Good morning. It's great to see you, and I'm glad you didn't get blown away by the wind yesterday. My name's Landon Dermott. If we haven't met, I'm the area director of Young Life here in the Roanoke Valley, and I grew up here in Roanoke. I went to Hidden Valley High School, and the Ministry of Young Life impacted my life when I was a high school student, where my relationship with Jesus became real for the first time. Working for Young Life now and being impacted by Young Life then, I feel unbelievably grateful for the mission and the way my young life leader, Andy Fitzer, showed up in my life and faithfully taught me about who Jesus was and what that meant for me.

As I get older, I've become increasingly grateful for this church and the people sitting here this morning that have supported the mission of Young Life in different ways. Thirteen years ago when I was a high school student, the gospel made its way to me through the Ministry of Young Life and through Andy Fitzer because this church has had a faithful relationship and partnership with the Ministry of Young Life. You've flown the flag of Young Life and said we want students in our local high schools and middle schools to know about who Jesus is. I feel incredibly grateful to get to be a part of a church like this one and to raise our family in a church that has had an impact across the globe and here locally with people knowing about who Jesus is.

It's my joy and privilege when I get the chance to be up here and teach. This morning, I'm so excited about what we're going to look at. We're going to look at a passage in Exodus chapter 3. Aaron read it—thanks for reading it. It's a lot of verses, so Aaron had a heavy lift this morning. It's a passage that maybe you've heard before. I imagine a lot of you have heard this, maybe when you were in VBS as a younger kid, or growing up in the church at Sunday school, or maybe the Veggie Tales version of this.

I think a lot of us in this room have heard the story of Moses and his encounter with God through a burning bush. If you're sitting here and you would say, "I've actually never heard that story," know that I envy you. I almost hope that we could all wipe the slate clean of the versions of this story we've heard or speculation we have around it, so we could go in with fresh eyes and look together at what God says to Moses in this encounter with him in the wilderness through a burning bush that day a long time ago. Perhaps we could also see for ourselves that in what God says to Moses, he might perhaps here today be saying something to me and to you.

If you've got a Bible and you're willing, flip it open to Exodus chapter 3 and we're going to walk through this passage verse by verse. My hope would be that we can follow along and see what I would say are three phases that Moses goes through in this encounter with God. Perhaps you might relate to Moses in one or a few of those phases.

Setting the Context

We'll pick it up in verse 1 of chapter 3:

Now Moses was tending to 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 he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

I tell high schoolers in campaigner meetings all the time: we would never walk into a library, go upstairs, pick a random book off the shelf, open it to a random page, read a passage, and then assume we know what's going on. Context is important for us. In this passage we see that Moses at this time is a shepherd, tending to the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, in a place called Midian.

Moses' life was pretty unique. He had three 40-year periods in his life. The first 40-year period was when he was born in Egypt. He was born an Israelite when the Israelites were living in Egypt in slavery. Moses is born at a time when the Egyptians are feeling nervous about how much the Israelites are growing. So they decided they're going to put to death every Hebrew boy that is born at this time.

When Moses is born, he's supposed to be put to death. But his mother puts him in a basket in the Nile River in hopes of saving him. In a crazy turn of events that you can look at in Exodus 1 and 2, Moses is rescued out of the Nile River. He ends up being raised in the palace of Pharaoh with his own mother. It's this crazy turn of events. For 40 years, Moses is raised in the palace of the king of Egypt. He receives an unbelievable education. He's living in the culture of the Egyptians, living a comfortable life in the palace, all the while his own people, the Israelites, just outside the window are being oppressed.

slavery by those Egyptians. You can imagine the identity crisis that would have created for Moses—being raised in the palace knowing he's not truly Egyptian. Maybe he has some of that imposter syndrome. And outside the window, his own people are suffering in slavery. He wonders if he more so belongs with them.

But his life in the palace comes to a head about 40 years into it when Moses is out one day and he sees an Egyptian oppressing one of his own people. He is described as having a heart of justice in the Bible all the time. And his heart of justice wells up, but it becomes twisted. Just maybe you didn't have this experience, but I didn't hear this part of the story in the VBS version—Moses gets so angry we see in chapter 2 that he literally kills a man. He becomes so enraged watching an Egyptian oppress one of his own that he murders him and buries him in the sand.

The next day he comes back and sees two of his own people, two Israelites, arguing. He tries to settle the argument. And one of them says to him, "Who are you to be ruler and judge among us? Are you going to kill us like you killed the Egyptian man?" He realizes that what he's done has become known. And he knows that Pharaoh is going to surely punish him, maybe kill him. And what does he do? He flees to Midian.

