Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign, Maybe just lift your hands, Put your hands out as if you are receiving the gift of God.
[00:00:15] Certainly he's given us the gift of his self, his presence in his spirit to us.
[00:00:23] And we welcome you today, Holy Spirit, not only into this room, we welcome you into our hearts.
[00:00:30] We ask you to renew our minds, to deepen our trust so our faith in you can continue to grow.
[00:00:39] God, we believe you are the same God.
[00:00:42] You're the same as you were back then. You're the same today.
[00:00:46] You're going to be the same tomorrow. God. And so we say, would you come be with us now? Teach us, encourage us.
[00:00:55] In Jesus name, I ask this. Amen. Amen. God bless you. Go ahead and have a seat. Praise God. Thank you, Meghan and the worship team.
[00:01:03] Amen. Happy Mother's Day.
[00:01:07] Happy Mother's Day. I'll add my Happy Mother's Day to the one Bryant gave you. Happy Mother's Day. On Friday, my wife and I got a chance to go over and visit with my mom and took her Mother's Day card. And, you know, I spent all of 90 seconds picking out the card.
[00:01:28] Not because I was in a hurry, because sometimes your eye just goes to something and then you pick it up and you read it and you go, this is it. And that's what that card was that I picked up from my mom. In essence, it reminded me of how grateful I am for the mom that God gave me.
[00:01:48] She was an example in so many ways. A mom who raised three boys on her own, she said, a great example in so many ways, certainly in her love and her commitment to her family, doing all she could to get us three boys raised.
[00:02:03] She gave me values that guided my life, really helped prepare me. She actually taught me how to open and that I should open a door for a lady, even though a lady is certainly able to open up the door for herself.
[00:02:17] But she said that's what men do. And so she taught me a lot of things, including hard work. And so I thank by God that mom gave me a running head start at life and prepared me well, really, so that when I met Jesus, man, add Jesus on top of the beautiful gift of the upbringing I received.
[00:02:37] And God has really been doing some incredible things in my life. So I thank you for my mom, and I thank you moms for being here today to spend this Sunday morning in pursuit of God yourselves. And I hope that rest of your day, your afternoon, will be fun and restful, perhaps, but that also this message this morning would help you and encourage you in your Journey with God. Amen.
[00:03:01] Before I get into the message, I do want to add my note to what Bryant shared in terms of our district assembly coming again.
[00:03:10] We've been asking for volunteers and I think that's pretty much in hand. About 60 plus people have volunteered to help us with district assembly. So thank you for being part of that. But every, every time we have a district assembly, we are asked as a church to host it for two years and then it moves to another church next year it'll be in McMinnville. And so this is our second year. And it's literally, my friends, it's literally right here in our backyard. It's actually right in our lap. It's right here. So I would encourage you, man, if you're just looking for some encouragement.
[00:03:43] On Thursday night is the kickoff of the assembly. Now, if you have a heart for missions, then come at 1 o'. Clock. If you can spend some time hearing what God is doing missionally around the world, but even through our local denomination here in Oregon. But on Thursday night is the opening assembly. It begins with a great time of worship and focus on the person of God as we are going to talk about some of the business of God among our denomination. But our Oregon district superintendent will bring a message of encouragement that God's been preparing for him to share to our people, the Nazarenes of Oregon. And I would encourage you, if you don't, I mean, it's right here in our lap.
[00:04:23] Thursday at 6:30, I would encourage you to come out and participate in that. Otherwise you're going to have to go to McMinnville next year. We'd love to have you come out this year. And if you're available on Friday at 11 o', clock, we're going to have an ordination service where that is men and women who have felt a sense of calling on their life to become pastoral ministers, some paid, some unpaid. They've completed all the education and the time and training and preparing the interviews that go along with being sure that they're ready to serve Jesus. We have a beautiful ceremony and celebration at 11 o' clock led by our global superintendent. So I don't know if you're available, you could come and see that, just to see how the inner workings sometimes are. But anyways, I encourage you to be part of it since it's right here in our lap. Okay. We're in a series study of Moses in the book of Exodus.
[00:05:16] Moses is a central figure in the Old Testament. He's the author credited for the first five Books of the Old Testament. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Right, those first five books. The second book is Exodus.
