Scripture: Exodus 33:7-11; Psalm 37:7
Theme: Hearing From the LORD
Title: Lingering with GOD
This sermon is part of a Lenten Series focusing on being able to better hear God’s Voice.
INTRO:
Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
Welcome to the season of Lent!
One of the joys of the Lenten Season is the opportunity it provides for us to grow in grace. That is one of the biggest reasons why people take this time of the year to put aside certain things so that they can concentrate on their walk with the LORD. It is not merely to starve themselves or to challenge themselves to see if they can live without social media, chocolate, alcohol, swearing, gossiping, meat, coffee or soda.
In fact, a great many people add things to their lives during Lent. Things like learning how to be more compassionate, how to deepen their prayer life, how to be more consistent in their attending worship and taking more time to read/study the Bible. Others find new ways to give to the poor while still others practice 40 days of writing some a kind note to someone, doing 40 random acts of kindness or actually making 40 old fashion phone calls to the most important people in their lives.
You may have chosen one of those things or something else. Whatever you choose or don’t choose this time of the year gives us an excellent opportunity to grow in grace, mercy and love.
This morning, I would like to invite you to do one more thing this Lenten Season – to join all of us as we do our best to:
Being able to hear God better
Over the next few weeks, I would like for us to look at how some different individuals in the Bible learned how to better hear God speaking to them. For there is nothing that can more effectively help us in our walk with the LORD than for us to be able to better hear and understand what God is saying to us. I think we could all agree that being able to hear God better is a worthwhile goal this Lenten season.
I would like for us to sit at the feet this morning of a man named Joshua. He is one of the great people that we find in the Bible. He didn’t start off as great person, but as you read his story you find that in the end Joshua is one of the greatest spiritual leaders of the People of God.
Let’s get a little bit of his background story:
+He is from the Tribe of Ephraim – that is to say from the Tribe of Joseph – the tribe that was in power for quite a number of years in Egypt. But as we know after the death of Joseph and the rise of a new Pharaoh, the tribe of Ephraim along with the other Hebrew tribes saw their power diminish. In fact, their power diminished so much that they all found themselves becoming slaves. And at the beginning of Joshua’s story that is exactly where we find him – he and the rest of Israel are slaves.
+After the Exodus event, Joshua becomes a soldier – in fact, he became an amazing military intelligence officer
+He became the leader of His tribe
+For many years he served as Moses’ right hand man – helping him, watching over him and seeing to his personal needs and safety
+During the last season of his life, Joshua was appointed the leader of Israel’s army and the commanding leader of God’s People
+Joshua is probably best known for such things as:
-His battle against the City (walls) of Jericho – Joshua 6
-Praying for the LORD to make the Sun to stand still – Joshua 10
-These famous words:
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”- Joshua 1:9
“But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” – Joshua 24:15
As we see one of the amazing things about Joshua was the fact that he was born into a life of slavery and ended up being the commander of God’s People. That little fact in and of itself is enough for us to spend some time studying his life and his mission. Added to that of course is the fact that for years Joshua was Moses’ right hand man and what better way could one spend their life than being around Moses.
It is while Joshua was serving Moses that we come to our passage this morning. It is a passage that at its very heart holds a very important key to how we can better hear God.
The Bible tells us that Moses would go into this Tent called the Tent of Meeting to be with the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. While Moses was in the tent he would receive messages that God wanted him to share with His People. Moses basically was both priest and prophet for the people of Israel.
As amazing as all of that was for Moses to be used that way I don’t want us to focus on the goodness and greatness of Moses but to focus on the ending words of verse 11 –
“When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.”
Another version puts it – Joshua would linger in the tent/in the presence of the LORD.
I like that word “Linger”
Some people think it is a lot like the word – Loiter but it isn’t.
Joshua was not just passing away time. He was not just skulking around. He was lingering – a lingering that caused him to spend time in God’s Presence. That is what I want us to look at just for a few moments before we share Holy Communion this morning.
I. Lingering with God
To linger means “to remain or to stay in a place longer than what is usual or expected.”
In this case it is being with the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY without an agenda.
Now, let’s take a moment and think about all of this:
+Have you ever taken the time to just linger with God?
+Have you ever just taken some time to seek God out, to spend some quiet time with Him and to just linger in His Presence?
We don’t do a lot of lingering today in the Church.
Most of the time we go by a bulletin or an Order of Worship that goes from one point to the next and then on to the next until before we know it our hour is over and it is time to go out the doors and back into the world. That is normally how we spend our time in church. It is ordered and it is structured to go from one thing to another.
That is not a bad thing – but it is a thing.
Some years ago, I had the opportunity to be able to both read and hear a man teach by the name of Richard Foster. Dr. Foster wrote such books as
+Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
+Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home
+Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith
+Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World
and many other books and writings.
Dr. Foster was greatly influenced by the Quakers after the death of his parents. If you would have gone to church with him as a young man, you would have entered into a fellowship that has at its heart the goal of being quiet before the LORD in order that you might hear Him speak to you. While the usual Quaker service does at times contain teaching, singing and prayer the tenor of the service is to be quiet enough to hear God speak.
