Pastor Darren: So Moses gets the heck out of Egypt, luckily, or maybe not luck, finds his way to his original birth community, finds a leader in Jethro, a priest of the Midianites, and a wife who is a son of the priest, Zippara, and now he's gonna settle in for a nice easy life.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: This will be nice and easy, especially for a guy who doesn't have confidence in how he he speaks and talking people into things.
Pastor Darren: This is nice and easy until God comes for him.
Pastor Darren: And it's not just some simple little message that you can go, oh yeah, maybe he didn't, you know, maybe that wasn't God.
Pastor Darren: No, we got a bush that's on fire, but it's not burning up.
Pastor Darren: It's grabbing his attention.
Pastor Darren: There's nothing else that he can do but sit and listen to this.
Pastor Darren: I wonder if you were to ask by a small child, maybe a child named Amelia, maybe not.
Pastor Darren: Why is the bush burning?
Pastor Darren: What would you say?
Pastor Darren: No, really.
Pastor Darren: We were dealing with this on Friday night.
Pastor Darren: It was question after question, and that was one of the questions.
Pastor Darren: Can I challenge you to how about this one?
Pastor Darren: Why is she putting her baby in the basket and sending it down the river?
Pastor Darren: What do you tell young five-year-olds?
Pastor Darren: We like to think that these are children's tales because we've known them so long, and yet when you really look at them, like, my goodness.
Pastor Darren: And here's this fantastic thing: this burning bush that isn't actually burning, this miraculous tail.
Pastor Darren: And it's interesting to me.
Pastor Darren: Am I fading in and out?
Pastor Darren: It's interesting to me how we get hung up there.
Pastor Darren: You know, this amazing story about how God comes to Moses and in turn comes to us, inviting us into life abundant, life that is rich, life that is with God.
Pastor Darren: In this case, a pathway with uh cultural justice.
Pastor Darren: He's gonna be freeing the Israelite people.
Pastor Darren: So he's getting invited into this pathway, and we read this story, we tend to get hung up on the burning bush.
Pastor Darren: All right, my life's difficult.
Pastor Darren: God, you can send me a burning bush.
Pastor Darren: Let me know for sure what I'm supposed to do.
Pastor Darren: Have you said this?
Pastor Darren: Where is my burning bush?
Pastor Darren: You know, I'll follow.
Pastor Darren: Sure, I'll follow you, God.
Pastor Darren: Just give me a burning bush so I know I'm not being silly over here.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And we we kind of submit this economy to God.
Pastor Darren: You give me miraculous proof, then I'll do whatever you want.
Pastor Darren: Who has said this?
Pastor Darren: Liars.
Pastor Darren: We've all said it in some unique way.
Pastor Darren: Just give me some evidence, God, and of course then I'll follow.
Pastor Darren: But we so we get hung up on this burning bush.
Pastor Darren: Maybe we want a little FOMO.
Pastor Darren: You know, we wish we could get that burning bush.
Pastor Darren: This theme that we're working through over these next few weeks, this journey to faith, it starts last week when we're talking about how we're a little bit like Moses' basket, where we're being kind of pushed down the river with all the different currents and flows, and for us in life, the influences that happen around us, the things that can get hold of us sometimes.
Pastor Darren: And we talked about how some of those are macro things where we're challenged to go live out a life of justice, and if it means sacrifice, maybe even danger.
Pastor Darren: But we also talked about the micro things.
Pastor Darren: Stuff like, how many cookies is too much, God?
Pastor Darren: When have I shortchanged myself?
Pastor Darren: I want to be clear about that from last week, by the way.
Pastor Darren: Cookies, I believe, to be a gift from God.
Pastor Darren: And add to the richness of living here, as it as with all food.
Pastor Darren: I think the challenge is knowing when we move from the the richness of this gift that life offers to I need this.
Pastor Darren: I need this, I need this coffee, I need this sugar.
Pastor Darren: That's when it becomes a conversation, and that's when we start to understand versus sometimes, these false gods that get hold of us, right?
Pastor Darren: And and start grabbing on to us, sometimes to small degrees, sometimes to big degrees.
Pastor Darren: And in the midst of that journey, we're navigating all of that, God comes to us and God says, Hey, I want to show you a better way.
Pastor Darren: I want to show you where you might go to live a life that is more bountiful, more rich.
Pastor Darren: It's a way that's grounded in faith in God's presence and God's power.
Pastor Darren: It's a way that's grounded in God's justice and equity for all.
