MCC Podcasts
Rediscovering Adventure - Excuses
It occurred to me this week that this series that we're in rediscovering a life of adventure really is synonymous for rediscovering Christianity, because Christianity is a life of adventure. When it's truly lived, when it's biblically lived, when it's lived the way Jesus intended for it to be lived, to talk about Christianity and then talk about a life of adventure is actually redundant. It's just that the Christianity that we've become acquainted with and even have endorsed, sadly, is not at all adventurous. It's overwhelmingly safe and careful. It doesn't knock down any new doors or break any windows that really should be broken or build anything that is very risky to build sometimes. But that's not true Christianity. Christianity is a life of adventure. But we do need to rediscover that life, kind of get refueled in our faith. And we're walking through the book of Exodus, not exhaustively, but from the front to the back, some movement through the book and learning from moments of adventure in that book. What can we learn about adventure? What kind of observations can we make from some of the great people in particular Moses in the book of Exodus that teaches about this life of adventure? And this morning I've entitled this message, this application of that rediscovery of the life of adventure, the excuses that try to tame us. Because a life of adventure is a wild life. It's not a tame life, excuses that try to tame us. We're going to be in Exodus chapter 4. In a moment I'm going to read the text that we're looking at. And so if you want to read along in a Bible as I read, you can grab one of the Bibles that's underneath the seat in front of you and find Exodus chapter 4 toward the front of your Bible, second book in the Bible. But we'll also have that text in a moment up on the screen from Exodus chapter 4. If you were here a handful of weeks ago, you may have been here on the, it may have been the Sunday that we celebrated the ministry of one of our really faithful friends and servants, Eliana Eley. Eliana for years has done just about everything there is to be done in this church. And then quietly done even more. But she has been involved in our music ministry, several different iterations of that. And we thought, man, we want to just publicly thank her and have some fun with her. She continues on in the church and she and her husband, Doug, continue to be really involved and not going anywhere. But come on up here, Eliana, and some of you here that week we gave her some gifts, you know, we gave her a book, we gave her a bit of a challenging book. She was here for first gather and I asked her how she was doing, she said she's halfway through that book. And so I said, then yours is confused as I am by reading that book. This is a good, good book. And we gave her a utilitarian gift, Eliana has sometimes she works so much on our computer or playing the piano that her wrist hurt and so we gave her a little foot pedal attachment to go with her computer that helped her transpose and compose and all kinds of music. And we gave them symphony tickets, which I'm sure they love. But we also gave Eliana a gift that we weren't quite sure she would use. In fact, on that Sunday, I cautioned her. I said, Eliana, I'm going to be checking eBay and I do not want to see Craigslist, eBay, anything, this gift show up for sale there, we want you to use it. The gift that we gave them, the fourth gift we gave them was not only lunch in the Napa Valley, but the lunch went with a hot air balloon, an unfettered hot air balloon ride through the Napa Valley. Now Eliana has probably already worn out the foot pedal. I'm sure she's using it like crazy, arranging songs on her computer. And there's no way she and Doug are going to miss out on an opportunity to go to symphony or the opera or any other artistic musical expression for that matter. We know that she's reading the book and enjoying the book and I can't wait to talk with her about some of her thoughts on the book that she and I are both working through. But on that fourth gift, she actually has a really good excuse for not going on the hot air balloon ride. I mean, for skipping that part and going straight to the lunch. When we found this gift for Eliana and gave the gift to Eliana, some knew, but I didn't know that she had a great excuse for not using it because like me and many of you, I'm sure, she has a significant level of discomfort when it comes to heights. She actually said it's quite a strong discomfort. She's afraid of heights. She's uncomfortable in heights and so the idea of her stepping into a basket and then cutting the ropes loose and letting that big balloon take her up, I don't know how high those things go, they can go pretty high and just depend upon the wind to move her from here to there and then land it safely and she would get involved in that. She would actually take us up on that gift. So like I said, she has some really good excuses, at least one, for not being a part of that. Haven't you found yet in life that every adventure comes with excuses, even reasonable excuses? In fact, it may be that most of the excuses that come attached to most of the adventures that are laid across our paths are in fact reasonable. They make sense. They're based in reason