JAN 19 2020 | Invite: Discovering the Power of Invitation S1E3 | Moses and the Burning Bush

Sea Change Church · Invite: Discovering the Power of Invitation · "Moses and the Burning Bush" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · January 19, 2020
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Take my hand, press the star, and lead me home. You guys can just go home. Church is over. Happy Sunday, everybody. Just kidding. My name is Harry. I'm the student ministries pastor on staff, and I will be reading our scripture. Today, our scripture comes from Exodus chapter 3, verses 1 through 6. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight, why the bush does not burn up. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses. And Moses said, here I am. Do not come any closer, God said. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.

Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God, the word of the Lord. Mmm. Chris. Oh. Oh, she said I was trying not to do that. Look what you made me do. Taylor Swift. I'm going to bring myself a hanky just for these moments so I can just do this in the back and sweat a little bit and tap my forehead.

That was so good. Man. Church is good today. All right. Let me pray. Jesus, I want to thank you, God, for your goodness, for your grace, and all the things that you do. To bring us out of a wilderness, God, and into a promise. Out of loneliness and into community. Out of being disenfranchised and into a family. Lord Jesus, we bless you. Now, let the word of God burn like this burning bush in this scripture. And we bless you and thank you for it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. Martin Luther King Jr. is an archetype of the Mosaic figure. One of many in history who had the ability to lead a group of people from a wilderness and towards a promise. And willing to die for what he believed. And this is powerful. I think right before he passed, obviously he said, I might not get there with you. Speaking about the place that they would go. And really powerful. And today we do want to honor that.

Here, and in the invitation series, I've woven in this Mosaic passage to this series on invitation. Invitation is so important. I'm coming to believe that invitation is one of the most powerful elements of the entire gospel. Evangelism needs, always, and needs to start with an invitation. Evangelism is built upon invitation. And we have to have that. And so today we're looking at God who is inviting Moses out of a wilderness.

Moses is living in a wilderness, as we saw. I'll read through this in a moment. And calling him not only into purpose, but into deeper community and into family. And if you only see the story of Moses through the lens of leading the Jewish people from out of Egypt and the story of suffrage and freedom, moving into the promise, then you miss the individual nuance of Moses' story. We'll talk about Moses in a moment. We'll go deeper into it.

But Moses was in a personal wilderness. He was an incredible personal wilderness. 80 years old at the reading of this story. God didn't really start moving according to how people see purpose until Moses was 80. Forgotten in the wilderness, in a personal wilderness, and God had called him. And perhaps today, you or someone you know is in a personal wilderness. And today we want to look at the tools and the invitation God gives us to personally step out of that wilderness, to move away to the edges of that wilderness and into God's promise.

Let me read Exodus 3. Now Moses was tending the flock. Circle tending the flock. He was being faithful with little. He had a little. He didn't have a flock of his own. He would eventually, by some estimates, have 6 million people he was leading. But at 80 years old, he was tending a flock. And the scripture says in the New Testament, he who is faithful with little will be given more. And I definitely have seen that proven true in many people's lives.

He was tending the flock. Not even his flock. The flock of Jethro, his father-in-law. The priest of the Midian. He was working for a priest. Moses would become the greatest priest in Jewish history. For ours, we would put Moses a little bit probably behind Jesus as the greatest high priest. But Moses is right up there. But he wasn't even a priest at the moment. He was a wandering shepherd. And you remember David was also called out of tending sheep.

God often takes the things we've been faithful with. And Moses is a faithful shepherd. The things that we've been faithful with. And then he leans into them and calls us to something even deeper. It says he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness. And I love that. You can write a book. You've heard of the book East of Eden. You know, this could be called to the far side of the wilderness. And sometimes we need to get out of the center of our wilderness and move to the far side of it.

Then we might get whole and healed. And he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And a little bit, we're going to show you a picture of that mountain. But we're going to, a little teaser right there. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him. God appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. Now this is important because not only was this some cool miracle, it was also God telling a story of who he is.

That God can consume, God can radiate power, heat. And he needs no fuel. He is self-sufficient and needs nothing to do it. We believe that the earth was created out of nothing. It wasn't created out of a few cells that got together, some gas. We believe it was actually created out of nothing. And God has the ability to create out of nothing. And I think that's important for us because many of us feel like they're nothing.