He sits down at a well and meets a man named Jethro. He gets married and has a son. Moses moves from this 40-year period of living life raised in the king of Egypt's palace to living a sleepy life in the suburbs, becoming a shepherd, so to speak. There's a teacher that I've grown to know, love, and admire who teaches on this passage and says Moses was content to live this way. Moses had been raised for 40 years in the palace. Then things came to a head and he'd done some terrible things and he flees to the wilderness. It would have been shocking for people to read this about Moses—to know that someone who had received one of the greatest educations in the world in the palace of the Pharaoh would become a lowly shepherd. But Moses is content to live a sleepy life in the suburbs, to live safe and cautiously, thinking he's outrun any possibility that he could be used by God because of what he's done in Egypt.

So for 40 years he tends to the flock as a shepherd here in Midian. And that's where we pick up the story now. Moses is approximately 80 years old. He's tending to the flock of his father-in-law like he's done every day for about 40 years. And then we see something significant happen.

The Burning Bush

This day that he's walking in the wilderness is no ordinary day as we pick up in verse two. Let me read this to you:

The angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within the bush. And 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." And when the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush. Moses said, "Here I am." — Exodus 3:2-4

The first thing I want us to see here in this passage is that Moses is walking along in the wilderness—something he's done many, many times—when in the corner of his eye he catches a fire. And I think for most of us we're like, okay, well if there's fire, of course everybody's going to look. If a fire just started in the back of the room right now, I imagine we would all go and look. So it doesn't seem significant that Moses turns aside to look.

But scholars would say that a brush fire in the desert wilderness where Moses had spent all of this time as a shepherd was actually pretty common. It was a normal occurrence for a brush fire to happen in the wilderness. But what's significant is that it catches Moses' attention—he turns aside to look and he notices that though the bush is on fire, it's not consumed, right?

We know how fires work: you start a fire, you put a log on there, the fire burns it up, you put another log on and things are consumed. But the bush is on fire and it's not consumed. Moses realizes that something that seems incredibly ordinary on the surface is actually underneath the surface incredibly peculiar.

So what does he do? He turns aside to look. And it's when he turns aside to look that God says his name. God speaks to him. That's when this conversation happens with God. And I want you to write that down in your notebook or make a mental note in your head or type that in your phone right now: it's significant that God speaks when Moses turns aside to look. It's not till then that God chooses to speak to him.

I wonder as I've studied this passage—was that bush burning for 40 years? Was it there every day and Moses just kind of with his air pods in and his phone out didn't notice? Wasn't moving at a pace? Wasn't living in a place where he could see what God was doing?

Turn aside and look and see what God has to say. But all of what happens here from here on out hinges on Moses turning aside to look. And so the first thing that I want us to see about Moses is he is oblivious to God's call in his life.

You see, he's 80 years old, he's a lowly shepherd, he's walking in the wilderness, and he thinks if God ever had a plan for him, well, he surely had outrun that when he had killed someone in Egypt and he'd run for his life. If God had any plan for him, it was surely back in Egypt where he's fled to live a sleepy life in the suburbs. Maybe it was because of his identity crisis—I don't even know who I am, so how would God use me? But Moses is oblivious to God's call.

And we'll pick this up in verse 7, and it says this:

The Lord says, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I'm concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians." — Exodus 3:7-8

Before I move to our second point, I just want to stop right here because I know that there are people in the room right now that it was all you could do this morning to get out of bed and limp into church, and of the Holy Spirit, there's nothing else that I could have said already or I will say later that's more important than what you need to hear right now. What you need to hear is verses 7 and 8:

The Lord says, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people. I've heard them crying out, and I'm concerned about their suffering. So I've come down to rescue them." — Exodus 3:7-8

God's nature then hasn't changed since then. It's still true today that God sees you, and he hears your cry, and he knows your suffering, and he's come down to do something about it.

And so we'll continue in this passage, and we see that God goes on to say that he's going to bring them up out of the land into a good and spacious land full of milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

"I am sending you." — Exodus 3:10

I wonder if in this encounter happening between Moses and God—God is saying, "I've seen the cry of my people, and I'm going to go and help them"—and Moses, who it says hides his face away, if he hears that, he's like, "That's all great, God. They need your help. I tried, and then I ended up killing the guy. It didn't go too great. But they need your help." He's tracking these are all good things. And then God says, "So now go. I am sending you." I wonder if Moses said, "Hold the phone. You want me to go? He says me? What's going on here?"

