Caught In Between | Week 2 (7-19-2026)

Dr. Woods Lisenby preaches on the subject, "Don't Think, Just Do."

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Exodus chapter 14, starting with verse 10, goes like this. As Sparrow approached the Israelites, looked up, and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, Leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians. It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert. Moses answered the people, Do not be afraid, but stand firm, and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only be still. Then the Lord said to Moses, Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff, stretch it out, your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. This is the word of God for the people of God. And together we say, Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Will you pray with me? Lord, may the words of my mouth and meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our strength and our deemer. We thank you for your love. We thank you for your work. May it always be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and all God's people said, Amen. Have you seen all the headlines about how people are afraid that artificial intelligence is coming for our jobs? It's been all over the news. It's been like one of the biggest stories of the past, you know, year or so. And to be honest, I'm not too terribly worried. I don't have any current existential dread. You know, I I know that technology uh can change things and we might have to adapt a little bit. But so far, AI hasn't started trying to perform any weddings for me. It's not going out there and officiating over any funerals. Um, but but it has started taking something from me. Uh I have begun it has begun to remove a bit of my usefulness for what I bring to the table, both to my family and to my friends. It it's replacing one of the things I'm genuinely probably one of the best at in the entire world. Uh and and I know that's maybe not humble enough, but trust me, I I'm really good at looking things up on the internet. It's like one of my specialties. Like you don't understand, I could get a gold medal in the Olympic sport of looking things up on the internet. I mean, just ask Brianna. I'm so fast and efficient. If we need a restaurant recommendation or reviews for a product, I mean, I she just hands me the phone because I know how to use the Google machine like a wizard. And I and I know the deep recesses of Reddit to make sure that I get the most accurate opinions on a thing. If you go to Disney World, you want me in your group because I'm a master of the Disney genie. If you haven't used the Disney genie, it means you haven't been to Disney in a minute. But you have to have this app to get you around and get you into the lines and get you from place to place. And I tell you what, uh, whenever we last went to Disney World, I was in charge of our group and we made every single rider we wanted to ride. We didn't wait hardly any lines while these other jokers are over here just sweating to death and we're going for we gotta run all the way around. We got our steps in, but Disney Genie over here and me, we're best friends because I did the research. I looked on the YouTubes, I I was all over the information that was needed. And so you just let me know if you need some tips. Uh but probably the place in my life where my internet research has been put to the most use is fishing. I love to fish. I grew up freshwater fishing over in the Wiregrass. When I moved here about a decade ago, I learned how to saltwater fish, and it's really my my biggest hobby outside of well, I guess my only hobby. Once you once you get kids in a job, like you can you can have like one hobby. That's that's it. You can't have two hobbies, you can't have three hobbies. I got one hobby. And so uh we actually were down at the beach this past week with Brianna's family, and I got to fish with my kids off the dock, and my I I got to teach my nieces. They had never fished in salt water before, so I taught them how and I had my kayak and they're on the back, and we caught probably like 50 fish. I mean, we were just landing little pinfish and a lot of hard head catfish, which are gross, and I don't touch them anymore because I got barbed in the hand. You know how it goes. Well, we one of the things that uh uh is going on this weekend, if you don't know, is the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo. Um, it's in one of my proudest accomplishments. I told you this before, I saw some of you. One of my proudest accomplishments is getting first place in the flounder category in 2023. In my life, my proudest accomplishments go like this Jesus, you know, getting saved, Jesus is the best, uh, convincing Brianna that I am marriage material, took a lot of work. Um, my children, and then in some order, ordination, iron man, fishing, like in that kind of I mean, like not that fishing is more important than being ordained, but like I'm pretty proud of that accomplishment, just like I'm being proud of being ordained. And so uh uh in 2023, uh the Alabama DC fishing rodeo that's gone