Sermon Tone Analysis

“24”

RePlant Part 2, 2007

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

February 16~/18, 2007

Selected verses: Exodus 3 & 4

 

 

Welcome to the last week of season 1 of 24.

What a ride this has been!

Can’t wait for season 2. Today we come down to a very important specific: the unique role that God has carved out for you and me.

In 24, we are talking about a big mission, a limited amount of time, and a unique role…today we are talking about that unique role.

Though you can do all kinds of things, the Bible teaches that God has designed and equipped you for something, what the Bible calls a “calling.”

A calling isn’t just for people with funny collars or people with reverend in front of their name…we all have a unique calling.

How many of you are Monty Python fans out there?

Give me a couple of lines from the Holy Grail.

One of the Monty Python skits from their Flying Circus shows was their take-off on the Special Olympics.

One of the events was a race for those with no sense of direction.

Everybody steps up to the starting line, the gun goes off, and they all run a different direction…nobody knows where the finish line is…they are all just running nowhere.

Without a sense of calling, that is how we as Christians will live our lives, just running nowhere.

Yet, the more tuned in we are to God’s will for our lives, to the role that he has for us to play on this planet, the more purposeful and effective we will be.

We can live life confidently, knowing that we are pursuing God’s purposes for us, like the apostle Paul who was able to say at the end of his life that he fulfilled his calling.

For a few happy people in history, God has made that calling very dramatic and clear…like the apostle Paul who got knocked off a donkey with a bright light and Jesus talks to him from heaven…or Moses who has the burning bush experience, or Balaam whose donkey talks to him.

It might be nice if God did that kind of thing for us, but even the vast majority of the Bible men and women didn’t get the dramatic Jesus in the sky kind of call from God…but they still had a sense of calling and fulfilled it.

As you pray about your calling, God might write it in the clouds in the sky “KIDZONE SMALL GROUP LEADER” (our children’s pastor paid me for that ad).

He might make a shape in your mashed potatoes of a monkey, and you know you are supposed to work in men’s ministry.

Yet, it’s probably not smart to expect that because God doesn’t reveal calling that way very often…but he does reveal it if we are open and willing to serve.

The good news is that though it sounds mystical and mysterious, God’s calling in our life is actually more right in front of us than we know…discovering how God designed us is sometimes the hold up, but more often than not, it is following through and acting on what we know that holds us up.

Today we are going to look at the call of Moses, one of the more dramatic calls from God in the Bible, to learn how to discover our calling, our divine design, and how to follow through with the call.

This message will be like a play with two acts.

*Slide :) ___________________ *Act One: The Discovery

 

(learning to follow the clues to our calling) and

 

*Slide :) ___________________ *Act Two: The Follow Through

 

(learning to push through reluctance to say yes to God).

Turn with me to Exodus 3 (Exodus the 2nd book in the Bible), where we see the story, and let’s look at

 

*Slide :) ___________________ *Act One: The Discovery

 

to learn how to discover our own calling, find our own unique role:

 

*Slide :) ___________________ */Exodus 3:1-4/

 

/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 desert 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.”

Ex 3:1-4./

/ /

Let’s stop here, because there is a key to discovering the call that is easy to miss.

I know I’ve missed it all these years reading this passage.

Moses sees this burning bush, which is  a remarkable sight, and in the Hebrew it makes a big point of the fact that Moses “turned aside.”

He didn’t just keep on going on with this life when he saw the bush, but instead, he “turned aside.”

And the Hebrew also makes a big deal about his turning aside, because it says, “When God saw the Moses turned aside, then God called to him.”

The way the story is written makes Moses’ decision a hinge point of the story.

If Moses doesn’t turn aside, if he just goes on with his life, then God isn’t going to call out to him…If Moses does not turn aside, and he doesn’t have to, and he just goes on with his life—then there is no Exodus as we know it, Moses just lives out the rest of his life as a shepherd.

Moses could have missed the call, missed his reason for being on the planet, if he did not choose to turn aside.

So, here is the question for you and me: How good are you at turning aside when God wants to speak to you?

How hard is it for God to get your attention?

Do you regularly stop and even ask the question, “God what is it you want me to do?”—especially at burning bush moments.

The burning bush was not the call, just God’s way of getting Moses to stop his life and be open and ask the question.

Do you realize that by being in this church at this particular time, that you are experiencing a burning bush moment?

I’m talking about Replant 2007.

What God has us up to as a church right now is no every-day thing.

It’s not like we are going to replant our church every two years.

What God is doing right now is big, and it is no accident that you are part of it.

It is no accident that God has led you to be in our church, right here, right now.

God has a reason for you being here, a role for you to play—otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

For all of us, this time in our church is a unique opportunity to listen to God, to be open to him, to ask the question, “God, what do you want me to do?”

 

Until we turn aside, God will not reveal anything.

But Moses did turn aside, and because he did, God spoke and God revealed the calling.

In Moses’ case, he revealed it directly, he just told him.

Let’s read that part of the story:

 

*Slide :) ___________________ *Exodus 3:7-10

 

 /The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.

I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.

So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.

And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.

So now, go.

I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt/” 3:7-10.

For Moses, God tells him his job: to be the point person that God will use to confront Pharoah and lead the people of Israel to the promised land.

So, for Moses, a very clear sense of God’s direction in his life: God just told him.

And, as I said before, for a few people in history God has done that.

For the rest of us, however, he reveals his calling, our unique role, over time as we begin to serve, and we can discover our calling through three very important clues.

If we begin to act on these three components of our calling, we can be confident that we are being faithful.

God doesn’t need to speak to us directly because he has told us how we can find our unique role.

So, let’s look at these three components of our calling.

We can even see these played out in Moses’ life.

*Slide :) ___________________ *Life Experience

 

The first clue to our calling is our life experience.

Nothing about our life is accidental.

God has allowed everything in our lives to shape us into the people we are to serve him.

Even those things in our lives that seem so random (why did God allow that?), are not random.

God uses all of them, and life experience shapes us and gives us passion for particular ministry opportunities.

You can certainly see that in Moses’ life.

Was it just random that when Moses was a baby, that Pharoah decided to try to control the population of the Hebrew slaves by killing all the male babies?

Was it just random that his mom and sister put him in a reed basket in the Nile to save his life, and he was found by Pharoah’s daughter who adopted him?

Was it random that Moses grew up not in his own family but the courts of Pharoah as a prince?

Or was it random that Moses got ahead of God and sinned by murdering an Egyptian that was treating a Hebrew slave harshly?

Random that he ran for his life and found the family of Jethro and for 40 years lived out in the wilderness?

No, Moses needed to learn humility and his character needed to be shaped.

Though many things may have looked like they were just random at the time, none of them were.

Here is a principle we need to remember in finding our ministry direction:

 

*Slide :) ___________________ */Those life experiences that seem random may be the very things God uses to shape our character and give us passion for the ministry to which we are called./

Not too long ago I heard the life story of a popular Christian author, psychologist, counselor, and educator named Dan Allender.

He and Tremper Longman, also an author and a college professor, are very close friends and write books together.

The story of how that happened is a cool story.