You see yourself as the initiator in almost everything you're doing. And if anything, you're trying to get God to come alongside your plans and to bless them. But see, you reverse the process. God is the initiator. Rescue belongs to him.
God merely invites you into what he's doing. In the divine dance, God always takes the lead. Thanks for joining us today for the Summit Life podcast with J.D. Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vitovich.
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Now, today Pastor JD walks us through Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush. Let's not wait any longer. Open your Bible to Exodus chapter 3 and let's join Pastor JD. Good morning, Summit Church at all of our campuses. If you have a Bible this morning, and I hope you do, if you will meet me in Exodus chapter 3.
Exodus chapter 3, I think this chapter is going to be really helpful for some of you this morning because this encounter we're going to look at in Exodus 3 speaks to anybody who's ever found themselves feeling insecure about anything or fearful about some assignment that you've been given or worried about your ability to measure up to that assignment. Maybe it's a new task that you've been given, a new role that you're having to play. I read an article this week about the prevalence of what they call imposter syndrome in our culture. You may have heard of that. That's the idea that you're a fraud, totally insufficient for whatever position you're in, and soon everybody's going to figure that out.
People that you would never think have this are consumed by it. Maya Angelou, the great poet, says, she said, every time I write a book, every time I face that blank yellow pad to start writing. The challenge is just overwhelming. She says, I've written 11. If you wrote 11 best-selling books, I feel like you should be confident at that point, right?
She says, but every time I think, uh-oh, they're going to figure it out now. I've run a game on everybody. I don't really have anything to say. And now they're going to figure me out. Did you ever feel like that about something that you're dealing with?
Insecurity is a voice inside of you that whispers, I'm not blank enough. I'm not blank. What what most often goes into that blank for you? Think about it. In fact, maybe just take a note, write it down on the margin there, because we'll come back to it.
I'm not smart enough. I'm not funny enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not spiritual enough. I'm not.
young enough I'm the wrong age, I'm the wrong gender. What is it that when you're nursing your doubts and your insecurities? What is it that goes into that blank? For you. By the way, many of our brothers and sisters in our prison campuses have told me that they feel this when it comes time for their release.
One of them told me, he said, I'm just not sure how to function anymore in the real world. I'm not even sure if I have what it takes to survive in the real world anymore. Exodus 3 opens up with Moses as a pretty defeated man. Moses had started out his life with a lot of advantages. Remember, he was a beautiful child by his own description, which means that he did not lack confidence.
But I do think it's safe for us to assume he was a pretty good looking guy. He'd been raised in Pharaoh's house, which means he had access to all the advantages of the royal family. But then one day, at around age 40 or so, he'd gotten really incensed at the Egyptian mistreatment of some of his fellow Jews, and he felt like he was supposed to do something about that. And he ends up killing an Egyptian soldier. Pharaoh reacts poorly to that and puts a death sentence on Moses' head.
And then the Jewish people that he tried to rescue rejected him. In chapter 2, verse 14, when Moses came to them after he'd killed the Egyptian, they were like, Who are you? Who made you our Savior? I mean, y'all, it's a bad day at work, right? Everybody hates you, your boss fires you, then you kill someone on the way to the parking lot.
That was basically Moses' 40th birthday.
Well, needless to say, it left Moses feeling pretty defeated. And so between chapters two and three, Moses wanders in the desert for 40 years nursing his failure. His confidence had been shaken to its core. Chapter 3, verse 1.
Now Moses was keeping the flock of his... Father-in-law, Jethro, let's stop right there. When you're approaching retirement and you're still living in your father-in-law's basement, watching his sheep. That's a fail in any culture, am I right? And he led the flock to the west side.
Of the wilderness and came to Hereb, the mountain of God. By the way, Mount Hereb. is another name for Mount Sinai. That's ultimately where God is going to descend before Israel in a cloud and give them the law and the blueprints for the tabernacle. It's going to be at this very place.
And that's going to be a very important detail that we'll come back to. Verse 2, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. Moses looked, and behold, it was a bush that was burning, yet The bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside. to see this great sight, why the bush is not really burned.
When the Lord saw verse 4, that he turned aside to see. God called to him out of the bush. By the way, I cannot help but wonder. how different Moses' life would have turned out. If Moses had not stopped.
Because it was when he stopped and turned that God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. Moses said, here I am. Then the voice that was in the bush said, Do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet for the place on which you're standing. Is holy ground, and God said.
I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Moses hid his face because Moses was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said. Moses, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have. heard their cry because of their taskmasters.
I know their sufferings. And I have come down to deliver them. All that is extremely important, which is why I highlighted several things. We will come back to that. Verse 8 again.
