Sermon: "Joining God Leads to Crisis"

Fifth in the "Experiencing God" series.
Delivered March 26, 2006 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8

Theme: There's always something important on God's heart that He wants to share with us. And it will always challenge us and lead us to a crisis of faith, in that it forces a decision on us. Because when God speaks, what we DO next will indicate what we believe about God.

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Sermon Notes are at the end.

I want to introduce you to a friend of mine named Liz. Liz is not her real name and that's because Liz is shy and if she knew I were going to use her real name, as I talk about her today, even though she is thousands of miles away, she would be absolutely mortified and wouldn't be able to enjoy this Sunday at all. So I am going to talk about her anyway, but I am not going to let you know who she is. Her name is Liz. Liz is an incredibly shy person. She is smart. She is funny. She has a great family. She is capable and a lot of fun to be around, but she is not the sort of person that ever volunteers for anything or ever puts herself forward as hey I am the one to do that. I've got the capabilities. Never, ever ever is she going to do something like that. She takes seriously all these things that are going on around her in the world, but she knows I mean just inside that she can't step out and put herself forward as the person that God would use in a situation.

Well, Liz was in our small group and so was another woman named Ann. Now Ann is a kindergarten teacher with inner city kids and Ann had all kinds of problems in her classroom. She really was concerned about the needs of these children she was working with, but the problems weren't the children. It's all the other things that surround teaching. Those of you who are teachers kind of know this. You know, you've got the school politics thing and all of the relational stuff that's going on; conflicts between different personalities. Then there is also the fact that some of the people around you are unmotivated. You are in the middle of a bureaucracy. You are short on materials. There is all kinds of things that add burdens to you on top of the burden of trying to help these children. And so Ann would come week after week sharing some of that and we would pray for her and Liz would go home and pray for her again.

Well, one day as Liz was praying she realized that God was calling her to do something more about it. It was great to pray, but God specifically tapped her and said, I want you to do something more. And so Liz left her comfort zone and walked up to Ann and said, "Ann I am volunteering to come to your class to be your assistant and to read to the children. I will do whatever I can." This was so uncharacteristic of her, but she felt that God was calling her do it and she was going to do it. She went and it helped Ann and incredibly it helped the kids even more. Liz loved it and God has a sense of humor. Very soon after Liz began helping Ann, Ann moved on to another school and Liz is still there now with a different teacher, because she loves these kids, this place and feels God call to her and is living out that call as she serves those children.

Now what Liz experienced is that God gave her an assignment, an invitation that pulled her out of her comfort zone. We can't escape this. We all are going to get this kind of an assignment some time or another from God. If we have a relationship with God, the day is going to come where God is going say, "Okay, come on and step out of this for a moment and come and join me in something bigger." Now it might be something absolutely huge, like what's going on in Moses' life in the passage we are going to read in a second. It's important and it's gigantic. But it might be something that's important, but a lot smaller like what God did in Liz's life. So many of the things that God thinks is important are almost invisible to everybody else. Either way, it brings a crisis in our life, a crisis of faith. Now, by a crisis of faith I am not talking about the kind of crisis that happens when a tragedy happens and we wonder whether God cares and we wonder if God is at work in the world or whether God exists; not that kind of crisis. It's the kind of crisis that comes when there is a moment in your life that you've got to put your money where your mouth is. You have been saying that God is faithful. You have been saying that God is at work in the world. You've been saying you have a relationship with God and then God says, "Okay, now I want you to do something with me". And what we do next, when we hear God speak, what we do next will indicate what we really believe about God. Moses gets in to this kind of predicament, let's take a look at it in the Book of Exodus, Chapter 3 and we are going to being at Verse 10. This is a long passage, so you kind of need to settle in and just go with it for a while. We will be in this passage for a little while. It beings with Verse 10, this is the verse that causes the big problem for him.

"So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

Up to that point Moses could be happy. God is concerned. God is taking seriously the situation of Israel and Egypt. Moses is ready to cheer lead God at that point and then God comes up with this news, "So now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." That's what causes the problem and let's see how Moses handles it.

Verse 11: "But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

Now you know, this shows that Moses has a brain. If Moses hadn't responded this way, there might be a problem with Moses. God is asking him to do something impossible. God is saying, 'I am going to send you inside of Fort Knox to liberate a billion dollars. This is an impossible task.' The most powerful leader in his known world and God is saying you are going to go there and you are going to somehow convince this guy to free an entire enslaved people. I don't think so. So that's his first response. And Moses is going to struggle more, as we read more in this passage. He is going to struggle more with what God is saying to us. Let's pray that we will understand a little bit about this dynamic in our relationship with God. Let's pray.