[00:05:31] Exodus really means, it's kind of from an old ancient Greek word. It means departure or going out. So the book of Exodus really chronicles the history of the people of God, escaping the bondage and the oppression in Egypt and then their journey to where God is leading them in the promised land. But today I'm going to talk about the years of preparation that Moses needed in order to be ready to accept the assignment that God would have for him.
[00:06:00] Now, you may remember as we started last week, the book of Exodus. It picks up right after Joseph's death. Now, Joseph was the youngest of 12 boys at the time. He interpreted a dream that made his brothers angry.
[00:06:16] They sold him into slavery to a caravan that was heading into Egypt. Once in Egypt as a slave, he was falsely accused of something that he was put in prison.
[00:06:25] And then eventually he was able to interpret a dream that the pharaoh had. And so the pharaoh released him and invited him to be the second in command of all of Egypt.
[00:06:36] And Pharaoh was so grateful for what Joseph had done that he asked Joseph, hey, if you want, invite your extended family, welcome them into the land of Egypt so that there's plenty of resources here. So invite them in. And so they did. They transition their family into Egypt.
[00:06:55] Then a time came when all of Joseph's family, all those who first migrated in, when the last of that generation died, the number of the Hebrew people had grown significantly and there was a transition in leadership in Egypt. A new pharaoh came in to power. And this new pharaoh was, was fearful of the numbers of Hebrews that were in nations because he feared that if another nation were to rise up against him and attack him, the Hebrews might turn on them again. He didn't really know the history of the context of why the Hebrews were even there and how they had lived and really for a couple hundred years as good neighbors with the Egyptians. But this king who came to power began to fear the Hebrews. And so he ordered that all male Jewish boys be thrown into the River Nile to be killed in order to control population.
[00:07:55] We saw last week that God provided he cared for Moses miraculously, as God sometimes does, and sometimes only God can do in ways that can't be humanly explained, but only by God and in God's providence. One of the things I share with you, that in God's providence, Pharaoh's effort to squash the Hebrews actually resulted in his own household raising and educating the man who would eventually be assigned to be the deliverer of the of the Israeli people from their oppressive grip of Egypt. So today we're going to look at what it took, the years of preparation for Moses to become the man he needed to be in order to be the deliverer of God's people. So let me pray and we'll get into God's word. Father God, we thank you for the opportunity again to look to your word, to look at the life of Moses and his journey. And I pray, God that we can take note from some of the things that he went through and see how they guide you by your spirit. You can apply them to our lives. But we want to offer ourselves to you today. God, continue to do your work in us, preparing us for our assignment that we're doing today, how we're serving you. But maybe there's an assignment that is in the tomorrows. God and I pray that you would use all circumstances to prepare us in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:09:19] All right, we're going to pick up in Exodus chapter two, looking at verse 11. We're starting Exodus chapter two, verse 11.
[00:09:27] It begins this way. It says many years later, when Moses had grown up. Okay, Moses was a boy being raised in Pharaoh's household by Pharaoh's daughter. 40 years. It tells us 40 years later. As a matter of fact, you can look at Acts, chapter 7, read it later, from verses 17 to about 44. It talks about things. It's like a short history of what happened with Moses. But there it says that Moses was 40 years, so many years later, when Moses had Grown up at 40, he went out to visit his people. He didn't go out to visit Egyptians. He went out to visit his people, the Hebrews.
[00:10:06] And he saw how hard they were forced to work.
[00:10:11] Now, how early Moses became aware of his heritage, that he was a Hebrew.
[00:10:20] As a matter of some debate by scholars, which I am not a scholar. I just read what scholars wrote, and I'm trying to share some of that with you. It's likely, though, that this understanding of his Jewishness was passed on to him while he was in his own mother's care. Remember he was put in a basket in the Nile. He was fetched out by Pharaoh's daughter.
[00:10:40] Moses sister said, hey, you want me to go find a Hebrew woman to nurse him for you? Oh, sure. Yes. And so Moses sister went and got his mom, and she raised him, maybe raised him for two and a half to maybe three, four, five years of age. So maybe he learned a little bit of his heritage there. But as a grown man, I can imagine the nagging curiosity he had for his people, knowing that Pharaoh's daughter was not his birth mom, that he was in fact an Israelite, even though Pharaoh didn't really know that.
