God According to God

“The Broken Silence” Exodus 3:1-15

Introduction: Have you ever been happy to finally share your story? To tell the truth the way you know and have lived. What your true intentions are and so that people can truly understand you? Trust you and even Follow at times. God is ready to try this again, but He wants to break His silence to a person He has chosen to free His people, He just needs this person to believe in Him. But what God does is tell his story from a third-person point of view. In third-person point of view, the most common choice for writers, the narrator refers to all characters with third-person pronouns like 'he', 'she', or 'they'.. In other words, the narrator is not a character in a story and is a separate entity. So there is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. 2 Tim.3:16 “ All Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit”

The book of Exodus is an epic story for the ages. Movies have been made, books written, and more importantly, the entire Bible refers back again, and again to the events here in Exodus. The word Exodus means to exit. This is God‘s great rescue mission out of oppression out of slavery. God meets us at our lowest at the place of desperation at the place where we wonder does God remember me? Does God hear my cry? and will he rescue me? Exodus fits right here because it begins 400 years after Genesis ends. God has waited 400 years for the Israelites to repent of their sins. In this series God According to God, God breaks his silence after 400 years. Some of us cannot stay silent for 40 minutes, but 400 years is a long time. God is ready to tell his story and become personal once again with His people. He sees and knows the potential and want to provide them with everything they need to succeed. You are probably sitting there thinking why Exodus, and not Genesis? The reason is that he never got the chance to really share His story, because He was busy creating the earth, dealing with the fall of man, drowning, and confusing languages while establishing a lineage with Abraham and all his descendants. Then they were all ungrateful. So God went silent and allowed their captivity to get their attention. God was tired of fighting, begging, and pleading with a generation of people who were not yet entirely ready to listen, follow, and surely obey. That’s when the book of Genesis ended.

Let's look at few verses before we dive into chapter 3 of exodus. In chapter 1 verses 1-4

Exodus 1:1-4 The book of Exodus starts with sharing the names of the sons of Isreal who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher the descendants of Jacob number 70 in all. So Exodus is like any good sequel, it picks up right where Genesis left off in fact, the Bible's first five books Genesis, through Deuteronomy, are written by Moses to the generation that was about to enter the promised land. This is where we see the preaching series come from. In a series, each message builds on the other. Once God breaks His silence and uses Moses to speak for him, it allows the people to anticipate the next sermon. It allows God to build on what He started in Genesis by finally sharing what He wants for His people. God knows He has an amazing recipe of life that if applied can do wonders for us and others. When I shared earlier about how people cannot stay silent for 40 minutes, that's because we continue to talk as though we know it all. rather than listening to instructions.

Listen to the words of the wise; apply your heart to my instruction. Commit yourself to instruction.

Anonymous

Three words that God is asking us is that we Listen, Apply and Commit

These are vital attributes given to us to help build our families, churches And communities. When you look at preaching series. it is vital to the health of the church. It ensures you keep a balanced message touching on all 5 areas, evangelism, worship, fellowship, discipleship, and ministry. The first five books of the bible were written or preached to help remind the Israelites of their identity and purpose and the first thing they are reminded of here is who they were in Egypt. They started out as just 12 brothers with 12 families and one patriarch Jacob also known as Isreal. But also in Exodus 1:6 the bible says “Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful they multiplied greatly increased the numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.”

Now I want to pause and add this nugget here. Notice How they all died and the community grew. Church let me share a reality with you. We are going to die, so what are you doing so that the church can continue to grow? That was free it won’t cost you anything, but we need to keep that in our hearts as we continue to move this church forward. Now,These verses link Genesis and Exodus together. They connect Joseph bringing Jacob and his family to Egypt. ( Gen.46:8-27) This shows God delivering Abraham’s descendants through the famine. and the death of that generation ( Gen.50:26) with their descendants living in Egypt as the people of Israel.

Time has passed 400 years and 12 families are now 12 great tribes exceedingly numerous. Now if we apply a reasonably high population growth rate of 2 1/2% to 70 people at 400 years. carry the one and add a pinky you get a total of 1.5 million people. Now that a long way from 70. Now church we currently have 75 members. I was just throwing that out. Now let me share this little bit of news. When my mother got married to brother Bowers, and they moved to California. They where both in there late 60’s in age. Our first time visiting them and He introduced me as the youngest child as for now. If you didn't get that you will when you leave this place. It’s a lot of Jews in Egypt ,seriously I don’t want to miss the fact that this is exactly what God promised Abraham, lots of descendants. This is one of the great themes here in Exodus “The Lord remembers” Here the Lord will remember his promises, and his covenant with Abraham, including numerous offspring and blessings on both people and the nations of the world. But what we can sometimes not imagine is that God promises will continue to be faithful to us. So our silence sometimes can speak volumes to God and others. They say that silence can be deadly. Max Lucado put it like this,

Clouds of doubt are created when the warm, moist air of our expectations meets the cold air of God’s silence. The problem is not as much in God’s silence as it is in your ability to hear.