when you really think about it. These are excuses that try to bring you back to your senses. You don't want to enter that race. You're slow, is that, and it may be a fact, but this adventure that you could go on, there's some fact that comes as an excuse not to go on the adventure. These excuses are based in reason and sometimes they're there to help you come to your senses and sometimes they actually help you make a more reasonable choice or at least make you aware of the risk you're choosing when you choose to go on a particular adventure to a particular university or take a new job or reach out to a neighbor in a different way or whatever it might be, the little mini adventure or grand adventure that you're going. But they're also excuses that are designed to tame us, to keep us from being wild in the best and most healthy sense of the word. Have you learned that yet? Have you found that every adventure comes with attendant excuses and the excuses actually most of the time make complete sense? I sure have. In fact, even some of the greatest names, perhaps all of the greatest names in biblical history have learned that. This isn't a new phenomenon. The excuses I'm talking about usually come under two or three headings. We're going to just look at a couple of them today and we're going to look at some of these excuses as exemplified by Moses. Remember the background of Moses. He's born into a Hebrew family during Hebrew captivity in Egypt. The Hebrew children are to be put to death because Hebrew people are growing too much. Moses is rescued and he's raised and adopted and then raised in a royal family. Then one day he got a little older, he must have been at least a teenager. He goes and he sees somebody abusing one of the Hebrew slaves and he's enraged by that. He, a Hebrew child raised in Egyptian royalty and therefore sits at dinner in the royal family's dining room, kills the Egyptian that's oppressing or hurting or whipping the Hebrew slave and buries him in a shallow grave and he has to leave. He's exiled and in exile, decades later, he's addressed by God and God says, "Now here's what I want you to do. I have heard the prayers of my people who were in bondage and I've decided to come down and respond to their prayers and deliver them from their oppression." God says, "So therefore, Moses, you go and deliver them," and that's the adventure that God lays in the lap of Moses. And Moses, just like us, comes up with some reasonable excuses that give cause for him to no longer be that wild, trying to tame him. Let's read the text and this is Moses' response right after God offers that challenge to him from Exodus chapter four beginning at verse one. Verse one, "Would you stand pleased for the reading of God's word today?" So God gives him this challenge and in verse one of Exodus four it says, "Moses answered, "But what if they do not believe me or listen to me when I say the Lord did not appear to you?" Then the Lord said to him, "What is it that's in your hand?" A staff he replied, the Lord said, like a shepherd's staff, a rod. A staff he replied, the Lord said, "Throw it on the ground," so Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake and Moses did what we would have done. He ran from it and then the Lord said to him, "Reach out your hand and take the snake by the tail," so Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. This said the Lord is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, he just keeps stacking the history that can give Moses confidence has appeared to you. Then the Lord said, "Put your hand inside your coat, your cloak," so Moses put his hand into his cloak and when he took it out, his skin was leperous, it had become as white as snow. "Now put it back into your cloak," he said, so Moses put his hand back into his cloak and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. Then the Lord said, "If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second." But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, this is all still enhanced with the question, but what if they won't believe that you spoke to me, right? If they won't believe that, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground. And Moses said to the Lord, "A part in your servant, Lord, but I've never been eloquent. Neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant, I'm slow of speech and tongue." And the Lord said to him, "Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf from you, who gives them sight or makes them blind? Isn't it I, the Lord, now go? I will help you speak and we'll teach you what to say." But Moses said, "Part in your servant, Lord, but please send someone else," which is Hebrew for whatever, may God add His blessing to His holy word, His fully inspired and holy trustworthy message to us. Go ahead and take your seats. The excuses that try to tame us, the excuses that always come attached to the great adventures that are offered to us. They're normal, by the way. Anytime your heart is challenged and stirred to go someplace new in life, to step out where you're not comfortable, take a new job, take a new spouse, I met people this morning at the house, we met table afterward, by the way, it's there for you, too, if you're new to our church and want to learn more about them or in covenant, take a