Amen. you you Well, good morning and welcome to the worship of God. Call to worship this morning comes to us from Psalm 84. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. And Lord Almighty, blessed is the one who trusts in you. Part of the big exercise of the soul that you do in a sanctuary is that last verb. You practice trusting the Lord. You learn to trust the Lord. Let's go before him in silent prayer, asking that would be the frame of heart that we're bringing this morning, is one of trust in God. And the way that God engenders trust in him, in your heart, my heart, is that he shows that he's powerful enough to deal with the situations that we need to trust him in. And that's what this song is about. Let's stand together to sing, I Sing the Almighty Power of God. ♪ I sing the mighty power of God ♪ That's when the glowing seas are o'er, and when the mountains rise, I sing the hymns of love again, a song to you again. The moon shines low at his command, Let us sing the goodness of the Lord, and fill the earth with joy. We mourn the breachers with his word, and then proclaim, stand by. For thou, Lord of hosts, art his way, above the sky. There's not a map for far below, by which all the glories go, when clouds arise and And we'll see that's the key of what God's trying to communicate with Moses, is that he's there with him and he's there with you, and he expresses that in his greeting. Which is, may the Lord bless you. He welcomes you into his sanctuary. May his grace be upon you and his peace. And all God's people said. Amen. And please be seated. If you'd please turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus 20. Looking at God's law, we're going to be looking at it, not just from the words that are spoken, but from the hearts that receive it. Considered last week that God spoke all of these words, everyone on Sinai encountered the same voice, but we thought last week, and we'll continue to see, that different frames of heart receive it at different. Last week we thought about those who are very, very fearful, And those who are proud, this week we think about those who tend towards being excessive and those who tend toward being really austere. The excessive are those who, they just jump into things with two feet. A parable of the prodigal son. Jesus is talking about someone who's excessive, someone who's austere. The prodigal goes, spends all the money. Anything that he's into, he does. But the lost son, the other son, is just as lost, too. He's austere, he'll complain to his father, I slave away for you every day, God. Man, you don't even give me anything to celebrate with. And as you think about yourself, right, there's tendencies you've got, tendencies I've got. And looking at some of these commands, you can think about how if you're excessive, you'd abuse it in one way, and if you are rather severe, you'd abuse it in another. Think about the Sabbath. Remember the Sabbath day, by keeping it holy, six days you shall labor, do all your work. Seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. If you've got an excessive heart, it really tends towards then, well, just laziness, why do I have to work at all? If you've got an austere heart, it's much more of, well, I know I'm good, because I don't do these things, but neither really receive it with a heart of gratitude of saying, God, you take care of me. You call me to work to have something with those in need. You see the same with the prodigal son, thinking about, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery. Easy to jump in both feet. And then what often happens is sometimes people spend time and excessive for years and then they whip really hard back to austere for the rest of their life, but neither again is receiving financial gifts, receiving sexuality as a gift from God and saying, teach me to use this well. Rather, in both ways, it just becomes about ourself. And that's something to avoid. And the final one is the one that really hits with this, which is covet. Right? Excessive people covet what everyone else has. And austere people, like you see in the parable of the prodigal son, the older son really covets the fact that the younger son can just live his life. but neither are really living their lives. Both are called, as all of us are called, with all these commands to say, God, help me receive from you. Not abuse your gifts, but also not think I'm better based on the way I use them than others. Let's go to our God in prayer, confessing all this. Father, we are quick to overtaste all the good things that you give in life. We're also quick to reckless abandon some of us. who have been hurt by this very abandon either committed by us or committed upon us, wind up the opposite. Begin to hate the good things in life because they can go bad on us. We ask that you'd help us. And we need this because you've told us that the earth is yours and the fullness thereof and this is for our good and our enjoyment. So we ask that you teach us and train us to receive and to enjoy. Teach us to restrain, teach us to celebrate, teach us to mourn, and teach us to laugh. And teach us that you want us to be satisfied, but satisfied with what truly does satisfy. Teach us, no matter how old we are, forgive us from