Why Me?
Who’s Next? • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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SERIES RECAP
We are four weeks out from Easter and three weeks into our series “Who’s Next?”
Week one we talked about “Jesus Changed My Life.”
Evangelism starts with understanding our story has power.
If Jesus really changed you, silence doesn’t make sense.
Last week Alyssa did an incredible Job talking about “The People You Pass.”
Every day we walk past people who are searching, hurting, and in need of hope.
The people you pass might be the very people God wants to reach.
This week we are going to look at another biblical story.
This time all the way back in Exodus.
This is a story that you may be familiar with.
If you’re not that’s okay, because this morning I want to kinda sit aside everything we know/think we know about this story.
Turn with me to Exodus 2.
11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.
12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?”
14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.
This morning I want to answer the Question:
Why Me?
Pray
SPACE SETUP
Can I talk about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the message for a moment?
My latest obsession.
I’ve been completely consumed by the rabbit hole of outer space and the universe this week.
Now I know what some of you are thinking…
“Obsession? You mean you watched a couple videos?”
No.
I counted.
This week I have watched 73 YouTube videos about space.
Seventy-three.
Which raises two concerns.
First… I know way more about the universe than a any pastor needs to know.
Second… I’m basically an astronaut at this point.
I’ll be submitting my application this week.
Here is how the obsession started.
Youtube recommended This video to me (Image)
Let me say this first before I for I go any further.
The title of this video is not clickbait.
Jupiter is terrifying….
But that’s not the point…Although… after church if anyone wants to talk about Jupiter, I am now shockingly qualified for that conversation.
But seeing this one video unlocked something inside of me.
Space is my thing now….until the next thing…
But anyway…
Learning about space this week really got me thinking about something….
The universe is huge.
Like… unimaginably huge.
Let me put this into perspective for you with just one planet — Jupiter.
You can fit over 1,300 Earths inside Jupiter.
And Jupiter isn’t even the biggest thing out there.
It’s just one planet…
In one solar system…
In one galaxy…
In a universe with what astronomers estimate contains billions of galaxies.
Told you….I learned things this week….73 videos…
And it all started with seeing one…
MOSES SAW THE BURDEN
And that is exactly what happened to Moses….
He saw something….
Go back to Exodus 2
11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.
Now let me clear something up.
In 1998 there was an animated movie called The Prince of Egypt.
Great movie.
But it created a misunderstanding about Moses’ story.
Because in the movie it looks like Moses suddenly discovers he’s Hebrew.
Like it’s this shocking identity reveal.
But that’s not actually what the Bible says.
Moses already knew who he was.
Remember how his story begins.
Pharaoh had ordered that every Hebrew baby boy be killed.
So Moses’ mother places him in a basket in the Nile River.
Pharaoh’s daughter finds him… adopts him… and raises him in the palace.
Moses grows up with Egyptian privilege… but he always knew he was Hebrew.
But here’s the important part.
Identifying and seeing are two different things.
Just because you can identify something doesn’t mean you’re actually seeing it.
You can identify poverty…and still never see the person struggling to survive.
You can identify injustice…and still never feel the weight someone else is carrying.
You can identify lost people…and still walk right past them every day.
Identifying is awareness. Seeing is compassion.
Identifying stays in your head.
Seeing moves your heart.
Moses had always known who he was.
He knew he was Hebrew.
He knew his people were slaves.
But one day he went out…and he saw the burden.
Exodus says he looked on their burdens.
And sometimes the moment God begins to stir something in your life
is the moment He allows you to see something you can’t ignore.
Moses saw the burden…
and he couldn’t ignore it.
But Moses responded the wrong way.
He tried to fix the problem himself.
He kills the Egyptian.
He hides the body in the sand.
And suddenly Moses is no longer a prince in Egypt…he’s a fugitive.
He has to run for his life.
Moses saw the burden…and it forced him to flee Egypt.
GOD SAW THE PEOPLE
But Moses wasn’t the only one who saw something.
Because while Moses was seeing injustice…God was seeing something too.
23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.
24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
I want you to notice something very important.
Moses saw the burden.
God saw the people.
Moses saw a problem that needed to be fixed.
But God saw a people that needed to be delivered.
Moses reacted to a moment.
God was responding to a covenant.
Moses tried to stop one Egyptian.
God was about to free an entire nation.
WHY CHRISTIAN SOCIAL JUSTICE FAILS
Do you want to know why so many Christian justice movements fall apart?
Do you want to know why Christians are so divided over political issues?
Because too often we are more focused on fixing problems than we are on freeing people.