A lot of many people today feel like they have nothing. And they don't see any way out of a wilderness. And I want to say that this burning bush is showing that God can create and emanate out of the nothingness of your life or your purpose. That God wants to call out of that. And if you feel like you're in a wilderness or know someone who does that, you want to come alongside of them. This is the God that we serve. So Moses thought.

And this is great initiative on Moses' part. Moses thought. And you've got to realize the rest of his life is built upon this thought. Thoughts are important. Not every thought is important. We don't give credit to every thought. But he built upon this thought. I will go over and see this strange sight. Why the bush does not burn up. He was curious. Alpha, the program we're starting, the cafe, is about people that are curious.

People, if you know in your life, invite them. Reach into their curiosity. Ask them, do you want to know more about Jesus? Have you ever understood more about Jesus? Invite. When the Lord saw, circle saw. I like that God says the eyes of the Lord are going to and fro throughout the world looking for those that might serve him. He's looking for you. He's looking for someone to say what Moses says. Here I am. We'll see that in a moment.

When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, out of his curiosity, God called him from within the bush. Twice. Moses. Moses. I think one Moses would have worked for me. One Adam. But God says, Moses, Moses. And Moses says great three words in scripture. I love the small little words in scripture. If is a great word. Or but. But he did this. Or if I did this. Here's a great three words. We love the long soliloquies.

But this is a great one. Here I am. That is great. You'll see that in the book of Isaiah. Where the Lord says he's looking for somebody. And Isaiah says, here I am, Lord. Send me. That's right. God's looking for willing soldiers. Willing people that will go out and make a difference in this world for love. Soldiers of God's heart and love. Do not come any closer, God said. Take off your sandals. For the place that you are standing is holy ground.

Then he said, I am the God of your father. Boom. Family. Now this matters because Moses has been rejected by his family. His entire family. I'm not talking about the priest of the Midian who he married into that family. He had married into a family of foreigners. But the Israelites, his true family, who he would become head over, had kicked him out. Why? Because he was a traitor. He was raised as an Egyptian in the hierarchy of the Egyptian society and culture.

And then he killed a man. And the Jews kicked him out. And the Egyptians had a price on his head. He was rejected. We'll see more about that in a moment. But with this calling of saying, I am the God of your father. If we are just looking at Moses as this incredible figure who led people out of the wilderness and into a promise. You miss the nuance that God says, you're in my family. That's a big deal. That's a big deal who was on the run.

He can't go back to Egypt. He is on the run. He's murdered somebody. And he murdered an Egyptian when he started having a heart for the Jews. But the Jews, he was like a tax collector to the Jews. Because he was raised by Pharaoh's daughter. You can imagine when you see Moses and you picture Moses, you have to picture him in all of the makeup. In all of the headgear. If you've ever gone to someplace like the British Museum or any museum or you've studied in school.

When you see the Pharaohs and you see all. He was up as high as you can go in the family as an adopted Egyptian. People don't realize this. And when Moses walked around, he was straight up eyeliner, the cats everywhere, the whole Egyptian deal. That was where Moses is. And we miss that he was part of that. Because he was part of that, the Jews hated him. So when he tried to stand up for the Jews and kill an Egyptian who was coming against one of his Jewish brothers.

The next day he went back out and one of the Jews said to him, you know, are you going to kill one of us like you killed that Egyptian? They immediately realized you're not one of us. He has not been part of the family. He's called out of family. He's been kicked out of the family. And God says, I am calling you through a familial calling. You're back into the family. That's a big deal. He is in the wilderness. And maybe you've lost familial ties.

Maybe you feel like you're wandering and lost from those things. Well, God wants to call you into his family. We don't want to miss the nuance of the individual people behind great stories. I love the God care. Jesus, we've seen, regularly has opposition to crowds. We talked about that. Jesus was always dispersing crowds. It seems like the church is always trying to gather them. Jesus is always trying to disperse them.

But he's looking for the individual. And here he's looking for the individual Moses. And we miss the individual in the story. Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals. For the place you are standing is holy ground. Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and of God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face. Because he was afraid to look at God. And we won't get into that today.

But many people are afraid of God. They have these barriers with God. They are angry at God. They're afraid to look at him. But there's one obstacle or another that is causing them not to be near or come close to God. Moses was afraid. We're going to see how that changes as Moses continues to move into deeper and deeper intimacy, deeper and deeper family. And Moses, it says, becomes a friend to God. And we'll see that in just a moment.