And we see that in this verse, we watch Moses transition from being oblivious to God's call—surely he wouldn't use a shepherd like him, an 80-year-old like him, someone who had washed up and messed up and had an identity crisis—he moves to fearful. Because God makes it clear what he wants Moses to do, and now he's afraid.

And it says this:

Moses says, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" — Exodus 3:11

You know, I studied this verse a little bit, and I think we can all relate to what Moses says here to God. And what scholars would say is when Moses says "who am I," what he's actually doing is rephrasing what was said to him in chapter two. Remember, I told you he sees a quarrel happening between two Israelites, and he tries to break up the fight, and they say, "Who are you to be ruler and judge among us?" And he's rephrasing that line to God—almost as if that thing that had been said to him 40 years ago, it stuck with him.

I wonder how many sleepless nights Moses had, tossing and turning, hearing those words ring between his ears: "Who am I? Who are you to be ruler and judge?" You see, that inadequacy, that insecurity, that brokenness, that shame, that guilt had taken deep root in Moses's heart. And he looks at God and he says, "God, you are there. You saw it. Who am I? I murdered someone. I've been in the wilderness as a shepherd for 40 years. Who am I?"

What I think is interesting is Moses shares something that I think we can all relate to. Because I think what happens is we get up in the morning, and whatever it is that we're supposed to do, we look in the mirror, we look at ourselves, and we say, "Who am I? I'm not good enough for this." You know, deep in our soul, each of us are afraid that we're not good enough, that we're not going to be enough, that if we do something, we're going to fall short, and we're going to fail, and we're going to fall flat on our face.

Moses says to God, "Who am I? Who am I?" And God answers him. And I think it's interesting to me because it's not how I would expect him to answer. Moses says, "Who am I?" And God says, "What I will be with you."

The ability to zoom out and see the whole story, and I would expect God to say something different. I would expect him to say one of two things because he could have said to Moses, "Moses, of course you realize that when you were just a baby, when you were defenseless, I rescued you out of the Nile River. That I saved your life. Of course I'm going to keep you in my hand."

He could have said, "Moses, don't you realize you were raised in the palace of the Egyptians? Who better to understand Egyptian culture and Egyptian education and Egyptian language, the inner workings of the government? Of course I want you to go and free my people from the Egyptians."

Or he could have said, "Moses, you know that heart of justice that you feel? I put that in you. And you have been created and ordained to be the one to go and use that heart of justice to free my people."

He could have said, "Remember how you've been a shepherd in the wilderness for 40 years, tending to the flock? Guess what you're going to do for the next 40 years? You're going to go and tend to a different flock—my flock in the wilderness for 40 years as you lead the people of Israel."

He could have said all those things, but he doesn't. You know what else he could have said? When Moses says, "Who am I?" he could have said, "Yes, Moses, you're the one. Oh, yep, I missed that line in the book. You did kill a guy? Never mind, done with you. You're a terrible person. You stay there."

He could have said either of those things, but he doesn't. Why? Because God is not interested in Moses's qualification, and he's not interested in Moses's disqualification. He's interested in him and what he's called him to do, and the fact that he will go with him.

In fact, God even reveals it if you look in verse 19 that God says Pharaoh will never let my people go unless I do something about it. God's calling Moses to an impossible mission. His qualification and his disqualification—they don't matter.

And if you're like me and you're keeping score at home, it's like, "Why would God call Moses to do something he could never do on his own if God's going to be the one that has to do it anyways? Why?" I don't know. It's a mystery of this thing that we look at. It's a mystery that's all throughout the Gospels.

What I think is true is that God wanted Moses, and God wanted intimacy with him. He wanted to use him in what he was going to do, and what Moses got to experience was unbelievable intimacy with God.

But Moses continues to be fearful, and he says, "God, who am I?" And God says, "I will go with you." And then Moses says, "Okay, great, you'll go with me, but who are you? What if they say to me, 'Who sent me?' Who are you?"

And God says one of the most theologically rich statements in all of the Bible:

I am who I am — Exodus 3:14

The word Yahweh is in here, and it's a word that's used as an almost intimate name for God. It became so powerful that people don't even say it. We're not going to have the ability to dig into every component. We could have spent all morning talking about the word Yahweh. We could spend the next seven hours, but you're hungry for tacos and we're not going to do that.