We want to fix systems.
We want to fix behavior.
We want to fix policies.
But the gospel was never about patching symptoms.
The gospel is about delivering people.
Moses saw a problem and tried to fix it.
But God saw a people in bondage and He was preparing a deliverer.
Maybe the problem with the person you’re trying to reach is that you’ve been trying to help their life without ever introducing them to the One who can save it.
ANYTHING BUT SHARE THE GOSPEL
Many Christians will do anything and everything except share the gospel.
We’ll offer to pray for them.
We’ll send them Christian songs.
We’ll text them Bible verses.
We’ll invite them to church.
We’ll post encouraging quotes.
But actually share the gospel?
The one thing that can actually save them?
No sorry, can’t do that.
And here’s something we have to understand.
THE GOSPEL NOT SYSTEMS
God didn’t send Moses back to Egypt
to make slavery a little easier on people.
He didn’t send Moses to negotiate better working conditions.
He didn’t send Moses to start a social reform movement.
God sent Moses to confront the oppressor.
God sent Moses to walk into Pharaoh’s palace and say:
“Let my people go.”
Because the suffering wasn’t the root problem.
The suffering was the symptom.
The real issue was the one holding the people in bondage.
And the Bible actually tells us something very similar about the world we live in.
Scripture says our battle is not against flesh and blood.
Our battle is not ultimately against people.
Our battle is not against the government policies of this world.
Our battle is against the oppressor of this world.
And the oppressor of this world
is not the political figure you don’t like.
The real enemy is the one who keeps people enslaved.
But here’s what we do.
We think if we can just fix the system,
then we’ll fix the people.
So we say:
We want to deal with racism from the White House.
We want to deal with abortion from the White House.
We want to deal with poverty from the White House.
But listen carefully.
Policies may restrain evil.
But policies cannot redeem people.
Policies can regulate behavior.
But they cannot break chains.
Policies don’t free people.
The gospel does.
Because the gospel doesn’t just manage symptoms.
The gospel sets captives free.
Caring about the problem didn’t free Israel.
And it didn’t save Moses either.
It just sent him running to the wilderness.
For forty years Moses disappears from the story.
The prince of Egypt becomes a shepherd in Midian.
And it’s there… in the wilderness… that God shows up.
Not in a palace.
Not in a courtroom.
Not in a political movement.
But in the middle of nowhere.
And when God speaks to Moses, listen carefully to what He says.
SEEING THE BURNING BUSH
1 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”
4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”
5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings,
8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
9 And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.
10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
Remember in chapter 2 it started with Moses seeing the burden?
Now here we are in Exodus 3.
Moses is in the wilderness…and suddenly he sees something again.
A bush…on fire…but it’s not burning up.
The text says Moses says, “I will turn aside and see this great sight.”
Moses saw the bush on fire.
Ladies pro tip, if you ever need to get a man’s attention just set something on fire.
Works every time.
But then the text says something even more interesting.
When the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to look… God called to him.
GOD SAW MOSES
Moses saw the bush.
But God saw Moses.
Moses thought he was just investigating a strange fire.
But God was watching a man who had spent forty years in the wilderness.
Moses thought he was looking at a mystery.
But God was looking at a deliverer.
But Moses?
He didn’t see it.
He ask a question every single one of us ask…
WHY ME? BECAUSE I.
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”
He saw a shepherd.
He saw a failure.
He saw a fugitive from Egypt.
So Moses asks the question we all ask when God calls us:
“Who am I?”
Or in our language: Why me?
verse 12 God answers his question…
12a He said, “But I will be with you….
Moses asked “Who am I?”
And God answered with “I will be.”
Moses was focused on his ability.
God redirected him to His presence.
Moses said, “Who am I?”
God essentially said, “You’re not the point. I am.”
Moses still though….he isn’t satisfied….
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
Now on the surface, Moses is asking a theological question.
“God… what is your name?”
But there’s an undertone to what Moses is really asking.
He’s saying, “God… what if they ask me something I don’t know how to answer?”
In other words: “What if they ask me a question I can’t handle?”
And if we’re honest…
That’s the same fear that keeps a lot of Christians from sharing the gospel.
What if they ask about suffering?
What if they ask about science?
What if they ask about hypocrisy in the church?
What if they ask something I don’t know how to answer?
Our fear of failure should never override someone else’s freedom.
But notice something.
Moses is worried about having the right answers.
But God never called Moses to know all the answers.
God called Moses to point to Him.
In Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”
And He said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
In other words…
Moses, when they ask who sent you— Tell them I AM.