minute and come on over there. I'd love to meet you there. But some folks came over and there's our second time worshiping with us and they were in their first gathering and I said, "Well, what brought you out to Marin? Where are you from? Well, we're from Texas. Oh, cool. We'll just move here from Florida. What brought you out? A job? No?" He said, "Actually, an adventure. What do you mean?" We just decided to go on a road trip and we ended up out here and it was so beautiful we decided, "Let's just move here." And so it was really a sense of adventure. So we went back to Florida, rented out our condo, moved out here. We got a job while we were on the road trip, came on back out here and thought we'd find a church and we found a church and here we are. Yeah, I remember that. Remember the days when you could fit everything you owned in your car that barely ran and that was kind of a crazy time but it was also sort of an exciting time? I remember that being able to take it. But with every adventure comes an excuse and that's normal and those excuses are usually based in fact and even reason. The trick is to, so sometimes those excuses are there to help you revaluate, "Am I ready for this adventure? What are the cost of this adventure? Am I still going to go on it?" But they're also there and at least potentially effective to rob you of that sense of wild excitement that is so normal for Christianity to tame us. And those excuses usually show up under a handful of topics. We're going to look at a couple of them this morning that Moses experiences and reveals to us. Here's the first one, "Those excuses that are designed to tame us when adventure is right there waiting for us often will be excuses that attack our sense of credibility." You know, it's that the fear that our past has completely destroyed our future. Me going on that adventure, that's a noble quest. I'm not credible, it just doesn't feel right. The way I've lived in the past, how could I possibly even dare to think that God says, "Here, come with me here, walk this trail, walk this path, invest yourself in this cause in this moment?" Moses experienced that. You look at verse one and that's what's going on. Moses, who did not leave Egypt under the best of circumstances the last time he was there. Moses, who did nothing to enhance his credibility there when he went back, hadn't been back. The Lord says, "Go back to Egypt, deliver those millions of people from slavery. Go back to the most powerful leaders in the most powerful nation in the world and basically tell them to undo the foundation for their economy and let all of that free labor go. And I'll be with you." And Moses says, "What I would have said, here, my Lord, send Ben, send anybody but me." And he offers this excuse for not doing it that's based in his questioning his credibility in verse one. What if they don't believe me or listen to me and say, "The Lord did not appear to you Moses." He sure didn't look like he was appearing to you and speaking to you last time you were here, addressing, attacking his sense of credibility. The fear that our past has completely destroyed our future. So Moses is saying, "What if no one will believe me? Besides, why should they believe me? How dare I think that I'm going to do something so great when you consider my past." Today we still use that excuse. We just have different language for it. Here's what that same excuse that attacks our sense of credibility might sound like today. But I've lived a duplistic life or I'm going to look like a hypocrite if I launch out into that adventure. You don't understand how I've lived in the past. I can be in the building, I can be a part of the church, I guess I can be a Christian. But you know what? The way I've lived and some of the things I've been involved with in the past, they relegate me to the back row, the shadows of the room. I'll come along, I'll quietly support, but I have to be in the back of the line. I certainly cannot be involved aggressively, publicly in any radical life-changing world altering certainly at adventure. We might say, but no one will believe I've actually changed. I've felt a little bit of that right after I became a Christian. I was so excited to have finally found a way to make sense of life and given the control of my life to Jesus and begin to pattern my life after Jesus and all new life habits. I'm doing all kinds of things I never did before. I'd be upstairs for hours reading my Bible and my dad was getting a little nervous about how much time I was spending doing all this stuff. And don't even get me started about the decision to become a pastor. That raised a few eyebrows. And then you go to your friends and they say, "Hey, Greg, we're having this party." I was almost 21, right? So when I turned 21, a bunch of my buddies, we had history together. So we're throwing you a great big party on your 21st birthday. We're getting this cake and we're getting this and we're getting that, we got this. And I said, "No, you guys, I can't do that." What? What's going on with you? Well, you know, I told them. I become a Christian and I want to live differently. And you know what their answer was? "Oh, we want to live differently too. Tell us about it." No. They said, "What?" Man, if ever you needed a drink, it's now, Greg, "Oh, what are you