On a Saturday in November this last year, (November 5, 2011), University of Tennessee freshman Derrick Brodus was lying on the couch at his fraternity house, waiting for the Tennessee Volunteers football game to start at 7 P.M. Less than an hour before kickoff, Derrick fumbled for his cell phone as it began to ring. The voice on the other end told him a police escort was on its way to take him to the stadium immediately.
“I thought it was a dream,” Derrick said. “I was just lying on my couch relaxing, and I answer my phone, and they just tell me that I need to come to the stadium as soon as possible.”
Just minutes before that call, Tennessee backup kicker Chip Rhome pulled a muscle during pregame warm-ups. Starting kicker Michael Pardy was already out, injured in Thursday's practice. So one hour before kickoff, the Volunteers were out of kickers.
Derrick, a freshman, had tried out as a placekicker when he enrolled at Tennessee, but never made the team. Now, on that particular Saturday, Derrick was the Volunteers' only option.
Minutes after Derrick hung up his phone, the police escort arrived at the fraternity house to rush him to the stadium. The team's trainer stretched him in the locker room while he put on his pads and a jersey that didn't even have his name on the back.
Even so, Derrick made the most of his opportunity. He made all three of his extra point attempts and kicked a 21-yard field goal at the end of the first half. His team won 24-0.
Back in the locker room after the final whistle, the kicker who began the evening lying on the couch with a bag of chips was celebrated as the hero. The team cheered as Coach Dooley gave Derrick the game ball. (Graham Watson, “Tennessee grabs last-second kicker off his frat house couch,” Yahoo Sports, 11-8-11; www.PreachingToday.com)
Often that’s the way God works in our lives. We’re lying around when God calls us to get off the couch and to use our gifts for His kingdom.
That’s what happened to Moses. He spent 40 years living the simple life of a shepherd when all of a sudden he gets a call from God. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Exodus 3, Exodus 3, where we see God calling Moses from his ordinary life into something extraordinary.
Exodus 3:1-6 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 desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 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. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 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. (NIV)
Moses was taking care of his father-in-law’s sheep on the back side of a desert. It was something he had done day in and day out for 14,600 days, when all of a sudden God showed up in his life. God set a bush on fire without consuming the bush, and Moses had to check it out.
It was an ordinary thorn bush, like many in the Midian desert, but God was about to do something extraordinary not only in Moses’ life, but in the lives of his people as well. You see, like a thorn bush on fire, they were in the fire of affliction, but they were not consumed, because God was right there with them. Israel was in slavery in Egypt; and Moses, bred to lead a great nation, was leading a bunch of sheep in the Midian desert. Then all of a sudden, Moses finds this God-forsaken desert a sanctuary, a holy place, because God himself shows up.
Exodus 3:7-9 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. 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. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. (NIV)
God sees. God hears, and God knows. Please, don’t ever forget that, my friends. When it seems no one cares, God does. He cared about the affliction of his ancient people, Israel; and now, He’s going to rescue them from their oppressors (vs.8).
The word “rescue” in the Hebrew literally means to take away or to snatch something away; and in this context, it pictures snatching helpless prey away from the mouth of a wild animal. In other words, God says He is going to snatch His people away from the jaws of the cruel Egyptians.
And at this point, I think Moses is delighted. Finally, after all these years GOD is going to do something. Then God bushwhacks Moses. God says…
Exodus 3:10 “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” (NIV)
Now, wait a minute, God. I thought you said YOU were going to rescue them. Why are you asking ME to go? Out of the ordinary events of his life, God called a failed leader to lead again. God called Moses to go back to the place of his failure and find that God could use Him in ways He never expected.
And that’s the way God works in our lives, as well. He speaks to ordinary people on ordinary days. He speaks to failures in the familiar routines of their tiresome existence, because He wants to demonstrate HIS power in their lives.
The Bible says, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29, NIV). So dear friends…
BE READY AT ANY TIME FOR GOD’S CALL.