turning your goods into idols, our own bellies into gods, as Paul would put it, and from turning our own self-righteousness into our God. We ask that you take these idols from your throne. It's in Jesus' name that we ask it. Amen. We need our Savior to not just save us, but to teach us, to train us, to lead us, to know how to even live life, and that's what this next hymn is about. All the way, my Savior leads me. The Savior leads me, while I rise and rise like a sun. When I doubt His heavenly mercy, O God, you've turned my eye. Your peace divides us from you. Gives me grace for ev'ry trial. Gives me grace for every trial. Our Savior leads me, the voice of his love, perfect bless to each from above. And please be seated. I'm going to be praying for the family of Dorothy Muir, with her passing. Information regarding the visitation was sent out. If by chance you don't get the praise and prayer emails, you can contact the church office to get on that list. Let's go together to our God in prayer, praying for Dorothy's family. And have mercy on us, O God. Have mercy on us, because in you we take refuge. We will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed, and there are plenty of disasters. For David in the psalm, it's his father-in-law's continual persecution of him, the king's persecution of him, but we have our own troubles. As your son said that we would in this life, and so it is. And so in your providence, it seems it must be, and we don't understand that. We think about how you've kept Dorothy Muir safe in the shadow of your wings and brought her from life through death to eternal life. She very much wanted to be with you the past two decades and now you've given this desire of her heart. She cried out to you and you've vindicated her as David puts it regarding himself. You've vindicated her from loneliness. From the questions of what she's doing here as age continued to creep in on her as so many of us know that struggle, questions about purpose, questions about why. You've given her a hiding place and now she's safe forever. We pray for the family asking that tomorrow would be a time of encouragement. Pray for Dorothy's family members among us, for siblings, for in-laws, for nieces, for nephews. Pray for her children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren. We ask that we as a church might be an encouragement to her family and the grandchildren. We look forward to the day when there are no more troubles like this. You send from heaven and save me as David row, rebuking those who hotly pursue me. You send forth your love and your faithfulness, and this was true. Regarding Saul for David, you did rebuke Saul. You put an end to him. but there was more trouble for David. There's Shimei, there's his own son Absalom, there's Joab, a great help and also a great hindrance. As a general and father, so it will be in this life. There'll be great helps, great hindrances, more trouble to come when trouble has passed. But we do look forward to a time when there will be no more trouble and only good as Dorothy has entered. We pray for others who have lost loved ones over the past few months, years, and decades. Some of us have been so at grief for so long, thinking about a spouse, thinking about a child. That grief is an old acquaintance, one that we never wish we met. And yet in your providence we have, we sometimes feel like David saying, I'm in the midst of lions, I'm forced to dwell among ravenous beasts. We ask that you'd help us in this pilgrim life and remind us that we too will one day be done with hardships. We pray for comfort and peace and encouragement for those grieving loved ones who have gone ahead. We pray as well for those who love people who have died, seemingly without trust in your son and in his salvation that has hardships of its own that only your spirit can help with. We pray for those amongst who are struggling, believingly, but still struggling greatly. We pray for Sharon Wiese. Some days are better than others in this walk with cancer, but you're with her in the downs and you're with her in the ups. We trust that you will continue to Be so and do so, so that Sharon can say, would David amidst her struggles be exalted, O God, among the heavens? Let your glory be over all the earth. And such praise is among the best medicine, but that's not one that's easy to take. We pray for others among us who have cancer, for Marilyn Mites, thanking you for her continued recovery from surgery. We pray as well for Evelyn Musselman's daughter, Sharon, and for Gordon Brand, and for others those in this congregation care about and love. We pray as well for those who continue to struggle with the consequences of cancer and the consequences of treatment for cancer. Help us to be steadfast in our trust in you and your ways, as unfathomable as they are, as we'll study this morning and evening. And my heart, oh God, is steadfast. My heart is steadfast, as David says to you and also to himself, encourage his own faith and we need to do the same because by nature our hearts are not steadfast. So we call ourselves to it. Pray for those among us who are overwhelmed by what we've taken on. We long for children for years and often feel overwhelmed in the parenting. We want this