on this weekend, and by the way, I'm proud of you for being here. There's other people out on boats right now, fishing in that rodeo. You chose to be here, and I appreciate that. But but uh a couple years ago, whenever I was out there, I I put my internet research skills to work. I looked up all sorts of new lures, I was mapping out different places to go around the area. I was looking at the Google Maps and I was watching YouTube videos on best tactics and stuff. And so the Friday morning of that tournament, the the cannon fired and uh I put all of it to work. That whole Friday, I tried the new spots, I tried the new lures, I tried all the different things I'd learned, and I came up with nothing. By the end of Friday night, I got skunked. Skunked is the worst thing. I know you don't catch skunks, all right? I know I'm gonna know enough about fishing to know you don't catch skunks, but if you don't catch any fish, it's called getting skunked. I got skunked. And on Friday night, I'm like, man, this isn't working out. So Saturday morning, I went back to what I knew. I decided, you know what? Uh uh, forget all the new stuff. I went back to the spots I knew the best, the lures I knew the best, the rod. So I was over in Little Dauphin Bay in the road. You can fish all the way to Louisiana, all the way in Florida. I was less than a mile from the weigh-in station because I had fished that water a whole bunch of times. I was over in Little Dauphin Bay right after the end of West Dauphin Island. I used my confidence bait, these little gulp swimming mullets. The pinfish will eat the tails off of them, but I knew exactly how to cast them. I used the rod I knew, and I found the biggest flounder of that entire tournament. And I got I got real lucky, let's be honest. But I had confidence in what I knew. How many times in your life have you spent just countless hours obsessing about what you're not? About trying to add things to yourself, about researching, about worrying about having anxieties, about trying to become something more than you already are, or trying to become a new version of who God's made you to be. Because I think that's how we spend a lot of our lives. We spend a lot of our lives trying to research and think and and and and not that you shouldn't think, but you know what I mean. Get worried and anxious about something that isn't that we're not, we're not good enough, we're not the best at yet. So we spend all this time. But sometimes, maybe oftentimes, when we fall back and realize that God has created us, God has given us what we need. We realize that the parts of ourselves, the truest parts of ourselves, the parts that we have known forever, are there. Those are the things that end up being the most important. And I think that it's exactly what we we see Moses this morning. We started a series last week called Caught in Between. It's where we're journeying through the life of Moses throughout Exodus. And last week we left him arguing with God at the burning bush, and we found out he lost that argument because apparently you can't win arguments with God. And I mean that should make it. We should know that by now, but Moses didn't know that at the time, he knows it now. And so he went and he went to Egypt and he took his brother Aaron and they went and talked to Pharaoh. And he said, Hey, Pharaoh, most powerful man in the world, all those slaves you have, my people, let them go. And Pharaoh's like, hard pass, not gonna do that. And so God started sending the plagues one after the other until at the very end, uh there was the night of Passover. And then finally Pharaoh said, Fine, get out, and he sent them all away. And they went out in such a hurry that they didn't even have time to wait for their bread to rise, which is why, still today, whenever people celebrate the Passover, they don't add yeast to the bread. And so that's where our reading picks up this morning. Uh, the people are out of Egypt, they are free, they are out running for their lives because Pharaoh has changed his mind. He looked at his empire and he realized he has lost his labor force. And he's like, This was a bad idea. So he gets his whole army up together and they go run out and they're going chasing after the Israelites. And the Israelites are on the run and they get to the edge of this body of water, and the most powerful army on the earth is bearing down on them. In our English Bibles say, uh, the in some of the translations they came to the Red Sea, others will say the sea of reeds. The word in Hebrew is called Yam Suf. And if you want to know more about that, you should come to Bible study sometime because I love talking about this. But we're going to leave that to the side for now and just say that they were at the edge of some body of water. And they look back and they see the dust from Pharaoh's chariots, and they come apart. Listen to what they say to Moses. They say, Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you took us out in the desert to die? Didn't we tell you back in Egypt to leave us alone and lo serve the Egyptians? You know what's funny about that line? They never said that. I mean, go