Exodus 14:19-31 "God Opens a Way"

A boy was sitting on a park bench with one hand resting on an open Bible. He was loudly exclaiming his praise to God. "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great!" he yelled without worrying whether anyone heard him or not.

Shortly after, along came a man who had recently completed some studies at a local university. Feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy.

"Hey" asked the boy in return with a bright laugh, "Don't you have any idea what God is able to do? I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle."

The enlightened man laughed lightly, sat down next to the boy and began to try to open his eyes to the "realities" of the miracles of the Bible. "That can all be very easily explained. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red Sea in that area was only 10-inches deep at that time. It was no problem for the Israelites to wade across."

The boy was stumped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible laying open in his lap. The man, content that he had enlightened a poor, naive young person to the finer points of scientific insight, turned to go. Scarcely had he taken two steps when the boy began to rejoice and praise louder than before. The man turned to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation.

"Wow!" exclaimed the boy happily, "God is greater than I thought! Not only did He lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, He topped it off by drowning the whole Egyptian army in 10 inches of water!"

Having shared this story, I need to say that the depth of the Red Sea really has nothing to do with the scripture that we have read this morning. It doesn’t matter whether the Red Sea was 10 inches or 10 feet deep. It doesn’t matter whether we can find some way to rationalize away the parting of the Red Sea. What does matter is that God worked in the lives of his people when they needed them most. The people of Israel needed a path, for the way was closed for them. And God made that way for them.

I. Amazing Stories

The book of Exodus is full of amazing stories that spark the imagination. There is Moses in a basket in the river, the burning bush, the ten plagues, Moses descending from the mountain with the ten commandments, the golden calf, water gushing from rocks and manna falling from heaven… but there is one that stands out above the rest and touches the imagination in a unique way, and it is the crossing of the Red Sea.

Imagine a group of people being chased by an army and finding themselves pushed up against the sea. They were at their end. They had unending water on one side of them and an army coming down on the other. God had promised to take them out of slavery and they had gotten their hopes up and then they found themselves in this predicament. They had two choices, really. They could either drown or be killed by the sword; neither a very good option. But these two options, these two choices don’t take into account the God that had brought them this far.

What is so great about the parting of the Red Sea is that it is completely God. It is not something that the people can take credit for. It is not something that they can pretend they are responsible for. God saves his people from the Egyptians and they know so very clearly that it is God doing the saving.

We don’t always live in the world that the Israelites lived in. We pay attention to the reminder that God helps those who help themselves. We know that we are to pray hard, but we also know that we are to work harder. It’s built into us that we are to do everything we can to take care of ourselves and our families. And yet we do sometimes find ourselves in situations that are beyond our control. We do sometimes find ourselves in places we cannot get out of. Sometimes we find ourselves caught between an army and a sea and all seems hopeless.

II. Oppression

I want to go back again a bit. I want you to think about the things that threaten to overwhelm you. What are you beholden to? What is it that oppresses you? The people of Israel were living under a real oppression that we just don’t deal with. They were slaves. They spent their lives working for the Egyptians and had no control over their own lives because of this. They were so oppressed that when the Egyptians decided to kill all the male boys being born to them, they couldn’t do anything about it. They were so oppressed that an Egyptian could kill an Israelite and that was that. They had no recourse. They had no control over their own lives. They had no freedom. They could not do what they wanted. They could not worship how they wanted. They were slaves. No wonder the African-Americans have identified so well with the story of the Exodus. But I honestly think we all can identify with the Exodus in some way. For we all have things that oppress us. And hopefully, we are all calling out to God to free us from such oppressions. Perhaps we feel overwhelmed by our jobs, perhaps it is our responsibility at home that overwhelms us. Maybe we don’t know how we are going to get out of debt, or how we are going to deal with the difficulties that come with age. For some, oppression takes the form of alcoholism or addiction. For others it is living in a situation of abuse. For some it is a marriage that doesn’t seem to be working out. For some it is chronic pain. Sometimes the oppression that you face might not seem like much to those around you, but it is real and it can be a struggle.