I've 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 that's flowing with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanites. The Hittites and the Amorites and the Prizzites and the Hivites and the Uptites, those are the Baptists. I'm just kidding, that's not what it says. Verse 10: So now go, I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people.
The Israelites out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, Who am I? Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt? By the way, Scholars say that that question is an echo of a question. That the Israelites had thrown into Moses' face the first time he tried to rescue them.
If you looked in chapter 2, verse 14 a minute ago when I called it out. You'll see that when Moses showed up to help them, they literally said, who are you? Scholars say that the repetition of the question here, the way Moses says it. Shows that their criticism, their doubt of him, had seeped down into his soul. Has that happened to you?
Somebody's criticism, a parent's, a teacher's. A coach's, a spouse's, a friend's. Their criticism has gone on for so long that the words have seeped into your soul. Whenever you're about to do something, that voice plays like a soundtrack in your ears. Who do you think you are?
You're not good enough. You're not smart enough. You've never been good enough. That's what's happening with Moses here. I want you to notice that God is very sensitive when he responds to Moses, at least the first couple of times.
Because God knows where Moses is coming from. Verse 12: And God said, But Moses, I will be with you. He doesn't rebuke Moses. But he also doesn't do positive self-talk with him either, does he? He doesn't say, Moses, look into the mirror and repeat after me, my name is Moses.
And I'm smart and I'm funny, and talk onto people like me. Say that, Moses, until you believe it. Visualize walking into Pharaoh's court and taking none of that pop psychology stuff. Just I'll be with you. Verse 13, Moses replies.
So suppose I say to the Israelites, The God of your fathers has sent me to you. And then they asked me, Or what is his name? Verse 14. What is his name? Then what will I tell them?
God said to Moses, I am who I am. That's what you're to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. This is the personal name for God in Hebrew. I am.
I am, it's built on the four Hebrew consonants, Y H W H or Yod, He, Wa, Hei, which in Hebrew spells the verb I am. Your Bible may write it like this: may write it as capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, in small caps.
Now, what that indicates is that the proper name for God, I am Yahweh.
Now, what's interesting when you read Genesis, that was the name that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had all called God by. But up until now in Exodus, everybody has referred to God simply as Elohim. Elohim is more like a title. It's like saying pastor or Mr. President or your honor.
It's a title that you call somebody, not an intimate name that you use with them when you know them. What the author is showing us is that somewhere along the way, Israel had forgotten God's personal name. Yahweh. God had become distant to them. He was a God that they feared, but not a God they knew or trusted in.
So, God reveals this personal name again to Moses. It is a personal name, it is also a mysterious name. I just am. You see, in Hebrew, names were a big deal. Names always indicated where you were from or whose son you were.
Right, and you've heard the way they say this: that so-and-so of such and such. I am so-and-so, son of such and such. When God says, I am, He was saying, I don't have a beginning or ending. I didn't come from anywhere. I'm not going anywhere.
I've always been there, and I always will be there. And now you can see the symbolism of the fire in the bush, right? The text says the fire burned in the bush without burning up the bush. Fires need fuel, it's how they work. But the fire that Moses saw in the bush was self-sustaining.
It needed no external fuel. It just burned in the bush without burning up the bush. God, the eternal I am, needs no external fuel. Nothing preceded him. Nothing created him.
If you could go back to the beginning of how all this universe started, he'd be there just as he is, eternal and unchanged. He is without beginning or end. In fact, scholars say yahweh is supposed to sound like breathing with an exhale, and then a way, an inhale. He is our breath. He's the basis of everything else.
He is the source that gives life to everything else, and he will be there when all of it ends. And I know if you try to get your mind around that, it feels like it's going to implode. I already see sparks and smoke coming out of some of your ears, and that's okay. Your mind is finite, wired in time for time, mathematically incapable of thinking back beyond the boundaries of time. That's just how God set up your brain to work.
But there's got to be something beyond the beginning because the universe can't be eternal. I mean, even some of our famous atheist scientists acknowledge that. They don't know what the answer is, but they acknowledge the problem. Carl Sagan, for example, freely acknowledges. He acknowledges the problem of an infinite universe.
He says it's self-evident that nothing times nobody can't equal everything. He called this one of the universe's irresolvable mysteries. He famously said, the universe is not obliged to make sense to us. And it does it. Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time talks about the challenge of imagining something before the Big Bang.
What's before the Big Bang? What caused the Big Bang? What materials were in the Big Bang? And where do they come from? He says, it doesn't make sense, but I don't have any resolution to it.