If you want to know more about the word Yahweh and you have questions, we'd love for you to ask them. Send them to Tim@chsrono.com. That's where you can send questions about Yahweh.

But here's what God says: "I am who I am, Moses. Before you, I am. After you, I am. I'm above all things. I'm in all things. And I'm close to you. Tell them that's who sent you."

But Moses is still afraid, and I love the way this argument goes. You can follow it into chapter four and it continues. God says, "Moses says, 'I don't speak very well.'" And God says, "I made your mouth, and I will give you the words." And then God demonstrates his power through some incredible things. You should read it. But it still gets to the end, and Moses is arguing with God, and God says—not me—and God says, "Yes, you," and he says, "Not me," and he's starting to lose this argument.

If you ever get an argument with God, just know you're probably going to lose. That's just how it goes. And Moses is losing, and it gets to the end, and I shouldn't find this funny, but I do: in chapter four, Moses finally gets to the point where he says, "God, just please send somebody else. I got nothing else to say. Just send somebody else."

I said that a lot in high school. My mom would say, "Landon, I need you to go to the store," and I said, "Please just send somebody else, Mom. I don't..." But I think some of us are saying that to God: "Just send somebody else."

But he doesn't. And then we watch as Moses transitions from being oblivious to God's calling on his life, to fearful of what will happen if he says yes, to faithful. And he goes to Egypt, and through incredible signs and power of God, we see that the Pharaoh releases his people, and they leave Egypt, and they get to the Red Sea.

The Three Groups: Oblivious, Fearful, or Faithful

Moses moves from being oblivious to fearful to faithful. And in doing so, I think two things that we see: number one, Moses gets to play a part in God's redemptive plan for the world. What an amazing thing. But secondly, as we watch what Moses experiences, I really do think this is primary and not secondary. Moses experiences unbelievable intimacy with God. You see, for some reason God called him, and in that he got to experience him in unbelievable ways. And I think that's primary to what God is doing—more so than what he has him do.

I wonder which group you would relate to the most. Maybe you feel like you're oblivious to God's call in your life. Maybe you would say, "I know what God has called me to, but I'm afraid of it." Or maybe you would say, "I've been faithful to that call." I believe that each of us in this room are probably in one of three categories: we're the oblivious, we're fearful, or we're faithful.

To Those Who Are Faithful

Perhaps you're in the room this morning and you say, "I've been faithful to what God has called me to do. I felt the nudge to go and I stepped out. I felt him ask me to do something and I'm doing it, and I'm leaning into what God has said." When I would say to you: continue to lean in. Would you go further up and further in to intimacy with Christ? And inevitably, when your eyes drift off of him and you sink like Peter when he got out of the boat and started walking towards Jesus on the water, just call out to Jesus and he'll extend his hand and help you up.

My only caution would be: don't let God's call for your life from yesterday become God's call for your life for tomorrow. But instead, would you turn aside and look day by day, moment by moment, and see what God has for you new and fresh this morning?

To Those Who Are Fearful

The second group of people are sitting in this room and you know that God has called you to do something, and it scares you. You feel fearful and you say, "I know that I'm supposed to do X, Y, or Z, but I'm scared of what happens if I say yes. Who am I, God? Don't you remember who I was in high school? Don't you remember the thoughts that go through my head? Don't you know who I am, God? You can't send me. I'm not good enough."

What I would say to those of you in the room who feel fearful: I believe the reason we feel fearful—myself included—is because we're afraid of what will happen if we say yes. We're afraid that our life might be in danger. We're afraid that we might fail. If you hear nothing else, I hope you hear this: God doesn't call us to success. He calls us to obedience.

We're afraid of what will happen, and here's what I would propose to you: I think that we ought not be afraid of what will happen if we say yes. But we should be afraid of what would happen if we say no to what God has called us to do. And that's not fear mongering. It's not a prosperity gospel, because if you say yes, it's probably going to be a whole lot harder. It's going to be a whole lot more uncomfortable. But there's no better place for us than inside the will of God, and there's no worse place for us than outside the will of God for our lives.

I think we should be more afraid of what would happen if we say no, because it's probable that our lives, years and years from now as we're coming to a close, and we're lying on our death bed with money in a bank account that we can't spend anymore, we're wondering if we would trade all those days from then to now for a chance to have said yes to God's redemptive plan for the world and for intimacy with him.

