I Have Heard

I wonder how many people in the world today are asking this question: Does God hear us when we cry out?

Because there is real pain in the world. There are real cries rising from real people. And one of the great gifts of Scripture is that it does not ask us to pretend otherwise. The Bible is not embarrassed by human sorrow. It does not rush past grief. It does not silence lament. Again and again, Scripture gives us people who cry out, people who groan, people who ask where God is, people who wonder how long it will be before help comes.

And one of the most important stories Scripture gives us about that is the story of Exodus.

For the next several weeks, we are going to live inside that story together. And for some of us, Exodus may be familiar. You may know Moses and Pharaoh and the plagues and the Red Sea and the Ten Commandments.

But for others of us, this may be new territory. And that is okay. Because Exodus is not just a story for people who already know the Bible. Exodus is one of the stories that teaches us how to read the Bible. It teaches us who God is. It teaches us what salvation means. It teaches us what God does when people are crushed beneath powers that are too big for them. It teaches us what it means to be set free, not just from something, but for something.

At the center of Exodus is a simple but life-altering truth:

God hears.

That is why we are calling this series The God Who Hears.

Exodus begins in a world where people are being used up. The Hebrew people are living in Egypt, and at first Egypt had been a place of refuge. Generations earlier the Hebrew people had come to Egypt during a famine and found food, safety, and a future.

But over time, the story changed.

A new Pharaoh came to power. And when he looked at the Hebrew people, he did not see neighbors. He did not see families. He saw a threat.

So Pharaoh enslaved them.

He forced them into labor. He made their lives bitter. He turned human beings into tools for his building projects. And when even that was not enough to quiet his fear, he commanded that their baby boys be thrown into the Nile.

That is the world Exodus asks us to enter.

A world where power is afraid. A world where people are reduced to what they can produce. A world where the vulnerable are treated as disposable. A world where the cries of the suffering are ignored by the ones who benefit from their suffering.

And I know that world sounds ancient, but it does not sound entirely unfamiliar.

We may not live under Pharaoh, but we know what it feels like to live in a world where people can be consumed. We know what it sounds like when the cries of the poor, the lonely, the grieving, the addicted, the imprisoned, the hungry, the exhausted, and the afraid are treated like background noise.

But Exodus tells us that what becomes invisible to Pharaoh never becomes invisible to God.

At the end of Exodus chapter 2 we learn that the Hebrews groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry rose up to God. God heard their groaning. God remembered his covenant. God saw them. And God knew.

That is where the story turns.

Not first with a miracle people can see, but with a mercy they cannot yet see.

God hears.

And then, in Exodus 3, the God who hears appears.

Moses is a man who was saved from death as a baby. A hebrew, raised in the family of the Pharoah. He’s been exiled and now lives as a shepherd in the wilderness. It’s there that he sees a strange sight:

Exodus 3:1–10 NRSV

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “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. Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from 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 country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

So Moses is out in the wilderness and God shows up.

Exodus reminds us that God also appears in the wilderness. God appears in places of interruption. God appears in places of exile. God appears in places where people are not expecting anything holy to happen.

Moses is not on a spiritual retreat.

He is at work.

He is watching sheep.

And the living God interrupts an ordinary day with holy fire.

Then God says, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

In other words, “Moses, this story did not begin with Pharaoh. It did not begin with Egypt. It did not begin with slavery. This story began with a promise. I made a covenant. And Pharaoh does not get to have the final word over what I have promised.”

That is important.

Because when suffering lasts long enough, it can start to feel like suffering is the truest thing about the world.

When Pharaoh is on the throne long enough, people begin to believe Pharaoh has always been on the throne and always will be.

But God reminds Moses that there is a deeper story than Pharaoh.

Before there was bondage, there was promise. Before there was a cry, there was a God who had already bound himself to his people in love.

Then comes one of the most important sentences in all of Scripture.

God says, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry… Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.”

That sentence is the foundation of this whole series.

God says: I have seen. I have heard. I know. I have come down.

God sees what Pharaoh ignores.

God hears the cry before it becomes eloquent.

God knows the suffering that others have normalized.

And God comes down.

That may be the most astonishing phrase of all.

The God of the universe says, “I have come down.”

God does not remain safely above the pain of the world. God does not shout encouragement from heaven while his people are crushed beneath Pharaoh’s bricks. God comes down.

This is the movement of the whole Bible.

The God who hears is the God who comes down.