And so we call out to God and do what we can to try to get out of the things that oppress us. But the thing about oppression is that it doesn’t let you out. Even when you think you are free, it comes after you. Israel had been told that they were free. They headed out, on their way to the wilderness, on their way to the Promised Land. But those that oppressed them had not given up. They came after them with an army. They meant to destroy the people of Israel. Sometimes we think we may have escaped from our oppression. Sometimes we think we may have made it. But when we try to do it on our own, we will often find that that which oppressed us will chase after us and bring us back in, and even make things much worse. And then we find ourselves in the place that Israel found themselves: with our backs to the sea and an army bearing down on us.

What do we do when we cannot save ourselves? Where do we go when there is no place left to go? Do we just give up at that point? Do we stand and fight? Or do we continue to believe and continue to follow where God leads?

III. Spread out you Hand

The people of Israel didn’t handle it very well. They grumbled because they were afraid. We didn’t read this part this morning, but it is worth going back to Exodus 14:11,12. Here the people of Israel ask Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Harsh words came from the people of Israel. They had stepped out in faith and it seemed to be leading them to disaster. When we step out in faith things sometimes seem to go wrong, and we begin to ask these same questions? We wonder whether we really had been hearing God in our lives. We wonder whether it may have been better to have continued the way we had been going. But the fact is that God didn’t call the people out to the shore of the Red Sea just to die. Instead, God had something great planned.

God had been leading the people of Israel with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night. And the cloud came between the people of Israel and the Egyptian army. God shielded the people of Israel from the army that was after them. God kept them from battling each other. It seems that Israel was just as ready to fight as Egypt was, but God didn’t allow for either. So God bought the people of Israel time by coming between them and the army that oppressed them.

And then Moses acted on faith. He stretched out his hand over the water. Oh, he could have looked very silly. He could have stretched out his hand and nothing would have happened. More people would have laughed at him and their doom would have been complete. But Moses knew that that wouldn’t happen. He knew that God had brought them this far and would take them through the next step. So he spread out his hand, and we are told that through the night a wind blew and parted the Red Sea. We are told that the Israelites crossed it with a wall of water on their right and on their left. And we are told that a way was made for them that had not been there before.

This is the point where faith pays off. You’ve got your back to the sea. You’ve got no place to go. Your problems are running you down, about to hit you. You’ve run out of options completely. And then God opens a way that was not there. God opens a path that did not exist. Up to this point it has been about trusting God. Up to this point it has been about accepting that God will fulfill his promises. Now it is just about following the path that God has set before you. I’m sure there is trust involved at this point also, I’m sure it may have been scary crossing the sea with walls of water on either side. But God has just shown you what he can do and now all you need to do is walk on the path that he has opened before you.

God is able to open a path for you out of the oppression that you face. And when it comes time, God will work in a powerful way to make that path come alive, a path that you had not seen up until that time. But you are called to prepare yourself to see that path. You are called to follow God down what may seem like a dead end as he prepares you to be released from that which oppresses you.

And so, I want you to take three life lessons from Moses and the people of Israel. There are three life lessons that we can learn from and that will affect how we live and how we follow God.

The first of these is that we can learn from the fact that the people of Israel called to God in their slavery and he heard them. They cried out and asked for his help. They pleaded for him to come to them in their need. We must do the same. We must turn those things that oppress us over to God in prayer. We must give up the illusion that we can work our own way out of them and instead we must lift them before our God.

Our second life lesson is to see that Israel followed where God led, even though it seemed like it was leading them to a dead end. Oh, they grumbled about it, as we often do. They complained and worried about what God had in front of them. But, in the end, they followed when they needed to and went where God told them to go.