different position within a company. Now what are we to do with it? Wanted a spouse but now we don't know how to lead, how to be led. We wanted to get involved in the community to help in this way and now we find ourselves in charge of difficult circumstances. We ask that you give wisdom and give patience and give hope for great is your love reaching to the heavens, your faithfulness reaches to the skies as David trusted and reminded himself to trust. So help each of us to trust what you can do, not what we can do, and we don't know what it is that you have in store for us this week. We tend to think we do. We are as blind to the future as we're going to see with Moses as he heads out with the sheep. Teach us humility before you and before your providence. Give us firm trust, not in ourselves and not in others, but in you. We ask that you would be our hope. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to be seeing that God meets Moses in mercy in a lot of ways that are going to be quite unexpected. and we're going to be singing together. Is this a 100th anniversary? I will yield, yield. We're thinking about God's faithfulness in particular, but this one kind of covers all aspects that we see in Psalm 100. So let's stand and sing the two verses of I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. With my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness, Your faithfulness With my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever I will sing of the mercies of the Lord see God's grace forever he has done see God's grace forever And please be seated. We're going to be seeing the mercy of God to Moses, to his people, meaning to us, if you'd open your Bibles to Exodus 3. We're working our way through the first 15 chapters of Exodus. Today we come to one of the most famous parts in the whole book of Exodus and the whole Testament, which is Moses meeting God at the burning bush. Let's go together to our God in prayer. Father, we ask that you would speak to us. Think about how you spoke to Moses. And Father, please give us a sense that this is not all that different. That as you speak to us in your word, it is you speaking to us just as surely as it was you speaking to him on that day. We see Moses' response before you. We see him hide his face, recognizing that it's you to whom he's speaking. And we ask that we would have that same sense as we hear your word. We ask that you would exalt yourself before us, because otherwise we'll exalt everything and anything else, and find our identity there, find our truth there, and that will lead to great sorrow. But hearing you leads to to great trust. We ask that it would in us. We ask this in your son's name. Amen. Now Moses was tending the flock with 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. And Moses saw that the bush was on fire and did not burn up. And so Moses thought, I'll 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're standing is holy ground. And he said, I'm the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And at this, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I've heard them crying out because of their slave masters, and I'm concerned about their suffering. So I've come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good land, a spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, Hivites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I've seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them, 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 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 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. 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 asked me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you're 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. This is the word of the Lord. Well, if you look at the world, you will be distressed. If you look at yourself, you'll be depressed. If you look at God, you'll be at rest. That's Corrie ten Boom. She's got a wealth of experience thinking about such circumstances, spent quite a bit of time in Raven's book, Concentration Camp. If you've ever read any of her memoirs, you see a lady firmly devoted to God in about the worst circumstances you could be in, and a lot of overlap between that and Moses. You get a state-sponsored genocide going on, you get different ghettos in which they're putting particular ethnic groups to eliminate them, and Moses pushed back against that. We're going to fix this. That's where we saw him last week, and now he is utterly distressed before the world, utterly depressed in himself, but he's not found any sort of rest in God. And I don't know what frame of heart you're in this morning regarding the world, regarding yourself, regarding God, but what we see is what God does is what he does with Moses is he finds people. And he says that, well, I'm with you, and this is the beginning of how it works, how he finds people. We're going to be seeing that the Lord's presence is our only hope. That's how it was for Moses when he was lost. God finds him. How it is with us in Jesus. Jesus finds us. That's my only hope. That's your only hope before terror of this world. We'll be thinking about this with four different points, but