Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: And what God delights in doing is revealing himself, showing up, and revealing the plans that he has for us in a way that changes our lives and changes the world.

Greg: Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Heroes. Let’s listen as JP gives us part one of Moses.

JP Jones: If you have your Bibles, would you open to Exodus chapter 3? If you don’t have a Bible, we’ll look at the scripture up on the screen. This is a passage where God calls Moses. Moses is the person that we’re looking at. We’re in a series entitled Heroes. We’re looking at those people in the Hebrew Scriptures that God used to change the world.

The backstory of this passage is that Moses is born into a Hebrew family while the children of Israel were in captivity in Egypt. And the custom of the day at that time was to take the male children and to put them to death so that the Hebrew population would be kept in check. Moses’s parents, wanting to try to desperately seek to save Moses from this fate, put him in a little cradle, put it out in the water of the Nile, and floated him down the Nile. It so happened in God’s sovereign plan for Moses’s life that the daughter of Pharaoh found Moses, brought him into her family, and Moses was raised as the adopted son of royalty.

At about the mid-life point in Moses’s life, he sought to try to deliver God’s people, only he did it in his own power and as a result an Egyptian was killed. And fearing the repercussions, Moses fled Egypt and wandered around in the desert for quite a few years. While he was there, he married, started a family, and was taking care of the sheep of his father-in-law when God appeared to him and revealed the plan that he had for him.

The story of Moses tells us that God can speak to us at any time in our lives. That God can use us at any point in our lives. That God can take what looks like a failure and turn it into a victory and a triumph for his kingdom. The story of Moses is the story of how God calls us and reveals himself to us and shows us the plan that he has for our lives. And just like Moses, God has a plan for our lives. God wants to reveal himself. He wants to speak to us. He wants us to see who he is and what it is that he wants to do in us and through us.

It’s the story of hearing the voice of God. Exodus chapter 3 verses 1 to 15 says this: "Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, 'I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.'"

"When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, 'Moses! Moses!' And Moses said, 'Here i am.' 'Do not come any closer,' God said. 'Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.' Then he said, 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.' At this, Moses hid his face from the Lord because he was afraid to look at God. And the Lord said, 'I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of the slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.'"

"So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them out into a land that is good and spacious, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way of the Egyptians and how they are oppressing them. And so now I am going to send you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" And God said, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation."

For some of us, this is a familiar passage of scripture, this calling of Moses. It’s pivotal for our understanding that God is real, that God is personal, that God has a plan for our lives. That God wants to use us. That God wants to speak to us and he wants us to hear his voice. Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, God wants to speak to you. And he wants you to be able to see him and hear him and know the plans that he has for you. Just as God had a plan for Moses, God has a plan for each one of us. God has a plan for this church. God wants to use us to accomplish his kingdom purposes.

And when we look at this passage, there’s several observations I want to make from the experience of Moses that I think are applicable to our lives. Here’s the first one: God can speak to us anytime, anywhere. Therefore, develop spiritual sensitivity to hear the voice of God. God can speak to us anytime, anywhere. Therefore, develop spiritual sensitivity to hear the voice of God. God is not limited to just speaking to young people about the future that he has for them. God can speak to young people, old people, and middle-aged people.

God is not limited to only speaking to people while they’re at a church retreat. He can speak to them in the desert. He spoke to Jonah in the belly of a great fish. He spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus. He spoke to David while he was in the night watches. God can speak to us anytime, anywhere. And what God delights in doing is revealing himself, showing up, and revealing the plans that he has for us in a way that changes our lives and changes the world.

For Moses, Moses is in kind of the second half of his life. He was at a season of his life where he probably was filled with regrets because his life didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to turn out. And he was a shepherd in the desert. This is taking place in Mount Horeb. It’s the Sinai Peninsula. It later became known as Mount Sinai. In fact, Moses writing this says it’s the mountain of God. The mountain range is known as Horeb. The particular place where God speaks through the burning bush and where God gives later the ten commandments is Mount Sinai.

Not really a place that we think of as pastureland. Recently, I was in Israel and I was at the southern tip of Israel in Eilat, which is ancient Ezion-Geber. It was a place during the wanderings once they left Horeb, Mount Sinai. They came to the tip of the Red Sea before they went up onto what’s modern Jordan on the other side of the Jordan River. It’s desolate. I mean, it’s not even like a desert that we have out here in Palm Springs or Palm Desert. I mean, it’s rock.

And so being a shepherd, he had to wander and travel looking for food for the sheep. And they came up to the foothills of Mount Horeb and God spoke to him. He wasn’t expecting it. He wasn’t even seeking it. But God had a sovereign plan for the life of Moses, just like God has a sovereign plan for our life. And God is not limited by our expectations for how and when and through what means he speaks to us.

