I’ve titled today’s sermon, “How to lose an argument with God”. The simple answer is: get into one. I’ve had a few arguments with God, not too many because I like to think I’m a quick learner and I learned pretty early on that God’s way is, honestly, better than my way. Now that is not to say that I don’t still choose my way too often, because I do, I just don’t argue with God before hand… Instead I just make the poor choice and then later suffer the consequences and have to come back and kneel at Jesus’ feet and ask for forgiveness.
One of the arguments I lost with God was over my friend, Bruno Walter. Unfortunately for all of us, Bruno was part of our church family for far too short a time. Bruno was Mira’s husband, Bronek’s dad and Emily’s father-in-law, and grandpa to Scott and Christopher and Jonathan and Tomas. I remember one of the first times I started to get to know Bruno was over coffee with him and Mira at the 2nd Cup. It was delightful – both the conversation and watching the way the two of them interacted. I heard an amazing story of coming to faith in Christ, I heard an incredible story of how on Aug 20-21, 1968, the Russian army invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic where Bruno and Mira and their baby boy Bronek lived, and Bruno piled his family into a little car and drove past the tanks out of the country for good. And what I remember most was feeling fascinated and drawn to this man with a fierce intellect and gentle, loving spirit, who had figured out that arguing with people did nothing good so instead he was just going to love them, and I just wanted to hear more. Bruno kept saying, “Steve, you’re busy, you don’t want to sit here and listen to an old man tell stories…”, and I kept saying, “I’m not busy! I want to hear more!!”
It was not very long at all before Bruno was diagnosed with cancer. And God and I had a number of conversations about this. I told God I needed him as a friend in my life. I told God we needed him as a church – he had a depth and perspective that I just knew was critically important for where we were at as a congregation, he had gifts that I knew he could use that would build us up. Of course I talked with God about how his family needed him also. And I prayed and pleaded and asked and argued. And I lost; right around Christmas time, in 2007, Bruno set aside his earthly body and exchanged it for a heavenly one, and we celebrated his life and grieved his death.
I know many of you could tell similar stories, of a time when you argued with God. I’d be interested to know if any of you actually think you might have won the argument – that would make for a fascinating conversation! I’d actually like to try something a little different – I’d like you to gather into a bunch of small groups just where you are, and just have one person, anyone who is comfortable, share a quick story about an argument you might have had with God and how it turned out. If you don’t know all the people in your group, great! Just share your names and let the extrovert/story teller among you share a quick story.
Bridge:
Context:
Last week I started a little series I’m calling “Pivotal Moments in the Biblical Story”, and we looked at Abraham’s full and complete obedience to God when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. Abraham obeyed, but God intervened and stopped the sacrifice and then kept His promise to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation.
Fast forward about 250 years, and we find this “great nation” completely enslaved in Egypt. Today’s “pivotal moment” is when God appears to Moses and calls him to lead God’s people out of slavery and into the Promised Land. The story begins in Exodus 3.
Exodus 3:1-9 (NLT):
One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up. 3 “This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.”
4 When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
“Here I am!” Moses replied.
5 “Do not come any closer,” the Lord warned. “Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground. 6 I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” When Moses heard this, he covered his face because he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the Lord told him, “I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites now live. 9 Look! The cry of the people of Israel has reached me, and I have seen how harshly the Egyptians abuse them.
This is an amazing story. After 250 years, God is ready to act. God does this incredible thing with the bush, declares it “holy ground”, and reveals Himself to Moses. Talk about a pivotal moment!! Then it gets even better in verse 7, where God says He has seen, He has heard, He knows the suffering of His people. And then, it gets still better yet! God says, “So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Israel into their own fertile and spacious land”! Excellent! God is going to act, God is going to save, God is going to lead them out of Egypt into the Promised land!! This is the absolute best news any of the sons of Abraham could ever, possibly, imagine. Notice very carefully what God says there – “I have come down to rescue… and lead them out of Egypt”.
Ex 3:10
But now read the next verse: “10 Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.”