God, as we continue in your word here and read these words that Moses spoke thousands of years ago and that you spoke back to him, help us to understand, help us to take an additional step of faith as we hear your word and your voice. Lord, help us to be faithful. In Jesus' name. Amen.

So we go on in Verse 12:

"And God said, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain."

I will stop again for a moment. I love this sign. Don't you like this? I will be with you and this will be a sign, after it's all over you will be at this mountain to worship me. In other words, Moses has to go through it all before he gets the final confirmation that God indeed sent him. It's not like God gives him all of the signs up front. So, Moses I have sent you and one of the ways you are going know it, is you are going to end up right back here, but you are going to be surrounded by my people.

So we go on;

"Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' " God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers-the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob-has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation. Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers-the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites-a land flowing with milk and honey.'

The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, 'The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.' But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go. And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians."

Moses answered, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'?" Then the Lord said to him, "What is that in your hand?" "A staff," he replied. The Lord said, "Throw it on the ground." Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then the Lord said to him, "Reach out your hand and take it by the tail." So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. "This," said the Lord, "is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers-the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob-has appeared to you."

Then the Lord said, "Put your hand inside your cloak." So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was leprous, like snow. Now put it back into your cloak," he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh. Then the Lord said, "If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second. But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.

Moses said to the Lord, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." The Lord said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say." But Moses said, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it." Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses and he said, "What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and his heart will be glad when he sees you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. But take this staff in your hand so you can perform miraculous signs with it."

Now, this is quite a big conversation. I want to point out just a few points in this conversation, the high points so that we can see the central issue of what's going on as a crisis of faith for Moses. The first thing that happens is in Verse 11 when he says, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?" The first thing that Moses says is that this task is too big for me. Who am I that I should be doing something like this? This is too big for me and what God says back to him is that I am going with you. You are not going alone. The task is too big for me; that is the first crisis of faith and God says, okay, yes it's too big for you, but I am going with you.

Now, the second crisis really comes out in two separate verses. They are different things slightly, but its basically one issue. It comes up in Verse 13 and Chapter 4, Verse 1 where essentially what Moses is saying is, no one is going to respond to my leadership. Whose is going to believe that it's really you sending me to do this. That is the second crisis and God responds to him by saying, "You go with my authority." The task is too big, I am going with you. No one is going to respond to this, and no one is going to believe it's really you leading us and God says, "You go with my authority" and he gives several signs of that authority.

There is a third crisis though that comes out in Chapter 4, Verse 10. I kind of like Moses here you know, "Oh Lord I have never been eloquent neither in the past, nor since you have been speaking to me, you know I am not miraculously different through this conversation, so how can you possibly be asking me to do this?" And God says, "I made you. I made your mouth. I make people's ability to speak and to hear and if I am calling you to do it and I created you and I gave you these gifts, don't you think that I am going to give you an assignment that you can actually do? What do you think is going on here?" So Moses then says yes to God and everybody lives happily ever after, right? No. I like Moses even more in the next moment, because this is where he is most like me. Verse 13, "Oh Lord please send someone else." Here we are getting down to the will. We have argued about abilities. We have argued about creditability and are people going to do this, but when push comes to shove the last bastion of resistance is that he just flat out does not want to do it. He's afraid. I am a good shepherd God. You know, I've got a good thing going here. Send somebody else. Do you ever feel that way when God gives you a call? Anybody who has stepped into a new ministry, anybody who has ever gone to the mission field, anybody who has ever started a new small group, anybody who has taken any risk because of their faith in Jesus Christ has faced this kind of conversation. We say, God this is a big deal. Nobody is going to respond to my leadership if I do this. I am not good at this and I don't want to make the sacrifice. It's a common experience. At some time or another we all are going to face this kind of choice and this is the crisis of faith that we are talking about. When we are asked by God to experience something like this, step out; are we going to respond in fear or faith?

Now I don't often use illustrations, but I got a little illustration, a little PowerPoint embedded in here, so if we can bring that up. Let's go to the first part of this fear-faith cycle. The first part of it is that we hear God's invitation and the absolute natural response is that we fear and we doubt. This is universal. God challenges us with something and our first response is whoa, I am not sure about this. This is natural, but what's important is what happens in the next step of this cycle. We face a choice and it's at this point that it forks and we can have two radically different experiences. If we face this choice; if I face a choice, if I allow my feelings and fears to control me, then inevitably we are going to go to step three. I react by saying no to God and continue to live in fear. So God gives a challenge. It stretches us out of the comfort zone. It demands something new of us. We look at it and we say no, so we stay inside the comfort zone, but we stay inside the fear zone as well. And we get into a cycle of a tight orbit around ourselves, our sense of what our abilities are, our sense of what the risks are that we can take and so the cycle will repeat itself where we go on an experience again and again a call from God and fear.