We know that God speaks to us through scripture. It’s the normal, normative means by which God speaks. Because the word of God’s living, it’s active, it’s sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierces as far as a division of soul and spirit and joint and marrow. It’s able to judge the thoughts and intentions of our heart. And Jesus said in John chapter 8 to those who believed in him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly disciples of mine, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

Paul commends the folks at Thessalonica because he says in First Thessalonians chapter 2 that when you received from us the word of God’s message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is—the word of God, which performs its work in you who believe. So God speaks through his word, but God is not limited to only speak through his word. The psalmist in Psalm 19 says the heavens declare the glory of God. The speech is crying out from the very creation.

And Paul writing to the church at Rome in Romans chapter 8 says we haven’t received a spirit of the world leading to fear, but we’ve received a spirit of sonship and as sons, we cry out, "Abba, Father." God’s spirit bears witness with our spirit that we’re children of God. God speaks to our spirits. He uses scripture. He uses times of worship. He uses retreats. He uses creation. He uses wise counsel. He uses dreams. He uses prophetic words. The point is, God speaks.

And Jesus said in John 10 that he’s the good shepherd and his sheep hear his voice. Through a burning bush, God spoke to Moses. God can speak anytime, anywhere. And so we need to develop spiritual sensitivity in hearing the voice of God. In First Corinthians chapter 2, Paul says this: "Who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the thoughts of God except God’s spirit."

And then he says this: "Which spirit we have received so that we might know the things freely given to us by God. And these things we speak, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But the natural man cannot receive the things of the spirit of God because they’re foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they’re spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual discerns and appraises all things even though he’s appraised by no man. Who’s known the mind of the Lord that he should instruct him? We have the mind of Christ."

"But I could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to carnal men—men of the flesh, worldly men—for are you not still carnal and are you not still babes in Christ?" Paul says that the spirit of God reveals the things of God. The spirit of God speaks the words of God. The spirit of God communicates the voice of God to us. And some people are natural and they don’t hear it at all. Some people are spiritual and they hear it, they receive it, they discern it, they apply it to their lives. That’s why they’re spiritual.

And some people who should be spiritual are carnal. And so they hear God, but it’s fuzzy. Every person potentially can hear the voice of God. God is speaking. Whether we are listening or not, that’s a whole another issue. Moses heard the voice of God and it changed his life. God is speaking. This morning, God might be speaking to you. He might be revealing who he is and for the first time you’re coming to understand that Jesus Christ is God.

That I can be saved, I can have eternal life. Maybe God is speaking about your marriage. Maybe God is speaking about your future. Maybe God is speaking about an area of your life that you need to change, you need to repent. Maybe God is speaking, giving words of encouragement and affirmation and say just keep on keeping on. I’m pleased. Well done. The point is this: we need to hear the voice of God because God can speak anytime, anywhere.

Here’s a second observation: God is holy. Therefore, we must come into his presence having been cleansed from sin. God’s holy and we need to come into his presence having been cleansed from sin. There’s Moses on Mount Horeb and he sees this bush burning. And he turns aside to go over and look at it and he comes kind of within proximity of the bush and God speaks to him and says, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses says, "Here i am." And then God says, "You’re on holy ground, so take off your sandals."

Well, the ground was holy because God is holy. And wherever God’s presence is, that is a holy presence because the very nature of God is that he is holy. Remember the encounter that Isaiah had in Isaiah chapter 6? In Isaiah chapter 6, it says in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the Lord. And he saw this glorious picture of God on a throne and the heavens was filled up with the glory of God and the angels were kind of calling out to one another, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory."

And then in response to the holiness of God, Isaiah just kind of goes, "Uh," he says, "I’m undone. Woe is me because I’m a sinner. I have unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips." See, confronted with the holiness of God, he immediately became aware of his sin. And then God does something. He has the angel go take the burning coal and touch Isaiah’s lips where he confessed his sin struggle was and says, "Now I’ve been cleansed and my sin has been atoned for."

See, what every one of us needs to be in the presence of God is cleansing. The taking off of the sandals, that’s a Near Eastern custom symbolically representing kind of separating oneself from sin because walking around out in the desert, your feet get dirty. So you come into the presence of God, you take off those dirty sandals and it represents being clean in the presence of a holy God. Every one of us needs to be cleansed.

That’s why, if you were with us a few weeks ago in our series on Habits of the Heart, we talked about the habit of spiritual breathing and compared our fellowship with God to the action of breathing. Exhaling is confessing, getting rid of the impure. Inhaling is appropriating the filling of the Holy Spirit by faith and receiving the pure. In First John, kind of writing a similar way to Isaiah chapter 6 and to what Moses experienced in Exodus chapter 3, John says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

We’ve got this great promise because of Jesus’s death and atonement and the blood of Jesus Christ, we can be forgiven, we can be cleansed. Our part is to confess our sins. The context of that confession is what John says in First John 1:5, God is light and in him there’s no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and the truth is not in us. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin and we have fellowship with one another.

