Exposed...

At the church where I serve, we have been spending our time together in a sermon series entitled living on mission. During this series our hope and our prayer is that we would enable, equip and empower us to live our day to day lives as a follower of Jesus on mission as a missionary to those that God has already placed in our spheres of influence who are far from God in a way that reveals and reflects Jesus to them.

And if you do not buy the whole Jesus, Bible, church thing, let alone whether you should follow Him or live for Him, here’s the thing. What you will discover during this series is that there is a way that those who are followers of Jesus are supposed to live. And there is a way that followers of Jesus are supposed to talk about the claims that Jesus made about who He was and what He came to earth to do. And my hope for you is that you would see what Jesus calls His followers to so that you can see how He feels about you and what He calls His followers to do when it comes to engaging you. That way, you can cut through the bad experiences that you have had with Jesus followers to see the truth when it comes to what Jesus calls His followers to be truly about as they live around you.

This week, I would like for us to spend our time together looking at a section of letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of our Bibles called the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus records how God accomplished His mission to deliver the Jewish people from slavery at the hands of the nation of Egypt through a man named Moses. Now Moses was born while the Jewish people were enslaved by the nation of Egypt.

 And during the time of Moses birth, the king of Egypt, who was called Pharaoh, had given orders that every male Jewish child born was to be killed. Moses mother was able to hide her son for three months, only to have to place him in a wicker basket in the Nile River in hopes that he would be delivered from certain death. Moses was found in the Nile River by the daughter of Pharaoh, who took her into her home and adopted him as her son. Moses then grew up in the home of Pharaoh in a place of privilege as a part of the royal family.

However, at the age of forty, Moses was forced to flee from Egypt and Pharaoh after killing an Egyptian who was abusing a fellow Hebrew. And for forty years, Moses lived in utter obscurity as a shepherd who lived in a tent in the desert. Then after forty years of living in utter obscurity in the desert, we see Moses have an encounter with God that would change the trajectory of his life in a powerful way. And it is in this encounter that we see God reveal for us a timeless truth when it comes to living on mission. So let’s look at this encounter together, beginning in Exodus 3:1:

Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up." When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." Then He said, "Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." He said also, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Now I would like for us to place ourselves in this event from history as Moses. Place yourself in Moses shoes. You are at work one day taking care of your father in laws sheep, when out of the blue you see a large bush on fire. Yet while the bush is burning, it does not get burned up. Upon seeing this most unusual occurrence, you decide that you need to get a closer look. And as you get closer to get a closer look, out of the bush the Angel of the Lord appears and calls your name. Now the Angel of the Lord is not simply an angel from the Lord. Instead this is “the angel of the Lord”.

In other words, this is an Old Testament appearance of Jesus. So you are now face to face with Jesus. And as you are face to face with Jesus, Jesus basically says to you “Hey make sure that you do not come any closer to Me. Instead, you need to take off your shoes as a sign of respect and worship of Me, because you are now in the presence of God. I am the God of your ancestors and I have come to earth to have a conversation with you”.

Now you are Moses. You are face to face with Jesus. What would you do? How would you respond? You would respond how Moses responded, which was to hide your face in fear. You would hide your face in fear because just like Moses, you would be face to face with perfectly pure and all powerful Creator of the universe, whose power and perfection would expose your every imperfection.

Just like Moses, you would recognize that you would be exposed for who you really are as you were exposed to who God really is. As Moses hides his face from Jesus, we see Jesus begin to have a conversation with Moses. So let’s look at that conversation together, beginning in verse 7:

 The LORD said, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. "So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. "Now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.

Jesus basically says to Moses, “I have seen the suffering and mistreatment that the people who I have chosen to enter into a special relationship with have received from the nation of Egypt. And now, I am going to fulfill the promise that I made to your ancestor Abraham some 500 years ago to bring them into the Land that I have promised them. I have heard the cries of suffering from the Jewish people and I am going to respond to their suffering by rescuing and delivering them from the oppression of the Egyptians”.

Now imagine yourself 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 will see tomorrow…