First of all, as we talk about change, if you look at your notes, it says the genesis of transformation. One of the questions, one of the things I'm fascinated with. I'm fascinated with people's stories. I met with somebody two weeks ago. We met and we were talking. And as they were talking, I just wasn't sure that they wanted change. I just wasn't sure. And I told them I wasn't sure they wanted change. And they told me they were sure they wanted change.

And I said, well, I'm not sure you want change. And we went back and forth. And we'll find out. And I've been getting so many amazing texts. And I got this, either it was a text or an email this week. And it says, I can't wait to get together with you again. God has done miracles in my life. I've had a radical transformation. I can't wait to tell you. I don't know what the story is yet. But I am so excited to hear about that story.

And that's just one of many stories of people who are not just ready, as we said last week, but ready and willing. Huge difference, as we saw last week, was Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was not just ready. He said Zacchaeus was ready and willing. Everyone's ready for change. But not everyone's willing to change. Everyone's ready. I meet a lot of people that are ready for change, but not willing to do the hard yards of what it takes to change.

Moses was. Moses says, here I am. Where does change come from? And these stories of transformation fascinate me. Where does change begin? Where does 30 years of marriage begin? Where does 50, 70 years, like the Cottons who have both passed away, who were part of our congregation, sat there for five years while I was here. Where does 70 years of marriage begin? Where does it continue? How does it continue? Where are the spots where it might have only gone 30, but it made it to 40?

Where does 15 years of sobriety begin? Where does a relationship with your children begin? Where does financial security and lack of a poverty mentality begin? Where do these things begin? I'm fascinated by how things begin. I'm fascinated with Genesis. Genesis, I'm also fascinated with the journey of continued long suffering to make sure that you just don't have early beginnings that are first fruits that never continue on to something greater.

We see Moses having a genesis of transformation. Moses goes from this place. We'll see who he was. A wandering exile. A family, basically a family-less, a wandering exile. To becoming the greatest Jew by Jewish standards. One of the greatest religious figures. One of the greatest historic figures, whether you're religious or not, of all time. If you were going to look at somebody freeing people from slavery. If you were to listen.

I mean, when you look at Martin Luther King and you listen to many of the great black gospel songs and hymns. Many of them reference Moses. He is an archetype of that type of change. How does he become that and go from a wandering exile to that? Where did that change begin? Well, let's look at this. The first of all is we need to identify. In order to have change, there's a couple things that have to happen. There's a lot of things, but I tried to bring it down to two to make it very practical for us.

The first would be identification of the obstacles. What are the obstacles that are keeping you from change? Maybe it's your credit cards. Maybe it's spending. Maybe somebody told me this week it was social media. They said, I'm not posting anymore on social media because I realize that I compare my life too much. It makes me unhappy. I don't want to post anymore on social media because of this. And this, all of a sudden, this is an obstacle.

And I said, well, tell me a little bit more about these obstacles. Tell me why that is. Where is this coming from? They said, I don't know yet, but I know I want to get smaller. I want my life to be smaller. And I love the idea of leading a small life. Today, there's this momentum. There's this desire in our culture to live bigger lives. I don't understand why a bigger life is better than a smaller life. Jesus was always trying to live a smaller life.

I don't know if you realize that. Everyone wants to do something bigger. I guess bigger is supposed to be better in all situations. And here, we're looking for a small life. But I like what they told me. So the first is identifying the obstacles. Maybe on your note, you can write down what the obstacles are in your life. I said last week that I meet many people. They tell me what the obstacles are in their life. And I say, why don't you get rid of that obstacle?

And then the next 15 to 20 minutes of the conversation is they tell me why that obstacle is not really that big of an obstacle. And I said, well, why did we bring it up in the first place? Because if you can't identify an obstacle, then you rarely are going to have a place of change. If you go to AA, one of the things that says, I came to admit that my life would become unmanageable. Basically, you have to say that I am an alcoholic.

That's an obstacle. And they make you identify the obstacle. You know, the big book of AA doesn't start out with, I like to drink every so often, but it's not a big deal. It doesn't start with that. It starts with, my life had become unmanageable. And one of the ways to find out if something is an obstacle in your life is if that area of your life has become unmanageable. There's a big push in society right now to say there's no such thing as sexual addiction.

