do right now is know me, to worship me, to look at who I am. Can I promise you something? If you remain faithful, if you walk with the Lord, if you walk in the presence of Jesus, one of two things is going to happen later in your life. Either A, you are going to look back at the years that you have glorified God and be able to see how he directed your path, how he moved in you, and how you did something in you just little degrees at a time, or B, you are going to have a moment like Moses is about to have. You're going to have a moment where you're minding your own business, you're just being faithful, and God shows up. Look, I don't know what it is in your life that you are waiting on God to do right now. It's different for everybody. But can I just tell you this, the Israelites waited 430 years to be delivered? Moses 40 years in the courts, 40 years in the wilderness, and he ends up another 40 years, even after God speaks in the wilderness. God's timing is not always our timing. So, what does that say? Don't give up. Keep praying, keep being faithful, keep moving. Number one, God's timing is not our timing. But number two, God's ways are not our ways. Look, I get it. At our core, if we were to just have a little honesty to speak for a minute, because we can do that, we're friends. At our core, we truly believe if everybody would just do what I said we would all get along. It's true. You can say it. But there's only one problem with that. And it's that we're sinners. We're all sinners. We're all sinners in need of a Savior. And we're all one step away from blowing up. That's just what I know about us. You see, God is the only one who has the right to say, no, no, no, we're going to do it my way. No, no, no, we're going to do it like this. Why? Because God is the only one that sees things from an eternal perspective. What do we see things through? We see things through what about 90 years at best for most of us. I love how Stuart Hall says this.

He says, "If we could see as God sees, we would do as God says, no questions asked." No questions asked. You see, but here's the problem. We don't see as God sees. We see through a glass that is dimly lit, we see through a sinful situation, and we see through a broken mankind. But if we can just see as God sees and how God orchestrates and what God does, we would never have a problem obeying Him or stepping into Him. But the problem is, we have to have faith in that moment, in who God is, rather than who we are. There are two things that kind of hit me or two thoughts when I looked at this, but let me read what it says right here, what happened, verse 2. "There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire it did not burn up." Two things here. Number one, I thought, why in the world did God just not set the whole skies, the whole mountain and the whole wilderness on fire to call Moses? Have you ever thought about that? I don't know if you ask questions when you read the Bible, but I got enough for me and you both. Here's what I think. I think this is just me reading into the text. But here's what I love that God did right here. Easy to miss this. God used a small, little, miniscule nothing of a bush to call Moses. And here's what that means. That means this moment of grandiose wasn't there. It was a scrub brush that blows around the desert that God said, hey, if I can use this to call you, I can use anything. This is exactly what Paul says right? 1 Corinthians 1:27, "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." Do you know what this tells me? There is nothing or no one that is too small or too minuscule for God to use as part of his plan. Nothing! Don't fall into the trap of the deceiver, Satan that wants to tell you that God only uses those things, those powerful things. He used a pile of kindling basically to point his person in the direction to deliver his people. But why is it that we try so hard to put God in this little box because this is also what I just noticed out of this? Who thinks of putting a bush on fire that doesn't burn? We don't, because we can't think that, but God is so beautiful, and so creative and so not linear. Can I just give you a warning? Never push God into your linear thinking box. Never do it. Here's what that means. God's probably not going to move in the way you think He's going to move. He's probably not going to. Why? Because He's God and He can do what He wants to do. He's got it. He has such a better perspective than us. I am so linear in my thinking; I love the same five restaurants. I love the same schedule. I love the same everything. I like the same six meals at our house. I like the same shoes. I like the same shirts. I don't like to get outside of my box. But God says, hey, I am the creator of the universe, and I can do what I please to do. I love this when I think about God. Do you realize that He spoke the universe into existence with his mouth? Do you realize that the God that we serve made a fish have a coin in its mouth to pay some taxes? A lady got healed, when she just touched his robe. One day, he spit into some mud and put it on a guy's eyes, and he was healed. And, one day Jesus is going to ride back into this planet on a white horse with a tattoo on his thigh and say, come on, let's go. God's ways are not my ways. They're not my ways. But know that's kind of joking. But when you think about it, we only view God moving in the ways that we can see Him moving. But God's not like that. Please don't think that just because He's not doing something your way that He's not moving. Philippians 1:6 tells us, "Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." What does that mean? It's just like we talked about last week, when you trust Jesus, as your Lord, He will always remain faithful. He's always moving. He's always speaking. He's always pressing, and He is the one that is holding your salvation up. At any moment. God can be speaking in the silence or speaking as clear as day. At any moment He can be speaking in the pain or speaking in the joy, speaking in the struggle, or speaking in the favor. This question hit me this week. Look at these two points, and it's this; Am I positioning myself in my everyday rhythm to experience God? Am I or am I just blowing past it, because this is not my time and it's not how we do it? Can I just tell you post resurrection how Jesus speaks most often to us?