talking about? We're having a party." Yeah, right was their answer. Because you feel like, "Oh, man, I'll look like a hypocrite." You get to the point when this excuse that attacks our sense of credibility is employed, where you start to believe, "My yesterday has sabotaged my tomorrow, forever and ever and ever." Who in the world would ever believe me because of the things I used to be involved in, the man or the woman I used to be? I felt that a little bit a week ago Friday out in Sanonella when we were doing the committal service for my mom. I'm standing next to my mom's casket and reading from the Book of Worship references to things like the sure and certain hope of resurrection, talking about new life in Christ and the hope that he brings and how Jesus can change things. I'm speaking though to my extended family. It's one thing to talk like that here. We didn't grow up together, but my cousins are there. I did unspeakable stuff with my cousins. I'm embarrassed and I wish God would wipe my memory, you know what I'm talking about? There were some things that we were involved with that were not good at any level, and they remember them. Some of my cousins have never really launched themselves from that time of a lifestyle, and I can just see them. I could just hear what was going on in their heads, hearing their cousin, my family name is Tiger. Their cousin, Tiger, is up there wearing a coat and tie now talking about this. Right. But I remember when men that I ever feel like a hypocrite or potentially, and potentially, there was, there was, I almost trimmed back what I was saying because of that. Maybe I shouldn't be so aggressive. Maybe I shouldn't be so clear. I don't know if I want to say that because my cousins are here and they're hearing it, and man, they know, we grew up together. They know, my aunts and uncles are standing right over there going like this year, right? The excuse to not go on that small adventure. The idea that yesterday has sabotaged tomorrow for me. Things that attack our sense of credibility, Moses experienced that, and then God gives him this great, big, inspiring, multi-level response. And in the middle, I don't know if you pick up on this or not, but as we read through, in the middle of God giving that response, Moses has had enough, and he actually interrupts God. You pick up on that? Now put it back in your coat, God says. So Moses put his hand back in his coat, and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of the flesh. Then the Lord said, "If they don't believe me, you want to count on those things, get some water, pour it on the ground. It's going to become like blood from the Nile. They will, the water you take from the river will be like but on the ground." And then in the middle of that, Moses says, "Hold on a second. I stutter." He interrupts God and comes up with yet another excuse. It's yet another kind of excuse that tends to try to tame us. The first were excuses that attack our sense of credibility. Second, excuses that exploit our lack of confidence. Moses said to the Lord, "Pardon your servant, Lord, I've never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." That makes sense when you think if you're going to go to the strongest family in the strongest nation of the world and say, "Undo your entire economic system by releasing all of these slaves as free labor you have," you would be able to speak with some eloquence. And Moses grew up bilingual. He's saying, "I used to speak their language but that's been 40 years or so now. I never was that good at it then and I'm not so good at it now and I'm trying to be bilingual here but I'm not really great and I'm going to have to have a translator." You might want to pick somebody else. I am not competent for this challenge. Excuses that exploit our lack of confidence. The conviction that there is no way we could ever make a difference on that particular adventure. Moses says, "Okay, but even if you address the credibility issue with your power and they believe me that you sent me, the fact is I'm just not equipped to do this thing." And that was even reasonable. He wasn't. I don't have the tools to succeed in this adventure. I'm not competent to do this. That was the way Moses expressed that doubt. It sounds different today. Here are some other ways that that same doubt sounds today. Yeah, it's not my gift. It's not my calling. God hasn't called me to that. Or even this. The idea that the pitiful contribution I could make to that particular task will make no difference at all. Excuses that exploit our lack of confidence. Yeah, I could offer so little to that adventure. It might as well not even show up, might as well not even take the first step down that trail. I just have nothing to offer it. Aren't you glad the boy with the loaves and fishes and the gospels on that day that Jesus fed thousands didn't have that attitude? What in the, in fact, one of the apostles that took the gift from the boy did have that attitude. There's a boy over, Jesus, how are we going to feed so many thousands of people? We have no food. And one of the apostles says there's a boy over here with a lunch, some loaves and fishes. But what is that to so many? Could never even make a difference. That's an excuse, not even to try. But that little guy says, I don't have any idea