And our third lesson has specifically to do with Moses. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. He was willing to look foolish for his faith. He put all his trust in God and allowed God to use him in a mighty way. By stretching out his hand he was acknowledging that God was in control and God would open the path before them. And God did this very thing. And God can and will do this very thing for you as well. So, call out to God for help, go where God leads and be ready to look foolish for God’s sake, putting your trust in his faithfulness. And just watch to see what God does for your sake. Amen.

Exodus 12:1-14 "Celebrating Victory"

For me this week has been a week of the heavy heart. We have had a few deaths in the community. And we have lost one of our loved ones from our extended church family. As if that weren’t enough, every time you turn on the news you are inundated with pictures and scenes that almost don’t make sense because they are so horrible. There are towns in Mississippi that no longer exist. And there is the situation in New Orleans, which has finally been getting better this weekend, as supplies get to these people and they are able to get evacuated from their city.

A whole city has disappeared, at least for a time. People are without a place to live, they are without jobs, they are without schools. Many don’t have anything to identify them, no driver’s license or social security card. In one storm their lives were changed, our country was changed, and we were changed.

It is easy to become overwhelmed by what we see. We turn it off because we feel so helpless. We ignore it because it is too painful to dwell on all that is going on. And I wonder, where is God in the midst of the destruction, in the midst of the violence, in the midst of the pain.

But then I go back to what we are studying in scripture. We see a people, God’s people, living in the midst of destruction, in the midst of violence and in the midst of pain. We see Israel living as slaves in a land that is not their own. And we see God so clearly working on their behalf. We see God come down and bring them out of their slavery. We see God offer them freedom. We see God bring relief from their suffering. And we can hope and pray that God can do the same for us.

I. Passover

Exodus 12 finds us in an interesting and difficult place. Moses has reluctantly accepted the call that God has laid on his life. He has gone back to Egypt to speak to Pharaoh and bring Israel out of slavery into the desert, towards the Promised Land. Moses has not had the greatest success. God sent plague after plague to the land of Egypt. Pharaoh would be troubled by each plague and would promise Moses that he could take Israel out to the wilderness. He would ask Moses to pray for him and he would promise that the Israelites would go free. But then, when the plague ended he would change his mind and he would keep Moses and Israel in Egypt.

And eventually we come to the tenth plague. And it is a horrible one. All the firstborn in Egypt are to die in one night. One cannot imagine the horror and pain this would bring to the people of Egypt. One cannot imagine the suffering that the people of Egypt would have to suffer because of their hardhearted leader. But then it gets weird for the people of Israel. For they are told that they are to celebrate a festival. Their instructions are quite clear. They are to prepare a lamb to eat. They are to do so in a way that there are no leftovers. They are to go through their families and portion out how much lamb each person in their household will eat, and only cook that much. After we have stopped reading, in the rest of the chapter, we see that they are also supposed to bake bread without yeast, unleavened bread. The people of Israel are to have a celebration. They are to barbeque lamb. But their celebration is also supposed to have a sense of haste to it. They are to eat with their sandals on and their cloaks and staffs ready so that they can go. And they are to take blood from the lamb which they are eating and put it on their doorframe. If they follow this command, then the plague that hits the people of Egypt will pass over them. And they will be ready to go when they hear the call to leave.

This must have been a strange request for the people of Israel. First, they are called to have a feast, though they have not been delivered from slavery yet. You think they might worry that they are wasting resources. They are all told to take their most promising lambs and use them for the feast. They might argue that this is not the time for feasting. Perhaps after they have gotten out of Egypt they can do so, perhaps when they are hungry in the desert, the lamb will be much more needed. But God has given a command and they respond. Moses has promised them deliverance, but again and again, Pharaoh has changed his mind and you begin to wonder whether they really thought they would ever be able to go. And the rules for this feast are so specific. And then there is the odd request of the lamb’s blood on the door.