If we say that we have no sin, we lie and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. See, it’s great news. I can be forgiven, I can be cleansed, and I can be in the presence of God who is absolute light. God is holy. And wherever God is, it’s holy ground and I need to take off my sandals just like Moses. I need to confess my sins because I’m in the presence of a holy God.

Greg: What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we’d like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today’s date. We’ll send it your way for just $5. Or if you’d like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives: 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That’s 949-916-0250.

For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP’s new book, Facing Goliath. Please join us every Sunday at 9 or 11 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or check us out on the web at CrosslineChurch.com. We’re going to get to the address and phone number again in a minute, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today’s message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. We’re in a series called Heroes. We’re looking at how God takes ordinary people and does extraordinary things through their lives. And God can do that for us. God wants to use our lives to be examples and witnesses for Jesus Christ. God wants to use you. God wants to do a work in your life to transform you and make you a hero for Jesus Christ. Today we’re talking about Moses. Moses was a person that was used by God to deliver his people out of slavery in Egypt.

Moses’s life breaks up into three phases. There’s the first 40 years where Moses is raised in Pharaoh’s court. He is raised as a son of Pharaoh. Then there’s a second 40 years where he’s wandering in the desert thinking his life has been put on hold. And then there’s the final 40 years where he delivers the Israelites and moves them into the promised land. God has a plan for our lives. Whatever phase you may be in in your life right now, it’s where God wants you to be. And God wants to meet you right where you are.

God wants to transform you right where you are. You may feel like God has abandoned you. You may feel like God has forgotten you. You may feel that God has put you on the shelf. You may feel that God doesn’t want anything to do with you. The reality is God loves you. He has a plan for your life. He wants to transform you. He wants to forgive your sin. He wants to make you into the person he wants you to be. God has a plan for our lives and that plan is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

When we take steps towards Jesus Christ, we are taking steps towards the plan that God has for our lives. Wherever we are in our life, we have the opportunity to seek after God, to call upon the Lord, to get right with God, to become the person that he wants us to be. Moses experienced that in the middle of the desert. In Exodus chapter 3, Moses is in the desert tending the sheep. He’s in this middle phase of his life. He probably is feeling that the plans and the dreams that he had as a young person are not going to be fulfilled.

He maybe is even thinking that God no longer cares about him or has a plan for him. And this is what it says in Exodus chapter 3: "Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flame of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, 'I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.'"

"When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him and he said to him, 'Moses! Moses!' And Moses said, 'Here i am.' 'Do not come any closer,' God said. 'Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.' And then he said, 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'" God appeared to Moses from within a burning bush. God revealed himself to Moses. And God revealed himself to be holy and that he was the covenant God of Moses’s ancestors.

You see, God wants to reveal himself to us. God wants to get our attention. And God wants to say to us the same thing that he said to Moses. He is the holy God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You see, God is not a God of our own making. God is not the God of our own thoughts. God is not the God of our culture. God is the one true God, the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God is holy.

For us to become heroes, for us to become people who are used by God, we need a God-sized vision. We need to see God for who he really is. We need to be like Moses and turn aside and seek after God. And then when we see him, we need to see him for who he really is, the God who is holy. What do you think about when you think of God? Is God bigger than you can imagine? Is God greater than your thoughts and speculations?

Is God the God of the Bible—the creator, the sustainer, the infinite, limitless one, the one who’s absolutely pure and holy and righteous, the God who’s the God of love, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who is our savior and our judge? Do you have a big view of God? You see, we will never be heroes. We will never be people who step up and make a difference in our generation if we have a small view of God. We need a huge view of God.

We need a view of God that is true of him and worthy of him. We need to see that God is holy. Because when we see that God is holy, we come to recognize our own sin. We recognize our own unworthiness and we recognize our own inadequacy. And what that leads us to is to experience the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. You see, only Jesus Christ can take away our sins. Only Jesus Christ can make us holy so that we can worship a holy God.

If we’re trusting in anything other than Christ to make us right with God, we’re going to fall short and we’re going to be separated from God. When we see God for who he is as the holy one, we trust in Christ, we cry out to Christ, we experience the forgiveness and cleansing of Christ. And when we do, Christ makes us holy. That’s when we can become heroes, when we see God for who he is and we accept his plan of forgiveness and his plan to make us holy.

That’s through trusting in Jesus Christ. If that’s what you desire, if that’s what you aspire to, would you tell God that right now in prayer? God, I am so unworthy of your call on my life. God, you’re holy and I’m sinful. But thank you that Jesus Christ cleanses my sin, takes away my sin, and Jesus Christ makes me holy. Lord Jesus, make me holy so that I can be a hero for you in this generation. And I ask that in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Greg: We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives: 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at CrosslineChurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to CrosslineChurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.

Merry Christmas from Crossline Community Church. We want to invite you to one of our amazing services this Christmas. You can join us on Christmas Eve at 4:00 and 6:00 PM or on Christmas day for a special family Christmas at 10:00 AM. For more information, go to CrosslineChurch.com/Christmas.