Be prepared for God to tap you on the shoulder when you least expect it and invite you to serve Him. In the ordinary, everyday events of your life, get set for God to let you know He wants to use you for His purposes, even if you have failed miserably in the past.
I like the way Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it. She says, Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes— The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
My dear friends, don’t just sit around plucking blackberries. Take off your shoes and listen to God speak in the ordinary experiences of your life. God want to use YOU for His glory even in places where you think, “That’s impossible!”
Late one night, Emanuel Lighe returned home to find police waiting for him. There was a death in town, and Lighe's name topped the suspect list. The police cuffed Lighe, took him to the police station and questioned him well into the night, not allowing him to leave.
Hours turned into days; days dragged into weeks. Lighe remained at the police station, then was transferred to Prison Civile de Lomé, the main prison in the capital city of Togo in West Africa's Togolese Republic. He remained there for five years and four days even though he was innocent.
Prison Civile de Lomé is a dangerous place. It was built to house 500 inmates, but the prison is packed with 1,800 inmates who live and sleep in one cramped, open-air yard. Infectious disease is rampant, and many prisoners die, often before they've served their sentences.
Lighe spent half a decade of his life there – always hungry, always scared, always wondering how he, an innocent man, landed in this place.
He said, “Life in prison is so difficult that it's hard to understand for outsiders: people get raped, beaten up. Money and possessions get stolen. There's a lot of violence and pressure.”
And yet, the Bible Society of Togo was there. For years, the society’s members have visited the prison, bringing food for the inmates and supplying them with another life-giving gift: the Bible itself.
For Lighe, the Bible became a source of life and hope. It inspired him daily to reach out to his fellow inmates, spreading God's Word through preaching and living out its message. Although Lighe struggled to understand why he was placed in prison, God began to teach him that his detainment had a purpose: He was there to minister to his fellow inmates.
Lighe said, “I believe in God's power and God's Spirit, so I continued my work, because I am not ruled by man.” Lighe had found God’s purpose for his life in the unlikeliest of places and so began to thank God for bringing him to prison.
Even after he was released, Lighe returned to the prison regularly to visit friends and continue his ministry. Lighe is respected by the inmates, because inside the walls of that prison, he is the real, breathing picture of God's hope. (Benjamin Leama, “Wrongfully Accused,” American Bible Society Record Online; www.PreachingToday.com)
Maybe you don’t like where you’re at right now. It may not be a prison, but you feel stuck and wonder why God put you there. That’s when you need to hear God’s voice saying, “Go and tell my people that I want to rescue them.” “Go and tell my people that there is hope even in prison.” Don’t sit around complaining about where you are. Find your purpose there, and let God use you for His glory wherever He puts you.
God uses failures. God uses people stuck in their tiresome routines. God uses people like you and me. So be prepared for His call in the most unlikely places. And…
TRUST IN HIS HOLY PRESENCE.
Depend on God being with you to get the job done. Rest in his companionship to accomplish the very thing He calls you to do. That’s what He asked Moses to do.
Exodus 3:11-12 But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 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.” (NIV)
Moses asks God, “Who am I?” And God basically says, “It doesn’t matter who you are, because I am going to be with you; and because I am going to be with you, you will succeed in bringing my people out of Egypt to this very mountain.”
You see, Moses had to learn that who he was was not important. 40 years before this, he thought he was a somebody. He thought he was Israel’s deliverer and failed. Now, 40 years later, he thinks he’s a nobody, but God says, “None of that matters. What matters is my presence, not your ability or lack of it, and you need to trust that I will be there for you.”
And that’s what God asks us to do as well. He asks us not to trust in ourselves, but in His presence.
