Barefoot and Blessed
(Name), did you get my message? (Name), did you get the message I left for you on your answering machine? (Name), did you get the message I left for you on your cell phone’s voice mail? (Name), did you get my e-mail? We live in the information age where messages are constantly being sent back and forth in a variety of ways. A missed message could mean a loss of business. A missed message could result in confusion about where to meet. A missed message could result in a loss of life. But a missed message from God is the worst kind of message to miss. A missed message is a missed blessing.
I believe that God gives His people certain messages, and these “messages” are instructions to equip us, and encouragement to do His will. Our scripture for today, the story of Moses and the burning bush, is a story about a message from God to Moses. A message that, thankfully, Moses didn’t miss.
Close your eyes. Now imagine you’re walking on a lonely hillside on a hot summer day. A bush catches fire, but instead of burning up it keeps on burning! That’d get your attention, wouldn’t it? You might think, “That’s weird. What does this mean? Is God trying to tell me something?” It could God calling you with a message. He has a message for you that could change the direction of your life.
Moses was a shepherd, tending his father-in-law’s sheep, doing the same thing he did every day. It was a day like every other day. Until…this bush catches fire. Well, this is the most excitement Moses has had in a while, so he stops to watch it burn down. Only it doesn’t. The fire is in the bush, but it doesn’t consume the bush. It’s kind of like those fake fireplace logs with the electric flames. It just keeps on burning.
And Moses, being so articulate, even though amazed at the sight, probably goes, “huh”. He decides finally to walk on over and check out this unburnable bush a little closer. As he’s walking closer, God’s presence calls to him from the bush, “Moses, Moses!
Moses, being the quick wit that he is says, “What…here I am.”
I wonder if Moses gave any thought to the consequences stopping to check out that burning bush. People of passion and faith rarely count the consequences. You see, if Moses had really thought about it, he’d have put as much distance as possible between himself and that flaming bush, although we know that “you can run but you can’t hide” from God. So put yourselves in Moses’ place. "Have you ever heard a call from someone to go way beyond your usual pattern of life? What happened? What were the consequences?"
Moses! “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings and I have come to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt.”
So Moses whips out his trusty Palm Pilot and says, “Well, I’ll have to check my calendar. Oh. Nope, can’t do it, I’m busy that day. I’ve got a 10:00 meeting with my father-in-law, then at noon I have a sheep shearing lesson, and at 2 I’m getting my staff aligned. And, of course, I have to help the kids with their history homework.”
“I’m just a shepherd. Why me?" "Moses!" God said, "I am with you now. I will be with you then. I need you to bring my people out of Egypt." Moses looks at his Palm Pilot. The screen is blank, the battery’s dead. His schedule has just been changed.
Everything changes for Moses at this point in time because his encounter with God is a revelation of God himself and the God that he encounters is a God of fire. This bush should have been destroyed in less than 10 seconds, but the miracle here is not the bush but the fire; the fire of God that kept burning and burning and burning. This kind of fire requires no fuel. God was in the fire and Moses had just stepped in to God’s home.
There Moses is instructed to remove his sandals, which is not foreign to him. Egyptian priests observed it in their temples, people in all Eastern countries observe this as well. The removal of shoes is a confession of unworthiness to stand in pure holiness. God tells Moses, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
It’s the same for all of us. He calls to all of us "take off your shoes, you are in my presence and it is holy." We are here in God’s house and His presence is with us. We are on “holy ground”.
We all know how dirty shoes can get. They pick up all kinds of stuff that we step on. And everywhere we have been and everything we have done can be found on the bottom of our shoes. It’s like stepping on gum on a hot summer day. You can’t get it off, little strings of it just keep following you. Everybody who sees you knows that you stepped in gum.
God knows every sin we’ve ever walked through. God says, “Take off your sandals, I don’t care what’s on the bottom of them, just do it."
It’s all about humility and reverence. At PromiseKeepers a few years ago, a speaker was talking about this passage, and concluded his message by asking all of us to take off our shoes in worship. And the Hoosier Dome, which had been used for hundreds of other things, was holy ground because God was there. This church is holy ground because God is here.
Well, some of you may say, "I’ve got stuff, sins, on the bottom of my shoes that will never come off, God will never take me." Well, Moses killed a guy; anybody here do anything worse than that?
God doesn’t tell Moses that he’s gifted. He doesn’t tell him that he’s more talented than he thinks. He doesn’t tell him that his problem is low self-esteem. God does tell Moses, “ What you lack, I will supply.”
It doesn’t matter what God has called you to do or to endure . . . you can do it if you trust His strength! It doesn’t matter what problem or difficulty you’re facing. It may be moving to a new city to begin a new job. It may be the prospect of chemotherapy or radiation. It may be an opportunity to serve in a ministry. It may be the reality of standing before death’s door. It doesn’t matter! Whatever God has called you to do or to endure, He tells you the same thing He told Moses, “What you lack, I will supply.”
God will often get our attention by causing uncommon events to occur. They are God’s way of tapping us on the shoulder so that we will sit up and listen to what he has to say. Refusing to answer your message, your “burning bush” will not change the outcome. So answer your burning bush. A burning bush today can be different things: a news flash on TV, an accident or illness; maybe an unwelcome change like getting laid off or fired, a brush with death, the miracle of childbirth, some good fortune. God speaks to people in different ways to get our attention. Sometimes God has to use tragedy to get our attention. God doesn’t send the tragedy, but he will use it to get our attention.
God will use whatever it takes to get our attention, even a scraggly, dried up old bush. There wasn’t anything special about that bush, but God wanted to use it. And if God wants your attention, if he wants you to wake up to reality, if he wants you to leave whatever destructive path you’re on, any old bush will do. Even plastic flowers.
Most of you remember the first time I preached here. Just after the sermon, Donna Jo yells “fire” and I turn around to see the plastic flowers on the altar table on fire because the candles had burnt down too low. The very first thing that crossed my mind was our scripture for today. I was waiting for God to speak to me from the “burning bush”. Throughout my journey I have often identified with Moses. I struggled with my calling in the beginning. I told God to find someone else. I asked God, “Who am I, that I should be up here preaching your word? Why me?” I kept asking God for a sign, hoping to get out of it, hoping I was misunderstanding the message He was sending. I’ve told many of you this, that when I turned and saw that fire, I knew that was my “sign”. That, literally, was my “burning bush”. God’s message had come through loud and clear. (And I’ve noticed that since that day, Helen has made sure that the flowers on the altar are always real!)
Look at the scripture in Exodus 3. In verse three, Moses says, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight..." The Bible doesn’t say that God demanded that Moses come to the bush, or even that He called him to come to the bush. God placed the bush near Moses path and allowed Moses to make the choice.
But what if Moses hadn’t gone? What if he had flat out refused? Well, he would have forfeited the blessing that comes from living God’s way. He would not have been in the center of God’s grace. But Moses didn’t refuse. Instead God used him in awesome ways because our God is an awesome God.
We also have that same choice to make. Are you making excuses so you don’t have to do what you know God wants you to do or go where He wants you to go? Are you missing God’s message? Or maybe ignoring it? I hope that we all will answer our own “burning bush” so God can use us in awesome ways. And when we do, let’s go barefoot and we, too, will be blessed.