That’s it – they share testimonies, they share life, they share what God has put on their hearts but at the center of Quaker worship is quietness, lingering in God’s Presence with the goal to be able to hear a word from God.
Lingering – it sounds easy but if you have ever tried it then more than likely you have found that lingering in God’s Presence can actually be hard work.
Today, we are so use to noise and activity. We like it when we go from the Welcome to the Singing to the Sharing of the Creeds to the Prayers and then finally to the Sermon and Blessing. We don’t like it when we are suddenly surrounded by quietness.
And for the most part we don’t linger – we don’t linger before worship, we don’t linger when we take Communion, we don’t linger when we come to the altar or when we end our services. We are people on the go. We have something to do and somewhere to go.
But just perhaps we could hear God better if we practiced a little bit of lingering. That is to say:
+Coming to the Church, sitting in the sanctuary or going somewhere like a park or a safe space where we could just linger. Where we could just take a time out to sit and wait for God. Sitting aside a time where we just allow the wind, the sun and the rest of nature to still our souls. Where we do our best to be quiet enough to hear our own breathing and open our minds, our hearts and our souls to the LORD.
+Taking the time to just read Scripture without a goal – taking the time to read one of the letters of Paul or even one of the Gospels through in one setting.
+Taking the time go on a prayer walk – talking to God about our children, our grandchildren and our friends. Talking to God as one friend talks to another friend for that is what the Bible tells us that Jesus has made possible; for us to be friends with God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
You see, lingering in God’s Presence is not something that just happens. It will only happen if we commit ourselves to it. We don’t linger in a legalistic manner but as a way to allow our soul to grow in God’s Presence. We allow a time of lingering as a way for us to allow God to speak into us and allow His Holy Spirit to refine us and renew us.
When is the last time you went to a church to just linger in God’s Presence?
Have we ever done that?
Have we ever thought that was possible?
It is. Joshua’s life is a testimony of it.
This lingering that Joshua did transformed him. It changed his trajectory in life. This lingering enabled him to go from having a slave mentality to becoming a leader of God’s people and a leader of their army. It enabled him to become one of the great Old Testament leaders.
Far too many people when they think of Joshua only think of his battles and the miracles that surrounded those battles. But before there was all of that there was this lingering with God that enabled all of that.
Years later the Prophet Zachariah would hear these words in a vision; words that he was to share with the ruler Zerubbabel:
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit; says the LORD of Hosts.” – Zechariah 4:7
This morning, we will never accomplish great things by our own might or by our own power. But in the Spirit – in God’s Spirit it is possible for us to do the impossible. But that only happens as we learn to hear God’s voice and one of the great ways for that to happen is for us to linger in God’s Presence.
Thomas Merton that famous monk from the Abbey of Gethsemane wrote these words:
Just remaining quietly in the presence of God,
Listening to Him, being attentive to Him
Requires a lot of courage and know how.
Years earlier another great man of God wrote these words:
There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful,
than that of a continual conversation with God;
those only can comprehend it
who practice and experience it. – Brother Lawrence
So, today as we take Holy Communion – don’t be in rush
Take some time to be with God – linger in His Presence
And if you can’t do some lingering today because you already have a busy day ahead then I want to challenge you to make sure that during this Lenten Season you take some time to just linger with God
+For lingering with God is how He transforms and cleanses our hearts and minds. If we are going to grow in grace we need to allow Heaven the time to invade our hearts, our minds and our souls and that can happen only as we linger with the LORD.
+For lingering with God will allow God to infill you and empower you with His Strength, Mercy and Grace.
It is not by accident that there were 10 days before the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Ten days the 120 people in the Upper Room spent lingering in God’s Presence.
Some years ago, I took some time to study the life of eagles. I was working on a sermon that dealt with the Golden Eagles of Israel. You may remember that passage in Isaiah 40:31
31But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.
I discovered that eagles usually fly around 25 mph but when they are gliding and looking for food they can travel up to speeds of around 125 mph. And when they go into an all out dive towards an object they can hit speeds around 150 – 200 mph.
I also learned that they spend great quantities of their time resting – as much as 15 – 18 hours each day. Resting, building up the energy that it would take to soar, to look for food and to hit speeds of 150 mph.
They needed that rest time. They needed that lingering around the tops of trees or near their nest. They needed that time to refocus, to be prepared and to be centered.
I believe this morning that it would be good for us to do the same. To linger in God’s Presence more than we normally do so that we can soar to greater heights and be more focused, prepared and centered.
As we prepare for Holy Communion this morning, let’s take up the challenge to linger with God more this week and during this Lenten Season. It sounds like such a simple thing, and it is, but what it can do for our lives is literally amazing.
Again, this is not loitering – just wasting away time.
It is actively spending time with God – it is not leaving God’s tent – His Presence.
I believe if we will do this we will be amazed not only how we can hear God’s Voice more clearly but how more we will be renewed and strengthen by God’s Holy Spirit. I believe if we do that we will be amazed at how much God will teach us in all things and how much better we will experience life here on His Good Earth.
Closing – Holy Communion/Prayer/Blessing
