MCC Podcasts
Rediscovering Adventure - No Going Solo
Well, another message in this series, Rediscovering Adventure, as we work away through the book of Exodus, and Exodus is quite an adventure when you read Exodus, boy, was adventure stacked upon adventure. We're jumping in, look at just two verses today, where Moses is interacting with God in response to an adventure that God's sending Moses on, we're going to try to pull some lessons out of that. I want to begin by confessing something, here it is. I hate bold print all caps, 16-point font, hate camping. Anybody besides me hate camping, I mean you all love, let's go camping, let's be fun, hate camping. I mean, look, I just can't see the attraction in a sleeping bag, you have no idea who last used it. If it's ever been to the dry cleaners, who your kid last lent it to when you weren't looking on the ground in a tent, usually you can't even stand up in this tent. So when you get out of your sleeping bag, and it's all cold getting out of your bag, you have to get dressed laying on your back, because you can't stand up until you're sliding your legs into your pants and trying to get dressed laying on your back, then you don't even get to go to the shower first. And if you have hair like mine, I mean it's scary for people to see that stuff, sticking up in the morning hat hair, so you have to wear a hat, and the hat itch is, I mean, look, I can't see anything redeeming or fun about camping. Can anybody relate to me on that? It's just awful. What is so much fun about cooking over an open flame? The only thing I like about cooking over an open flame is watching somebody else do it. I don't see what's so fun about gathering water in the stream to wash your pots with a cold, brillow pet. I just don't get it, but they're perfectly fine and wonderful hotels and motels all around us. Where's Ken? Where's Ken Kroner? I know he, you feeling me on this, Ken, don't you agree with me on this? You've talked about these things. I hate camping, so imagine the fantastic parental contribution I made to my daughter when she was 12 years old and we were living in Colorado. And she came and said, "Dad, would you go camping with me?" Yeah. I said, "No, call your aunt Susan, she'll take your camping." You go camping with me and we're going to go on a family camp ground up into the mountains of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains and they fill up so somebody has to go up the night before, right, to get this place. And so it was going to be Becca and me in a pup tent. I don't know, she's 10, 11, 12, somewhere in there. And I thought, Becca, you do not know what you're in for going camping. I know you and I know camping and you were not made for it. But we went. "Dad, will you go?" Yeah, okay, we'll go. So we went. We pitched the tent. Everything was fine. We laid out our sleeping bags. Everything was cool. We drove into town to eat. Everything was just wonderful. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Now we come back and finally suffered through getting into our sleeping bags and trying to go to sleep on the ground and it gets dark and all the noises. And everything was fine because the good part about camping is once you fall asleep you know, it's kind of cool until you have to wake up to it again the next morning. So we fall asleep and we're both and then in the middle of the night, sure enough, two or three in the morning. "Dad?" "Dad?" "What?" "Dad?" "What?" "I have to go." "Okay, we'll go." "No, Dad, where's the bathroom?" "What's about like 20 or 30 yards down the trail there? There's a building that was built just for you that's down the trail there and you take a flashlight and go on down there and do your thing and then come on back. "Look, Dad?" "What?" "Well, but it's dark." "We have flashlights, you go ahead. But Dad, my girlfriend told me that in the mountains there are mountain lions." "Well, I read the mountain lion report and I'm absolutely sure there are no mountain lions. By the bathroom tonight, you're free to go, "Dad, I'll go, but will you go with me?" "Okay, so it was an amazing trip. Get out of the sleeping bag and she had instructions for me. Don't get too far away from me and you have your sleep, you flashlight, I had my flashlight right." So then we get to the outhouse and she goes, "My toilet seat's broken in the front." "No, honey. That's how they make them." "Oh, okay." And she goes, "You stand right here. Promise me you won't leave." "Okay." She says, "You have to make sure nobody comes in here." "It's the middle of the night. You won't leave and I see the flashlight, light, bouncing and beam." Then the next question comes, "Dad, what now, honey?" "Well, how do you flush this? You don't flush it." "Oh, gross!" So we're walking back and it was quite fun for Becca. Here's what I was thinking that night though and I was recalling that story for this reason. It looked as though my daughter was afraid of the dart and afraid of mountain lions. So that's what the issue was. But the real issue was this. She actually wasn't afraid of the dark and she wasn't actually afraid of mountain lions. What she was afraid of, what she was unwilling to do was to face the dark and the possibility of