the first is that God meets Moses. That's a meeting. Since we were with him last week, Moses has become a shepherd. And this continues to break his ties with the Egyptians, because the Egyptians tended to think that, much like the Hindus thinks cows are sacred, the Egyptians had similar thoughts about sheep. So the idea of Pharaoh's daughter, that her adopted son Moses, who she raised for years, had become a shepherd, that this would just make her exceedingly disappointed in her son. Moses continuing to break ties with Egyptians, and when we met him last week, Chapter three, Moses was, sorry, now we meet him today, but he's taking his sheep far from home. And he's taking his sheep far from home, because there's no greenery there for the sheep to eat. And this is the Lord's plan, right? The Lord's in charge of weather, the Lord's in charge of rain, and he has been excluding rain around where Moses lives to drive Moses to Mount Sinai. Horeb, the mountain of God, as chapter three puts it. Now, Horeb wasn't the mountain of God before God met Moses there, wasn't the mountain of God before God met the Israelites there. It's not as if, if you grew up watching Indiana Jones movies like I did, you could somehow go to these places historically and all of a sudden you would meet God at Horeb. No, the only reason that it's sacred is because God chose to meet people there at that time. There's nothing particularly unique about this mountain other than that's where God chose to meet these people. But Moses had no idea that this long sheep drive would bring him to meet with God. He was just living his life, right? The way yesterday you were just living your life, the way driving here this morning, right? I was just living my life. But Moses, he's living it lost. He describes himself that way in verse one. He says he's beyond the wilderness. In the Hebrew, the phrase is pretty striking. The idea is there's the wilderness, which is as far away as you can imagine, and he's way beyond that. So where he is is he's basically in a place where he's just utterly lost. That's how he's describing himself. There's no north, there's no south, there's no east, there's no west, if you're familiar with old medieval maps. He's where the dragons are, right? He's where the sea monsters are. There's no up anymore, there's no down for Moses. He thought he knew what life was about. He thought he knew what he was for. He really threw everything he had into trying to help out his fellow Hebrews. And now it's 40 years of seeing what, why God, what is going on here. That's 40 years of a lot of questions. And it's in this lostness that God finds Moses and he finds him through a non-burning Burning bush, that's really the key of the burning bush. The key of the burning bush is not that there was a bush on fire in the wilderness, because that happens all the time. Fires start, lightning strikes. It's not an abnormal situation to have things on fire in the wilderness. What's unique about this is that this bush keeps burning, but nothing changes. Like, imagine a tree in your own yard. Maybe you've got a maple. It's on fire, and you keep watching it, and it keeps burning, but nothing ever burns up. It burns, but nothing ever changes. That's what's going on here. And this is the first of many unnatural wonders you're going to see throughout the book of Exodus. There's going to be dirt becoming gnats, there's gonna be water becoming blood. What God is showing through all this is I am in charge of all of this and can do with it whatever I want. And this is how he starts with Moses, this is how he meets Moses. I'm in charge of everything, I can do whatever I want. Which is gonna be a lesson Moses needs to keep learning, that you need to keep learning, that I need to keep learning, the God who creates the world, he's still very involved in it all. And this fire that burns but doesn't consume, this fire that burns but doesn't change, it's a very apt metaphor for God, right? He destroys and he purifies. Think about fire, right? You want to get close to it, but you also don't want to get too close. There's a sense it can consume. So, We talk about that, we talk with our children, right, with bonfires, other things, a healthy fear of fire. Fear of the Lord, very, very similar. Sense of respect, you draw near, but you don't draw too near, you don't presume on it, but you do appreciate it. It's worth me considering, you considering, do I think about God that way? And does he destroy or does he purify when I deal with him? And Moses remembered this fire, this burning bush, for the rest of his life. In his final speech to the people before he dies, what he says is, he prays that they would receive the best gifts of the earth and the fullness and the favor of him who dwelt in the burning bush. So this fire sticks with Moses the rest of his life. It's interesting, if people pass away, they talk about any number of things that has been exceedingly meaningful to them. And Moses, he thinks about this moment. This is where God found me. It's one of the reasons we remember this story so well and the Jews remembered it very well because God had them put it in their temple. If you could bring up our slide. What we've got here is we've got the lamp