And yet, though what they were being asked to do was so very weird, the people of Israel followed Moses command, and did as he asked. And this is the moment that the exodus really began. This is the point where the people of Israel left Egypt and began their trek to the Promised Land. And this was the beginning of an annual celebrating which remembered that God passed over his own people, protecting them and saving them. God’s judgment came upon all the people in Egypt, but because of the lambs’ blood on their doors, the people of Israel were saved. The celebration of Passover was the center of their worship. It was Christmas and Easter wrapped up together. It was the place where they celebrated their freedom from slavery. It was the place where they celebrated their victory. And it is no coincidence that Jesus’ death came at the celebration of Passover. It is no coincidence that Jesus sat with his disciples and ate unleavened bread with them and drank from the cup with them and declared the bread his body and the cup his blood. When Jesus sat with his disciples and did this, it was during the Passover feast. It was when they were celebrating the freedom that God offered the people of Israel.

Now I had a teacher in college that really spent a lot of time looking for the shape of crosses in the Old Testament. He was a dearly loved teacher, and full of much wisdom, but I often felt that his classes were more like Sunday School than college. He would hold up a diagram of the temple that Israel worshipped at, and he would show how it was in the shape of a cross. He would point out the snake in the desert, on a pole and talk about how it was up on a cross. And he would talk about the doorframe that the lambs’ blood was on. He would point out that the doorframe would have blood on both sides and the top. And, if you connect the dots, this makes the shape of a cross. Many of us thought he was stretching just a bit with this. We would look at the tiles on the floor, where they intersect, point to them and say, Oh, look it’s the shape of a cross.

It is a stretch to see the physical shape of a cross in the blood on the doorways at Passover. But it is not a stretch to see this spiritually. You see, what that lambs’ blood did for the people of Israel, Jesus did for each of us on the cross. God saved his people from slavery, he protected them from plague. And he did this because of the blood that protected their doorways.

God saves us from that which oppresses us. And he does this because of the blood shed by his Son. When we talk about Jesus as the Lamb of God, it isn’t because we think he is sweet and cuddly. It is because he is the sacrifice that was offered in our place. He was sacrificed so that we can know life. He was laid down so that we can know salvation. He was killed so that we can begin our journey as we walk with our God and follow him out of our own slavery into his presence.

II. Remembering

The people of Israel didn’t always follow God the best. God rescued them from slavery. He took them out into the desert and promised to give them a land that was beyond their wildest dreams, one flowing with milk and honey. And even after having seen God work miracles and do great things for them, they still chose not to trust him again and again. Because of this, they spent 40 years in the desert. Because of this they found hardship after hardship as they wandered through that same desert. The lamb saved them, the lamb’s blood brought them out of slavery. But then they were called to follow God and obey God and trust God. At times, when they chose not to do this, they even contemplated returning to Egypt, returning to a life of slavery.

I fear that we sometimes are too much like the people of Israel. We refuse to trust the God that has led us this far. We refuse to remember that God goes with us on our journey and God is offering us a better destination than that which we came from.

It becomes particularly hard when we face the trials that this world brings, when we see the destruction of a hurricane, when we lose someone close to us. It becomes easy to wonder what God is all about. It is easy to think that we should just worry about ourselves and not follow this God who could let such a horrible thing happen in this world. It is easy to decide that it might be better back in Egypt, where at least things made sense. But then, for Israel, there was the Passover celebration. A time for them to remember the fact that God was faithful to them. It was a time that they could remember God had protected them from a horrible plague and God had rescued them from slavery. Hopefully their memory of this would help them to learn to trust God in their present situation. Hopefully by remembering that God had been faithful to them in the past, had saved them in the past, they could trust that God would be with them in the present as well.

III. Holy Communion

Today we celebrate communion together. We partake of Christ’s body and blood. We remember that Jesus is our Passover lamb. We celebrate that Jesus’ blood has saved us. But we don’t want to become like the people of Israel in the desert. We don’t want to allow ourselves to participate in this celebration regularly without paying attention to what it means. It means that God will be with us. It means that when God promises to do something he will stay true to that promise. It means that Jesus did something for us 2000 years ago, but he continues to be there for us today.