I don't know if you've seen that, I've been studying. But they're trying to say that there is no such thing as sex addiction, which is a complete lie. Anything that releases dopamine into your brain can cause addiction. So the reason there is for that is if you can set that argument up, then there's nothing that's wrong basically sexually. It kind of goes into that whole thing. So they're saying that there is no, there is nothing.

But I know many people that have lost their entire families because of the inability to control their sexuality. Understanding what the obstacle is and naming that obstacle and saying that is an obstacle for me. Like I said, this week people told me it was sexuality. People told me that it was social media. People told me that it was spending because of loneliness. They like, you know, it isn't like they go buy stuff.

They like to go out and just be somewhere where other people are and then buy something because they don't want to look like an idiot and just walk in and keep going to the same stores. They said, I said, okay, well, you can still do that. Go to Costco, just eat the free stuff. But nonetheless, no, the obstacle. Next is, I don't know if this sentence works. I tried to make it work. Movement towards the better. It works for me.

So, and it's my sermon. So there you go. But moving towards the better. What I mean by that is Moses left the center of the wilderness and he moved to the fringe of the wilderness. He did things to move out of the center. We can get caught in the center of our own wilderness where the wilderness becomes our identity. The wilderness becomes what we're all about. Now, Moses, God would take the story of Moses' wilderness.

And when he led the people later on, because Moses has already spent 40 years in the wilderness, he's going to spend another 40. But this time he's going to be leading people through it. You have to realize that God used the brokenness in the wilderness of Moses' life to lead other people out of their wilderness. God will take the ashes of your life and turn it to beauty. God will restore the years that the locusts have eaten away.

What the enemy wants to tell you, what Satan wants to tell you, and influence you with the thought that you are nothing, you will always be nothing, you will never be worth anything. And God's story is the story of redemption. He understood this and he started moving away from the wilderness towards the mountain of God. I want to show a picture right now if you can. This is Mount Sinai. It should be coming up. There it is.

That's Mount Sinai. On the top there is where Moses hung out with God when they wrote the Ten Commandments. It's just an amazing place, an amazing picture that speaks of strength in the midst of the wilderness. And from this place the presence of God dwelt and it oversaw the entire wilderness. I love that the highest place in the area is where God's presence dwelt, although he did come and dwell amongst the people because God dwells everywhere.

But the sense is that God is looking over the wilderness of your life. And not only is he willing to look over the wilderness of your life from the high place, he wants to move into the tent of meeting of your heart and dwell with you. You can turn that off and go back with the lights. Let's look at Moses just quickly as we kind of look at his life and his story and see if there's any identifiable markers for yourself.

First was Moses was an orphan. Moses, because of what was going on in Egypt and the killing of the Jews, was put into a river. And he went down the river and Pharaoh's daughter went and fished him out of the river. The name actually means Moses to be drawn out like water. And he was drawn out. And God wants to continue to draw us out of the things of our wilderness and put you in towards a promise. But we have to decide we will no longer be defined by the wilderness and start making movements towards the mountain of God away from our wilderness, to the far side of the wilderness.

Moses was a murderer. We talked about that a moment ago. Straight up murderer. Remember, other than Jesus, the three most important figures in all of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, Moses, Paul, and Jesus, of those three, one was murdered, two were murderers. Paul was a murderer. Moses was a murderer. These are men who God called and called them from this place to lead his people. No one is beyond redemption. But Moses had a lot of reasons to think why he was disqualified.

We tend to regularly disqualify ourselves because we've done one thing or another. Moses was a murderer. And Moses was a wanderer who was, and if you're, you know, over whatever age that you think you should be for the place that you think you should have gone at, I don't know who figures all that stuff out, but there are all these different ages where we feel like we're told that you need to be this by here and that by then and you need to have this many followers or that much significance by this certain point.

Moses was way past his prime. Moses had started up in the heights of aristocracy and now was living in the midst of a wilderness at 80 years old. Moses didn't, according by, you know, our world standards, actually do anything until he was 80. People don't realize that God called him, and there's a lot of us who feel like we've missed it. There's a lot of us who feel like there should be something more, as opposed to living fully in the moment, to try to just get all the joy out of life.