how this is going to make a dent in that task. But I'll give you the little I have. Go ahead. He did not employ the excuse that was reasonable and obvious to him. An excuse based in logic and boy did God ever do something with that gift. God I'm convinced waits for the day, longs for the day when his people discover the power. The effect, the profound difference can be made by a lot of people doing their humble seemingly irrelevant part all at the same time over a long period of time. Now that's a powerful effect. That's an adventure worth taking. But there's this excuse that wants to keep us tame, quiet, and safe. Until we rediscover that, my contribution doesn't seem like it's all that much. But boy, when it's linked with a hundred other people making an equally humble, faithful contribution, whether it's a contribution of the way we live a merciful life, give an abundant gift, financial gift, the contribution of the forgiveness that we tend to offer, the justice for which we stand, the things we will no longer tolerate. When enough people decide to do the little they can do and then partner that, there's quite a difference that gets made in a community. Just think if only the people who were part of the Marin Covenant community, if nobody else even did anything, but all of us said, Monday, tomorrow, just for one day, all of us are not going to respond to things that aren't so great with something else. It's not so great. We're going to respond with grace. And every single one of us did that just tomorrow. Think of the impact that would make. I mean, the potential for impact, even long-term impact. God's waiting for His church to realize, man, my little peace, added to your little peace. And us faithfully, over a long period of time, offering our small peace in response to whatever adventure He has us on, makes a huge difference. But until then, I'm not able, it's not my calling, and I can't possibly make a difference. All excuses designed to tame us, to keep us from being willing to live a life of adventure, will continue to keep us in our boring, life-training, mediocrity-inducing cages, until we break the chain of those excuses. Excuses that attack our sense of credibility, Moses experienced that, excuses that exploit our lack of confidence, Moses experienced that, too. Now, I said earlier that every adventure comes with excuses, even reasonable ones, that try to bring us back to our senses when we're saying, "We're going to just kind of drive west and see where things end up," or whatever your version of that is. They try to reattach us to the reasonable, but they also are excuses that try to tame us. And that's true. But isn't it inspiring, when you get around someone who has every reason to employ the excuse and then doesn't, someone that says, "Yeah, but I'm going to go ahead and go on the adventure anyway," when you get around someone who is afraid of heights and still steps into the basket, "Yeah, they did it, not going to find it on eBay, sorry." They didn't just skip the scary part and go right to the lunch. They got in the basket, ropes were cut, and the wind took them, where I don't think Doug was, but where Eliana was very, very nervous about going. I was pleasantly surprised. And even though it seems like a small thing, I'm pretty inspired by it to take that seemingly small illustration and ask myself the question, "What bigger things are going undiscovered by me and unexperienced by us as a community because of well-intentioned, reasonable excuses that have gone awry?" And gone from keeping us in the place where we're simply thinking logically to actually putting us in cages that rob us and our world, what could otherwise be offered to them. Today we're going to finish our time together by responding to something that you either sat on or had to move in order to sit down when you came to your seat, because in your seats we placed compassion international packets. I want to ask you if you would take hold of one of those right now. Maybe there's just one for your family or one for a couple of friends. We don't have enough for everybody, obviously. Our church has been invited on an adventure that was really going to make some difference in people's lives. Not only are we foolish enough, crazy enough to say, "Let's do a major capital campaign and invest in our community now in this economy by responding to this building needs." We're also saying, "And let's not stop there. Let's touch more lives. Let's do more. Let's go on more adventures." This is a much smaller one, but we've been invited to our church only, give to a village in Kenya, one of the villages that I had the privilege of visiting last year, some help that they need. There's no other church that compassion is offering this to. This is going to be Marin Covenant and Marin Covenant alone, the Lord through Marin Covenant, moving to a village in Kenya, the life that it needs by funding a project that helps mothers who are infected with HIV/AIDS make sure they don't pass that infection onto their infants. And we're going to teach them how to not do that. It's possible not to do that, to keep that from happening. But because they don't know how, it just keeps being passed on. That village needs this program and compassion, I said to compassion, "Can Marin Covenant please have first