When we look at the pain and suffering in this world; when we feel overwhelmed by the loss that we see around us; we must remember that God is with us. We must allow him to work in the midst of evil. We must allow him to show himself in the midst of chaos. We must trust that he is there. Just as we trust that when we eat this bread and drink from this cup we are somehow receiving the body and blood of Christ. Jesus is our Passover lamb. He gave his life for us. As we celebrate communion today, let us remember this. Let us know the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf. And let this affect how we live and what we do. When you take that bread, know that Jesus offered his body up for you. When you drink from that cup, know that Jesus’ blood has set you free. When you celebrate communion, remember God’s faithfulness in the past. But also look to the present and look to the future. Remember that God is promising to be with you today. Know that God stands with you in the darkest place and comes alongside you and walks with you. And as you celebrate communion this morning, promise again to walk alongside God. Amen.

Exodus 3:1-15 "A Reluctant Leader"

In seminary, it was interesting talking to a whole group of people who went into ministry and discovering how they first felt that call. For each of us the call was different. For some, it came not just from ourselves but from those around us. I know I had a pastor when I was just a kid, not even through confirmation yet, who told me that I should consider ministry. As a sixth grader I must say I thought that was a silly idea. But that pastor was the first of many confirmations that lead me down the path that brought me to a place of professional ministry. But in seminary I was not the norm. You see the vast majority of people in seminary didn’t just come right through school. Many had done some other job first. I had a couple friends in seminary who were approaching retirement age, and had felt the call by God on their lives towards full time ministry. The vast majority, though, were in their 30’s or 40’s and saw God leading them to a new journey in their lives. Some had been Christians their whole lives, had been in leadership in their churches, but now were making the switch from lay leadership to full time ministry. Others became Christians later in life, and their new-found faith was calling them to give up what they had and move in a new direction. Some heard God speak quite clearly to them about this call on their lives, others saw the call more in the events around them. And many talked about how they fought the call for years if not decades.

In Moses, we see an 80-year-old man who is called to full time ministry, who is called by God to lead God’s people out of Egypt. It was not a job that Moses wanted. It was not something that he was prepared for. He had tried to do something for the people of Israel 40 years earlier and had failed miserably. But God called him to ministry and he followed God’s call and history was written.

I. Leaving Oppression

There is something amazing and powerful about the story of the people of Israel as they left the oppression and slavery they faced in Egypt and traveled for forty years to enter the Promised Land. It is an amazing story filled with miraculous occurrences. You have manna falling from heaven, you have water springing from rocks, you have donkeys speaking to their riders, you have people crossing the sea on dry land and you have bushes that are on fire but don’t burn up.

The exodus from Egypt has a resonance in it that is powerful. If you look particularly at many African-American spirituals that came out of the time of slavery before the civil war, they would continually reference Moses leading Israel out of slavery and leading them to someplace great. The slaves in America resonated with the slaves in Egypt as they longed for freedom from their slavery, as they looked for a God who would see their plight and respond. And though we don’t face slavery in quite the same way that the African-Americans did, nor as the people of Israel as they endured slavery in the land of Egypt; we do face our own bondages. And we know that as God looks down on us, he will remember us and deliver us from those things that we face. And we see that God will prepare a way for us through our trials and God will prepare people for us who will help us through that which we face.

These next three weeks we are going to look at this freedom from bondage that God offers. We are going to watch as God saved the people from Israel from slavery and brought them out of Egypt, and we are going to see how God can do the same for us, saving us from whatever slavery we face. And today we are going to look at the leader that God raised up to bring Israel out of Egypt, Moses.