stand. Now imagine this lit. What would that look like? It would look like a bush. It would look like a bush that would just keep burning all the time but would never really change. God has The people put this in the temple to remember his presence. This is who I am. I'm a fire. And I'm with you. And I don't change. And I'm here. And God gives symbols like this to help the Old Testament saints understand. It reaches much more clearly in Jesus, saying this is really what I'm like. God is just like the fire that you see in Jesus. Consumes, purifies. The Lord will purify Moses. Moses, Moses, he says to Moses. It's almost certainly a term of endearment, just like Jesus with Martha. Martha, Martha. A sign of care, a sign of affection, a sign of being for this person. So it seems this God of the burning bush, which is the same God that's involved in casting Moses completely out of the palace. This same God loves this Moses. That's part of what it is to be loved as a fallen person in a fallen world by a God of fire. It's not all that straightforward. Wasn't for Moses, isn't for me, won't be for you. And this God of fire loves Moses, so he also tells Moses to keep his distance, right, just like we do with children with fire. Do not come any closer, God said, take off your sandals for the place where you're standing is holy ground. And now again, we don't want to fall into magical thinking here. It's easy to do this where like the thought of somehow people, and people talk this way sometimes, is if you could go to Sinai and Horeb and you could test the radioactivity of the ground and therefore you could see it was more radioactive and therefore God had met with people that really know what's going on here. The ideas of God, he's manifesting himself in a particular way And so Moses would be wise not to draw near. This is the genius, the brilliance of the incarnation, is God saying, I'm gonna come near you in such a way that you're not destroyed. So I'll do it as a baby. And this is him putting his spirit in you. I'm gonna cleanse you from your sin before I'll put my spirit in you, otherwise you'd be destroyed. So God, he's always finding ways to come near to us, because we can't come near to him. That's That's how it goes, this is how it goes with Jesus, right? God comes near to us, because we can't come near to him, and we won't come near to him. So he finds us. The Lord doesn't know he's looking, sorry, Moses doesn't know he's looking for the Lord, but the Lord knows he's looking for Moses, and he'll identify himself now to Moses. Verse six, I'm the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of... Jacob, now you think about that, put yourself in Moses' shoes. What happened last week? He decides to side with the Hebrews against the Egyptians. The Hebrews reject him, so he's no longer a prince, and he's no longer, according to the Israelites, an Israelite. He's nobody. He's got nobody who's with him. And God is saying, I'm gonna tell you who you are, right? The Egyptians, they don't get to determine who you are. The Hebrews, they don't get to determine who you are. You don't even get to determine who you are. I'm the God of your father. You're one of my people. I mean, everyone throughout their whole life is trying to learn their own identity, and when God says this, okay, I'm the one that gives it to you. It's not others. It's not even yourself. It's God. And we're gonna see that Moses, he has a good deal to learn about the Lord, as do you, as do I. decades of living in Midianite. They've paganized Moses in a number of different ways that we'll see. There is great benefits of being with the Midianites, kind of the Amish of that day, but there's also different pitfalls that Moses is gonna need to be drawn out of by God, just like you do, just like I do. We've been westernized, Americanized in 10,000 different ways, some great blessings in that, also some great confusions. But Moses still has the good sense to recognize he's talking with God. That's verse six. Puts a veil over his face because he's afraid to speak with the Lord, to see the Lord. There's wisdom there. There was a lot of foolishness last week, Moses. He's rushing in where angels fear to tread. I can do this. Now he's saying, I can't. I can't look at you. That's the fear of the Lord. And Solomon, all wisdom literature, says that's the beginning of wisdom, meaning that's like if you want to learn ABCs, that's the A of dealing with God, is saying He is not like me at all. I really don't have any business dealing with Him, but He really seems to love dealing with me, and that's my hope. So Moses set out that morning with these sheep, thinking that, you know, I'm just kind of lost till I die. And the Lord finds them. That's how it happens, that's the story of the Gospels. The story of the Gospels is not that the Pharisees got the people so morally together finally that now God's gonna send Jesus, right? That was largely what the Pharisees hoped, is if we clean ourselves up sufficiently, the Lord will send the king. And that's not how it goes at all. God finds people. God finds you, right? God finds me. Then he sends us on mission, and that's our second point, which is the mission. This mission is the exodus. I've indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt, as the Lord puts it in verse seven, and I've come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians. and to bring them out of that land into a good and spacious land. As verse 8 puts it, so this is what the Lord has been preparing. Last week we saw there was all this genocide, babies being drowned, Moses out in the middle of nowhere, and the Lord knew. Right? The Hebrew wants you to rest with that. Moses wants you to rest with that. The Lord knew. Where was God? He knew. Right? That's true in the various tragedies. Yesterday, we went down to a visitation, or rather like a celebration of life for Bethany's cousin that passed away in a car accident at 31, and the Lord knew. Right, that's, you can't get away from that. And now we're gonna see the Lord also knows what he's going to do. Right, so yeah, it leaves you in that tension, but not forever. Here's what he's gonna do. He says, I've come down to rescue them. out of the hand of the Egyptians to bring them up out of the land. And what he says, and you see this throughout scripture, what God comes down to bring the people up. God doesn't call the people up themselves. I'm going to come down and I'm going to bring you up. This is what you see in Jesus as well, right? He comes down to bring us up. It's not a sense of here's a number of principles by which you're going to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and then you'll be here with me. No, I'm going to come down and I'm going to carry you up. That's how this is going to go. That's how it goes in the Exodus, is how it's gonna go into real and salvation. We just sang about that. Jesus led me all the way. I know this is good news for Moses that God is going to do something, but verse 10, that's the sticking point. So now go. I'm sending you to Pharaoh. to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. So the idea here is, yeah, this is the Lord's plan, but Moses has a role to play, and you're gonna see this throughout the whole Exodus story. God's in charge of everything, and everyone's got skin in the game. But the Lord sends Moses, and Moses is to go. God works in history, but you live in history. So his plan is gonna be in and through the mess of your own life. It's gonna be in and through the blessings of your own life. He likes to write his perfect plan in history, but he does with very imperfect pens like Moses. I like you. And like me. And each of us would very want, very much want, him to write with perfect pens. But he doesn't. Because there's only one available, and that's the one who he actually authored the story with finally, which is Jesus, and then he works it in through you and through me. And that's fearful, because God sends us to do things that we can't do. And that's what we're gonna see with Moses next, is I can't even do this. And that's our third point, which is who am I? Moses is all for God's plan, all for the idea of God saving Israel, not at all for the fact that he's going to be involved in it. Because he'd given that a good try. He'd given that his best shot, and it cost him his family, it cost him his friends, it cost him the palace, it cost him his own identity, because he was helping somebody who was getting hurt. That seems like a very reasonable, noble thing to do, and it totally all but unravels him for four decades. I've given that a shot, God. I mean, I've tried. Verse 11, but Moses said to God, who am I? that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt. There's nothing, no heroics that you saw in Moses last week. There's no ego. There's no sense of, why doesn't somebody else step up? Why can't people be more like me? Right, that's in us. That's in our noble flesh. Why can't others do the good things that I would do? Why won't others lay themselves down the way that I would? And so we very quickly judge everyone else around them, because, well, they're not us. It's Moses last week. He's rushing in where angels fear to tread. And now there's none of it. And now he knows he's nothing. He's gonna ask God five different questions. We're gonna do two this week, three next time, but the first question, who am I, has to do with his own self-understanding. At one time he really did think, oh yeah, I am the guy, right? I'm a prince. I've got a whole lot of pull in the country. I really see what's wrong and I'm here to help and I might be the best situated person to fix this. He really thought he was him. I can do it. And now it's, who am I? That I should go to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. Today we live in a very often carelessly affirming culture. Let's imagine that this happened today and Moses recounted this story on Facebook, if you're on Facebook, and kind of explained here's the situation and typed, who am I that I should lead the Israelites out of Egypt? You can just imagine all the different friends. Oh, Moses. Moses, you are such a wonderfully patient man. You are the best person capable to do this. Moses, don't be so hard on yourself. You could really pull it off. Remember back in high school, Moses, when you, well, whatever. And no, well, Moses is actually the one who's right. He's not up to it. And now he knows he's not up to it, which is why he's now