Sadly, both these guys refuse to allow that what's behind it could be God. But they leave themselves in a dilemma claiming that nature has to be responsible for something for which there can be no natural explanation.
something not mathematically possible within a finite set of materials that we have to work with.
Now, to be clear, the Bible doesn't explain it all. It just recognizes that there is something that nature alone cannot explain, and that thing is supernatural or above nature. Which is what supernatural literally means. And that thing that is above nature is the great I am, the one without beginning or ending, the eternal present, the one who just is. He doesn't show up before Moses with a philosophy book and explanations of himself.
Moses could not have grasped them if God had given them. What he does is expose us, listen occasionally to mind-bending things for which there is no natural explanation. Like a burning bush? or the life and resurrection of Jesus. or fulfilled prophecy.
or a miracle in your life. Things about which you say, I don't know how to explain what's there, but it shows me there's something beyond the physical world. Did you notice, by the way, that Moses stopped and turned aside? Moses stopped, and that's when God spoke to him. I say that because that's what's happening to some of you right now.
Somebody's invited you here, something's been happening in your life, and God is saying to you: stop, stop, turn aside. Turn aside because I got something to say to you. That's another sermon for another day. But right now, I just want to show you what this encounter indicates about God's involvement in our lives. Scripture shows us, this encounter shows us five crucial principles for how each of us encounter God.
Here they are. Number one. God takes the initiative, not us. God takes the initiative, not us. God was the one who started this conversation.
Moses wasn't out in the mountain looking for God. Asking God with his plan to help him liberate Israel. No, mm mm rescue was God's idea. God takes the initiative and he comes to Moses and he invites Moses into his plan. That's why I pointed out verse 7.
I have seen, I have heard, I have come down. And all the great movements of the Bible, all of them, God is the one who takes the initiative. It is never some man or woman. In Scripture, who says to God, okay, God, it is time for deliverance, and here's the plan. And here's how I need you to help me, God.
Those kinds of situations always turn out badly, like Moses in the previous chapter killing the Egyptian. No, in all the great stories of the Bible, God takes the initiative and he calls a man or a woman or a group of people, sometimes who aren't even looking for him. He calls them into his purposes.
Now, we kind of nod our heads, but most of us don't think like that, do we? You see yourself as the initiator in almost everything you're doing. And if anything, you're trying to get God to come alongside your plans and to bless them. Let's see, you reverse the process. God is the initiator.
Rescue belongs to him. God merely invites you into what he's doing. In the divine dance, God always takes the lead. By the way, when you get the order right... You don't even have to pray about your plans as much because God's plans come pre-blessed.
Since they were his ideas to begin with. At least you pray about it in a different way. God takes the initiative, not us. There's principle one, but there's a balance to this point, and it's principle two. God moves in response to prayer.
So it's clear that God takes the initiative, but it's also clear in this chapter that God ties his moving. to the prayers of his people. Laced throughout this story are references to the cries of the people, like verse 7. I've heard their cry. Or the way chapter two ended, Israel's cry for rescue from slavery finally came up to God.
So I want you to put principles one and two together. Principle one, you can only join God in what He's doing because He's the initiator. But principle two, We are to live in a posture of crying out to God to do something. God comes in response to his people's cries. And that's why we've got to be serious about prayer.
Over the break, I heard our friend John Tyson speak. And he drew a fascinating contrast between two villages in Jesus' life. Nazareth and Bethany. Jerusalem was Jesus' major city, but Nazareth and Bethany were the two most significant villages in Jesus' life. Nazareth was the village where Jesus had grown up.
His relatives lived in Nazareth. His elementary school teacher would have been in Nazareth. His first Sabbath instructor, the first person to give him a job, lived in Nazareth. He had a lot of natural affection for Nazareth. But Jesus was consistently questioned and doubted in Nazareth.
And as a result, Matthew 13, 58, Jesus did very few miracles in Nazareth. Bethany was where Jesus did a lot of his miracles. In fact, go back and look at how many different miracles are going to be tied to Bethany. Bethany was where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. You ever wonder why did Jesus go there to raise somebody from the dead?
Why didn't he go to Nazareth? Think about what else happened to Jesus in Bethany. Bethany was where Mary had sat at Jesus' feet, desperate to hear him. Bethany was where she'd poured out the ointment over Jesus' feet and dried it, you know, washed his feet with her tears and dried it with her hair in the week before leading up to Jesus' crucifixion. Get this.
After Jesus resurrected, Bethany was the place that Jesus went. Acts 1, it was from Bethany that Jesus ascended back to heaven. Nazareth was where Jesus was from. Bethany is where Jesus went to. Nazareth was where Jesus grew up, but Bethany was where he showed up.