I wonder if you're in this room and you say, "I'm afraid of what would happen if I say yes." For some of you it might be something big. It might mean you're going to go into your workplace and you're going to quit your job and you're going to move across the globe and you're going to share the gospel with a foreign people group. For some of you, it's that you need to wake up and become the spiritual leader for your family that they've been needing you to be all along. For some of you, it's that you need to leave your life group and become a new life group leader and help start a new life group to create community for people in this church. For some of you, you're going to call me tomorrow and you're going to say, "Hey, Landon, I..."

Want to be a Young Life leader? It's a little bit of a shameless plug, but maybe that's what it is. For some, it's big things. For some, it's small things. It might be just walking back into your office that you've worked in for 30 years and extending the hand of friendship across the desk and telling someone who's never known about Jesus's love about him. Whatever it is, I wonder if we should be less afraid of what happens if we say yes and more afraid of what we'd miss if we say no.

The Oblivious

The last group of people that I want to talk to this morning is perhaps the majority of us that would say: I feel oblivious to God's call.

Maybe it's because, like Moses, you say I'm old and washed up—what would God have to do with someone like me? Maybe it's because you're young and you say I'm too young, I could never do something for God. Maybe it's because, like Moses, you feel disqualified and you say because of the things I've done, God could never use me. Or perhaps you just feel like you're just a lowly shepherd—I'm just a businessman, I'm just a mom, I'm just [filling in the blank]—I would never use me.

I promise you: God wants to use you.

You might say, "Well, I've never heard the voice of God, and I feel so envious of all the people who've heard this audible voice of God, like a megaphone coming down from heaven." I'll tell you the truth: some people have, and that's a wonderful thing. I haven't. In fact, the call of God often looks more like something that seems incredibly normal on the surface but is incredibly peculiar under the surface.

For Moses, it was a brush fire in a desert wilderness—something that was so common. But because he was living in a place and moving at a pace where he could turn aside and look, God spoke to him. What I would say to you is: are you moving at a pace and living in a place where you could turn aside and look at the things that on the surface seem ordinary in your life but perhaps underneath the surface are quite peculiar, and perhaps they have God's fingerprints all over them?

I promise you this: God has something for you, and he wants to call you to it if you would just turn aside and look.

Perhaps for some of you, you feel oblivious to God's call in your life because you've never personally known the Jesus that we claim to follow here at Church of the Holy Spirit. You say, "I don't actually know who he is. I've never seen Jesus." What I would say to you is, as we look in this passage, Jesus is here.

An angel of the Lord appeared to Moses through flames within a bush — Exodus 3

Scholars would say that's Jesus. That's Jesus—the bush that's on fire but not consumed. And Jesus, thousands of years after this account, would leave heaven and come to earth. He becomes the true and better Moses.

Jesus leaves his palace—not a palace in Egypt, but his palace in heaven—and he comes to earth. He spends time in the wilderness, and then God's call for his life comes. He resolutely turns his face toward Jerusalem. He lives a perfect life—the life that you and I should have lived. He dies a death that we deserved to die. He goes up on a mountainside and he mediates a new covenant and fulfills the one that Moses had. He's nailed to a cross, and there on that mountainside God's wrath is poured out on Jesus—the wrath that we were supposed to get.

You see, Jesus is the burning bush in this passage with Moses, and he's the burning bush that day on the cross. God's fire pours out on him, but guess what? Jesus was not consumed. Jesus was the burning bush in his passage in Exodus 3. Jesus was the burning bush when he died for us on a cross. And guess what? Jesus is the burning bush here this morning.

If you would just turn aside to look, to see him—it says that God saw that Moses turned aside to look. And what did he do? He said his name.

The Call

So perhaps this morning, in a moment when I pray, you might come to these rails. You might pray alone, or you might pray with someone in the back, or you might pray in your seat. But what I'd ask is: what group are you in?

Perhaps you're oblivious to God's call, and this morning for the first time you're going to turn and you're going to hear Jesus say your name. You might enter into a relationship with him.

Perhaps you're going to turn aside and look at the things that on the surface seem ordinary in your life where God's fingerprints are all over it—because he's got a call for you.

And perhaps he's closed in on you this morning, and before you left you said, "Just send somebody else." But you're going to say yes, and you're going to experience intimacy with him because of it.

Or perhaps you're faithful, and this morning you'd lean in. But would you spend some time this morning turning aside to look at what God might have to say to you?

Lord, thank you that you love us, that you're after us, and even when we think we've outrun you, you're seeking after us. Thank you that you grow flowers in desert places. Thank you that you love us, and that we would turn aside to—

Look soon and we pray amen.