up to it. That's how it tends to go with different things, right? When are you up to parenting? When you know you're not up to parenting. All right, people, before they have children, I had this. You tend to all these different thoughts of here's how it is to be done. Just wait till my and my grandeur enter my parenting. Then you're in it. You're like, I don't know what's going on here. God help. That's how it is with anything God calls you to actually do. If you think you can do it in your own power, You're actually not in the place to do it. If you know you desperately need God's help to do it, you're ready to do it. So Moses now is ready to do it because he knows he can't do it. And we have to take seriously he can't do it because name one person that you could know, you could imagine, now, ever, throughout human history, who could go to the tyrant of the superpower of their day and tell them and make them do anything. Can you even make your children do anything? Can you make your spouse do anything? Can you make anyone do anything, let alone somebody who's in charge of everything, like Pharaoh was? Moses is spot on to say, I don't know who I am that I should go to Pharaoh. How is this my thing? I can't do this? That's sensible. But now the Lord knows where Moses is at, and he's gonna say, kid, it's not about you. Because, all right, Moses He expects that he's somehow going to be able to pull this off on his own. And the Lord is saying, I'm not expecting you to pull this off on your own. You're going to see the Hebrews often very frustrated for Moses for not pulling it off. And the Lord's going to say to the Hebrews, this isn't his to pull off. The Lord's up to something totally different, which is why you see his really strange answer to Moses in verse 12, which is God said, I'll be with you. So Moses, very thinking about his own competency, thinking about his own adequacy, inadequacy, very natural. And God's saying that's not what matters. Right? Your own adequacy is not relevant. What's relevant is God. Moses must simply do what God says. God will tell Moses to strike the Nile and it will become blood. And Moses must strike the Nile and if God wants to become blood, it will become blood. Moses just has to do what he is told. The Lord is the one who will do what the Lord wants. And the same's true for you, same's true for me. That's trust and obey. What's your side of the equation? It's not to secure what God's going to secure, it's to say, I'm to trust, I'm to obey, and God will do what he will do. So the point is that it's not about Moses. It's not about me. It's not about you. It's about the Lord. And that's the certainty of time, verse 12. And this will be a sign to you that it's I who have sent you. When you've brought the people out of Egypt, you'll worship God on this mountain. This is a very, very exceedingly strange sign, because almost always you're given a sign in Scripture that you can see right then. Right? You give somebody a sign to confirm right then that I'm with you. And God says, okay, here's your sign. Eventually, you're going to come back here. What kind of a sign is that? How about something right now? What the Lord is saying is, I'm so confident that I'm gonna bring you back, because I'm not confident in you, Moses, right? I'm confident in me. That's why God chooses us. It's not because he's, okay, because he's really confident in us. You never see a servant other than Jesus throughout all of Scripture. That guy's got confidence in, in the sense of saying, you know what, I'm just gonna turn this over to you. No, it's all, I'm gonna work through you. I'm confident in me, and I'm so confident that I'll use somebody like Moses. I'll use somebody like Adam, I'll use somebody like you. Because that way it's not about us, it's about him. Who Moses is is not as all important as about who God is, as one commentator put it, and that's true with your life. Who you are is not as important as who God is. In your parenting, in your grandparenting, in your work, in your church service. The question really is, who's God? And that's our final point, which is, who are you? This is the second of Moses' five questions, and this one arises out of his concern that the Israelites won't want help. This is a very, very natural, very natural, put yourself in his shoes. Right? He wanted to help them last time, wanted to help them 40 years ago, put everything on the line for them, and they didn't want his help. So it's very natural. What if I go and they say, well, why should we listen to you? Remember when you totally turned tail and ran away? Why should we think you're really going to stick it out? And we didn't really want your help in the first place. These are very understandable questions, and often the questions that we have regarding what God wants are very understandable, right? To us. It's worth noting that this never actually even happens. The people never at once that we read about ask Moses to say, well, who is the God that sent you? Maybe like some of us, as one commentator put it, Moses excels at raising problems and issues that never emerge. When I think about you, think about all the various things that you thought were going to happen that never emerged. What about, what