How To Find Life in a Dying World
(Part 1, The Call)
Text: Exodus 3:1-10
We find life when…
1. God reveals Himself to us
It often takes the most peculiar things for God to draw our attention away from the daily grind.
Have you ever been told something three of four times before you understood what was being said? I remember camping with my youth group up in the panhandle of Florida and we were taking our showers out in the forest. They were of the garden hose variety. I cut my toe on a double-edged axe sticking up out of the ground. I yelled to the cabin for help and for them to bring down the first aid kit. They thought I was saying come down and get naked. I had to hobble up to the door and show them my stub of a toe before they understood what I needed. God does the same thing with Moses here in Midian.
There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. (Vs. 2)
Have you ever found yourself playing “Christian”? This can be the most distracting part of our lives that keeps us from hearing God’s voice. Moses probably wasn’t expecting to see a burning bush in the cliffs of a local mountain. He probably had been there many different times and, not thinking, walked on by with staff in hand tending his sheep. Caught up in his daily routine, it probably was out of his mind that God was trying to get his attention.
Have all men heard God’s call? Frankly, I don’t know. Probably some far-reaching areas of the world have not been reached by the gospel yet. But even in that situation there are evidences of God’s voice. Take the example of this missionary:
Lady goes to Africa to give an ancient tribe a written language and then translate the Gospel for them in their native tongue.
God must reveal Himself to us in order that we come to Him and answer His call. Has He done that today? Has He done that in the past? Let me ask you this; have you read your Bible lately? If you have then God has shown Himself to you. John 1:1 states that in the beginning was the Word and that the Word was with God and it was in fact God Himself. God has revealed Himself to all who have heard the good news. They have heard God’s call. They may not have listened to it clearly and long enough, but they have heard it. If you have not stopped and listened to the call of our Lord you need to let Him reveal Himself to you today. We are all called by God as sinners. We are called to Him as pleasing children.
2. God calls us to Himself. (Pleasing Children)
“There is no calling unless there is a Caller.”
-Os Guinness
I have the weirdest phone service I have ever heard. I get these calls, and I’m sure you do as well, the phone rings and you pick it up and say hello and everything, but there is no answer on the other end. This is a very frustrating thing. Sometimes it happens over and over and over again. Soon you just say forget it and don’t pick up the phone. I also have a new problem that happens every so often where I will be talking with someone on the phone and out of nowhere I am all of the sudden talking with a complete new person who just dialed in. I don’t know what they call this feature. They have call-waiting, call-forwarding, call-return…I guess this one is call-interrupting. But it’s frustrating not knowing to whom you are talking. As Christians we must know who is calling us in order to come to Christ.
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” (Vs. 4)
God has revealed Himself to us so that we might understand His calling is to us as sinners is by Him alone, because we are called to Him to be His pleasing children. Because we are His pleasing children, God calls us as obedient servants for His work. We are called for God.
3. God calls us to serve. (Obedient Servants)
Our response to God’s call is how we choose to live out our lives within His calling.
How many of you out there feel like you are pretty talented, or are multi-gifted? I have to admit that I feel I am that way. Ask Tanya; she’ll tell you so. My wife is my biggest fan and sometimes that gets the best of me. She recruits me for things I have no idea how to do, but she looks at some of my past successes and figures that I’ll be able to do it just because she married the greatest man in the world. She’s right, but I still get embarrassed when she starts telling stories about me like that. Anyway, I talk with more and more people who are confused about what they should be doing for God and they can’t seem to decide on which opportunity to make the most of. They actually think that they can do all of them by doing a little bit here of this one and little bit there of that one. They don’t know how wrong they are. God has gifted many people with many talents. He requires that we do obey His call. In our obedience (remember: obedience is responsibility by another name) to answering His call, He asks us to serve Him as faithful servants. It is God’s delight to ask those kinds of people to do something for Him because He knows that they will find numerous ways to accomplish the task. Other Christians have limited talents and sometimes God has to hand pick duties for them to be able to serve. Now it’s an issue of inadequacy. I can’t do this and I can’t do that. This was Moses’ excuse and we’ll see next week how God responded to him. But, Moses task was made clear. And God will often times make our tasks as clear for us.
So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. (Vs. 10)
It is all too often that we as Christians try to pass the buck and let others to the act of service when we are fully capable of doing that very thing. Many suggestions could be made on your part, but when asked to accomplish those very things you have ten other priorities on your plate or you are just not able to do those things. We have not been called by the Almighty god to sit back and let the other person do it, how absurd and obnoxiously self-righteous of us to think so. We have been called by God, to be His pleasing children, and for His obedient service.
While God doesn’t use these tactics to call us today, He has left us evidence of His work among those who have been called by Him, to Him, and for Him. We need to be able to recognize God’s voice for today. His word is complete and infallible. We have a great wealth of knowledge in front of us, all we need to be able to hear God’s voice. The question is, “Are you listening?” God wants to give His children life in a dying world.
Outline:
How To Find Life in a Dying World
(Part 1, The Call)
Text: Exodus 3:1-10
We find life when…
God reveals Himself to us
It is often takes the most peculiar things for God to draw our attention away from the daily grind.
There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. (Vs. 2)
God calls us to Himself.
“There is no calling unless there is a Caller.”
-Os Guinness
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” (Vs. 4)
God calls us to serve.
Our response to God’s call is how we choose to live out our lives within His calling.
So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. (Vs. 10)
While God doesn’t use these tactics to call us today, He has left us evidence of His work among those who have been called by Him, to Him, and for Him. We need to be able to recognize God’s voice for today. His word is complete and infallible. We have a great wealth of knowledge in front of us, all we need to be able to hear God’s voice. The question is, “Are you listening?” God wants to give His children life in a dying world.