Anyone to know why? Because that's where he was wanted. I'm telling you, there are some dead people left in graves in Nazareth because Jesus wasn't wanted there.
So some of the question is, how much do we want Jesus? Here. I don't want dead people left in graves here. Because how much we want Jesus is shown by how diligently we pray during seasons like this one. Jim Simbel, a pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle up in New York, he always says, You can always tell how popular the pastor is.
How popular the worship team is. By who shows up on Sundays to hear the preaching and participate in worship? But you can tell how popular Jesus is. By who shows up at prayer meeting.
So thanks for being here this weekend. I hope to see you this coming Friday. Because this Friday we come to cry out to God. It's not a performance, y'all. Worship team is not performing.
I'm not performing. We come together to crowd to God because we are desperate to see him work. At least I hope you are. We got seasons of fasting and prayer because we want God to move and we fast. Because we want to be sensitive to where he's moving.
I've told you, fasting does not put God in a better mood to hear us. Please don't insult the finished work of Christ by saying, God will hear me now that I skip a meal. The blood of Jesus is all you need for God to be kindly disposed to your request. What fasting does is it puts you in a better posture to hear from Him.
so that you can pray more effectively because the prayers that start in heaven are the ones heard by heaven.
So we don't fast to get God to hear from us. We fast so that we can hear from him. All right, so here's number three, because God is the initiator. Here's your third principle, because he's the initiator, he's also the supplier. Because God took the initiative.
He was responsible to supply the power.
So when Moses asked God, who am I and how am I sufficient for this task? God doesn't respond by affirming anything about Moses. He just says, I'm with you, Moses. From this point on, it doesn't matter who you are, it only matters who I am. Chapter 4, Moses again is going to object to God's choice of him.
In fact, look at it: chapter 4, verse 10. Moses describes himself as being slow of speech and tongue. Which scholars say probably means he had a speech impediment. At this point, God's answers start to become a little bit more direct. Because Moses' questions, listen, have gone from insecurity to unbelief.
And eventually God says verse 11. Moses, would you shut up about your mouth? Who do you think made man's mouth? And by the way, Moses, I got way bigger things for you than giving speeches anyway. I'm going to give you the power to make hail fall from the sky and to turn the Nile to blood, and I'm going to be the power in all that you're going to do.
Believe me, Moses, I can handle your words. Verse 13, Moses persisted a fourth time. Oh my Lord. Please send somebody else. Watch this.
Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. And God said, well, is there not Aaron, your brother the Levite? God was like, if you insist that you can't do the speaking part, I'll send Aaron along and he can speak in your place, which I know sounds like God is letting Moses off the hook. But see, that disbelief costs Moses pretty dearly. See, Aaron ends up being a pretty unreliable lieutenant.
At one point, he leads the children of Israel to construct a golden calf in Moses' absence. And in the book of Numbers, he's going to get really publicly critical about Moses. Listen, I want you to hear this. This is an unbelievably important lesson. The great temptation in any divine assignment is always to try to supplement the promises of the Spirit by the power of the flesh.
Here at Summit Life, our mission is simple, to deepen people's understanding of the power of the gospel and advance that great news wider into the world. Just remember, deep and wide. You see, we believe that everyone should have access to the life-changing truth of Jesus Christ. And through radio, podcasts, devotionals, and more, Summit Life is working hard to make that happen. but we can't do it without the prayers and generosity of friends like you.
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So, would you consider joining us with your gift today? Call us at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. or visit jdgreer.com to start your partnership with us today. The temptation is always for you to try to find an errand that feels more reliable to you than God's promise.
Listen, in any divine assignment, there's going to come a time of testing where you feel like you can't do it. And in that moment, you're going to be tempted to try to accomplish by the flesh what can only be done by the spirit. Abraham did that with Ishmael, remember? God had promised to give Abraham and Sarah a son in their old age, but Abraham got impatient.
So he turns to Hagar, his younger house servant. He impregnates her so he can help God out with the promise. But that union produced Ishmael, and Ishmael and his descendants became a major source of strife to Abraham's descendants for many years to come. The Apostle Paul uses Abraham and Hagar and Ishmael as a metaphor in the book of Galatians to warn us never to try to finish in the flesh what God promises through the Spirit. In any divine assignment, I'll say it again, there's gonna come a time.
Of testing where you feel like you can't do it, and in that moment, you're gonna be tempted to try to accomplish by the flesh what can only be done by the spirit. If God started it in the Spirit, He's got to finish it by the Spirit.
