God Prepares

Last week we began a sermon series called “God With Us”. In this series we are joining the Israelites as they journey from slavery to freedom. As they have God lead them through the wilderness to Mt. Sinai. The Moutain of God.

Last week we looked at how “God Saves Us” focusing on the birth of Moses. This week we turn to how “God Prepares Us.” Our scripture comes from Exodus 3:1-15. The words will be on the screen.

3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There 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. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

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

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.”

13 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?”

14 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.’ ” 15 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 you shall call me from generation to generation.

Let us pray…

Our God is on our life journey with us if we are willing to invite him to join us. Part of that life journey is facing life’s ups and downs and can involve us at times crying out to God to intervene in a situation, or to ask for him to offer us insights into the next steps that he would like for us to take in our lives.

No matter what is going on God knows our struggles. He knowswhat we are focusing on and what we need. We can recognize this from God’s words from verse seven when he tells Moses “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt.”

God knows what is taking place in our lives. He sees our affliction. He sees when we cause affliction. He knows when we focus on him. He knows when we are choosing to walk away from him. No matter what is going on in our lives God knows.

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This can be both a blessing and a curse for us just as it was for the Israelites. When we are following God’s will and doing things the way that pleases God than it is a good thing that God can look down on us and see all the good that we are doing. When things are not going well and we are in need of God’s assistance it is a good thing that God is looking down on us.

On the flip side when we aren’t following God’s will, God also knows. When we make choices that are against what he would expect or desire from us, God knows. When we rely on human answers instead of seeking godly answers, God knows.

We often blame God for the bad things that happened to the Jewish people in what we call the Old Testament. We look at how God’s chosen people end up in captivity over and over again and we want to blame God. When in fact it was God allowing the people to do what they wanted. He was staying out of the situation that they put themselves into that often led to them being in captivity.

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In the case of why the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt we need to go back to when they were saved by an Israelite. Joseph was a young man that to make a long story as short as possible was sold into slavery by his brothers, put into prison by his master. Got out of prison because he told the king there was going to be a famine.

He Saved all of the people because they had time to stockpile food before the famine. This caused many Israelites to be able to move to Egypt. The Egyptians eventually became afraid that the Israelites were getting to much freedom. This leads to the Israelites becoming enslaved. And this led to them now crying out to God.

In this case God waited until the Israelites cried out to him before he responded but we can find in scripture that sometimes God responds before anyone cries out to him. Sometimes his compassion will lead him to just respond.

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We can find an example of this with the time that Jesus is with his disciples and a widow walks by as a part of a funeral procession for her only son. Jesus recognizes the situation that she is in. She will possibly be left homeless with no way to fend for herself. The scripture says that Jesus had compassion on her and revived her son.

Sometimes God will use what we are going through to bring us closer to him. These can be times of struggle. It may seem that what we are going through will never end and that we are alone. Actually, God is trying to make us stronger. God is helping us grow in our faith. We will many times be able to use the experiences that we have gone through to help someone else as they are going through similar struggles.

There are of course also times like we have in today’s scripture where God hears our prayers when we cry out to him and he responds. He waits until we are ready to receive help from him. He wants us to decide that we are going to rely on him instead of on ourselves or the intervention of other humans.

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When God does respond he responds in one of three ways: yes, no, or not yet. We need to be willing to deal with the response that God gives us even if it is not the response that we want to receive at that moment. We need to desire to wait for God’s timing instead of focusing on our own timing.

We don’t know if the Israelites had just started crying out to God or if they had been crying out to God for a while. We don’t know if a few were ready and God waited until all of them were ready to leave captivity and follow him.

We also don’t always know how God has prepared the way. In fact, quite often we don’t know that he has prepared the way for us to succeed or to be relieved of a burden that we are facing until the time comes. Our God works in mysterious ways. One way that he prepares the way is to have someone make the way for us.

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We can recognize this through our first reading where in this case we have a group of people. In the story we have a man who was paralyzed. This man happens to be in the right place at the right time, but he can’t be healed alone. He needs help from others and God has the right people around him.