But then the story takes a turn.

Because God says, “I have come down to deliver them,” and then almost immediately God says to Moses, “So come, I will send you to Pharaoh.”

Do you hear the shock of that?

God says, “I have come down.” Then God says, “I will send you.”

That is how calling works in Scripture.

God hears the cry. God comes down. And then God invites human beings to participate in his liberating love.

Moses says what many of us would say.

“Who am I?”

Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh? Who am I that I should speak? Who am I that I should lead? Who am I with my past? Who am I with my fear? Who am I with my inadequacy?

And God’s answer is fascinating.

God does not say, “Moses, you are more gifted than you think.”

God does not say, “Moses, let me remind you of your résumé.”

God says, “I will be with you.”

Moses asks, “Who am I?” God answers, “I will be with you.”

Because calling is not grounded in the adequacy of the called. Calling is grounded in the presence of the Caller.

And that is good news for Moses.

And it is good news for the church.

Because today is Pentecost.

And Pentecost is the church’s burning bush moment.

In Exodus 3, Moses sees fire that burns but does not consume, hears the voice of God, and is sent into the world because God has heard the cry of his people.

In Acts 2, the disciples are gathered in Jerusalem. They are waiting, unsure, probably afraid, certainly inadequate for the mission Jesus has given them. Then suddenly there is a sound like the rush of a violent wind. Tongues as of fire rest on each of them. They are filled with the Holy Spirit. And they begin to speak.

Fire comes again.

But this time the fire does not rest on a bush in the wilderness.

The fire rests on people.

And they are not consumed.

They are empowered.

Pentecost is the church’s burning bush moment: the God who hears the cries of the world comes down in holy fire and sends us to bear witness to his liberating love.

And that means Pentecost is not just a birthday party for the church.

It is the day the church receives its vocation.

The Spirit comes so the church can hear what God hears.

The Spirit comes so the church can see what God sees.

The Spirit comes so the church can go where God sends.

And that matters because we live in a world full of cries.

Some cries are obvious. Some are hidden. Some are personal. Some are communal. Some come from hospital rooms. Some come from jail cells. Some come from classrooms. Some come from kitchen tables where bills are spread out and there is not enough. Some come from people living outside in the heat and rain. Some come from those who are hungry in a county with more than enough food. Some come from people who have been told in a hundred subtle ways that they do not matter.

And the question for the church is not only, “Do we believe God hears?”

The question is, “If God hears, will we?”

Because the Spirit-filled church cannot be deaf to the cries God hears.

We cannot celebrate Pentecost and then ignore the language of our neighbors’ pain. We cannot worship the God of the burning bush and keep walking past holy ground. We cannot say we believe in the God who came down and then build a religion that keeps us safely above the suffering of the world.

The God who hears sends.

Now, this is not a sermon about savior complexes. Moses is not the hero of Exodus. God is. The church is not the savior of the world. Jesus is.

We come like Moses.

Barefoot. A little afraid. Aware of our inadequacy. Standing on ground made holy by the presence of God.

And we come trusting the promise: “I will be with you.”

That promise is enough.

So maybe Pentecost begins for us where Moses began.

By turning aside.

Before Moses speaks, before Moses confronts Pharaoh, before Moses raises the staff, before Moses leads anyone anywhere, Moses notices. He pays attention. He allows his life to be interrupted by the presence of God.

And maybe that is where the Spirit wants to begin with us too.

Whose cry have we learned to tune out?

What suffering have we accepted as normal?

What neighbor has become invisible?

Where is the bush burning, and have we been too busy to turn aside?

Because the God who hears is still speaking.

The God who saw Israel in Egypt still sees.

The God who heard their cry still hears.

The God who came down still comes down.

And the God who sent Moses still sends the church.

So on this Pentecost Sunday, we stand again before holy fire. We stand before the God who refuses to be distant from suffering. We stand before the God who hears the cries of the world and says to ordinary, inadequate, beloved people, “Come, I will send you.”

And God’s promise is still the same.

“I will be with you.”

That is the promise at the bush.

That is the promise at Pentecost.

That is the promise for the church.

The Spirit has come. The fire has fallen. The cries are rising. And the God who hears is sending us into the world with the transformational love of Jesus.

So may we become a people who hear.

And may the world hear through us the good news at the heart of Exodus and Pentecost alike:

God sees. God hears. God knows. God has come down. And God is not finished setting people free.