The Fear/Faith Cycle

Now, let's move on a little bit. We can get to the point where we hear God's invitation again, one more slide in, again we are going to feel fear and doubt. That's inevitable. God surprises us with some kind of demand, but we can face the choice differently if we choose to believe along with Moses that we are chosen, that we are given authority and power and that we are gifted, and that inside of that God is not coming to us as strangers. We already have a relationship with God where we are blessed. We are chosen. We are adopted. We are holy. We are blameless. We are free. We are accepted. We are empowered. All of these things are true about us before God ever comes to us and says, "Take a risk with me." All of those things are true and we can choose to believe this along with the fact that we are chosen, given authority of power and gifted for this specific task and then something radically different happens. We respond with faith and trust and courage. The fact is, whatever happens we are going to face a choice. I face a choice when God comes and speaks. And we have to choose whether we are going to respond in fear or in faith. We are actually going to get to know God better if we choose to take a risk.

As a kid I got to know my grandfather very well. I can remember times sitting in the kitchen of his house and most of my memories of being in this kitchen, the fan is on the kitchen because in New Orleans its hot most of the year, so the fan is on in the kitchen. We are sitting in there and we are having coffee together and at some point or another my grandfather will get up from the table and he will say, "Come on outside John. Let's go work on the car." And so I would get up and go outside with him and at one point it was a big Ford station wagon, brown and white and we would go and change the oil one time. Another time we changed the brakes on the car, we changed the shocks, replaced the starter.

There were all kinds of things that we would do together and I got to know my grandfather well because I worked with him. It's not by reading the birthday cards he sent me that I got to know my grandfather well. It's not by hearing other people talk about him that I got to know him well. I got to know my grandfather well because I went outside and I worked with him and I saw his skill as he worked on the car. I saw how he handled the inevitable problems that came up. Who has ever worked on a car and it's actually turned out to be the 30-minute job you thought it was going to be? Never. Add an hour and a half and I saw how he handled that. I saw how he handled things when I broke things and I learned how many different ways you could use baling wire to repair a Ford. These were all things that I learned about my grandfather, because I stepped outside and accepted his invitation and went to work with him.

It's the same way with God. There are some things we will never know about God until we take a step of responding to him. We can never know it by reading something or by hearing something from somebody else. We are going to actually have to take a step. Now we've got a Franklin Graham festival coming up and some of you at some point or another might feel like you need to go the Christian Life and Witness course. Others might be feeling like there is a neighbor that I really need to talk to about one of these events that's coming up, because I would really like them to go to this. Now when we get this feeling inside, the first thing we have to do is test it to make sure that its not indigestion. We've got this is this really you God talking, but once we are convinced that its God nudging us, then there comes a point we have to make a choice. Are we going to do it and take the risk or not? There are things we will get to know about God only as we take that risk. How will we ever know that God has been working ahead of us in the lives of our friends if we never get to the point that we actually take the risk to talk to them about Jesus Christ? There are some things we will never know. We will never know how God provides until we take a risk when we are in a situation where we don't have enough resources to do what God has called us to do. Anybody who has been on Inner Varsity Christian Fellowship staff or Campus Crusade staff or who's been a missionary knows what its like to be in a situation where you can't do it unless God through somebody provides the funds.

I can remember a time a number of years ago I had $10,000 to raise in December. That was a huge sum there. They won't even let you build up a sum of that magnitude anymore. And I had to leave campus and work on fundraising and I was praying about it. God how are you going to do this? And it seemed like a mountain that was just enormous. How could he do this in 30 days? And I can remember around Christmas I had been calling people and sending out letters and I made a phone call to one guy and I can remember he said, "John, how much do you have left to raise?" And I said, "It was probably around $5,000" something like that at that point. He says, "Well you keep on calling people and then call me on the 30th of the month and whatever is left I will pay. I will send to you." God provided. God provided it all. And I would have never have known that if I wouldn't have been in that crisis, taking that risk and waiting on God.