People that were not going to let a crowd decide if he would be able to be healed. We find them being stopped by the crowd. I am sure that they were frustrated with the situation, but they were not allowing the situation to dictate the result.

One of them looked up and thought of another way. So, theycut a hole in the roof and lowered the man down onto the floor. It wasbecause of the fact that Jesus was there. The fact that there were people that were willing to do anything to get this person in front of Jesus.

And a person, Jesus, was willing to heal someone who was practically dropped on top of him. God provided the people, people who cared enough to not give up allowing for this man to be able to be healed.

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I am sure not everyone was happy with the way these men went about getting their friend in front of Jesus. That is also what we have to be willing to accept. Not everyone will be happy with what we do and the way we serve God.

We know this is true by how many churches and different denominations we have around the world. We are to choose to have our actions dictated by what God would want for us to do even if some people may have to be inconvenienced.

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This is the case in today’s scripture as God has prepared the way for Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness. Moses was a person uniquely qualified to fulfill the task. The first way that he was prepared is that he was the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter. So, we have an Israelite who grew up with the king’s family.

Since he was a part of the royal family, he witnessed the suffering and oppression that the Israelites had faced. He was aware that he was like them but had the opportunity to also witness how they were being treated.

This led Moses to want to see the Israelites be free. God had prepared him for his calling and he wanted to see the people set free, but he didn’t think that he was the one who should do it. He doubted if God was choosing the right person. His life prepared him to be the right person. God had prepared the way for his calling.

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God has also prepared the way for us to respond to a calling. You may already have, but God may be calling you to even more. We should choose to be open to God and what he says to us. We should be willing to step out of our comfort zone and let God lead us to where he wants us to go. It is not easy, but it is what we should do because of what God has done for us.

God has prepared the way. The question is are we going to be willing to do what God has called us to do. He may already have the circumstances in place in order to help us. I never can remember the stories I have told or haven’t.

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This story involves me going to Florida for my grandmother’s funeral. I am on my way home and notice someone that I went to church with, someone that I didn’t know well but who I recognized.

Back in the old days of flying Southwest if you see someone you know you try to sit with them. We sat with each other and as we are going, she tells me the story of her son and how he doesn’t go to church anymore.

That leads to me bringing up that the church just started a young adult group that would include the people he had been with growing up in the church. I was able to give her information about the group and her son went to the group and started going to church regularly.

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Can you see how everything had to line up perfectly for this situation to turn out the way it did? Her and I in the airport on the same flight. The church recently starting up a young adult group.

Her being willing to tell me about her son and where he stood regarding going to church. Her son being willing to go to this group and eventually to church. God placed each one of us in the right place. God had prepared the way for this young man to find his way back to church.

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God will also sometimes take care of the situation himself. We will sometimes cry out to him and he will fix what is troubling us. He will answer our prayer as quickly as we had asked for him to intervene. (Derik and cussing)

God intervened and changed this person. He waited until he was ready but once he asked this burden was removed. You may have something in your life which you are struggling with that is hurting your relationship with God and possibly those around you. Trust that God can remove this for you.

But also recognize that he may have you be like Paul. Paul wants something removed from his life. He goes to God and asks for its removal. God chooses to have him keep it and have it be a blessing to those around him instead of the curse that Paul believes that it is.

Let us end our time today by focusing on the most important way that God has prepared the way. God prepared the way for us to be in a close, intimate, growing relationship with him through having his son come down to earth, spend time with those that would listen, eventually die on a cross, and then be raised from the dead.

It was through these actions that we are able to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We are able to have God within us in order to help us become the person that God desires for us to be. What we have to be willing to do is to respond to the circumstances or the calling that God has given to us.

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We do this best when we are willing to be closely connected to God. We get to decide how close we want to be to God. We get to decide if we going to create space for God to speak to us and then we get to decide how we are going to respond.

Let us believe that God has prepared the way. Let us decide that we are going to be willing to be like Moses, even if we don’t want to, and follow the will of God in our lives.

Let us pray…