a mountain lion alone. Because she said, "If you'll go with me, everything will be okay." What she was unwilling to do was to get out of that tent all by herself and walk into the dark where she couldn't see, into the unknown, with the possibility, the rumor of some kind of a beast or something that waited for her that could care her. It wasn't the dark that was keeping her in the tent. It was the thought of facing the dark alone. Know what I'm talking about? Many of us can relate to that because when it comes to rediscovering a life of adventure, it's often not the challenges themselves that keep us in the tent of life, it's the possibility, the notion of facing those challenges by ourselves, facing those challenges alone. When faced with the thought of moving into the unknown, remember a few weeks ago one of the things Pastor Jeff said was that an adventure is a situation where you're sort of out of control. You don't get to have control on an adventure. You don't know what's just around the corner and just around the bend. Some of us, it's the thought of moving into that by ourselves, the thought of going there alone that keeps us from being willing to embrace the adventure. That's why I love the point of today's text. This is the point that for the Christ follower, there's really no such thing as going solo. There's definitely such a thing as feeling alone. But actually, according to Jesus, there's no such thing for us as being alone, wherever we go, whether forward or backward, whether we go there for good or for not so much good. God is with us. And you know that phrase, "I am with you." God is with you. We need to dig into that phrase a little bit because it's what we lean on today. The idea that God is with us, that we're never alone when we get out of the tent and take steps into a life of adventure. But we have to drill down on that a little bit because that phrase is bounced around so much. You know, we even use that phrase with you. But we use it to mean lots of different things, right? You say, "Hey, I'm going over to Costco because they have the best hot dog deal in town." And I say, "Well, I'm with you on that." It means I agree with you on that, right? It doesn't mean I'm literally going to walk to Costco with you, although if you invite me to a Costco hot dog, I'm all over it. I want to be with you on that. But you know, we use that phrase so many different ways. We use it for agreement. We use it for I'm going to sort of be thinking about you. I'll be with you. We got some wonderful, thoughtful cards after the passing of my mom and even this week, some emails and Facebook responses and things. It knows people in effect say, "Hey, we are with you even when we're not with you." We use that phrase a lot. But when God says, "I will be with you," how is he using the phrase? And I want to deal with that by just asking and answering a couple of questions. The first is that one I've just asked. God says he's with us. How is God with us? How is God being with us a guarantee that we're never actually alone when we step into some kind of a crazy, risky adventure, especially an adventure that's designed to join him in his task of improving the world and helping people improve their relationships with him? And the point I want to make is simply this. When God says, "I am with you," what he means is, "I am literally with you." Not just, "I am in favor of you," not just, "I agree with you," not just, "I appreciate you." He's actually saying, "I am taking up real space where you are." I'm actually present where you are. You actually are not alone. He's literally with us, and not literally in the sense that it's being used so much more often like, "I'm telling you that elephant literally flew to the feeding trough." Well, the elephant didn't literally fly to the feeding trough because elephants don't literally fly, right? That's not the way I'm using this word. He's present, not touchable, but there nonetheless. And that's what he means to say. He's literally with us, therefore we're never alone. Moses deals with that and has God affirm him for that, and these two verses we'll be looking at today. But I wanted to explore a little bit of how that works and how that phrase is used in other places as well. For instance, in Luke chapter 12, you have the apostles on the adventure of speaking this new faith to people who are hostile to them. And what in the world are we going to say? How are we going to do all this if you're not here with us? We're barely surviving when you're here with us. And you have Jesus saying, in Luke 12 verse 4, "Look, don't be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that can do no more. I will show you whom you should fear, fear him who after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell." Which initially doesn't seem like it would help them in their nervous situation. He goes on to remind them though of this, he says, "Whoever publicly disowns me, I jump down to verse 9, will be disowned before the angels of God, and everyone who speaks a word against the Son of man will be forgiven, but anybody who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, another case, another story." And then verse 11, "When you were brought before synagogues and rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very time what you will say." It's as though he's painting this picture, the Holy Spirit is with you, and he's going to be putting in your mind and in your heart just the right response. He's going to be active in that discussion with you when you need it, Christ with us through the Holy Spirit. And he expands on that in John chapter 14, that idea of the Holy Spirit being the means by which he is with us. He says, "If you love me in John 14, 15 and following, keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever." The spirit of truth, the world cannot accept him, that's a reference to the Holy Spirit. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but get this, but you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you again, God with us on the great adventure, the grand adventure of life, by means of the presence of the Holy Spirit. That's what Jesus was talking about when they said, "You're leaving? What are you talking about?" He says, "Well, wait, it's way better for you if I leave." Because why do you see who I'm going to send? I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. It's going to be way better for you. He's going to indwell you. You'll never be able to go anywhere where you're not with me and I'm not with you after I leave. And that's the promise God makes, those who follow Jesus and choose him as their Savior. And then in the text that we have for today, Exodus chapter 3, verse 11, "God is sending Moses on this great adventure," and we'll look at that in just a second. And Moses says to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" Because that was the adventure God assigned to Moses. And what was God's answer? As though this is the only answer, any faithful thinking people person ever needs to hear. As though this should stop the discussion and evacuate all fear, God said, "Here's your answer, I am with you." You're not going there alone, Moses. And it's a good reminder for those of us who have life launched us into journeys we did not plan, who go from what was comfortable to what's not comfortable, from what was known to what was not known, especially for going in response to something we saw that is just not right. And it can't stay like this anymore. Not as long as I'm alive to see it and do something about it. Come on God, I sent you, stirring my heart, to live a more radical life of faith, to go deeper in you, to parent this way, to love my spouse this way, to live in this place. Leave everything that's comfortable for me, whether it's emotional or locational. And go where you call me to go and respond to the dream you have for the world and the relationship you long to have with every person. What we need to remember is that as scary as that seems, as risky as it feels to unzip the tent and to get out in the dark, we never ever go there alone. For the follower of Jesus, going solo is not an option. Feeling as though you're going solo certainly is. Feeling that you're not going solo, yeah, that's an option. But Christ promises to be actually, literally, measurably, functionally, and relationally with us, no matter where we are, we're never ever alone. That's how God is with us. I remember when I was, when I was living in Vancouver, Washington, I was a youth pastor and going to seminary in Portland and I used to, I kind of got into connecting with police officers and I used to like to go on the police ride-alongs with the cops and then in Denver I was a police chaplain. We actually had our own police jackets and a key to the police office and the jailhouse and everything. Yeah. Yeah, that felt pretty important. And I'd go on these ride-alongs and I was going, I used to like to ride the night shift because day shifts were boring. All you do is riding tickets. I mean, that's all you'd be doing today. That's how we're, never mind. All you'd be doing is riding tickets. But then you actually had some action in the middle of the night in Vancouver, Washington and I was riding with this guy that I got to be friends with. We'd ridden quite a few times together. He wasn't a follower of Christ yet but he wanted to talk about Jesus all the time. And so we'd ride along as much as possible. One night, it was, it was one of those common dark and rainy nights in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, like every night except about four nights, it does like that. And we actually had fallen asleep, we'd gone someplace and started talking a little bit. The next thing I know, I wake up and he's snoozing over in his chair and I'm snoozing in my chair. It's like three or four in the morning. And dark outside, of course. And we're awakened by his radios, police radio that comes on, he jumps, he grabs it. And we were called to respond immediately to a group of warehouses, you know, rust, they're not new cool looking warehouses. These were burnout, beat up, awful looking dark, dreary warehouses. And there's a burglar there, alarm was tripped. We need to get them right now and we're within a block or two. So he doesn't turn any lights on or anything. We just zip down the streets and pull in his warehouses, we get out and it really looks scary. I'm