Now, some of you at this point are like, okay, Pastor, I get this. Yeah, yeah, I'm there, but practically what does that look like? Because I don't want to try to accomplish something in the flesh, but I also don't think God wants me to sit around me doing nothing, right? I mean, you're like, I'm working to provide for myself. Is that trying to help God out in the flesh?
I don't just wait for God in the Spirit to magically put money in my bank account. Or for me, I work hard to study for these messages. I use all my intelligence and all my skill and all my energy to make them as good as I can possibly make them. In doing that, am I trying to supplement the Spirit's power with my flesh? Or maybe you're like, look, I'm doing my best to parent these kids.
As a parent, I don't sit around and say, well, I'm just going to let go and let God. Right? I'm not going to do anything. It's got to be a spirit thing. See, like on the one hand, I don't want to take over in the flesh, what God can only do in the spirit, but I also know I'm supposed to be.
Doing stuff using the means that God gave me. You ever have that question, by the way? What's it actually mean to trust God? How do you know if you're acting in the spirit or acting in the flesh? You ever ask that?
That's a great question. Here's my answer. There are two telltale signs that you've taken something over in the flesh. They are A, you compromise the laws of God. Or B, you lose the peace of God.
You compromise the laws of God. That's what Abraham and Moses did. Abraham took on a mistress. Not his wife to obtain the heir. Moses killed a guy.
For you, it might look like this. In an attempt to financially get stable. You cheat on your taxes. Or you overwork. And cheat your family.
Or you fail to tithe. In all these cases, you're breaking the laws of God in order to accomplish some purpose you think is good. Or you're not happy in your marriage.
So you leave your marriage to find happiness in another relationship. Or you're not content to wait on God's choice for your marriage, so you lower your standards and date somebody you shouldn't be dating, and everybody tells you you shouldn't be dating. Or you start living with your boyfriend or girlfriend because you don't want to be single. You compromise the laws of God in an attempt to accomplish the purposes of God. Here's the other telltale sign.
You lose the peace of God. This is what more often happens to me, okay? You can tell you've taken something over in the flesh because you start to worry about it all the time. You started to carry the weight of the assignment on you. It keeps you up at night.
You lose sleep over it. I'm not talking to anybody. You got this frenetic sense of panic, desperation. I gotta fix this, I gotta take care of this. As a parent, I experience this.
You start to carry all the weight. What if I don't do everything right? You think my kids are making bad choices? What did I do wrong as if it were all up to you? I will tell you from experience, that is a crushing, shame-inducing weight.
I heard Tim Ferriss, the leadership guru, not a Christian. Talk about this practice that he instituted in the early days of one of his startup companies that helped me out so much. But some of the best spiritual advice I got came from a guy who wasn't even trying to be spiritual. This guy, Tim Ferris, hired a virtual assistant in India. Who would take care of online tasks, pay bills, make reservations, and so forth.
So at the end of every workday, he would send her an email with a list of things to do. And because the day and night is flipped over there, their day is our night, and vice versa, she'd work through the night, his night, and when he got there the next morning, all the work would be done and waiting for him when he got up.
So one afternoon, just he said on a whim, as he was writing down his list for her, he wrote down. Like number five, and I'm really worried about this problem in our company, and it's keeping me up at night.
So I would like for you to worry about that for me tonight. He said when he got up the next morning, he had an email from her which said, Dear Mr. Ferris. I just want you to know I was up all night worried sick about that thing. And so now I turn it back over to you.
He said, I know it's stupid. I know it's stupid. And I don't know what it was, but just knowing she was over there awake worrying about these things helped me sleep at night. And if she was worrying about it, I didn't have to.
Now, I read that and I thought, well, that's what actually God does with me, but it's not stupid. He says, Cast your burdens on me and let me carry the weight of these things. He stays up at night so I don't have to. And I just get up every morning and do what he tells me to do. No, listen, I get up every day now.
In fact, this is why I do my quiet time in the morning because I know that every day JD needs to hear this. I get up every day and remind myself that all God has invited me to do is join him in what he is doing because rescue belongs to him. Start to finish. Whether I'm talking about reaching somebody for Jesus, parenting my kids, providing for my family, writing a message, or producing fruit in my spiritual life, he carries the weight for all of those things. Rescue belongs to him.
And all of those things, he's the actor, I'm the responder. He's the I am, I'm the I'm not, and that's why we make such a great pair. Right? I'm a big ball of helpless need. He's the endless I am.
Told you, I love Ephesians 2:10. I quote it to you all the time: God has preordained good works that we should go and walk in them. Preordained. I love that. It means God has already appointed them.
