Sermon Tone Analysis

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An Undeniable Experience with God

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When God Shows Up!

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When God Calls You For A Mission!

Exodus 3:1-9

 

 

       The entire first message of this short series was an introduction to this series of messages on “An Undeniable Experience with God,” or “When God Shows Up!”  In that message, I discussed God’s leading for this series, how I struggled with naming this series and some of the differences between Mediterranean culture and American culture—particularly as it relates to dealing with experiences.

Remember that first-century circum-Mediterranean culture is the time and culture in which Jesus, the Christ, was born, lived, died, buried, and rose again and all of the books of the New Testament were written.

We cannot accurately interpret God’s original message to the original people of the Bible without some understanding of the culture in which the texts were written and the contexts were lived out.

In the second message, we began to look at six (6) stories that deal with “undeniable experiences with God” or “six times when God shows up”.

The encounter that we explored in the second message was when God showed up in the life of Abraham.

He showed up in the life of Abraham when he passed the God’s test, through obedience!

Today we move to God showing up at a particular point in the life of Moses.

/(Please notice with me Exodus 3:1-9.

I’ll read this aloud for us, as you follow along silently.

Let’s talk first about:)/

 

I.

The Expectation.

First-century circum-Mediterranean people had a different perspective concerning events in life.

They believed that every event was attributable to some being.

They almost always ask,

 

“Who did this to me?”

 

Not

 

“What happened?”

In addition, there was a pantheon or a *collective* or gods, angels, demons, spirits, ancestors, ghosts, spirits, dead saints, animals, plants, etc that interjected themselves in the people’s lives.

\\        This can be seen in the fact that when Jesus rebuked demons and when He rebuked the raging sea, He used the same words, “Peace, be still!”

Why?

Because the raging of the sea was believed to be caused by demons.

*The point is:  “Those who people the pages of the Bible expect the supernatural!

Those who people the pages of the Bible expect God to show up!”*

 

       *One of the points of this series is to highlight the fact that we, i.e.

Americans, really don’t expect God to show up!*

This is because of our Western, Greek, Enlightened mindset.

*Furthermore, I want us to begin to see the impact of that lack of expectation.

*Why?

Because we get what we expect!

If we want God to show up in our lives, we’re going to have to expect Him to show up!

Job said in

 

Job 3:25 (NLT), “25 What I always feared has happened to me.

What I dreaded has come to be.”

 

Job’s fear and dread were his expectations and he got what he expected!

*A book that I am reading puts this same concept another way:  “We get what we focus on!”*

 

·        If we focus on God showing up, He’ll show up!

·        If we focus on intellectually interacting with the concepts of the Bible, that’s what we’ll get, i.e. intellectual stimulation that is bound by our conception of the Word of God.

 

*Excuse me, but I don’t come to church or get into God’s Word for mere intellectual stimulation!*

I come to church and get into the Word for an encounter with the King of kings, Lord of lords, and Prince of princes!

 

/(That bring us to:)/

 

II.

The Environment (/Circumstance/).

*Moses had attempted to be the “Deliverer of Israel” through his own power.*

In so doing, he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew.

This became known, so Pharaoh sought to kill Moses.

Because of this, Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian.

\\        *While in Midian, Moses was in spiritual training!*

His training entailed shepherding the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, on the backside of the desert.

Moses was all alone with God…involved in a task that would prepare him to shepherd God’s people!

So,

 

1) Moses had a passion for bettering the life of his people;

2) Moses tried to fulfill his passion using his own methods and power;

3) Moses was rejected, broken, and in a foreign land;

4) Moses was doing a job that would prepare him for leadership; and

5) Moses was all alone.

Don’t we see here some prerequisites for God showing up in our lives?

1.

We need a godly passion.

My passion is to help hurting people through covenant relationship!

2.

We need to come to the end of our own methods and power.

3.

We need to be rejected, broken, and a long way from home, so that God can get our attention.

4.

We need to be preparing ourselves for leadership by blooming where we are planted.

5.

We need to be all alone, so that God can have our undivided attention!

/(We have touched on the expectation and the environment, so let’s look at:)/

 

III.

The Experience.

As Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai.

At Mount Sinai, the “angel of the Lord” encountered Moses in a burning bush that was *not* consumed by the fire.

The terminology of the “angel of the Lord” is used for Jehovah God.  *So, Jehovah God encountered Moses!  God showed up!*

*But, how did God show up?  God took an ordinary bush and transformed it into a flaming manifestation of Himself!

This was an undeniable experience with God!*

\\ *This was the manifest presence of God, as opposed to His omnipresence!*

The manifest presence of God is called the Shechinah, which represents the majestic presence or manifestation of God, which descended to ‘dwell’ among men.

The Rabbis had two other terms that they used in place of the term ‘God” when anthropomorphic (/God being likened to Human attributes/) expressions of the Bible were no longer regarded as proper.

They were

 

1) Memra (= ‘word’; ‘/logos/’).

The “Word” of God is the manifest presence of God!  And

 

2) ‘Yekara’ (/i.e./, ‘/Kabod/’ = ‘glory’).

The glory of God is the manifest presence of God!

 

“Shechinah” does *not* occur in Scripture, but was used by later Jews and by Christians to express the visible divine Presence of God, especially when resting between the cherubim over the mercy seat.

The word means (/literally/) /residence/, i.e. of God.

“Whenever the invisible God took on a visible form, whenever the omnipresence of God became localized, this visible, localized presence was the /Shechinah/ Glory.

Throughout most of Old Testament history, the /Shechinah/ Glory took the form of a light, or fire, or cloud, or some combination of these things.”[1]

/(All right, back to the story!)/

A blaze of deified fire arrested Moses attention!

The sight is particularly arresting, because the bush was *not* consumed!

Fire is one of the recurring symbols of God’s advent or showing up in the Old Testament (Exod 19; Ps 18; cf.

Jeremias, /Theophanie/, 56–66, Kuntz, /Self-Revelation/, 138–47).[2]

“Fire was a symbol of the Lord’s presence and the instrument of His power, either in the way of approval or of destruction” (/New Unger’s Bible Dictionary/).

·        You could have said whatever you wanted to say to Moses, but he knew what he saw and what he experienced.

·        You could have said whatever you wanted to say to Moses, but bushes that burn with fire burn up.

They don’t continue as if they are *not* on fire!

·        You could have said whatever you wanted to say to Moses, but he knew that Jehovah did not usually show up in the midst of burning bushes!

*This was an undeniable experience with Jehovah God!*

       Have you had any burning bush experiences!