[00:11:16] Pharaoh just thought his daughter had adopted. And so, by the time he was 40 years old, I believe Pharaoh became, I mean, not Pharaoh. Moses became increasingly aware of the conditions of his people. He went out to see his people and observed the hard work they were forced. It goes on to say, during his visit, he saw an Egyptian beating one of his fellow Hebrews.
[00:11:43] And notice what he does after looking, looking around, making sure no one was looking, no one was watching. Moses killed the Egyptian, and he hid the body in the sand.
[00:11:59] Wow.
[00:12:00] A guy who.
[00:12:02] Now, none of us has ever done this, right?
[00:12:04] Looking around, is anybody watching?
[00:12:07] None of us ever done that. This is the actions of a man who knew what he was about to do was wrong and he shouldn't be doing it.
[00:12:18] Moses may have had arguably a righteous concern for what he had witnessed, but he went about it all the wrong way. And how he responded at least shows me, I think, two things. The first is it's an unhealthy impulsiveness, a very unhealthy impulsiveness. If you know somebody who has a healthy impulsiveness about them, turn and look. No, just don't do it.
[00:12:44] No, we don't want to call anybody out, but we all know people like that.
[00:12:49] But I think it also showed about Moses a lack of maturity as a man and certainly as a prominent Egyptian being raised in Pharaoh's household. But he had a lack of maturity, especially in his conflict resolution skills.
[00:13:07] His answer to solving the problem was simply to kill the guy.
[00:13:14] Not good.
[00:13:15] Sometimes we can be aware of the need.
[00:13:19] Somewhere in the world, our world, in our country, in our state, we become aware of a need.
[00:13:26] But it's only whenever maybe we visit the places and we actually can see the need. We can see the problem firsthand, that it really moves us in a powerful way.
[00:13:39] That's why, as you know, sometimes whenever there's a natural disaster or some catastrophe, that our political leaders sometimes show up at ground zero. They want to be there, they want to see.
[00:13:53] They want to see what people are going through, because it moves us to different places.
[00:14:00] And I think as we think about these needs, I think it's fair to say that when you find a need, it doesn't necessarily mean you have found a call.
[00:14:13] Somebody might see the need and respond to the call, because that's really how God do it. Sometimes we see a need for. But it's whenever God points it out and stirs it up in our hearts that we then respond to it as a call. And I think for Moses there was a flame. Something was stirring inside of him.
[00:14:31] Verse 13 goes on to say, the next day though, when Moses went out to visit his people again, he saw two Hebrew men fighting.
[00:14:41] Why are you beating up your friend? Moses said to the one who started the fight.
[00:14:46] Right, Maybe he's trying a new approach to conflict resolution.
[00:14:52] But the man replied, who appointed you?
[00:14:57] Who put you in charge of us? Who pointed you to be our prince and our judge?
[00:15:03] Are you going to kill me like you killed that Egyptian yesterday?
[00:15:09] Wow, what a response. Moses maybe thought that what he did the other day in sticking up for his fellow Hebrew was a stand up thing to do.
[00:15:22] But he got it all wrong. He wasn't expecting the response he got that day. For sure. Maybe he thought maybe a little thank you very much would have been nice to get. But that's not what he got. Again In Acts chapter 7 in verses 24 and 25, again you can look at Acts chapter 7 in there. There's a. There's a whole short story of all that's taken place in the life of Moses. But In Acts chapter 7, verse 24, it says this.
[00:15:48] He saw an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite. So Moses came to the man's defense and avenged him, killing the Egyptian. Verse 25, Moses assumed.
[00:16:02] Moses assumed his fellow Israelites would realize that God sent him to rescue them.
[00:16:10] But they didn't.
[00:16:14] That was part of Moses headspace. I don't know how he got there. He certainly had an idea that he was a Hebrew. And he thought maybe he was brought up in Pharaoh's household because maybe God had a special purpose to maybe relieve the burden. And so he was stirring up, something was happening in him.
[00:16:33] But Moses miscalculated because he was pretty sure that they would, the Hebrew people would understand his actions. They might say, hey, we have the prince of Egypt on our side. He wasn't necessarily a prince, but we have this prominent Egyptian on our side. And they would get excited, get behind him, knowing that God was going to use Moses to deliver them from the oppressive behavior.