Many years ago, New York's Museum of Natural History arranged one of their rooms from the perspective of a dog coming through the door. The legs of a table looked like large pillars, the chairs like lofty thrones, and the mantle above the fireplace seemed to be an un-scalable cliff, high overhead. Ralph W. Sockman, The Higher Happiness, Nashville Abingdon, 1950, p. 14; www.PreachingToday.com)
So often, that’s the way we view life – like a small dog where everything seems so big and insurmountable. But God sees it from an entirely different perspective, and if we could learn to rely on His presence, then those insurmountable obstacles become doable, not because of our ability, but because of His.
The great Latin American evangelist, Luis Palau, had to learn that lesson. During his first year at Multnomah School of the Bible, Major Ian Thomas spoke at one of the chapel services. He talked about how it took Moses 40 years in the wilderness to learn that he was nothing. Then one day Moses was confronted with a burning bush – likely a dry bunch of ugly sticks – yet Moses had to take off his sandals. Why? Because God was in the bush!
Major Thomas said, “God was telling Moses, ‘I don't need a pretty bush or an educated bush or an eloquent bush. Any old bush will do as long as I'm in the bush. If I'm going to use you, it won't be you doing something for me, but me doing something through you.’”
Luis Palau says, “I was that kind of bush: a useless bunch of dried up sticks. I could do nothing for God. All my reading and studying and modeling myself after others was worthless unless God was in the bush. Only he could make something happen.”
After that chapel service, Luis Palau ran back to his room in tears and cried out to God in his native Spanish. He had been struggling with God’s call on his life, and finally that struggle was over. He said that from that point on he would let God be God and let Luis be dependent on him. (Luis Palau, Men of Integrity, May/June 2002; www.PreachingToday.com)
My dear friends, you may think that what God is calling you to do is impossible or at the very least not feasible and like Moses, you ask, “Who am I?” Well, stop asking that question, because it doesn’t matter who YOU are. It only matters that God is with you; and If He is WITH you, He will do THROUGH you the very thing He is asking you to do. So listen to what He is telling you to do and trust in His holy presence to get it done. Trust in His presence. 2nd…
TRUST IN HIS PERSON.
Rely on who He is as God Himself! Depend on His unchanging, self-existent nature to be all that you need Him to be for whatever you face ahead. That’s what God asked Moses to do.
Exodus 3:13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” (NIV)
Moses has gone from asking, “Who am I?” to asking God, “Who are you?” It’s the right question, because who GOD is is all that matters.
Exodus 3:14-15 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation. (NIV)
What name? The name I AM – YHWH in the Hebrew. That’s God’s personal name, the name by which He chooses to reveal Himself to His special people. It speaks of his self-existent, unchanging nature. God is eternal, not dependent on anyone. He is all powerful, and all we need Him to be – the I AM! God’s name, YHWH, speaks of His transcendent nature, but His name also speaks of a personal, intimate God who chooses to be in a covenant relationship with His people.
Vicki Crooks of Klamath Fall, Oregon, talks about the time her four-year-old son asked her about God's name. She explained that God had many names including Father, Lord, and Jehovah. But after listening to her long explanation, her son asked, “Can I just call him Steve?” (Vicki Crooks, Klamath Falls, Oregon, “Kids of the Kingdom,” Christian Reader; www. PreachingToday.com)
We laugh at that, but it illustrates what God is trying to communicate to His people here in Exodus 3. God is known by many names to many people, but God wants us, His special people, to call Him I AM – YHWH, His personal name.
Some people call me “Mr. Green,” and that’s fine especially if they’re a telemarketer or an insurance salesman that I don’t really care to know. But those I know well, and those I want to know, I ask them to call me “Phil,” my personal name, because that’s what my friends call me.
Many know God as “The Creator,” but God says to His special people, “Call me YHWH, my personal name, because I want you to know me personally.” Imagine that! The Almighty God of the universe wants to be in a close, personal relationship with His people!
Who I am is NOT important. Who God is is ALL important, and that’s what we can count on.
That’s what God wanted Moses to do, and that’s what God wants us to do, as well. God wants us to rely on who HE is. God wants us to trust in His person, not in our own power.