You know, like it says in, I remember Dead Poets Society, when he's quoting the poem and he says, you know, to suck the marrow out of life, to get to the meat, to the center of what God is doing in this moment and to totally live in that moment. You know, the purpose is knowing God, and your purpose is to be who God has created you to be and to live in the midst of that. You know, God calls Moses late in life, and God had a calling for him, but we so often think we've missed it.

And if you feel like you've missed something, I would say it's never too late with God. Why? God's eternal. There's no missing. See, time is a thing God created that we live in, but there is nothing that God cannot restore, and because he is the God of time, can bring us out of that. So, for any of you that might feel that you've missed it, realize that God can meet you in that desert, in that wilderness. Now, I like three things here.

There's a couple things. If we're going to change, if you're going to have change in your life this year that are going to have to happen. One, you're going to have to move. God's going to have to respond. And then God's going to have to call. And I see that happen all the time. I rarely have met a person. I'm not sure if I have yet. I'm not, seriously. I'm not sure I've met a person who has genuinely sought to find God, because God promises, if you seek me, you will find me.

I don't know if I've ever met a person who has genuinely sought to find God that hasn't found God in some capacity or another. I've seen people hit obstacles and lose their faith, but most people who are in a genuine search find him. Moses moves. The question before we go into that is, do you need to move? Do you need to make some changes? Do you need to no longer go certain places? Do you no longer need to do certain things?

One of the things I knew when I was changing my life, when God called me in 19 to radically change my life, that there was two things that needed to change. My geography and my chronology. Where I went and when I went there. What I did with my time and where I put my body. I knew that if I did not end up in Tijuana on Wednesday night, that it would be a much better decision and a much easier for me to get the life change that I wanted.

Where are you spending your time? Another one would be who you're spending your time with. That was a third one. But I had to make a movement away from certain things. What we tend to do when we think about change is we think about all the things we're going to miss. When you have something in your life that you want and you know you shouldn't be doing it anymore, we tend to focus on everything we're going to miss. It's really easy to think like, oh, I'm going to miss that or I want to go this.

Or when you're feeling that pull to go towards that thing you're addicted to or that thing that you want really, really bad. Or some people are serial, you know, they have to have relationships constantly. So they're moving from one relationship to the other for the excitement of it and they break up. And when you're in the midst of that pull, you can think about all the things you want and all the things you miss. Because what we rarely think about is when you are moving away from something, you're also moving towards something.

The thing is it's oftentimes harder to attain the thing you're moving towards than to stay with the thing that you want, if that makes sense. So it took me a long time to get sober. I started, it was hard, it was difficult. But where I am now, I look and I was able to not only visualize, but live in the very center of that place that God was calling me to. What I'm saying is this, God is calling you away from something.

God is asking you to move, but he's also calling you to something. He's calling you to be a better father than you've ever been. He's calling you to have more intimacy in your relationship with your spouse than you've ever had. He's calling you to perhaps financial freedom. He's calling you to emotional health. He's calling you to physical health. Some of us need to get, we need to get healthy. We need to do certain things.

We have one person we're still praying for, anonymous every week. It's there. We get these prayer requests. If you need to be prayed for, we will pray for you on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday we get a list of all the people who put in prayers. It says, I'm trying to stop smoking. I'm trying to stop drinking. Every time I feel like I'm a loser when I do those things, but I can't stop. We're praying for this person. We don't know who it is, but we're praying for them.

But they're making movements to make a change. One of the positive movements was to write that down and put it in the prayer bucket. That's a positive movement in the right direction. But to be able to see that God is not only calling you away from something, he's calling you to something. Very few of us sit and think through what our lives would look like if we made that change. I oftentimes can visualize how difficult it is not to have the thing I want, but what would it look like if you were healthy for the first time in your life?

I was watching the, I was running around social media looking at some things, and Rebel Wilson, maybe you know her, the actress, has started a new 2020 health thing. And she said, for the first time in my life, I'm going to address some issues. I'm going to get healthy. She's got the ropes. She's doing the whole thing. Good honor. Good for her, you know, to want to make that positive change. What is that? They made a move.

This week I made a move. My wife bought this cool little spiritual journal. And it's daily, and you kind of write things. You put a vision board. And I thought, I've kind of stagnated in my spiritual life in regard to my quiet time with God. Would you buy one of those for me? So she bought me one. That was my movement. I want to move towards God. I want to be able to sit more than five minutes. I've actually lost the ability to sit still recently.