Pastor Darren: It's a way grounded in love for all of God's children, all of God's creation.
Pastor Darren: It's a way of commitment and often a way of sacrifice, but to a higher way.
Pastor Darren: This is what God offers to us in place of these other false gods that we sometimes get attached to.
Pastor Darren: But like Moses, sometimes we find that way a little too difficult.
Pastor Darren: Even though we know the blessings God has for us, we know we have felt the blessings God have for us.
Pastor Darren: Still, when God comes to us and says, I want to show you an even better way, we we fight it a little bit.
Pastor Darren: Have you heard about the uh five excuses of Moses?
Pastor Darren: We dealt with those a little bit in Bible study just last Wednesday.
Pastor Darren: The five excuses of Moses, the different things he comes up with to say, wait a minute, God, do I really need to go to the highest king in the land and tell him to free all the Israelites?
Pastor Darren: Do I really need to do this?
Pastor Darren: He starts with that question of who am I?
Pastor Darren: What's this insignificant person?
Pastor Darren: Have you ever said who am I?
Pastor Darren: Then he goes, Who were who are you?
Pastor Darren: I mean, you're you're God, you know?
Pastor Darren: Maybe you ought to take care of this, God, right?
Pastor Darren: You you got all the power, all the omniscience, I'm the omnipotence.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, maybe you ought to take care of it.
Pastor Darren: Or there's another one of the excuses.
Pastor Darren: What if they don't believe me?
Pastor Darren: I'm gonna stick my neck out, look a little silly if I'm out there talking about how we're supposed to free these Israelites, and then nothing happens.
Pastor Darren: Then the famous one from Moses, I am not eloquent.
Pastor Darren: I am not eloquent.
Pastor Darren: I lacked the necessary skill set to get this done.
Pastor Darren: Have you said that one to God?
Pastor Darren: And then the last one.
Pastor Darren: Send somebody else.
Pastor Darren: Just pure unwillingness.
Pastor Darren: Thank you, God, for the offer.
Pastor Darren: I'm going to move on.
Pastor Darren: We probably say that more than we're even willing to accept.
Pastor Darren: But here's what's amazing about this passage: this at least 3,000-year-old story about our relationship with God.
Pastor Darren: Because God has answers for each of these.
Pastor Darren: When we talk about who am I, well, God's answer is I will be with you.
Pastor Darren: In a way, it doesn't matter who you are, because I am with you.
Pastor Darren: The power is with the power is with God.
Pastor Darren: When we say, Who are you?
Pastor Darren: God says, I am who I am.
Pastor Darren: I am coming as the character of justice, the character of love, the presence of all of these things.
Pastor Darren: But you need to bring me.
Pastor Darren: When we say, what if they don't believe me?
Pastor Darren: Well, God in this passage provides the signs that gives Moses what Moses needs to be able to be credibly.
Pastor Darren: And then God takes responsibility for the result, making sure that things happen.
Pastor Darren: When we say I am not eloquent, God says your mouth, but me.
Pastor Darren: I gave you the faculties you have but me.
Pastor Darren: I know what you are capable of.
Pastor Darren: And when we say when we say send somebody, yes, God grudgingly sends Aaron along with Moses, but he also cautions against missing the blessings of being that instrument.
Pastor Darren: That instrument to be is able to do what God would have them do, what we would do with God.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, we want to focus on this burning bush a lot.
Pastor Darren: And we want to focus on why God doesn't seem to speak to us like that.
Pastor Darren: But we get in danger of missing this brilliant deconstruction of why we don't experience the full blessing that God wants for us, the life that God sees for us.
Pastor Darren: I think this is what is meant when we say that God is coming to us with a better way.
Pastor Darren: Amidst our lives of competing influences, the little voices that tell us we need something more than we need God, the bigger voices that tell us we're not worthy or we're not safe.
Pastor Darren: God comes and says, Let's do this.
Pastor Darren: Let's go and be the blessing.
Pastor Darren: Today is communion.
Pastor Darren: As you are in your time of reflection, leading up to communion in your time of partaking, let's try to move past the need for the burning bushes and to look for how God is trying to reach us.
Pastor Darren: That invitation to a life abundant comes to us in many, many ways.
Pastor Darren: Let's not the let's not wait for the miraculous way at the expense of missing God's real communication to us.
Pastor Darren: As you come forward today, ask yourself how is God coming to you and how might you respond?
Pastor Darren: Amen.