It's when we read His word and pray His Word. It's simple. We read His word and pray His word He moves in us. Number one; His timing is not our timing. Number two; His ways are not our ways. And watch this for Moses. Number three; He would tell us that His presence is personal. That God's presence is personal. Think about this just for a minute. There's 7.9 billion people on this planet. I looked it up this week. Have you ever looked at that little counter that tells you how many people are on this earth at this moment? 30 minutes later, I looked up I was mesmerized. But here's what this means 7.9 billion people on this earth, but He hears you. He knows you. And He wants to be with you. God is not only this incredibly powerful, omniscient God. He's not just this transcendent, overall, everything but He's also eminent. He is with us. And He knows you. Watch what happens in Moses's life in verse 3. "So, Moses’ thought, I will go over and see this strange site. Why the bush doesn't burn up." Now the bush burning is not a thing. It happened a lot in the desert. But the fact is, it wasn't burning up was the thing. Look at verse 4. "When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to Him from within the bush, Moses! Moses!" Circle those two words, Moses, Moses. Now I don't know if this really sinks in a whole lot to you. But this is Old Testament. This is Old Testament. Put yourself in Moses's shoes just for a minute. Alright? Don't read this as history, read it as if it's present in your mind. He's in the backside of nowhere, minding his own business, and the God of the universe calls his name. At this moment, He's realizing something special is about to happen. One of those things that his forefathers had talked about happening with Adam and Noah, one of those things that had happened with Abraham and Isaac. He is about to get a message from the Lord and the Lord is about to call his name. Now, fast forward to the New Testament. Let's pull this systematically together. Post Jesus ripping the veil. God now calls our names. He calls our names. He calls us to Himself through the power and the presence of Jesus. And I want you to hear me right here. Although He is a personal God, He walks with us, He wants to know you. He wants to be in your life. Although it's personal, it's not automatic, number four; God's call requires a response. It requires a response from you and from me, Moses shows us this. It means that we have to respond to His message. Look at verse 4. "When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses!" And awe this next sentence. "And Moses said to him, here am I." Now look, I can't think of three words that speak sweeter, into the soul of God, then God, here, am I, here, am I, here am I. Now don't get in the trap here. This is not Moses playing Marco Polo. God knew where he was. This is not a proximity question. It's not, Hey, I'm here God! No, no, no, this is not a proximity. This is not a location. This answer from Moses is a surrendering answer. Moses, Moses, yes, Lord, whatever it is, my answer is yes. It's like us saying, God, I'm not sure why you want me but here I am. God, I got some wounds. But here I am. God, nobody else around me is going to believe this happened in my life. But here I am. God, I don't have anything to give you other than me. But God, here I am. Can I tell you those three words are words that you must speak to God as He calls you to enter a relationship with him? Because they are a surrendering statement. God, I'm here. Yes, Lord. You see, when God calls you to repentance, when His Holy Spirit speaks into your life, that's all he expects. He doesn't expect you to know everything. He doesn't expect you to get everything put together. He just expects you to recognize that He is calling and saying, yes, Lord. Here I am. But He also expects it every day. Every time our feet hit the floor. Yes Lord, Here I am. Yes, Lord, what if that was our primary statement every single day we woke up, Lord, yes. You know, the incredible part about this? Moses doesn't even know what God's about to call Him to do. Do you realize that Moses answered yes before he ran the strengths and weaknesses of what God called him to do? That one stinks, doesn't it? Because most of us, what do we do? We filtered through our timing and our grid; we filter it through our desires. But what did Moses do? Moses said yes, before God even said later on, here's what we're about to do. And you know how He did that? He knew two more things. Number one, he knew that God's holiness deserves our undivided attention. It deserves our undivided attention. What is holy? Holy is just set apart, above all else, nothing else equals up to it. But here's what I know about us. We love to see Jesus as our Savior. We love to see Jesus as our friend. We love to wear the T shirt; Jesus is my homeboy. But listen to me. He is Lord. He is Lord. That means He is above all, and you come to Him because of His position, and not any other reason. He's Lord, don't make the mistake. Alright? Yes, He has made Himself available personally. But He's above us. And that means you. Means He's above all.