Ok, imagine you are Moses. How does that strike you? God just said “I am going to rescue and lead them out of Egypt”, and now God says to Moses, “Now go, for I am sending you… You must lead my people out of Egypt.”
Let the argument begin…
Ex 3:11-12
11 But Moses protested to God, “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh? Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?”
12 God answered, “I will be with you. And this is your sign that I am the one who has sent you…
Now we are going to pick up that “sign” in just a moment, but let’s note a few things quickly first.
1. God has given the command to “go”. This is the first time; don’t worry, there are many more where that came from in this conversation…
2. Moses’ response to the command to “go” is to “protest”. Now the original word is actually “said”, but it is pretty clear – it’s a protest. Moses starts an argument with the God whom He just discovered in the middle of this bush that was on fire but was not consumed…
Ok, back to the “sign”. This promises to be good. If I’m Moses, I’m thinking, “ok… this should help… some miraculous sign, some undeniable evidence for me and for everyone else that this huge command is actually from God… something that is tangible that will prove it to all the skeptics, and make it easy for me to establish my power and authority. Ok, perhaps we are making progress…
Ex 3:12
12 God answered, “I will be with you. And this is your sign that I am the one who has sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this very mountain.”
Huh? Isn’t a “sign” something in the “now”? This is a promise in the future! It is “hindsight”!! When the Elders of the Israelites say, “Really Moses? Prove it; show us a sign.”, this is the response he is supposed to give?
Ex 3:13-16
So the argument continues:
13 But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?”
14 God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you.” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.
This is my eternal name,
my name to remember for all generations.
16 “Now go and call together all the elders of Israel…
So we have the second “protest” by Moses, and God provides the answer and introduces Himself, personally, by name, to Moses. Put in context, this is really remarkable – this is a very powerful and intimate moment, where God reveals Himself and blesses Moses with this very personal knowledge. And then we have the second command to “Go”.
God gives Moses a few more specifics in the last part of chapter 3, including the victory the will have over the Egyptians and how they will strip the Egyptians of their wealth, and then we pick up the story at the beginning of chapter 4.
Ex 4:1
But Moses protested again, “What if they won’t believe me or listen to me? What if they say, ‘The Lord never appeared to you’?”
Do you think God might be getting a little frustrated yet? This is the third protest. But God is still patient, and in response to this objection God gives Moses the three miraculous proofs – the rod that turns to a snake, the hand put into the cloak and becoming leprous and then cleansed, and a third sign of pouring water from the Nile river on the ground and it turning to blood.
So, can you guess Moses’ response?
Ex 4:10-12
10 But Moses pleaded with the Lord, “O Lord, I’m not very good with words. I never have been, and I’m not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled.”
11 Then the Lord asked Moses, “Who makes a person’s mouth? Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go! I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say.”
This is the 4th protest by Moses and the third command by God to “go”. And all along, God keeps promising that He will be with Moses – miraculous signs, promises of victory, now God is even going to give Moses the exact words to say. Moses’ response:
13 But Moses again pleaded, “Lord, please! Send anyone else.”
Sound Familiar?
Does that sound familiar? I’m pretty used to seeing Moses as this incredible leader, this obedient servant of God who was used by God in this incredible way to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, the man boldly confronting Pharaoh, parting the Red Sea, meeting God on the mountain, face glowing with the glory of God…
I’m not so used to seeing him as the reluctant follower. The one who tried really, really hard to get out of it. “Lord, please! Send anyone else.”
But I am deeply encouraged, and I hope you are also. Because maybe you and I have places where we are struggling to obey God as well. Maybe we know that God has asked us to step up, to obey, to serve Him, to take some risks, to put our image or our money or our time on the line in some way of serving God and His Kingdom. Maybe we are even arguing with God, wanting Him to “send anyone else”.
We will lose that argument, and we will be glad we lost.
See, God’s way is always best – best for us, best for the world, best for the people we love. Fighting God’s way, resisting it, and disobeying is where the problems come. We see that in the next verses:
Ex 4:14-18
14 Then the Lord became angry with Moses. “All right,” he said. “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he speaks well. And look! He is on his way to meet you now. He will be delighted to see you. 15 Talk to him, and put the words in his mouth. I will be with both of you as you speak, and I will instruct you both in what to do. 16 Aaron will be your spokesman to the people. He will be your mouthpiece, and you will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say. 17 And take your shepherd’s staff with you, and use it to perform the miraculous signs I have shown you.”