It means they are already out there. God's already decided what they are. And it also means the power to do them is already supplied. I just got to get up and go join God in what he's already preordained for me to do because the initiator is also the supplier. I'm telling you, it is such an incredibly peaceful way to live.
Number four. God heals your world, we see in this story from the place he healed you. It cannot be accidental. Right? It can't be accidental that Mount Hereb, aka Mount Sinai.
Where God calls Moses and heals him of his shame and insecurity. Cannot be accidental, though that's the very place that God's going to use Moses to give the Ten Commandments and lay the plans for the tabernacle. That's another pattern, y'all, that you're going to see over and over and over in the Bible. Your brokenness becomes the place from which God uses you in the lives of others. In the book of 2 Corinthians, Paul said to the Corinthians, Blessed be the God of all comfort.
Who comforts us in all of our affliction so that. We may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction. With the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted by God. It is from the place of my brokenness, my affliction, from the place that I receive comfort that. You most often become an instrument of healing to somebody else.
And so for God's servants, listen. He usually takes them through a wilderness of failure before he uses them. You can see that with not just Moses. How about Paul? I could pick pretty much any Bible person and illustrate this.
Before Paul's conversion, Paul had seen himself as a pretty capable instrument for God. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He won all the scholarships. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees.
So God had to take all that pride and strip it out of him and his self-confidence and cut him down.
So he struck him blind for a while. Then he made him live in obscurity for 17 years. Then he gave him a permanent thorn in the flesh, a weakness in his flesh that Paul pleaded for God to take away, and God never did. It's because God was breaking Paul so that he could use Paul. You can even see it in the transformation of Paul's name.
Paul was not his original name, Saul was the original name. Saul was his pre-Jesus name. Saul was a strong Jewish name. Taken from the king who literally stood head and shoulders above everybody else. Better call Saul, right?
We didn't make that up. That was their thing. The name Paul, by contrast, literally means in Greek, you know what it means? Small. In order for Saul to become useful in God's kingdom, Saul the mighty needed to become Paul the small.
Because here's the thing: God couldn't use Saul. Saul the accomplished Pharisee couldn't help the churches. He couldn't write letters that would help me. Saul, the perfect Pharisee, might impress the churches. but he couldn't help them.
But the Paul that had walked through pain and failure, the Paul who believed that he was the chief of sinners. The Paul who could testify that God would be faithful even in our darkest days, that when the power of death overwhelms us, the power of resurrection surges inside us, that's a guy who can help me. The best parts of Jesus, friend, you can only learn in the valley of the shadow of death. God's got to transform you from Saul the mighty into Paul the small. In fact, A.W.
Tozer famously said it like this: It's doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until. His first hurt him deeply. It's not that God is the one who wounds you. Listen. He's just allowing you to be wounded.
So that you can testify to his healing and his help.
So, my question is: where has he allowed you to be wounded? See, that's likely where he's going to use you because from that place you will be able to minister to people. From the place of your woundedness, your misery becomes your ministry. One commentator says it like this: I love this. Moses spent 40 years in Egypt becoming something.
Right? He was a big deal. Then he spent 40 years in the desert learning he was nothing. Many spent 40 years in the wilderness proving God was everything. And he could do that in the wilderness.
Because of those 40 years in the desert. He could say to the Israelites, I've known that fear. I heard those voices. I felt that shame and I'm telling you, all that you need, Israel, is the great I am. Y'all, I look back on my life now.
At 32 years old, I look back at my life. And I recognize. I recognize that the most valuable places in my life are places that I've grown the most. The places that I can now be most helpful to you as a pastor. They've very rarely have they been places where I've done well.
They almost always flow from the places that I've failed or struggled and found God faithful anyway. And I know you're like, ooh, tell us about those places, Pastor. And I do from time to time, okay, get off your horse. But y'all know some of it is too personal and too embarrassing. But those are the places I can best help you from because, like Charles Spurgeon said, those are the places that the storm waves of my life pressed me up against the rock of ages, and I found it solid.
So the best of what I give you each weekend comes from those places. She's been good for my seminary time and I love my seminary time. It comes from those places of brokenness. I've always loved this quote by the great missionary Hudson Taylor: God wants to give you something better than riches and gold. Better than personal charisma or talent.
And that thing he wants to give you is helpless dependence on him. And see, that's something I can pass on to you. Whatever charisma or talent I have, whether it's a little or a lot, whether it's more than you or less than you, I can't pass that on to you. What I can pass on to you is God's faithfulness when you are helplessly dependent on Him. I don't know who you are or what situation you're in, but what I can give to you is a God who is always faithful and infallibly the great I am.