[00:17:00] But that's not what happened. As I said, Moses miscalculated how his fellow Hebrews would respond.
[00:17:08] And that sometimes does happen when the person proclaims themselves as the leader. They step into a role that hasn't been given to them. See, God had not appointed Moses to be the Deliverer.
[00:17:24] Yet God had to point him to be the deliverer. Yet Moses still had much to learn. We go on to verse 14. After that encounter, it says Moses was afraid, thinking, everyone knows what I did.
[00:17:42] And sure enough, Pharaoh, not Pharaoh, not the Pharaoh household, that he was raised up in the new Pharaoh in power.
[00:17:51] The Pharaoh heard what had happened and he tried to kill Moses.
[00:17:56] But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian.
[00:18:01] When Moses arrived in Midian, he sat down beside a well. I think we get it. We get why he would be afraid. And we understand that his status, not sure exactly what it was. But his status in Egypt didn't carry the day.
[00:18:21] We know this because Pharaoh again, by this time, Moses was 40 years old. This Pharaoh was not likely the Pharaoh of his Egyptian mother who had rescued him from the Nile.
[00:18:37] Though he might still have been a prominent Egyptian, it was. It's easy to see why when he killed one of the Egyptians, that the current reigning pharaoh would have come against him and that Moses would have lost his favor with the crown and he became a hunted man. You see the consequences sometimes of our actions can bring change upon our lives.
[00:19:04] It did to his standing in Egypt, right? Whoever he was, he was nobody now. And he was on the run.
[00:19:11] It also maybe brought a change with regard to his people. Though we could arguably say his people at the time never would have accepted him.
[00:19:20] Seeing him as an Egyptian, accepted him as their deliverer for sure.
[00:19:27] Fleeing, though, for his life, for Moses probably felt like God's plan for his life was completely defeated.
[00:19:36] Anybody ever feel that you feel like because of a decision that maybe you've made, or a series of decisions, you find yourself living in the consequences? It's on the other side of decision. It's not what you had hoped or how you hoped it turned out. And now it's just not a good situation. You find yourself on that other side and you feel like maybe if God had a plan, I just certainly stepped out of it and I don't know if I'm ever going to get it back.
[00:20:00] So maybe Moses as he was feeling and fleeing, he felt maybe defeated.
[00:20:07] Any chance to help his people or to be their deliverer was over and there's nothing more that he could do. It's at this point, understand this, that Moses was right where God wanted him.
[00:20:22] Sounds silly, doesn't it? But think about it. He's right where God wants him to be. Because sometimes, my friends, when consequences come upon our lives, they move us to a new place, a different place.
[00:20:36] That God can then use, begin to use, to teach us and to prepare us to be the men and the women he wants us to be, to accept the assignment, ultimately, that he wants us to walk in. Amen.
[00:20:49] So this is part of Moses years of preparation.
[00:20:53] Again, in verses 16 and 17, we continue, because it becomes an opportunity, an opportunity for Moses to do the right thing, even though he's still feeling down about being chased out of Egypt and everything he had known. It says this in verse 16. Now, the priest of Midian had seven daughters.
[00:21:19] Wow, what a Mother's Day we would have had.
[00:21:25] Again, it would have been worse if it was seven sons, because we know how.
[00:21:29] Now, the priest of Midian had seven daughters who came, as usual, to draw water and fill the water troughs for their father's flocks.
[00:21:38] But some other shepherds came, chased them away.
[00:21:44] So Moses, he jumped up and he rescued the girls from the shepherds.
[00:21:52] Then it tells us he drew water for their flocks. First of all, Midian is a region, if you can imagine where Egypt is. Then there's the Red Sea. Then I think it's Saudi Arabia. I think on the other side of that, Midian is on the east side of the Red Sea and is really a land full of.
[00:22:13] What do they call them? Nomads? They're wanderers. Okay.
[00:22:17] And this Midian, this priest of Midian had seven daughters who obviously were not so delicately bred because they were shepherds. But here, the priest and his daughters, we're going to come to know is their descendants.
[00:22:31] The descendants of Midian.
[00:22:34] Okay, great. They're in the land of Midian. They're descendants of Midian. Well, who's Midian?
[00:22:39] Well, Midian is the wife. Midian is the son of Keturah. Anybody know who Keturah is?