18 So Moses went back home to Jethro, his father-in-law. “Please let me return to my relatives in Egypt,” Moses said. “I don’t even know if they are still alive.”
“Go in peace,” Jethro replied.
Conclusion:
Even here, when God finally gets tired of Moses’ excuses and becomes angry with him, God still is gracious and finds a way, sending Aaron to stand with Moses and help.
But the end result is clear – God wins the argument. God gets His way, accomplishes His will, which (by the way) is entirely for the benefit of His people – there is nothing selfish here. The result of obedience is freedom – for the Israelites, and, dare I say, for us as well, still, today.
Here is the point. God speaks to us, and asks us to follow Him. It might be in a specific task like it was here for Moses, but it is definitely in a way of living that is characterized by love for God and love for others, and of self-sacrifice as a lifestyle of love for God and others. God speaks: we can argue, we can protest, we can resist, and God is ok with that because He will listen to our fears of inadequacy or lack of skill or desire to stay comfortable or plea to “just send someone else!” – but God will still win the argument. And we will be glad He does.
See, when we obey, incredible things happen. Obedience results in freedom. True, there may be challenges along the way. There may be confrontations. There may be times when the army is marching quickly and there is a huge sea blocking escape and it looks like there is no way out. But we have this promise of God, which Moses had also: “I will be with you.” That is what happens when we obey – God goes with us. And that makes us free.
A final story:
PUSHING THE ROCK (from http://www.sermoncentral.com/illustrations/searchresults.asp?Category=stories&Page=3&Sort=rank&keyword=obedience&ScriptureBookA2=&ScriptureVerse2=&TopicID=0&since2=0
I have been pondering a story of a weak sickly man. The man was so sick and he could not afford going to town to the doctor. The man lived in the deep back woods in an old log cabin, his condition seemed to grow worse.
Out in front of his cabin was a huge boulder. The rock was massive in front of his place. One night in a very real vision, God told him to go out there and push the huge rock all day long, day after day. The man got up early in the morning, and with great excitement he pushed the rock until lunch, then he rested a while and pushed the rock until supper time. The man loved pushing against the rock, it gave him meaning.
The dream was so real that it was with great excitement he pushed against the rock. Day after day he pushed. Day rolled into week, and week into months, he faithfully pushed against the rock.
After 8 months of pushing the rock, the weak sickly man was getting tired of pushing the rock so much, in his tiredness he started to doubt his dream. So one day he measured from his porch to the rock, and after daily pushing the rock, he would measure to see how much he had moved the rock. After two weeks of pushing and measuring, he realized he had not moved the boulder not a 1/32 of an inch? As a matter of fact, the boulder was in the same place as when he started.
The man was so disappointed, he thought the dream was so special and now after 9 months he saw his work had accomplished nothing, he was tired and his dream seemed dashed upon the rock. The man sat on his porch and cried and cried, he had invested many hundred hours into nothing. Nothing, it was all nothing!
As the sun was sitting in the west, Jesus came and sat down next to the man as he cried. Jesus said, "Son, why are you crying?"
The man replied, "Lord, You know how sick and weak I am, and then this dumb dream gave me a false hope and I have pushed with all that was within me for over 9 months, and that dumb old rock is right where it was when I started."
Jesus was kind and said to him, "I never told you to move the rock, I told you to push against the rock."
The man replied, "Yes, Sir, that was the dream."
Jesus told the man to step in front of the mirror and look at himself. As an act of obedience the man stepped in front of a mirror and looked at himself. The man was amazed, he had been so sickly and weak, and what he saw in the mirror was a strong muscular man. The man realized that he had not been coughing all night. The man started thinking of how well he felt for several months and the strength that he had built by pushing on the rock. Then the man realized, that the plan of God was not for the rock, but for the man.