not kidding him. It looks scary. And he says to me, this guy is still here, we're here fast and nobody saw us. I said, cool, let's go get him. He says, let's do it. He says, you walk down this row, I'll walk down this row. And we'll get him for sure then. I said, well, what if I'm the one who finds him? He said, don't worry, aren't all you have to do is holler. I'll just be around the corner and the other side on the other side of the building and the other row. And I'll come. Well, that doesn't work for me. I said, I don't want to go and I don't want to go down there by myself. You come with me and we'll just go together and then I'll help you in any way you need help. I mean, I'm just thinking, man, if I find this guy, I want the guy with the experience and the gun in his holster, not near me, not within hearing distance, not just for me, not eventually supporting me, I want him with me right now. And if you're with me, I'm happy to go with you, but I'm not going down there by myself. I'm not going to do it. Jesus understands that fear. Are you kidding this life, this adventure, this wild response to the thing you started in my heart, I'll go there, but I'm not going alone. I'll go if you'll go with me. And he always does. So how is God with us? Literally. That's how he's with us. The last question is this question. Only how is God with us and the answer being literally with us, but why is God with us? In other words, for what can we depend on God when adventure calls us to get out of our tents and walk in the dark? What are his intentions in being with us? What are some of the reasons he is with us? What are some examples of what God does when he's with people? And there are a lot of them. If you do a study beyond this and just look at some of the times that phrase turns up, you see God revealing what he likes to do when he's with us, why he's with us. I just picked out a couple of them that were connected to our text in Exodus today. One of the things God loves to do, one of the reasons he's with us is apparently God is with us with the focus of giving us success as we launch into a faithful adventure. He wants to see us succeed. That's why he's with us. Listen to his conversation with Jeremiah. Jeremiah is called to be a prophet at a young age and Jeremiah is reluctant. In fact, if you're familiar with the conversation Moses has with God, you're going to hear some of the same language in Moses arguing with God about his adventure, his assigned adventure, and Jeremiah arguing with God about his assigned adventure. But listen to what God says, Jeremiah, I'm with you so that you'll have success. The word of the Lord Jeremiah writing came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." "Ah, sovereign Lord," I said. I do not know how to speak. Moses says the same thing, by the way, when God calls him to go down to free his people. I'm too young, but the Lord said to me, "Do not say I am too young." By the way, the Lord would still say that. Do not say I am too young. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you, do not be afraid of them for why. I am with you, and I will rescue you." Declares the Lord. In other words, you go where I ask you to go. I'm going to always be there. I'll pick you up. I'll jump in when you need me to jump in. I'll rescue you when you get in too deep, when you feel like you're all alone and you don't know what to do next. I'm with you, and one of the reasons I'm with you is to help you succeed, in fact to guarantee your success, if you're going to walk where I ask you to walk. You get that sense in Jesus, the last words that he offered to his apostles, before he ascended into heaven. The 11 disciples went to Galilee Matthew 28, beginning at verse 16, to the mountain where Jesus had told him to go, and when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. So if the apostles doubt, don't you, you have the freedom to doubt too, don't worry about that. That doesn't derail God. That's all with you. And then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Do you understand the force of this and the people who are hearing this challenge? These are not people who are well traveled. There's not people for the most part who are very well educated. And Jesus says, "I'm going to change the whole world, and I want you to do it. Go and make disciples. Go be the rabbi for all people groups, every ethnicity, every language spoken. I'm depending upon you to get that done throughout the world. How do you think they were feeling when they heard about that adventure? Competent? No. And Jesus sensed that. And He sees in their faces for sure, "What are you talking about, the nonverbal?" He said, "And surely, absolutely without doubt, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age, you step out on an audacious journey in response to my stirrings in your heart, and my choice, God would say, to depend upon you, you swing for the fences, and I'll be with you every time, every time. It's not possible for the Christ follower to go there alone." Then in our text with Exodus chapter 3, you have, at the end of verse 12, after God gives Moses this challenge, he said, "This will be a sign to you that it is I who has sent you, when you have