shot not shared with any other churches, just us? Let's connect with this village. My people can do this. Can we have first shot at providing this village with that program?" And they said, "Yeah." And so they sent us these packets. We need to sponsor 65 children in order to fund that project. Some people in the first gathering grab some of those packets, you're going to grab the rest of those packets. So I believe too because my wife and I are going to add two more compassion kids to the compassion support that we already do. But all of us strategically coming together doing our small part make a huge difference there. And then here's the other part of it that we're going to do. After we're done, once we successfully fund that, I'm going to call Compassion International and say, "Will you put together in 12 to 18 months a trip for us?" No, we can't all go. But for representatives from our church, can we then go to the village, meet the very children that we're sponsoring, and see the program and learn from the people there, have them carve our hearts out and share with us there well so that we can be deeper Christians and more interested in this great adventure and deepen the relationship to our church and the lives of the Lord is giving us the privilege of affecting. By the way, that works both ways. You understand everybody has wealth and everybody has poverty, right? They're just different expressions of wealth and poverty. And we'll connect our wealth with their poverty and their wealth with our poverty and both of us will share with each other. Fill these things out. Here's what I'm asking you to do today. You're going to pray in a moment and if you're not attached to a packet with some friends or a family or whatever, get attached to one. Read the name on that packet. That's a real child in that particular village. Every single one of these packets are all neighbors in Kenya in the same village. And then I'm going to ask you during a time of silence to actually offer up a silent prayer for that child and that child's family. In this HIV infested part of Kenya. And ask you to pray that the Lord would stir us and guide us to respond. And then I'm going to ask you to not put that packet back on your seat, but to actually take the paper out, fill it out as a group of friends, as a family, as a household, even if like us, you're already supporting kids with world vision or world concern or some other way. Don't church do this and give this gift to this village. Doesn't that sound like a cool idea? I love that adventure, that challenge. Fill that out. Don't go home today without having filled it out. Pastor Peter or one of his representatives is going to be at the back table right back there with the compassion sign on the table. Take your filled out form and lay it on that table. We'll make sure that compassion gets all the information they need and soon you'll hear from them. And then maybe next year you'll be part of a group who will go to Kenya together. You'll meet folks and let them meet us as well. Let's pray. And then we're going to do this and then be dismissed. You know, if all the churches and people that are available to you, to be the answer to the prayers of people who are really struggling but hoping in you, you choose us for this one word. Thank you. Thank you for not leaving us out, for not leaving us behind, for giving us the privilege of responding with our version of wealth to somebody else's version of poverty but also for infusing in us or at least beginning to, the humility it takes to recognize that we too are poor and blind and infected. And there's a wealth upon which we need to depend, a wealth of relationship, a strength of faith, tenacity that comes only through hardship and we need to benefit from it as well. And so would you create this reciprocal experience, oh Lord, launch us into this adventure and strengthen us to enjoy the ride as much as you will. Now here are our prayers, God, for the households that are represented in the packets we hold in our hands. We pray silently but we know you hear it loud and clean. And now would you stand and be dismissed with this blessing? You still have a few minutes, you can fill out your, thank you, fill out your card there and then just take it to the back table. Don't forget, get a wristband, remember to be praying for the project that we have going on here. Connect yourself with a village, let's as a church do something together, this would be a blast I think, I want to remind you of this too. There are folks who love to pray for you and there are going to be a couple of them coming up front here. You would like to be prayed for in any way, whether it's related to the things we talked about today or not. Maybe you're wondering what Christianity really is. You've heard spoken of in a way you haven't thought about it before. They would love to pray with you, they're really great people. So you make your way up and find them, they'll find you and we can minister to you in that way. Take this blessing. May the God of mercy and grace open our eyes so that we can see more fully and more often the mercy and grace he always offers us and then may that same God strengthen us to parallel that mercy and grace and to offer it to others. the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.