back and read it. They just made that up. They never said, hey, uh, let us stay and be slaves in Egypt. Fear put those words in their mouths. Because fear has a way of fogging our memories, right? When we're fearful about the current moment, we look back on the past and imagine it to be better than it actually was. Fear changes our perception of reality and helps us rewrite history in a way that never actually happened. And so Moses, to his credit, he holds steady and he tells them four things. He says this do not be afraid, stand firm, and you'll see what the Lord does. The Lord will fight for you. And the last one, you only need to be still. I mentioned this last week, but this series was born out of reading a book called Moses and the Journey to Leadership by Norman Cohen. And he is a rabbi, and in this book, he passes on different readings from other rabbis and different ways of understanding the tradition. And I love it. And there's this one that he gives us about this account where he says, uh, Moses is giving four reassurances, and these rabbis they imagine it was because the crowd was not saying one thing together. Because crowds rarely say one thing, right? You get a bunch of people together and everybody's got different types of complaints. And so they imagine there's four different groups with they were worrying and complaining four different ways. One group said, It's hopeless. Let's just uh throw ourselves into the sea and be done with it. The other group said, uh, you know what, let's go back and take our chances in Egypt. The third group said, No, let's turn, let's fight these Egyptians. And the fourth cried out to Moses for dragging them into this situation. And if you read the text this way, if you imagine that this is what's going on, Moses has answers for each of each of those groups. To the ones who were ready to drown, who just wanted to rush off into the sea, he said, Do not be afraid. And to the ones who were ready to run back and go back to Egypt, he says, stand firm and watch what God does. To the ones who want to fight, he says, the Lord will fight for you. And to the ones crying out against him, he says, You only need to be still. Now, I'm not claiming this is exactly what happened, right? This is a way of interpreting text. It's fun to imagine what might have been going on with the people. But but this kind of reading uh is what the ancient rabbis love to do and how they try to interpret text. And when I think of church people and just kind of people in general, it's it's it rings kind of true. Because get any group of people into a real crisis and you won't get one reaction, you'll get four or more. And so I'm I love how Moses lands this whole thing. He says, You only need to be still. It's beautiful. And and it sounds exactly like the face that we love to praise, right? This idea of like, you know what, just let go and let God. Have you heard that praise? That idea just like let God take care of everything. Well, don't get too comfortable. Because as nice as that sounds, there's also verse 15. Did you hear what verse? Did you hear what God said to Moses in verse 15? He says, The Lord said to Moses, why are you crying out to me? What a response. Tell the Israelites just move on. That's like in pastoral care, you know what you're never supposed to tell somebody who's going through a crisis? Just get over it. Just move on. And so he tells the Israelites to move on. He says to Moses, Raise up your staff, stretch out your hand over the sea and divide the water. It sounds like Moses is telling everybody, hey y'all, just chill. It's all gonna be good. Just wait. God's gonna do something great, just just watch. And then God says, uh, why are you crying out to me? Why are you waiting for me? Which leaves me wondering in our faith. Well, which is it? Are we supposed to be still? Or are we supposed to get up and do something? Because I think most of us live our lives right there between those two verses, between verse 14 and verse 15. We live between uh waiting and watching God and God saying, What are you waiting for? Uh, because when bad things happen, when hard things come into our life, a lot of us go straight to just being still. And there are times where that is the appropriate response and the only response. In fact, that's what next week's sermon is about. Next week's sermon, we're going to talk about the people when they're at Mirah and whenever uh lament is really the only thing that you can do. But we also know that there are many times, if not most of the time, where being still can turn into a very holy way of doing nothing, right? Of abdicating our responsibility. We say we're waiting on God or we're praying about it, but many times what we're actually doing is standing at the edge of water, frozen, quietly hoping that if we wait long enough, somebody else will take care of the problem for us. Somebody else will come along and resolve the issue. I catch myself doing this like literally like all the time, right? Like uh there are horror conversations I know I need to have. I'm not a I don't know, like avoid conflict, but there's some times when you're