The Same God week 2 Sermon

Me

Intro Malawi Partnership

Maybe review our method

Tea

We - Malawi Video

We have injustices in the world

God - God Chooses You

Israel the person becomes Israel the nation

Israel the nation gets enslaved, but are still God’s promised people

All sorts of issues with slaves

abuse

After centuries of silence, the God of the patriarchs breaks through. It is an awesome moment, and his sacred presence demands that Moses come no closer and that he remove his shoes because the ground is holy.

Exodus 3:1–12 NRSV

1 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. 2 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. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 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.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 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. 7 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, 8 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. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 So come, I will send 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 He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”

Exegesis

Israelites were the slaves to the Egyptians

This is a call not only to return the land to those that had rightful ownership of it, it was also a proclamation that those people would thrive in that land.

The prosperity described is best known as flowing with milk and honey

A land in which people are in right relationship with the earth, and come to recognize that the earth itself actually has more than enough to sustain us.

Moses is not seeking to know the name of God, Moses is seeking to know the character of God

God acknowledges and engages with the troubles that Israel faces

“I have come down” - God not only has an awareness of human suffering, but God enters into the storline

God knows of Israel’s oppression and is prepared to counter it

We are too often complicit with God coming down and changing things

We are uncomfortable changing things ourselves

That god said that I have come down, and then says, and the way that I have come down to solve this problem is you.

You - your faithful response to injustice

“Don’t just accept the things you cannot change, change the things you cannot accept” (Bishop Trimble)

Your faithful response is someone else's answer to prayer

Us - We get charged up in religious spaces so that we can go out

The coming back and celebrating on this mountain doesn’t really seem like a promise.

Some think that in the statement this will be the sign God may be referring to the burning bush. In other words, the sign is God’s appearance to Moses. Reflecting on that awesome experience would sustain him through difficult times ahead.

What happened in Malawi is as much a part of our method as a church as worship is

You have experienced the pressence of God here in the church....so go…go far to do something about the oppressions of this world