[00:22:46] Keturah is the wife of Abraham. Everybody know who Abraham is. Right.
[00:22:50] Keturah is the wife that Abraham married after Sarah. We know Abraham and Sarah, after Sarah died, he married Keturah, and they had a son, Midian. And now you're in that land. So this is a land where there are relatives, his relatives.
[00:23:05] There's no question, though, for Moses, that he was being presented with an opportunity to be prepared.
[00:23:13] You see, he had even in this moment, at this. Well, because in Egypt, he saw how the Egyptians were treating and mistreating the Israelites and how he responded wrongly. But now he's witnessed another injustice of these bullying shepherds.
[00:23:32] So what does he do?
[00:23:34] He's going to respond again.
[00:23:37] He jumps up, it tells us, and he rescued the girls. It doesn't say he killed anybody. It said he jumped up, stood up for the girls and chased the others off.
[00:23:46] Which is way different than just killing somebody, right?
[00:23:49] Something maybe is shifting in him. But I love what he does next. Look at what he does.
[00:23:54] You see that word? I underlined it for you. It says, then he didn't just say, hey, I ran the bullies off.
[00:24:03] Praise me, I've done it all by myself. One man took care. He doesn't do that. Instead, it tells us, he drew water for their flocks. He served them.
[00:24:17] Maybe some of the values of his mama were showing up that day. But I'll tell you this.
[00:24:23] There's a humbling experience like in Egypt when he killed the Egyptian. Standing up for a fellow Hebrew. Yet he acted wrongly. And then he was chased out, Lost all prominence he had there chased out. It was on the run in the desert, far away.
[00:24:41] Sometimes a humbling experience will do something, can do something for us, can put us in a new place where we have to now pay attention. We have to learn some new lessons. See, maybe Moses had been a little too full of his Egyptian educated, privileged self before.
[00:25:02] But maybe some things were changing.
[00:25:05] Something was happening in Moses. We get on to verse 18. And it tells us, we when the girls return to again, the name of their father is Reue. Reue.
[00:25:18] He'll be known as Jethro come Exodus, chapter three. I'll be easier to say that. You know, it's funny. Sometimes in ancient times, people had two names. Maybe it was the priest of Midian, Reuel.
[00:25:31] But his family called him Jethro. Right? So I'm not sure what they're. But we'll get to that. But when the girls returned home to their father, he asked, why are you back so soon today?
[00:25:44] An Egyptian. They certainly recognized Moses as an Egyptian, not as a Hebrew. An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds, they answered.
[00:25:53] And then he drew water for us and watered our flocks.
[00:25:59] Verse 20.
[00:26:00] Well then, where is he? Where are your manners? Their father asked.
[00:26:05] Why did you leave him there? I thought I raised you better than that. Invite him here to come and eat with us.
[00:26:13] Their father sought to honor, sought to reward Moses for his actions. Again, remember Moses actions in Egypt. The way he responded caused him to be rushed out of Egypt. But yet here, the way he responded, not only in running off the bullying shepherds, but then to serve his daughters by watering the flocks.
[00:26:40] Their father wanted to reward Moses for his actions.
[00:26:44] And he wants to meet him face to face.
[00:26:47] And so he asked the daughters, hey, somebody go and get him, bring him, invite him back here for dinner so I can properly thank him for what he's done for us. And maybe this kind of response, a beautiful response, this kind response, for many of us might think it's common sense, if somebody does you a solid and helps you with something, usually you offer some way to repay them, right?
[00:27:09] Maybe you offer them a bottle of water, right? Or you maybe invite them or you buy them lunch or something.
[00:27:16] But I think what would happen here is this opportunity, this encounter that began with the well that then gets him invited home for dinner, would turn into a relationship. And I suggest an opportunity for Moses to continue to be shaped and prepared for the assignment God had for him. Verse 21.
[00:27:37] So Moses accepted the invitation and he settled there with him. Not just settle in for a good dinner, which he did, but to come and to dwell with him is what that is referring to. He settled there with him.
[00:27:51] Their father, Reuel, gave Moses his daughter Zipporah to be his wife. Further settling in later, she gave birth to a son. And Moses named him Gershom. For he explained, I have been a foreigner in a foreign land.