Look what happened to Moses, verse 5. "Do not come any closer, God said. Take off your sandals," That's a sign of respect, a sign of submission, a sign of position. Slaves did not wear shoes at this time. Moses is walking into the presence of the Holy God. Man, this is such a lesson for us on how we should approach God isn't it? That we don't approach God flippantly. We don't approach God on our terms. We don't approach God when we have time. We come before a holy God in a submitted heart. Watch what happens. "For the place you are standing is holy ground." Do you know what? Every spot your foot touches is holy ground now. You know why? Because the Holy Spirit is in this planet. The Holy Spirit is in our lives, the Holy Spirit directs us, so that means we don't just act like this when we're having this little moment with God. We act like this all the time. Verse 6, "Then he said, 'I'm the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, this Moses.' At this he hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God." Now, two ways to look at this fear. Number one; Moses was scared, don't get down on Moses, you'd be scared to if you woke up one night and the hampers on fire. I mean, this has happened in his life. But number two; he's scared in a reverence for what he is standing in the presence of almost as if God I will not move a step unless you direct it. Can I just tell you that prayer, right, there is a prayer every day that I have as a pastor for your heart, and as a community of faith here that God we would stand in your presence and say, yes. Why? Because He's holy. Look at number six. This is what got Moses there. This is the one. He knew at that moment, that God's promise is always fulfilled. Always! Moses is on his face, and this is such comfort. He's on his face before the Lord and listen to verse 7. I'm just going to read the whole rest of this text because it says it better than I do. "The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt." He's talking to Moses. At this point, Moses is on his face scared. "I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers. I'm concerned about their suffering. So, I've come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians to bring them out of the land, and into a good and spacious land. A land flowing with milk and honey-the home of the Canaanites, Hittites and the Amorites, and Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites." Yes, practiced that all week. Here it is, verse 9. "And now, the cry of the Israelites has reached me. And I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them." Hey, listen to me, your cries reach God. They reach Him. Look at verse 10. "So now go, I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt. He knew what that court looked like he knew what could happen to him. Then verse 12, this lands the whole plane. "And God said, I will be with you." Man, that’s good.

"And he said, 'This will be a sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." Now we don't have time, but if you've read the rest of Exodus, you know, they end up back on this mountain. They end up worshiping God on this mountain. God meets on this mountain that time God didn't have a little bitty burning bush, he set the whole mountain on fire. But here's the thing. Do you not think that's a little bit of foreshadowing of God speaking to us on what's going to happen one day when we're with Jesus? We are worshiping Him; He is faithful to us. Why? Because He is with us, and His promises are always Yes. Yes, Hebrews 13:5 tells us "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Joshua, when he walks into the promised land, the fulfillment of this says not one of all the Lord's good promises to Israel failed, but every one of them was fulfilled and listen for you and me New Testament. Let us hold unswervingly love that word to the hope that we profess, for He who promised is faithful, faithful. Here's what that means. God's power does not rest on my ability. God's promise doesn't rest on my ability, does not rest on my timing, does not rest on my ways, does not rest on anything that I have to offer other than my Yes, Lord.

From that point forward, it's on Him. It's on him and all He asks of us, is to say, here I am. Here I am. So, look, I don't know where you are in your walk with the Lord. There's a lot of you here. I don't know if you've noticed that. But here's what I do know. Some of you for the first time today, need to say Yes, Lord, here I am. There's something happening in your soul right now. And you don't quite know what to do with it. That's okay. I tell you what that thing is. That's the Holy Spirit. He's the one that draws us to himself. Your first move today needs to be to recognize that He is King, He is Savior, and He wants to come into your life to be your Lord. And you need to say, yes, during this invitation time in just a minute. Here's how you need to respond if that's you. Either A, you can walk over here and just look me in the face and go, hey, Matt, I think I need Jesus right now. I'll go, okay, let's talk about that. And we'll talk about it. Or B, you can reach out on the next steps text, if you're joining us online or joining us in here and you just want somebody to follow back up with you to tell you what that looks like. To say, hey, how do I say yes to the Lord? Here's how you can say yes to the Lord; just say yes to the Lord, right? It's not hard. But secondly, if you know Jesus today, maybe, maybe you're like Moses, and you feel like you're on the backside of the wilderness somewhere and maybe today, you just need to go, hey, Lord, I'm ready to say yes. When you're ready to move. That's all He asks. That's it. Maybe today, you need to step into this church to make it home. Maybe today, you need to step into a commitment into a group that you can walk with that you can fellowship with that can take care of you. Maybe today, you just need to take these next couple of minutes and go...

Hey, Lord, speak to me. Whatever it is, you're about to call me to do. Yes. Yes. Lord, move in these next couple of minutes. God I just pray for just a holy moment. God for people that need to make decisions. That God, you would show us, that you’re King. Give us a desire to follow. It's in Your name, we pray Jesus. Amen.

Let's stand and sing together.

Follow Along with the Message

A Desire to Follow

August 1, 2021

Exodus 3:1–2
1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him
Moses’s Reminders from the Fire

1. God’s   is not our timing.

2 Peter 3:8–9
8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Isaiah 40:30–31
30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

2. God’s   are not our ways.

“If we could see as God sees we would do as God says, no questions asked.”
— Stuart Hall

Exodus 3:2
There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.
1 Corinthians 1:27
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
Philippians 1:6
Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Question: Am I positioned in my everyday rhythm to God?

3. God's presence is .

Exodus 3:3–4
3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”…

4. God’s requires a response.

Exodus 3:4
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”…

5. God’s deserves our undivided worship.

Exodus 3:5–6
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

6. God’s are always fulfilled.

Exodus 3:7–12
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”
Hebrews 13:5
…I will never leave you or forsake you.
Joshua 21:45
Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.
Hebrews 10:23
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

Additional Notes