So where's that happening to you right now? Or is he letting you experience failure? Where is he letting you feel your inabilities? Maybe it's in your marriage. Maybe it's in your parenting.
Maybe it's a job failure. Maybe it's something that's happened to you. Maybe it's you're wrestling with an addiction. You just can't say, count on it, friend. God is doing something in you right there.
And if you let him, you will one day bring others back to that very spot, that Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai in your life, and you will minister to them from there. Your misery will become your ministry. All right, fifth. And maybe biggest lesson. True.
You are not. But you know I am. Moses said repeatedly, God, I can't do this. And let's be honest, y'all, he had good reason to say that, didn't he? He had personal failures.
He'd killed an Egyptian. That's a hard thing to come back from. He had personal disabilities. He had a speech impediment. That is not an auspicious beginning for a preacher.
He had personal doubts. Others had been really critical of him and their words had wounded him deeply. And when Moses brought all those things up to God, God said, Yep, that's all true. I am more than all of those things. And from this point on, Moses, it is not about who you are, it's about who I am.
You know, interestingly, Moses' insecurities. kept him from seeing how God had actually specially prepared him for the task he had for him. Right? And you think about it. For 40 years now, Moses had led sheep through that wilderness, the very wilderness that he would one day lead Israel through on their way to Egypt.
That means he knew where all the water holes were. It means he knew where all the danger spots were, where the mountain passes were. In the Egyptian palace, Moses had learned how to set up a government, how to write laws, how to organize large groups of people. Most Hebrews could not read or write, at least, very well. God had given Moses special training and all of that so that one day he could write the five books of the Bible that we call the Pentateuch.
In many ways, y'all, this burning bush is supposed to be like Moses' karate kid, Mr. Miyagi moment. Remember that? Where Daniel's frustrated that Mr. Miyagi has made him do all this manual labor and he's yelling at Mr.
Miyagi and Miyagi suddenly goes, send the floor! Daniel Duzzett realizes that all this seemingly useless labor has given him the skill to become a karate champion. And somehow Mr. Miyagi has transformed him into a black belt in like three weeks. Which is amazing, right?
Through manual labor. This should have been Moses' Mr. Miyagi moment. But see, Moses hadn't been able to see it because he'd failed to see that the great I am was in every single thing, the bad and the good. Overcoming his weaknesses and using them redemptively to shape him.
And I would guess that's been happening for some of you. You also are blind to where God has been faithfully at work preparing you because of your unbelief in God's goodness towards you. What you don't realize is that all your life he has been faithful and there's a world of opportunity out there for you. There's a place of ministry if you would just embrace that God has been working in your life redemptively in every moment, preparing you through the good and the bad, through the ups and the downs, through the triumphs and the tragedies. In all of it, there is a through line, a melody that is written by a redeeming God, the great I am who has been calling you.
Moses says to God, who am I? God says to Moses, it doesn't matter who you are anymore, it matters who I am. Moses says, but I'm not eloquent. I'm not polished. I'm not successful.
And God says, well, I didn't choose you because you were any of those things. I got enough of all those things for the both of us. In fact, I'd rather not have the guy that says, oh, God, pick me, pick me, because I'm awesome, because that guy's just going to clog the lineup. That guy's always going to be so enamored with his own power that he's never going to experience mine. He's going to stare at himself in the mirror thinking about how incredible he is.
He's going to take credit for whatever I do. No, God says you are not Moses. That's why I chose you because I am and you may not be but I always am and my amness will overcome your notness. Moses says, but they say I'm not very good. They say I'm not very good.
God says it doesn't matter what they say. It matters what I say. But God, I'm not very consistent. God, I always mess stuff up. God says, yet, I'm very consistent, and I don't mess anything up.
My strength is made perfect in weakness, and who began a good work in you will complete it all the way to Jesus Christ.
Some of you are at a place right now in your life where all you can think about are the deficiencies and the worries and the inadequacy about what's ahead of you. I might imagine God saying to you this weekend, you don't even really know the half of it. You're a lot more. Insufficient than you think you are. You're so weak and small.
You can't even guarantee you'll be alive tomorrow. In fact, you're so weak and small that for you to make some guarantee about tomorrow is a foolish and sinful boast of pride, James 4. You're like the wisp of smoke that the wind wafts away and nobody remembers. You're like a blade of grass that's here today and gone tomorrow. You step on it, don't even know you did it, and it's gone.
In the scope of the universe, you are so small and insignificant. You're just a dot on a dot on a dot in a backwoods part of a galaxy that is only one of billions and billions of galaxies that the slightest solar flare could wipe you out. You are way more insignificant than you think. This just turned out awesome. I'm not sure.