Moses was an amazing leader. A true man of God who had a powerful relationship with God, arguing at times with God to protect the people of Israel from the consequences of their actions; receiving the Ten Commandments; and leading the people of Israel for 40 years as they wandered through the desert. If you truly want to get a sense of Moses’ leadership, I encourage you to read Deuteronomy, which is basically his last sermon to the people of Israel before he died. Powerful stuff!

But as we saw in today’s scripture, Moses wasn’t always the strong leader that Israel needed. In fact, Moses didn’t really want to do what God asked him to. He didn’t think he was up to the mission that God had given him. He was afraid. But if Moses had given into his fears, if Moses has allowed his doubts to cloud his call, Israel would never have left Egypt. And I wonder what kind of spirituals we would have if this were the case. And then I wonder whether we sometimes let our fear and our doubts get in our way so that we don’t follow where God leads, so that we don’t step up when God calls us.

II. A Burning Bush

The story of the burning bush is one of those that we learn earliest in life. We learn about how God appears to Moses and gives him his assignment and does so in a burning bush. But sometimes we allow our familiarity with a tale to distract us from it’s meaning. So let’s look at this scripture and see what it has to teach us about God, about Moses and about ourselves:

Chapter 3 of Exodus begins with Moses as a shepherd. It is amazing to me how God continues to go to shepherds and give them such important roles in his story. We have Moses, we have David and of course, we have the shepherds who were the first to see baby Jesus. So Moses is a shepherd, and not a young one. He is 80 years old. He had spent the first 40 years of his life growing up as an Egyptian prince. He was adopted by a daughter of the Pharaoh and lived the life of royalty. But then he struck out at an Egyptian who was mistreating an Israelite slave. And he killed this Egyptian. The Israelites feared him and the Egyptians were after him. He ran away to the Sinai Peninsula. In Sinai he married and became a shepherd and spent the next forty years of his life. And now, after having lived two full and very different lives, Moses was probably ready to sit down and retire. He was probably ready to enjoy the last years of his life in peace and quiet. But as he is caring for his sheep he sees something that amazes him. A bush that seems to be on fire, but that doesn’t burn up. And Moses is curious so he goes to check it out. This is where things begin to get weird for him. For he hears a voice call to him from within the bush, and the voice calls him by name, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses responds, “Here I am.” This is the first thing to notice about Moses’ call, it is a call given directly to him. It is a message for him alone. God calls out to him by name. When we are called to serve God it isn’t always as clear as it was for Moses. I don’t think I know one person in any sort of ministry who has seen a burning bush that called to them by name. But putting that aside, it is worth knowing that God does call us specifically. God doesn’t have a bunch of things he wants done in this world and just pick names out of a hat and assign them. It may sometimes feel like that, after all, we often find ourselves doing this sort of calling at church. We need this many Sunday School teachers and so we are just going to ask people until we get enough people to say yes. But this is not the way that God works. No, God prepares us for ministry and prepares our ministries for us. Everything that Moses had done up to that point was preparing him for leading Israel out of bondage. Moses had gone through much and it was all designed very intentionally to make him ready for what would come. The same is true for us. The joys we’ve had, the struggles we’ve faced, all these are there to prepare us for what is to come in our lives. We can think, like Moses, that we’ve already done everything that is important. Instead we need to be prepared to allow God to send us. And we need to be ready to hear God’s call when it comes, and not ignore it but allow it to speak to us, to call us by name. When you get that call from the Christian Education committee or from the Nominating committee, listen to see if God is speaking to you through them. Is God calling you by name? Is God pushing you to continue a ministry you are involved in or move into a new kind of ministry in your life? How are you going to respond to the call?

Moses responds to God’s calling him by name by saying “here I am”. It is a simple response. It is a safe response. He acknowledges that he is there, in God’s presence, but he hasn’t committed to anything yet. Smart. God tells him to take off his shoes because he is standing on holy ground. I’m very thankful that that is not something that we always have to do when we enter holy ground, take off our shoes. But there is a more important question here, what is it that makes this ground holy? Is it just holy because of where it is? Are there places in this world that by their very nature are holy? Or is there something more to it. Perhaps it is holy because of the bush that is burning on it. Or perhaps it is because it is a place where God is speaking.

