This
week we are looking at a section of letter that is recorded for us in the Old
Testament of our Bibles called the book of Exodus, where, after forty years of living in utter obscurity in the
desert, we see a man named Moses have an encounter with God that would change
the trajectory of his life in a powerful way. Yesterday, we looked on as Moses
found himself face to face with an Old Testament appearance of Jesus, who
explained that He had heard the cries of suffering from the Jewish people and was
going to respond to their suffering by rescuing and delivering them from the
oppression of the Egyptians.
Now today, I want
us to imagine ourselves as Moses. You have spent the last forty years in utter
obscurity in the desert after you attempted to deliver the Jewish people by
killing an Egyptian only to fail and be rejected by the Jewish people. And now,
Jesus appears to you and explains that He is now on a mission to rescue and
deliver the Jewish people, just as He had promised Abraham hundreds of years
earlier. You are Moses: what would you be thinking at this point? What would
you be feeling? Jesus, however, was not finished talking, as we see in verse
10:
"Therefore, come now, and I will send you
to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of
Egypt."
So you are Moses; now what thoughts are running through
your mind? Now how are you feeling? You see, up to this point in the
conversation, Jesus had been saying “I have seen the suffering; I have come
down on a mission to rescue My people; I am going to complete the mission to
bring them into the Promised Land.”
Now Jesus says “I am sending you to accomplish the
mission. I am sending you to deliver them from slavery. I am sending you to
bring them in to the Promised Land. You are going to be the vehicle that I use
to accomplish my mission to bring My people into the Promised Land”.
And Jesus message today is the same to us: You are going
to be the vehicle that I use to accomplish my mission to reveal and reflect Me
so that I can bring My people into the forgiveness and relationship with God
that they were created for”.
Just as it was for Moses, while God does not need us to
do anything, God sends us to live on mission and to accomplish His mission in
the world. We see how Moses responded to the mission he had been given by Jesus
in verse 11:
But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I
should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of
Egypt?"
Moses responds to the mission that he had been given by
Jesus to be the vehicle that He used to accomplish His mission with a question:
Who am I? Actually, this is not a question. Instead this is an excuse as to why
he should not engage in the mission. By asking “who am I?” Moses is basically
saying “don’t send me because I am nobody.”
Now, here is a question for us to consider: How often do
we find ourselves using this excuse for why we are not living on mission? How
often can we find ourselves saying or thinking “I can’t live on mission because
I am a nobody?” We see Jesus response to Moses excuse in verse 12:
And He said, "Certainly I will be with
you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you
have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this
mountain."
Jesus responded to Moses excuse with a simple but
powerful statement “certainly I will be with you”. Here we see Jesus respond to
Moses excuse by promising His presence. And so that Moses would know that God
was present, Jesus tells Moses "you worship Me at this very place in the
future". You see, Jesus responded by promising His presence because while
Moses thought he was nobody, God was somebody.
In the same way today, God promises His presence when we
live on mission, because while we may think we are a nobody, Jesus, who is
present in our lives, is somebody. Now you would think that Moses would be
encouraged by the promise of the Lord's presence as he accomplished God’s
mission. However, Moses had another question for Jesus, which we see in verse
13:
Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I am
going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, 'The God of your fathers
has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, 'What is His name?' What shall I
say to them?"
Here we see Moses bring forth another excuse as to why he
should not engage in the mission that he had been given by Jesus in the form of
another question. This question, if communicated in the language we use in our
culture today, would have sounded like this: “What if the Jewish people say to
me ‘well if God sent you to us, then tell us His name’?” Now, by asking this
question, Moses is basically saying “don’t send me because they will question
my authority and if you really sent me.”
Now how often do we find ourselves using this excuse for
why we are not living on mission? How often can we find ourselves saying or
thinking “I can’t live on mission because people are going to question why I am
living on mission? I can’t live on mission because people will question or challenge
whether or not Jesus would really want me to be sharing the gospel with them or
living my life the way that I am when it comes to how I follow Him?” We see
Jesus response to Moses excuse in verse 14:
God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM";
and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me
to you.'" God, furthermore, said to
Moses, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'The LORD, the God of
your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has
sent me to you.' This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all
generations. "Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them,
'The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has
appeared to me, saying, "I am indeed concerned about you and what has been
done to you in Egypt. "So I said, I will bring you up out of the
affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the
Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, to a land flowing
with milk and honey. "They will pay heed to what you say; and you with the
elders of Israel will come to the king of Egypt and you will say to him, 'The
LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. So now, please, let us go a
three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our
God.' "But I know that the king of Egypt will not permit you to go, except
under compulsion. "So I will stretch out My hand and strike Egypt with all
My miracles which I shall do in the midst of it; and after that he will let you
go. "I will grant this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and it
shall be that when you go, you will not go empty-handed. "But every woman
shall ask of her neighbor and the woman who lives in her house, articles of
silver and articles of gold, and clothing; and you will put them on your sons
and daughters. Thus you will plunder the Egyptians."
Jesus responds to Moses excuse
by providing God’s name and God’s story of how He has always revealed Himself
to others and accomplished His mission through others. Now when God calls
Himself by the name “I Am”, this word, in the language that this letter was
originally written in, literally means “I Be”.
In other words, God is saying
“I have always existed and I have always worked the same way. I have always
worked through the lives of others in order to accomplish My Kingdom mission
here on earth”. And once again, God was going to accomplish His Kingdom mission
to rescue the Jewish people from slavery through Moses.
You see, God provided Moses His
name and reminded Moses of His story because while Moses had forgotten about
God’s story, God had not forgotten about the Jewish people’s story. And in the
same way today, God want us to remember His name and His story, because while
we may forget about God’s story, God has not forgotten about your story and how
He wants to use you to impact others by living on mission.
Friday, we will see Moses ask
some more questions that will reveal for us a timeless truth when it comes to
living on mission...
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