When God Calls Your Name: Moses Series

When God Calls Your Name… Twice: Moses

Scott Bayles, pastor

Blooming Grove Christian Church: 7/31/2016

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about how you might respond if God called your name—not just once, but twice. As I mentioned before, God calls plenty of people in the Bible often by name, but I’ve only found seven times where God calls out someone’s name twice in a row—Abraham, Abraham! Jacob, Jacob! Martha, Martha!

Each time that God calls someone by name twice, he follows it with something profound and powerful. He called Abraham to remind him that God must be first in his heart and life. He called Jacob in order to calm his fears and assure him that God is always with him. The third person God calls by name twice is Moses.

Moses’s story is as memorable as your first kiss and as familiar as your own living room. It’s the story of a baby saved by the providence of God and prudence of his mother, the story a stubborn king who refuses to submit to any higher power, and a story of redemption and freedom as Moses returns to Egypt and leads his people to the Promised Land. Before Moses ever stood upon Mount Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments or stood before the throne of Pharaoh to deliver his people, however, Moses stood before a burning bush in the desert wilderness of Midian. It was out of this burning bush that God called Moses by name twice and total transformed his life.

Our family recently had the opportunity to see the story of Moses told on stage at the Sight & Sound Theater in Branson. The performance just blew us away. The parting of the Red Sea ... the Burning Bush ... the Plagues ... the Ten Commandments ... the whole experience was completely immersive and spectacular. I’d love to bring the whole cast and crew here to retell the story for all of you, but that’s just a little outside my budget. However, my favorite retelling of the story of Moses is actually the animate epic, Prince of Egypt. So rather than simply reading this familiar scene to you, I’d like to play a short clip from Prince of Egypt when Moses hears God call his name.

• Play Video Clip: Prince of Egypt – Burning Bush

In Exodus 3, God calls out from the burning bush, “Moses! Moses!” (Exodus 3:4). Both mystified and astonished, Moses replies, “Here I am!” Once God had Moses’s full and undivided attention, he shared a message that would change the course of Moses’s life.

First, God tells Moses, “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” (Exodus 3:7 NLT).

Four hundred years earlier, Jacob and all his children and grandchildren moved to Egypt to be with Joseph in relative safety. Generations passed and the Hebrews multiplied. Eventually a new Pharaoh came to power who knew nothing about Joseph or what he’d done for Egypt. He saw the Hebrews as a threat. So he used them as forced labor, making bricks for the great Egyptian monuments. Despite crushing labor and cruel slave drivers, the Hebrews continued to thrive and multiple. So Pharaoh ordered the slaughter of every baby boy born to the Hebrews. So many times, they must have wondered, “Where is God? Does he even know or care what’s happening to us?”

And, honestly, isn’t that something we all wonder about at times?

When we look at all the tragedy and suffering in our world, don’t you sometimes wonder—in the back of your mind—if God’s paying any attention? Just last week, police officers were targeted and gunned down in Baton Rouge and Dallas. Multiple mass shootings and civil unrest seem to make headlines every week. That’s on top of the everyday pain and suffering experienced in individual lives – maybe including yours. There’s illness, abuse, broken relationships, betrayal, sorrow, injuries, disappointment, heartache, crime and death.

When you’re in the midst of some crisis or hurt, you may think, "Nobody knows what I'm going through, nobody feels the pain I'm experiencing."

But God knows! He wanted Moses (and us) to know he sees our suffering.

He knows your feelings and frustrations. He's seen the crisis in your soul. There's no hurt that goes unnoticed by God. The psalmist writes, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book” (Psalm 56:8 NLT).

Jesus knows every heartache and headache—every sob, sniffle, and sorrow. Often when we're hurting, we feel very isolated and lonely. Maybe there's been a death in the family, a divorce, maybe we've been fired, and we start to think, “Nobody understands the way I feel” or worse, “Nobody cares!”