I told my wife, I'm going to, stop laughing at me, Dave. Actually, I told my wife, I said, I'm going to sit for a half hour. She goes, why are you going to sit for a half hour? I said, because that's what the monks do. They actually do hours. She goes, why don't you start with five minutes? You can't even do five minutes at the moment. I'm like, no, a half hour. And I was like, you know, maybe I just got to start with five minutes.

I'm such a rookie. I'm back to five minutes of silent sitting. All right. Nonetheless, Moses moves. Moses came to the mountain of God, and then he went to the burning bush. Where do you need to go? Where do you need to change your time? Where do you need to change? Where are you going to go to make that movement away from something, but towards something else? Imagine yourself fully healthy for the first time ever. Imagine yourself in a relationship where there's no more striving or, or, or, you know, language that you don't want to use anymore or guilt.

What it'll look like, whatever it is, vision, what it would look like and go for the precious. Next is God responds. Verse four, when the Lord saw, I love that, that he had gone over. You see, sometimes God, look, God came to Moses first here, right? Obviously we see Moses, but God, God had his eye on him, but there is a mutuality of invitation that we see. We've seen in this invitation series. God calls you, you call God, God invites Matthew.

Matthew invites him over to his house. You know, it's, it's like this mutuality of invitation. You're inviting God. And so God sees this movement. Whenever you make a positive movement towards God, God is, is willing and looking to respond. He's looking for people. The eyes of the Lord are going all over. You know, before he destroyed Sodom, he said to Abraham, when he was speaking to Abraham, Abraham asked him, you know, if there's just 50 people, then he goes down to 40 people.

I think he goes to 30 and then down to 10 or whatever it is. And God's like, yeah, if I can find my eyes are looking, if I can find just those few people, I will make a change. I will save them for that. God is looking for change. He's looking for you to change as you move. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called him from within the bush, Moses, Moses, God wants to respond to you. Respond to God, move towards God, move out of your wilderness, move away, move to the fringe of your wilderness, move to the mountain of God, and ask God to respond and see what happens.

God responds. And then God calls. Verse five, God calls him into holiness. This is to say, these things don't work anymore. I love in the big book of AA, it says, my life had become unmanageable. God is calling him into holiness. Anything that is holy in your life will never become unmanageable. The things of God don't become unmanageable. God also will never lead you to burnout. I heard someone say once, the Holy Spirit will never lead a pastor to burnout.

One of the big things with pastors is they burn out. People burn out. The only way you'll ever have burnout as a pastor is if you're not following the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will never lead you to burnout. He will always lead you. He'll tell you to rest, he'll tell you to do other things, but he'll manage that. He's calling you into holiness. And some of us need holiness in your life. Do you need holiness in your life?

What you watch, what you see, what you do, what you say. God says, this is holy ground. If you want to deal with me, we're going to do holiness. You never need to rationalize holiness. You never, if you're there, you know, hey, should I do this or should I not? And then you start thinking a few reasons, you know, to kind of rationalize it. Holiness never needs to be rationalized, ever. It is just straight up holiness.

Do you want holiness in your life? Next, we talked about family. I love that God calls them into family and God calls you into family. This is a familial faith that God calls us into family. God wants you to be in the family of God. He wants you to call you close. He wants to be like a father to us. And it begins with invitation and reconciliation. He invites him. I already spoke about that a moment ago, but God calls him that.

And then finally, I'll just leave it with you as we circle the tower now, that Moses was called into a deeper purpose. Go on and read the story of Exodus. We're not going through it. We're going to be doing Genesis this year. I was going back and forth. I want to do the story of Moses, but I think we're just going to be continuing to bang through Genesis and start next week with our first week of the Genesis series. But God calls him to a deeper purpose.

It's a great story, as God calls him. But we don't want to miss that the purpose that God called Moses was more about God loving Moses than pulling his people out of Egypt. God cared more about Moses than he cared about the innate, because he's an individual God. He cares about individual, and he cares deeply about you. He cares about pulling the people out of Egypt. He cares about all these things. But ultimately, he wasn't going to lose Moses in the process.