will we do if this is Moses? Never comes up, and the Lord knows it's never gonna come up, but he wants Moses to know him. So he says, okay, this is my name. He told Moses, I am who I am. This is what you're to say to the Israelites. I am, has sent me to you. If you got your Bible open, you can see that the capital letters, Lord, What that is, is it's the name of the Lord Yahweh in the Hebrew. God calls himself, I am who I am, and we call him he is who he is, or he will be who he will be, which is likely what Yahweh means, right? So I am who I am is what God calls himself, we call him he'll be who he'll be, and there's endless debates about what everything this name means, but it certainly means something to do with presence. because that's what this whole section is about. God comes near somebody who's lost. The repetition of I am, as in I am who I am, emphasizes God's existence and his nearness. He's real and he's here, which were actually the questions under the questions at Haunted Moses for years. It wasn't really about the palace, right? It wasn't really about his friends. It was really about, is God even real? Is God even with me? And those are usually the same questions that we find ourselves struggling endlessly, which are under all the other questions. Is he real? Is he here? And so he gives this name to say, that's who I am. I'm real. And I'm here. And Jesus, he picks this up, right? The seven I am statements throughout the gospel of John, I am, as in I am who I am, I am who I am, the good shepherd. I am who I am, the way, the truth, the life. I am who I am, the resurrection and the life. This is who I am. I'm the same God who appeared to Moses. And that's the only real appropriate self-confidence that we see in a passage like this, is God's. Not Moses' last week. But well, God, he knows how to do it. He's the rescuer, he's the judge, he's the savior. And our role is to trust that he's with us, and to do what he says. And the rest of the exodus is gonna be proof that the Lord's with his people. Pharaoh's gonna scoff at that one. Pharaoh's actually the one who is much more interested in the name of God, and Moses tells Pharaoh the name of this God, and Pharaoh finds it just ridiculous. He just says, so I don't know, I don't know this Yahweh. I don't know, I'm not gonna do what you say. And then God's response basically is saying, I'm gonna show him what my name means. And that's the rest of the Exodus, is I'm real. And I'm with my people. And we tend to look, I tend to look, I would imagine you tend to look for God in every other place than he can be found. All right, well, this is what the Lord was teaching Moses, was where do you find him? This is the Lord's teaching us, where do you find him? So you look at the world, you'll be distressed. You look at yourself, you're gonna be depressed. And you look at God, you'll be at rest. Let's go to him in prayer. Father, certainly the case we are quite often lost sometimes as severely as Moses in this account, sometimes much differently, but we need to be found again and again and again. And the way we're found is by being with you and beholding you. We ask that you'd help us to do that. We ask that hearing your words, singing your praises, being with your people this day would be of help for each of us in that. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. I'm thinking about the Lord being beheld by Moses and Moses beholding the Lord. This next hymn that we're to sing in praise to God is the same impulses of us beholding our God. Let's stand to sing. Who has held the oceans in His hands? Who has numbered every grain of sand? Kings and nations tremble at His voice. All creation See it on His throne Come let us adore Him Behold our King Nothing can compare Come let us adore Him question any of his words who can teach the one who knows all things who can fathom all his wondrous deeds behold seated on his throne come let us adore him behold our king nothing can compare come let us adore him Who has felled the nails upon His head, Bearing all the guilt of sinful man? God eternal, humbled to the grave, Jesus, Savior, risen now to reign! Behold our God, sitting on His throne Come, let us adore Him Behold our King, nothing can compare Come, let us adore Behold our God, seated on his throne. Come, let us adore him. Behold our King, nothing can compare. Come, let us adore him. Please be seated. We have the opportunity now to give our gifts and our offerings to part of what God is up to in this world through the General Fund, Benevolence, and Ministry Shares. I ask that the deacons would help. Praise him, all creatures here below. Praise him, God of the empty halls. Praise God, in son and holy ghost. Amen. Combine the Exodus with the parables, studying the parables in the evenings, I think they're really both about God bringing his kingdom, saying this really is the only alternative to the world. And so this evening we'll think about how can the kingdom be here when there's so much that's wrong. I encourage you to consider coming to hear God's word again, but go into this Sabbath day with this blessing from your God. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be exceedingly gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.