brought the people out of Egypt." So now he's just telling him, "Go get this started," but God's talking about when it's done. You will worship God on this mountain. That's in the context of the, "I will be with you." And here's how you're going to know that I was with you. You're going to have success in this endeavor. I am with you to give you success in your endeavor of faith, in your adventure for my cause. It's interesting to note that the promise Moses has for the proof that God is with him and the success he's going to experience isn't until after it's all done. That's where the success is experienced and in the meantime, it feels like anything but success. I've learned in life, I'm only 57, so I'm a very young man, but I've lived long enough to learn this. Sometimes there are some really great experiences on the other side of difficult experiences. Sometimes the proof of God's faithfully being with us, even though it didn't feel like that was true in the process, you kind of gut it through the process with hope. And on the other side of that, there's something that just launches a level of joy and a sense of God's presence. You would have never known if you hadn't worked through what was difficult. Anybody else experienced that, lived long enough to experience that? The proof of God's presence, the success, is sometimes, it's all for later sometimes. You just have to gut it through. But one of the reasons he's with us is to give us success in this adventure. And one of the other reasons that he's with us is to, in fact, this may be a means by which he gives us success, is God's with us and he's busy raising up partners, raising up helpers as we move forward in response to the adventure he's laid out for us there. The book of Haggai isn't the most well read or often read book in Scripture, but he's a prophet worth reading. And listen to how in the task that Haggai announces for the people of God, God also is with Haggai and the people raising up helpers, putting in people something that wasn't there before in response to the faithfulness of a prophet. Their challenge was to rebuild the temple, so if people had their homes all built, but the temple had been destroyed and then they tried to rebuild it, but it wasn't moving along and it was a foundation, day after day they walked past the foundation, but there was no temple, no place of worship of God. And this is what the Lord Almighty says, "Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored," says the Lord. You expected much, but see it turned out to be little. But you brought home, I blew away. Why declares the Lord Almighty because of my house, which remains a ruin, which remains a ruin while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you, the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth, its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and on the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the olive oil, and everything else the grain produces on people and livestock and on all the labor of your hands. And then, Zerubbabel, the son of Shiltyel, Joshua, son of Josodak, the high priest, and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the prophet Haggai because the Lord their God had sent them. And the people feared the Lord, in other words, they referenced what they had heard from him. And then Haggai, the Lord's messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people. He said, "The Lord says, 'I am with you.' And as a result of the Lord being with them, look at what God does. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, son of Shiltyel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, son of Josodak, the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people, he started stirring up this same value, this same longing in the people. And they came and they began to work on the house of the Lord Almighty, their God, on the 24th day of the sixth month. God raises up people to rebuild his temple. What's one of the things God does when he's with us? Why is he with us? To call partners to go with us on the journey we take on, on the grand adventure that he puts before us. That was certainly the case in Exodus. In Exodus 3, the Lord said, back to our text, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt." He's speaking to Moses here. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I'm concerned about their suffering. You understand? Four hundred stinking miserable years, generation after generation after generation. They've been in Egypt. Much of that has slaves. And they're calling out to God. It was the tavia call, you know, a fiddler on the roof. God, I know we're the chosen people, but every once in a while could you choose someone else? We're chosen for this. And God says, "I've heard their cries and I'm about to act." So I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, parasites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, he says to Moses, "And I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go. I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." And one of my favorite preachers in one of my favorite sermons by him takes this text. And he's Eevee Hill and he has this great sermon on this about how we