That makes me feel very small and very insignificant. Yo, listen, like Louie Giglio says, I'm not trying to make you feel small, I'm trying to tell you that you are small. That's a huge difference. I'm trying to get you to see that you are not, but it doesn't matter because He is I am. And so you need to apply his I am name to whatever you feel broken, wherever you feel insufficient.
God, who could possibly be smart enough to figure all this out? I am. How am I supposed to know which way to go, God? I am. Nobody's listening to me.
I am. I'm not able to live the victorious Christian life. I am. There was only one person, in fact, who could ever actually live the Christian life, and he was so good they named it after him. That's why you're crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, you live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God.
Well, God, I'm 50 years old and I feel like I'm starting all over. I am. My marriage is crashing and I don't know where to turn. I am. Everybody thinks I can't do it.
I am. What if I fail again? I am. God, I've given all I can give and it's not enough. I am.
But God, I'm tired. I am. I just fucking need a hit or a drink or a fix or something. I am. I need a fresh start.
I am. I need a friend. I am. Last summer in our study of the Gospel of John, we saw Jesus take the name I am, the name that God revealed to Moses here in Exodus 3. He did the most amazing thing.
He applied it to himself for the most basic places of our weakness, to the unrighteous. Jesus said, I am Yahweh, your righteous covering. To the powerless, Jesus said, Yahweh, your defense. To the empty, he says, Yahweh, your fullness. To the dead, he says, Yahweh, your resurrection.
To the defeated, he says, Yahweh, your hope. You say, but God, I'm such a loser. You don't understand. I'm a terrible mom. Everybody thinks I'm a terrible mom.
But God says, I created the whole thing of mom-dumb. Just as I was Moses' power before Pharaoh, I'll be your power with your kids. I'll be your guide and your strength and your help. I'll be your sufficiency, whatever you're not, whatever you need, whatever you lack. I am.
Friend, the grace in Jesus is greater than the sin in you. The strength of Jesus is greater than the weakness in you, and the healing in Jesus is greater than the brokenness in you.
Some of the pharaohs in your life say to you, who do you think you are? You respond by saying, I don't think I'm anything, but he is. And when the hateful Israelites in your own heart whisper, who are you? You shout back, Me, I'm nothing. But him, he's everything, and I am in him.
So my challenge to you this weekend. Name your insecurity, write it out. I'm afraid I'm not. Blank enough. I'm afraid I'm not blank enough.
Fill in the blank. What is it? Good enough. Smart enough. Pretty enough.
Then I want you to write out, but in Christ I am. Write out a new adjective. I am sufficient. I am fully supplied. I am more than a conqueror.
I am undefeatable. I am because he is, and I am in him. Him. That is the mystery and the hope of the Christian life, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Why don't you bow your heads if you would?
I'm just very convinced that somebody in here.
Somebody at one of our campuses needed to hear this today. And in just a minute, I'm going to have you stand to your feet. I'm going to invite you to come down here and... Let's get around the altar. We're going to open the altar up, and I'm going to invite you to pray for the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
That you would, as Paul says, know the hope. And the promise to which you've been called, maybe just feel overwhelmed by insecurity. You just want to come down here and kneel. Or maybe you just need to hear from God.
So, you know where he's moving in your life and say, God, I want to follow you. I'm tired of taking things on my own initiative, I want to follow what you say. I want you to come down here and say to God, like Moses said at the burning bush, Here I am, Lord, here I am. I've had enough of failure. I've had enough of frustration.
I just want you to speak and the lead. I'm going to ask for two things here, okay? When everybody at all campuses, I want you to stand to your feet, if you would. Everybody, stand up with me right now. I'm going to ask our prayer team members, four or five at every campus, come down here, get in place.
Our worship teams are coming up right behind me at every campus. And I want you right now, if that's you, I want you to step out and I want you to come. You need to hear from God, you need to just ask God for. Help. I want you to come.
If you want to pray with one of these men or women, you do that. If not, just... Kneel at the altar there at your campus, right beside that, and you can pray in your room and grab a friend and come pray with them. Let's spend this time in the presence of the I am. What you need is not a message, what you need is.
What you need is to meet with him. Father, I pray in Jesus' name. that today would be a day of definable counters. Encounters with the great I Am. That's it for today.
Hope that looking afresh at this age-old passage has brought you new understanding and empowers you in your walk with Jesus today. Do you want to memorize more scripture this year? Our January resource makes it easy. When you give to Summit Life this month, you'll receive a beautiful set of 52 scripture memory cards to help you stay rooted in God's Word this year. Check it out at jdgreer.com.
We'll see you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries. Uh