During Sunday school, a pastor in Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, selected a middle-aged couple to act out the burning bush scene from the Old Testament. He asked the husband to supply the voice for God and his wife to read Moses' lines.
All went well until they got to verse 15. The wife got mixed up and began to read, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—’”
The pastor interrupted her. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You're not God.”
Without missing a beat, her husband deadpanned, “I've been trying to tell her that for 18 years.” (Laura Lee Allen, Daytona Beach Shores, FL, “Lite Fare,” Christian Reader; www.PreachingToday.com)
And that’s what God is trying to tell us. We are not God. HE is God, the permanent, powerful, self-existent One, who wants to be in a personal relationship with each and every one of us.
That’s why He sent His Son to die on a cross for our sins. Our sins had separated us from God, but Jesus’ death on the cross paid the awful price for those sins and made it possible for us to be in relationship with a holy God. Now, only through faith in Christ, can we have that personal relationship with Him.
My dear friends, stop depending on yourself, and start depending on Christ to begin that relationship today. Then keep on depending on Christ to accomplish all that God has called you to do and be.
In the Gospel of John, Christ identified Himself as the I AM (John 8:58). And there, He asks us time and time again us to trust Him. If you truly want to be all that God has called you to be, then just depend on who HE is, not on who you are. Trust in His person. Then…
TRUST IN HIS PROMISES.
Rely on His Word. Depend on what He has said He will do. That’s what He asked Moses to do.
Exodus 3:16-17 “Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob— appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’ (NIV)
This is a promise God made to Abraham 400 years before this. In Genesis 15, God said to Abraham, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions” (Genesis 15:13-14). God reminds Moses of this promise, and He tells him to remind the leaders of Israel.
Exodus 3:18-22 “The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go. “And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.” (NIV)
Just as God had promised 400 years previously. He told them they would be enslaved for 400 years; and afterward, they would come out with great possessions.
The word for plunder here is the same word translated “rescue” in verse 8. It means “to take” or “to snatch away.” In verse 8, God says He will snatch His people away from the clutches of the Egyptians. Here, God says His people will snatch away the wealth of the Egyptians like the spoils of war in victory! It’s God’s ancient promise to His people, and God asks Moses to depend on that promise.
God also asks us to depend on His promises, as well. Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” You see, our salvation, our sanctification, and even our service is not so much dependent on our faithfulness to God, but on His faithfulness to us and to His Word.
God made a promise to compete the good work He started in us (Philippians 1:6). And we can trust Him to keep that promise no matter what, even if we sometimes fail. Oh, my dear friends, if you want to be all that God has called you to be, stop trusting in yourself and start trusting in God’s presence, in God’s person, and in God’s promises.
The movie, Moneyball, just out last fall (2011), is one of those great, feel-good baseball movies, based on a true story, where the underdogs do better than anybody expected. A scene in the movie shows 240-pound catcher, Jeremy Brown, playing for the Visalia Oaks, a minor league team. He is a tentative base runner because of his weight, but on this particular occasion he does what he has never done before. He rounds first base and heads for second (show video clip). But then he stops and crawls back to the security of first base and clings to it like a frightened child clings to a teddy bear. The whole team is laughing at him, and then Jeremy finds out why. He had hit the ball 60 feet over the fence and didn’t even realize it. It was a home run! Well, Jeremy finally discovers that the ball went out of the park and rounds the bases for home with a big smile on his face. (Moneyball, Sony Pictures, 2011, Directed by Bennett Miller, Chapter 16, 2:01:53—2:03:34; www.PreachingToday.com)
Let me tell you: Christ has already hit the home run that brings us home. His death and resurrection assured us the victory, so we don’t have to live in fear anymore. We don’t have to cling to first base like scared novices. Instead, we can joyfully run the race as we head confidently toward home. So let’s do it! Let’s trust in Christ, our great I AM, and let’s run the race that He has marked out for us.