are God's answer. People cry out to God, the text says, "I heard their cries, and so God says, 'So now I'm coming.'" This is all Eevee Hill's work, this little part, but it's so impressive to me. God says, "So I am going to go down and rescue them, go Moses, and Moses must have looked at God or in his direction and said, 'But you said you were going to go.'" God says, "When you go, I go. I am with you." And one of the things God wants to do when he's with Moses is to raise up partners and helpers. And that's when Moses says, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" Not only just deliver them from Egypt, but to this luxurious place you're talking about. That is one grand adventure. God's only answer is, "I am with you." That's all you need to know with you in part to raise up partners. And God did give Moses partners, right? Because Moses also says, "But he chooses me. I can't speak. I stutter. Last time I left there, things weren't really good for me in them. You should send someone else. I've been out here, heard and sheep all this time." God says, "But I am with you." And I'll provide for you. And he provides partners like Aaron to speak for him. But he provides unexpected partners too, and we've got to take this away with us today to go on this crazy adventure to live this way, to live at this depth, at this level, to love like this, to stick with this, to try this new thing for the kingdom of God and for the values of God, to live the agenda of God in all of the twisted ankles and broken bones that that involves. We've got to remember this, that God provides with us literally to give us success and to provide partners with us and stir up the hearts of people who are going to be what Scripture calls or what one worship song, at least calls the marvelous comrades that God puts in our lives. He creates them by stirring up their hearts in like manner to join us, arm in arm in the adventure we're on. And he did that. He gives Aaron expected partners, but also God has unexpected partners. We would never intend, never in our wildest dreams, guess that this would happen. He did that with Moses, and he called flies and frogs and gnats and boils and hail and locus. And they were all partners, helpers, dreadful helpers, painful to read it. And God used even the elements and insects to help Moses succeed. When Moses said, "This is crazy, this is insane. I can't see how this can possibly work. This is going to be the end of me if I ever show my face there again." But God said, "Yeah, but I am with you." For the follower of Christ, going solo is not an option. The real question for us is, do we actually believe that? Or is it some little church myth, some nice little language we use to comfort one another? Is he with you or not? Is he impotent or not? Does God really delight in sending you on an honorable journey where you say enough is enough? I will live with excellence and honor and depth for Christ. And then is he the kind of God that loves to see you say even though out of a hundred, only ten will say, "I'll go." When you go, does he really love to vacate and to leave you on your own and watch you fail or is he actually with you, his own heart stirred by the fact that you would dare to live like that, dare to love like that? God knows that the adventures to which he calls us are well beyond our ability and he's with us in them. Well into, my goodness, I went way over time already. Well into his journey Moses had learned that he penned upon the literal presence of God. And so listen to this as we close. Even in Exodus 33, listen to how addicted Moses had become to the presence of God in everything that he's doing. So they're delivered by now and they're out in the wilderness. And Moses is praying and he says to the Lord, "See, you say to me, 'Bring up this people, but you yourself have not let me know whom I will send with me, whom you will send with me.' Moreover you have said, 'I have known you by name and you have also found favor in my sight. Now therefore I pray you,' Moses says, 'if you have found favor, if I have found favor in your sight, let me know your ways that I may know you so that I may find favor in your sight. That this nation is your people, this is your mess you called me to. And God said, 'My presence shall go with you and I will give you rest.' Then he said to him, 'If your presence does not go with us,' Moses says this, 'do not lead us up from here. For how then can it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not by your going with us so that we, I and your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth? The Lord said to Moses, 'I will also do this thing of which you have spoken. For in fact you have found favor in my sight and I have known you by name.' Moses hungers for the presence of God. He was willing to respond to every adventure call that God sent his way, but he was never willing to get out of the tent alone. I'll go there if you go with me, otherwise I'm not going. And that's an appropriate prayer. God, I'll go there if you go with me, otherwise I'm not going. For the Christ's follow, there's really no such thing as going solo. Wherever we go, whether forward or backward, for good or for not, God is with us.