It's a corporate experience as well. The session of this church has been struggling this last year with this whole issue of building the new building. And we have been struggling because you know we've got so much resources, we've got so much that we feel like you want us to do and so three times during the year we tried to talk God in to scaling the plan down or to forget about it altogether and we will find some way to gracefully exit. We were struggling with this, because just like Moses, we are saying its too big, people won't respond to our leadership, they won't believe its you guiding us. We don't have the gifts to make it happen. We don't want to do anything this hard God. We would rather just kind of coast. We've got a good thing going. And every time we came to that point, we got a sense that God was saying to us that God wants to impact the lives of people who aren't here yet and that's why we are here and there are people that don't fit in here yet. There are people whose children can't get in to the nursery because the nursery is not big enough yet. There are people who want to go to adult discipleship classes and that class is not being offered because we don't have a room to put it in. Three times. We are worse than Moses. Three times we came up, "Come on God, Send somebody else." And I honestly believe from the bottom of my heart, three times God has said, "No, go." It was even to the point where 75-year-old saints in this church would come to my office and sit down and say, "You tell the session to move forward on this." What would this church be like if the people who first bought this property would have said, you don't need a big property for a church of only 100 people or so. Don't buy all that land out there. What kind of church would it be if they didn't have the faith and the vision. When they built this sanctuary, they couldn't fill it. But we fill it now and we fill it three times. So we struggle with that.

This is an experience we have individually. This is an experience we have corporately. And so there comes a point when God says, take this risk with me and the crisis is saying is God big enough or not? That's the issue. Is God that big or not? Fear of faith? If we choose to let fear rule, we say it's too big. It won't work. I am not suited. I cant' be bothered. WE stay inside the comfort zone and we cycle tighter and tighter around ourselves. If we say yes to God and let faith win, then we know that we are chosen, we are equipped, we are gifted and we are sent to do something significant for God and our orbit becomes bigger because we are now orbiting God. Fear of faith? Moses faced it and Moses made his choice to follow and that choice made all the difference in the world to Moses' experience with God. You've got to hear that. It didn't just make a difference in the ministry impact he had, it made a difference in his experience with God because he got to see God do things that he would have never seen if he had said, "No thank you God. I am going to be a shepherd." He saw the Red Sea open.

Liz got to experience something new with God too, not nearly as big, but when she made her choice, she stepped into a new experience with God and saw something new in her relationship. We are all going to face this kind of choice and I would imagine that among us there are some like me who have messed it up already. God has given us the choice and we did choose fear. What the good news is here is that God forgives us in Jesus Christ and he is willing to pick us up and dust us off, set us up again, say "Are you ready?" But the moment we are ready he is going to give us another challenge. God who controls it all one day is going to come in some kind of burning bush and ask us to make a choice. Trust me and take a risk because I am big enough for both of us. If we are going to know God better, we are going to have to make Moses' choice.

Let's pray. God, we thank you first of all for the forgiveness that all these ways that we fall short, that you have forgiven us for and can pick us up and set us up again to continue our work with you and so first we praise you for that, but then we pray now for the faith to take the risk and to walk with you, to follow you in to whatever adventure you really have out there, because in it we will not only see your glory and power, but in seeing your glory and power and your grace we are going to come closer and closer to you and we will experience you in new ways and for that we give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen.

Sermon Outline Notes:

"When God speaks, what we DO next will indicate what we believe about God"

• The Task is too big for me. (3:11)
  --I am going with you.
• No one will respond to my leadership. (3:13, 4:1)
  --You go with my authority.
• I don't have the gifts (4:10)
  --You go with my gifts.
• I don't want to! (4:13)
  --Go!
• We face a choice.
  --Fear or Faith?

"So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing...
Love someone who does not deserve it...
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias...
Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
Though you have considered all the facts...
Practice resurrection."
Wendell Berry, excerpts from "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Foolishness of God

Perform impossibilities
Or perish. Thrust out now
The unseasonal ripe figs among your leaves. Expect
The mountain to be moved.
Hate parenst, friends and all
Materiality. Love every enemy.
Forgive more times than seventy-
Seven. Camel-like, squeeze by
Into the kingdom through
The needle's eye. All fear quell.
Hack off your hand, or else
Unbloodied, go to hell.

Thus the divine unreason.
Despairing, you may cry
With earthy logic-How?
And I, your God, reply:
Leap from your weedy shallows.
Dive into the moving water.
Eye-less, learn to see
Truly. Find in my folly your
True sanity. Then, Spirit-driven,
Run on my narrow way, sure
As a child. Probe, hold
my unhealed hand, and
bloody, enter heaven.
Luci Shaw, from "Polishing the Petoskey Stone"

© 2006, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org