just like, I don't know that I want to go, I just would rather not deal with this. And so you're like, I'm gonna pray about that. You pray about it for like three weeks and nothing's happened, and you're just wishing to be resolved on your own or on its own, and so that you wouldn't have to do anything, or like there's a need sitting right in front of you, and you're you're you somebody God has obviously set in your path. And you still pray to God, God, send somebody to help that person. And God's like, I did. It's you. And how many times have we just been standing there with our hands in our pockets, crying out, do something, do something? And God's like, Why are you crying to me? I already put the answer in your hand. Because can I tell you uh the most honest prayer I've ever prayed? Uh, when August was born, she was in the NICU for a week. And the NICU is that part of that hospital uh where you're glad it's there, but you never want to have to go visit. And I know many people have spent time in there. We didn't have to spend that long in there, but it it was just one of those very sobering experiences for over a week. She was there. And I remember when she first got in there and it was our first child, and we didn't really understand any of the things going on. I was there with Brianna and we were trying to hold it all together. And and I was telling her it's gonna be all right, she's gonna be fine. And I kept my voice as calm as I could and trying to be comforting. And the whole time when I'm saying these steady words out loud, the inside of me is like completely coming apart. Because like I don't actually know if it's gonna be fine or not. Silently, I'm I'm begging, I'm praying, God, please do something. God, please make these things all right. My words of comfort I'm saying out loud are every bit for me as much as they were for her. Have you ever done that? Have you ever been saying the calm thing out loud while you are crying inside in a place that only you and God can see? Like you're projecting strength and calm and comfort for your family or for your employees or for your coworkers or for somebody, but inside you're like, I have no idea if this is gonna turn out right. Because I I kind of think that might be where Moses is in this very moment. Because you remember, uh, this is the same man who was arguing with God last week. He had five excuses for like why he can't do what God wants him to do. And so picture him there on the sea, on the side of the water, and he's standing in front of a terrified nation, and he's doing the brave thing out loud. Don't be afraid, stand firm. God's gonna fight for you. But I just imagine on the inside, this is the same man who was doubting God, who was silently uh, you know, worried about the things of the burning bush. I wonder if that same guy was screaming, do something, do something down inside of him. Outwardly, he's calm, inwardly he's falling apart, waiting right along there with everybody else. He was just expecting God to come out of the sky and do something. But God says this why are you crying out to me? And then you hear that. But that's not what it was. God is reminding Moses of something Moses has forgotten in his panic. I've already given you what you need. Verse 16. Raise up your staff, stretch out your hand over the water. And here's the detail in the text that it took me a long time to realize. And maybe you've missed it too. God never parts the sea. Read it again. God doesn't do it. God tells Moses, raise the stab, stretch out your hand, and it's Moses with that stick who divides the water. That staff we met last week, this ordinary stick that the shepherd carries, the most ordinary thing that the man owns is a thing that opens the sea. God had already put the miracle in his hand. He was just standing there waiting on God to do the God thing, and God's like, I've already equipped you to do it. Why are you crying out to me? Uh when I was in high school, I had a chemistry teacher named Mr. Pierce. And uh Mr. Pierce was very tough. It was a hard class, but he was a very kind person. But he had a rule that drove me up the wall. Uh, during the test, you were allowed to walk up and ask Mr. Pierce any question about the test you wanted. What you were not allowed to do is get a good answer. Okay, you would go up to him and ask him, like, how the how do I do this? And he'd look at you and he'd ask you a question right back, like he's Yoda, right? Like, how do you think you should do the question? Right? Like stuff like that. Or he would have some sort of analogy that was incredibly unhelpful. And I remember uh one time it was in the middle of the test, and I went to his desk and I asked him how to calculate something like moles or molar mass or something I haven't thought about since 10th grade. Um, and uh, and I asked him, Hey, how do I do this? And he looked up at me, as cool as could be, and he said, You've got a calculator, don't you? And that was it. And that's all I gave me. He sent me back to my seat, and and I was so annoyed. I wanted the answer. And he sat there and he said, You already have everything you need to find out