Other people have crossed over that spot of earth since Moses. We can be sure of this. And no bush burned and no voice spoke to them. The place wasn’t holy when they passed over that space in the same way it was holy when God spoke to Moses there. I think what made the place holy is that it was a place where a person met with their God and where God gave that person a mission. God gave Moses a purpose. God gave Moses direction. And I believe that this is what made this into a holy place. A holy act was about to happen, and so God created a holy place for it.

We gather in this sanctuary and worship God here. We like to think of this as a holy place. We treat it different than other places we inhabit. No, we don’t take off our shoes as we enter this place, but there are certain unwritten rules that we follow in the sanctuary. They’re different for each of us. For some of us, we show its holiness by the way we dress. For others, we act different in church, more subdued. There are certain things that we would never think of doing in this place. The college I went to had originally been owned by the Catholic Church and was a school for Nuns. The chapel in the college was beautiful. When the nuns were ready to sell it there were two interested parties: our college and a police academy. The police academy wanted to take the chapel and turn it into a shooting range. Even though our college offered less money, the nuns sold it to us because we would continue to treat their chapel as a holy place. What is it that makes this place holy to us? Is it holy to us because it was holy to our parents and grandparents before us? Is it holy to us because we are told that it is holy? Or is it holy to us because it is also a place where we meet our God and where we find our mission?

III. God’s Mission and Moses’ Arguments

And now we come to the part in scripture where we see God give Moses his mission, his call. God doesn’t just tell Moses to go do this. He explains the need to Moses and gives Moses the chance to get behind it. He tells Moses about the suffering of the people of Israel and how he has heard this suffering and is going to act on their behalf. When God calls us he prepares us for this by making the need known to us. He gets us excited about making a difference. He fills us with a passion for that which he sends us to. If he is calling us to mission work, he fills us with a passion for the lost. If he is calling us to ministries of compassion and justice, he fills us with a passion for the poor and the weak. If he is calling us to work with children, he fills us with a passion for the young.

But we, like Moses, can argue with him about this. We can make excuses. We’re too old, we’re too young, we don’t know what we’re doing, nobody will take us seriously, we’ve already got too much going on in our lives with work and family, we cannot commit to something else, anyway that’s that pastor’s job, isn’t it? The list of excuses can go on and on. But if God is really calling us to a ministry, the excuses will not last. I have to say that in seminary I talked to a number of second career pastors who talked about having the call to ministry on their lives long before they accepted that call. They again and again talked about fighting that call in their lives. And they again and again talked about how God eventually wore them down and here they were in training for ministry. And their stories were always told as “don’t let this happen to you” stories. There is no pride in their struggle with God. It is not something that they are happy they did. They all wish they had given in to God’s will sooner. They wish they hadn’t spent so much time arguing with God.

Don’t let the fact that they all ended up going to seminary fool you though, for sometimes that is the place that God calls us, and other times God calls us to other ministry opportunities that are quite different. We are all called to ministry within our church; within our community; within our families. This ministry looks different for each of us. What is God calling for you to do? Don’t believe for a second that God is done with you. He still has a use for each of us. And don’t believe that he only calls some of his children to ministry. We are all called to lives of ministry in all we do. So what is God calling you to? How does he want you to serve him? How are you able to serve? Open yourself up to God’s call. Listen to see where he might send you. And when he calls, follow. Moses discovered that he had no option but to go where God led. He discovered that as God called him to ministry, God provided his resources for him in ministry. God will do the same for you. Perhaps God is calling you to full time ministry. If so, answer this call. But more likely, he is calling you to some other ministry in this church, in this community. Are you going to listen? Are you going to answer his call?