The One who always was.
The One who always is.
The One who always will be.
The One who is everything they need.
Remember what Paul said in Romans 1?People already know there is a God.
Creation points to Him.
Conscience points to Him.
But Paul says people suppress the truth.
God wasn’t asking Moses to introduce people to a brand-new idea.
He was asking Moses to name the God they were already crying out to.
But even that still isn’t enough for Moses.
Moses basically says, “God… what if that doesn’t work?”
“What if they don’t believe me?”
So God responds in Exodus 4:2–9.
2 The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.”
3 And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it.
4 But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand—
5 “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.”
6 Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow.
7 Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh.
8 “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign.
9 If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.”
God gives Moses signs.
A staff that becomes a serpent.
A hand that becomes leprous and then restored.
Water that will turn to blood.
God is showing Moses something important.
“You won’t go alone.”
“My power will go with you.”
But even after all of that… Moses still hesitates.
And I want to be very clear about something here.
The point of this story is not “believe in yourself.”
It’s actually Believe in the God who is with you…
DO YOU TRUST IN GOD
The Bible is not telling us, “Moses just needed more confidence.”
Moses didn’t need to believe in himself.
He needed to believe that God was enough.
Because every excuse Moses gives is really the same fear:
“God, what if you’re not enough to overcome my weakness?”
What if they don’t believe me?
What if I don’t have the answers?
What if I’m not a good speaker?
And underneath all of it is the same question:
“God… are you really enough?”
10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”
11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
13 But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”
Moses finally says what he’s really been thinking the whole time.
“I’m not eloquent.”
“I’m slow of speech.”
Translation: “God… I’m not the right person.”
And God answers him.
“Who made man’s mouth?”
“Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind?”
“Is it not I, the Lord?”
“Now go… and I will be with your mouth.”
God reminds Moses of something important.
The problem isn’t Moses’ weakness.
The problem is Moses’ view of God.
But even after that…
Moses says what many of us have thought when God asks us to step toward someone.
“Please… send someone else.”
God please…
There has to be someone better than me.
I can’t be the only option.
God… I’ve only known you for a little while.
God… please let me save you the trouble.
You can’t use me.
TERRIFYING/COMFORT VERSE
God responds and we end up with one of the most terrifyingly comforting verses in all of scripture…
14 Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.
That word “kindled” means God’s anger burned against Moses.
God was visibly angry.
And that should get our attention.
Because sometimes we imagine God as endlessly patient with our excuses.
But here we see something sobering.
Our resistance to God actually matters to Him.
But here’s the comforting part.
Even in His anger…
God doesn’t abandon Moses.
He doesn’t revoke the calling.
He doesn’t walk away.
He doesn’t replace him.
Instead He says, “Aaron will help you speak.”
Yes, God is angry at Moses’ resistance.
But He is still patient enough to help him move forward.
That’s why this verse is terrifyingly comforting.
Terrifying — because God takes His calling seriously.
Comforting — because even when we hesitate, doubt, and push back…
God is still willing to use us.
Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the point.
For three weeks we’ve been asking the question:
“Who’s next?”
But if we’re honest…
most of us are still asking the same question Moses asked.
“Why me?”
Why me?
I’m not the best speaker.
Why me?
I don’t know enough scripture.
Why me?
Someone else could do it better.
And God’s answer to Moses
is the same answer He gives to us.
“I will be with you.”
God never told Moses, “Moses, you’re the most qualified man in Egypt.”
He didn’t say, “Moses, you’re the best leader available.”
He didn’t say, “Moses, you’ve got the perfect personality for this.”
God said one thing: “I will be with you.”
Because the mission of God has never depended on the ability of the person.
It has always depended on the presence of God.
And here’s what’s amazing.
The man who said “Who am I?” is the same man God used to stand before Pharaoh.
The man who said “Send someone else” is the same man who watched the Red Sea split in two.
The man who ran into the wilderness for forty years became the man who led an entire nation out of slavery.
Not because Moses was enough.
Because God was.
JESUS SAID THE SAME THING TO THE CHURCH
You know what I find interesting?
Most pastors — myself included — will quote this verse when we talk about evangelism.
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
And that’s a great verse.
But what almost never gets mentioned is the verse right after it.
Because the same God who told Moses, “I will be with you” said the exact same thing to the church.
20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Do you see it?
Moses asked, “Why me?”
And God answered, “Because I will be with you.”
When the church asks, “Why me?”
Jesus answers the same way.
“Because I am with you.”
I leave you with the question of this series…
Who’s Next?