Max Lucado

Now lets get to chapter 3.

Take off your sandals everyone because this chapter is holy Ground. This story is critical to the whole Bible, one of the great revelations of who God is and the calling of Moses.

The story opens on the far side of the desert in Midian 40 years have passed since Moses fled from Egypt and in verse 1, Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midians, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb the mountain of God, After 40 years of training in the courts of Pharaoh, Moses now neared the end of another 40 years of his life as a shepherd. The humility of Moses' situation is impressive. Remember, Moses grew up as an Egyptian prince in the house of Pharoah. Now he’s a humbled Shepherd. Genesis tells us that Egyptians despise shepherds, and these aren’t even his own sheep.In Genesis 46:34 Joseph instructs his brothers to tell Pharaoh that they are shepherds so that they would be kept apart from the Egyptians. Again the Biblical narrator explains: for all shepherds are abominable to Egyptians.( cultural sense of racial superiority). How humbling can it be, to live a life to despise certain people and yet you go back to your origin. It shows me that He was willing to do what he needed to do for and with his people. These are the things that made God break His silence. Moses has passed the test and it was time. Next

I like the phrase, the “far side of the wilderness”, an apt description of Moses' situation, and the name of the mountain is Horeb later, called Sinai, and hear the mountain of God.In the historical description of the exodus, the wilderness is the place where God's gracious provision was given to the Israelites in spite of their grumbling. Though the Israelites were tested by God in the desert, they witnessed the glory of the Lord in the same place.

“Our Humbling Beginning (Introductions)” I call it affirmations. Stop and take a look at your life and how you came to this place. God spoke to you and lead you here so that He could use you for great things in His Kingdom.God wanted Moses to experience both sides that’s why Moses is considered to be like Jesus. In the typology of How God became flesh and dwelt among us. Especially how God used Him to help free his people in Egypt.

Versus 2, They’re 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 the strange sight of why the Bush does not burn up Moses saw a bush on fire and wanted to take a closer look sort of a double vision,These verses present the circumstances of Moses’ call by God. God never does things like we believe they should. Never underestimate the awesomeness of God

A few things has happened in Chapter 1 & 2. In Chapter 1 God’s people suffer in Egypt. Chapter we here the story of Moses rescue from dying as a baby boy. A story that we hear time after time. How his sister Miriam is instrumental in saving him out of the river and hiring his own mother to raise him. How God shares this story in the 3rd person and it actually is an I witness.

Moses takes a closer look and verse 4 “When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look God called him from within the bush, Moses, Moses, and Moses said here I am do not come any closer. God said, take off your sandals, for the place where you were standing is holy ground, and he said I am the God of your father God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the god of Jacob at this Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.” Moses had some good sins here to look at God was not for mankind, and yet God appeared he was there, and you can’t help but see a connection to Jesus the word become flesh God in our midst, and I love God‘s introduction Exodus.3.6 I am the God of your father to God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was Jesus who quoted this verse to show us. That God is not the God of the dead, but the living he is presently the God of Abraham, living Abraham, living Isaac, and Jacob.

God Always Remembers your name, so that He can make the connection

Closing: When has God spoken to you? Do we listen when He is trying to explain Himself to us? Do we make excuses to why we cannot do what he needs us to do? Do we need to hush so God can explain? Do we need to be still so God can move? Do we need to slow down and look for God’s awesomeness?

The story is about calling and vocation. It’s about the extraordinary breaking into the ordinary. It’s about hearing and responding to the call of God in our lives.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says of the story, “Moses had his ordinariness broken. He had to rethink the faith and the life of his people. Moses discovered that his life was saturated with the reality of God. . . . And he wondered: What could be different about the purpose of my life because of the reality of this God?”

Church How can our lives be different if we truly listen and saw how in reality God is with us? God made ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

God is trying to break His silence with us are we willing to listen?

God is trying to show us who He is in us