[00:28:08] I think Moses and Reuel, Jethro, these two men, I think eventually liked each other because maybe they saw something in one another. Maybe it was some courtesies, maybe it was honor, maybe it was the strength that their father saw in Moses. But the Bible doesn't record what conversations took place. It just goes from, hey, Moses accepted the invitation and then he settled there.
[00:28:40] But I suggest maybe there was a conversation.
[00:28:44] And I guess in that conversation they started talking about family histories, and they discovered that, hey, they have a common ancestry. Moses was from the line of Abraham and Sarah, and yet Jethro was part of the line of Abraham and Keturah.
[00:29:04] And so they had this family heritage that maybe drew them together.
[00:29:08] And maybe Jethro asked Moses why he had traveled alone.
[00:29:13] Why were you out in the desert? Why were you? Where are you passing through? Where are you going?
[00:29:17] And maybe Moses humbly shared his past, his current fugitive status.
[00:29:24] We don't know.
[00:29:26] But we do know that Jethro gave Moses a fine dinner and a proper thank you. And he offered him a refuge from his running. He offered him a job as a shepherd, and he even gave his daughter in marriage, friends, Jethro's hospitality. This unexpected kindness would be an opportunity that invited Moses into a season for God's preparation.
[00:29:56] And so while in Midian, I can only surmise Moses may have felt maybe a little discouraged. Like maybe he thought, you know, maybe God had some plans for him back in Egypt, and yet how he acted just caused him to be rushed out.
[00:30:16] And maybe he felt like he was now on the run emotionally anyways from his purpose. He's settling now for far less than maybe God, what God had intended for him.
[00:30:28] But the truth is, Midian became the perfect place.
[00:30:32] It was a perfect opportunity. It put Moses in the position now to learn to be the man that God would need to be the deliverer.
[00:30:45] No longer prideful because of his prominence in Egypt, his education or privilege, but in a place where God can now shape him and mold him.
[00:30:57] That takes us to verse 23.
[00:31:00] It says, Years past. Again, literally, this is another 40 years.
[00:31:05] Another 40 years passed and the king of Egypt died.
[00:31:11] But the Israelites continued to groan under their burden of slavery.
[00:31:19] They cried out for help and their cry rose up to God.
[00:31:25] God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He looked down on the people of Israel and God knew it was time to act.
[00:31:40] Alright, it's been 80 years since Moses was born into oppression in Egypt and literally two more pharaohs had died and the Hebrew people were still in bondage. It would be easy to surmise that they would be asking why?
[00:31:57] Why has God not heard us? Why isn't he doing something?
[00:32:02] And I can suggest maybe a couple things here about why 80 years have passed before God determined it was time to act.
[00:32:12] The first might be that the children of Israel really weren't ready to be delivered.
[00:32:18] They were ready to be delivered. I could maybe argue that yes, they were still in bondage, but maybe they were just angry, maybe they were just bitter about their oppression.
[00:32:33] They weren't really interested in seeking God for the sake of seeking God.
[00:32:38] They wanted to be out of this situation they were in.
[00:32:43] Understand? God hears our cries.
[00:32:46] In every situation.
[00:32:48] He hears our cries and he hears the motivations of our cries.
[00:32:56] See, when I, maybe you. When I cry out to God because I don't like.
[00:33:05] I don't like what's happening to me.
[00:33:07] So that's why I'm crying out to God. I don't like what's happening to me. Of course he hears that.
[00:33:13] But he also hears the motivation for my cry. My motivation might be selfish.
[00:33:20] I don't like it. God, make it stop because it's inconvenient and it's hard.
[00:33:30] Can I suggest that maybe there's a healthier posture of our hearts, our human hearts that maybe rises up, that really captures the ear of God.
[00:33:46] And our cry for help, our cry for deliverance our cry to not only maybe be taken out of a situation or to at least be led through the situation to be delivered from it.
[00:33:59] There's a healthier posture that I think that leaves us in a place ready to receive God's answer.
[00:34:08] Now, no doubt God has to prepare the answer, right?
[00:34:15] It's not always automatic. I want it automatic when I cry out. I want it answered. And I expect God to understand that. Cause I know right now I could get out my phone, I could look on Amazon, I could have something delivered by the time I get home from lunch.
[00:34:28] I want it now.
[00:34:33] But God hears our cries. And sometimes God is working out what is necessary in order to answer our cries. But what's important is also the attitude of our cry.