yourself. It took me a long time to understand that Mr. Pierce wasn't being lazy, he wasn't being difficult, he was being a good teacher. He knew that the worst thing he could do for me right then was to do the work for me. And that's exactly what God just did for Moses at the edge of the sea. Why are you crying out to me? You've got a staff, don't you? Because a lot of us are waiting for God to do something in our lives, or for somebody else, that God has equipped us to do. And before anybody hears me wrong, I'm not saying it all depends on you, right? Or that God only helps those who help themselves first. That's not in the Bible, and that's not what I mean. I'm not even saying that prayer is a waste of breath and that you shouldn't pray and cry out to God. Because, like I said, next week we'll talk about those times when that's the only option, right? I couldn't do anything for August in that Nikki room. Only the doctors could, and all I could do is pray and cry out. But not everything is like that. I think most of our regular day is more like the things where we're waiting on God to handle something, and God is waiting on us to handle it instead. God's saying, You've got a stack, don't you? And if you're like me, the reasons that we don't handle these things is often because we've decided it's somebody else's problem. It's somebody else's thing to resolve. Or uh we've overthought it. We've been so long putting it off because and we've been like convincing ourselves we're we're like moving in that direction. Like I'm doing the research, I'm thinking about it a lot, I'm asking everybody else's opinions. Um, and what we're really doing is just waiting for somebody else to come along. We tell God, um, you know, I don't even know that I can do this, God. You know, I'm not a preacher, or I'm not trained for this, or I don't have enough money, or I don't have the time, or I'm not the right person. And we ended up back at the bush all over again, making these excuses. And God uh keeps answering us in the same way. Hey, stop thinking about it so much. Just do it. What is in your hand? Because all of us have some version of Moses' staff. All of us have been equipped by God to do great things. Uh, you have an education that somebody worked hard to help you get, or you have a job and a position of influence, an opportunity to do good. You have a spare bedroom, you have a skill that nobody on your street has. You have a phone that already has the number programmed into it of the person you know you need to call. Moses was just a shepherd with a stick. And God told him, Raise up your hand, spread that water. So who are we to stand at the edge of our own water and tell God that we have nothing to work with? When God can use anything to do something incredible.

unknown 22:34

Mr.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Pierce wouldn't give me the answer, and I resented him for that until I realized that he was doing the most respectful thing that a teacher can do. He was telling me that he believed in me more than I believed in myself. And I think God does that very same thing for each of us. This is not some version of works righteousness where you do things in order to get saved. It's you have been saved, and now God has shown you that you have been equipped to do good works. We stand at the edge of the water crying out, do something, do something, God. And if heaven is silent, it's not because God is absent. Perhaps it's because God has already answered. God has already equipped us, He has already pressed a staff into our hands, and now He's waiting with more confidence in us than we have in ourselves. God believes in you enough to give you the tools to do something incredible. So that's my question for us this morning. What water are you standing in front of waiting for God to part when God might be saying, Why are you crying out to me? What staff is already in your hand? It might be that conversation you've been praying about and waiting for somebody else to fix. It might be that that person that God keeps placing in your path, or that thing that you already know you need to do, but you've been waiting for permission for. Stretch out your hand and see what God can do through you. Last week, Moses had to raise up his head to see what God was doing. How God was speaking. Well, this week he has to raise up his hand, hold out his staff, and move. And when he did, something incredible happened. I mean, he was a man caught between a God. He was waiting to act and trying to act for God. And the sea didn't open until he took a step towards it. I don't think ours will either. I don't think the problems in our life are all just gonna resolve themselves and go away. Yes, it is good to pray and to cry out, but at some point, raise up your hand, use what God has given you, and know that God has equipped you to do incredible things. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to stop thinking about it so much and just do the thing that God has prepared for you, that God has called you to, and that God has equipped you for in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We pray with me.