Moses hit his face when all this happened because he had another barrier. Besides being a murderer, besides being an orphan, besides being past his prime, he was afraid of God. He was fearful with God, and he needed a transformation within the transformation. And we see this transformation that happened in Moses' life. It says in verse 6b, at this, Moses hid his face because why? He was afraid of God. Now, if you take this 30 chapters further in the story.

There's a really cool chapter, chapter 33. I want you to read it, if you get a chance. Write it down and go read it this week. Because Moses, it shows this massive transformation where Moses goes from someone who is afraid of God to someone, as it says in Exodus 33, 11, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses returned to the camp, but the young aide Joshua, the son of Nun, did not leave the tent.

Moses would speak. Matter of fact, Moses, it says, because of the glory of God, he became a friend of God. He went from hiding. And then he asked, Lord, you know, remember he asked one time, can I see your glory? You know, and God says in this chapter 33, I won't ruin it. He asked to see the glory of God. Remember when he would see the glory of God and he would spend time with God, the glory would be so, the Shekinah glory is what it would call.

His face would light up. Would light up so bright that he would have to wear a veil because no one could look at his face. It was shining so bright because of the deep intimacy that he had with God. This is a person whose story went from someone who was afraid of God, who was an orphan murderer in the wilderness, to someone who became a friend of God. So close that God spoke to him face to face as a family member and his own face radiated the glory of God.

This is the transformation that God wanted. This is what Jesus and what God and when Jesus, you know, when Jesus goes to the Mount of Transfiguration, he's back in this glorious moment and Moses is back there with Jesus in this place and the glory shone. Jesus was transformed. Let me say this as we close. Jesus wants to transform your life. If you're afraid of God, if you have obstacles, he wants to take you to a deeper place, if you're willing to go there, if, if, we stand at a crossroads every day, do we want to follow God?

Do we want to know him? And do we want more than just change? Because this is the scary thing. Do we want intimacy? If you've had a broken upbringing, intimacy scares the heck out of you. Intimacy terrifies me. I'm getting better at it. I'm getting much better at it. I'm at a better place than I've ever been, but it terrifies me. Intimacy with God terrifies me. And for years, I have continued to allow little things in my life just enough to keep enough distance between me and God.

I got these little things that I put in my life on purpose because I don't want to be that close to God because intimacy terrifies me. The same way it terrified Adam and Eve when they jumped in the bushes, the same way it terrified Moses, the same way we never move. And I realize if I'm going to have the relationship with my wife, with my children, it's got to start at the beginning with me knowing God in a deep, personal way.

No longer living in the wilderness and moving towards a depth. So here's the question. Do you really want to know God? Not do you want to lead the people out of Egypt? Do you want to have a purpose? Do you want to have more followers on? Whatever. Write the book you want to write. It's not about that. It's about knowing God deeply and having intimacy with Him. That's the barrier. That's the question. And that's where we want to go.

Let's stand. Chris, lead us away. Broke my heart this week when I saw someone had written on a message board about the fires in Australia. Thank you, universe, for sending the rain. And I thought, it's not the universe. The universe is a secondary creation. There's a loving God so much more who wants to know you deep and personally. And if that touched your heart today, if you've thought, I've never had that. I feel disenfranchised.

I feel like I'm in my wilderness. I'm going to give you an opportunity to follow Jesus today and to know Him. If you bow your heads, let's all bow our heads. If that's you today and you're like, I need that, just raise your hand. If you've never followed Jesus in your life, you've never made that decision, just raise your hand. You say, I want to follow Jesus exclusively. Is anyone here today? Or there's someone else that says, I need to walk out of the wilderness.

I'm ready to walk towards the mountain of God. If that's you, just raise your hand today. I want to bless you. Yeah. Yeah, right on. Anyone else? Yeah, in the back there. Yeah. Just two of us in this whole crowd? There you go. Be honest. There we go. Two hands. Stand your hands and we bless you. Lord Jesus, I bless these people with your goodness, God, and your grace. For you would just bless them and cover them, God, with change.

That you would let them walk out, God, the center of a wilderness, God, and into a family. To the arms of a loving father, a prodigal father who looks for his son, the father of a prodigal God. We come back to you with open arms. We need you. We need you in our marriages. We need you in our families. We need you in our prayers. We need you in our own hearts. So Jesus, bless these people now as we send them out and bless you.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.