[00:34:46] Our motivation, I hope, gets to the point we are no longer just about our selfish comfort.
[00:34:54] But maybe we want to see the glory of God, his purpose, his justice and his power show up.
[00:34:59] We want to see him in our lives. Not only that, that maybe those who know us as Christ followers, they might look upon our lives and see God showing up for us that there really is a God that we believe in and he is showing up. Yes, we're going through a hard time, but they get to see God showing up in our lives.
[00:35:22] Do we? Is our motivation in our cries to see the hand of God be revealed in us?
[00:35:31] Maybe it's to take us out of a situation, but maybe it's to take us by the hand and walk us through it. You guys, remember there's the Old Testament story of three guys who were thrown in a fiery furnace, right?
[00:35:43] And the king, he said, when he looked in, I knew I threw three guys in there. But I see a fourth walking around with them.
[00:35:49] My friends, that is Jesus. That is our God walking us through.
[00:35:54] But that's whenever we come to God with our cries. Because it's not just about our selfish comfort. And we don't want that. We don't like it God.
[00:36:01] But maybe we really want to see the reality of our God alive in our midst.
[00:36:09] We want to see kingdom purposes be fulfilled in the world, certainly, but also in our lives.
[00:36:16] Because then when we have that motivation, I think I am maybe we are too ready to receive his answer. Verse 24. There, as we read it says, then, then God heard their groanings and he remembered his covenant promises. Not that God hadn't heard her groanings, but it's not that he had forgotten his promises. His promise to bless Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They were going to be a great nation.
[00:36:44] But then maybe the Whole motivation of God's people got right. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant promise. And he looked down on the people of Israel and knew it was time to act.
[00:36:56] Not only because the heart of the people were maybe right, but because the answer was prepared to accept the assignment.
[00:37:05] The cries were always heard.
[00:37:07] But now God has prepared. Moses deliverer is now ready.
[00:37:13] It's time to act.
[00:37:15] So we've walked through this passage. I'm going to ask Megan if the team if you can come up.
[00:37:19] I asked this question. What are you crying out to God for?
[00:37:23] What are you crying out to God for?
[00:37:25] Can I ask? Is your heart right? Is your motivation right? Or do you only want the inconvenience and the discomfort to stop? Hey, understand, it's natural to want the inconvenience and the comfort to stop. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. That's the humanness.
[00:37:41] But I think as God loving people, we should want more than just the discomfort to stop. We should want to have the visitation of our God show up in our lives, to walk us through, to deliver us from situations. So maybe we ask him in our prayers and our cries, we ask him two things. One, to help us to trust his timing.
[00:38:04] God, help me to trust your timing.
[00:38:07] I don't understand it. It took 80 years to prepare Moses. I hope it doesn't take that much time for God to prepare the answer to my prayer. But help us to trust him in his timing until he decides it's time to act.
[00:38:22] Then maybe we ask him to teach us.
[00:38:25] While in the waiting period, we may feel like God isn't there or he doesn't hear, but he does.
[00:38:33] And sometimes we just sit in the waiting, maybe grumbling and groaning. We have to wrestle with our heart, our motivation for our cry.
[00:38:44] We're probably unhappy and disappointed, my friends. But in the waiting, the encouragement is to stop and ask God while you're in it, God, is there something you want to teach me about myself, about you? Is there something you want to show me?
[00:38:59] Is there anything? Is there something you want to do and do in my life?
[00:39:04] As the answer is being prepared, as our heart is maybe getting right to receive the answer.
[00:39:10] Maybe we ask God to do some preparation in our hearts. Why we are waiting?
[00:39:18] Because maybe there's an assignment. I don't know what it is, but maybe he wants to do something more in you. And maybe that's how we should pray and ask. We're going to close with a song here called Good Plan. We introduced it last week. Great, wonderful. Song to remind that God has a good plan for us. Even though we might be going through the valleys, the valley of the shadow of darkness, but God wants us to be taught and to be shaped during our waiting. I'm going to ask if Rhonda and Michael and Mike Downer would come and pray down front. If you have an issue that you would like to come. Maybe it's about something we said this morning or just another cry that you have in your heart. We'd love to cry out to God with you, but I'm going to ask if you go ahead and stand and we'll go into a moment of worship.
