230 years ago a group of delegates from the thirteen colonies met in Philadelphia and signed a document that marked the beginning of democracy in the world. These brave men and many others like them took a stand and delivered America from rule without representation.
To call the continental army and the new government of the United States of America an underdog would be an understatement. A ragtag, poorly armed, group of frontiersmen took up their squirrel rifles and fowling guns and stood against the most powerful military of the time. We all love stories of underdogs who rise up to a challenge and beat the odds and prevail despite the overwhelming odds. This week we celebrate the deliverance begun by those first patriots.
A much more unlikely deliverer in the pages of history is Moses. His reluctance to assume a leadership role in delivering his people from bondage is quite clear. After all he was just a shepherd, not a diplomat or army general. We don’t often think of great leaders as being especially humble. But perhaps Moses great humility is what led God to choose him for leadership.
Exo 3:1-12 MSG
(1) Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the west end of the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, Horeb.
(2) The angel of GOD appeared to him in flames of fire blazing out of the middle of a bush. He looked. The bush was blazing away but it didn't burn up.
(3) Moses said, "What's going on here? I can't believe this! Amazing! Why doesn't the bush burn up?"
(4) GOD saw that he had stopped to look. God called to him from out of the bush, "Moses! Moses!" He said, "Yes? I'm right here!"
(5) God said, "Don't come any closer. Remove your sandals from your feet. You're standing on holy ground."
(6) Then he said, "I am the God of your father: The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." Moses hid his face, afraid to look at God.
(7) GOD said, "I've taken a good, long look at the affliction of my people in Egypt. I've heard their cries for deliverance from their slave masters; I know all about their pain.
(8) And now I have come down to help them, pry them loose from the grip of Egypt, get them out of that country and bring them to a good land with wide-open spaces, a land lush with milk and honey, the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
(9) "The Israelite cry for help has come to me, and I've seen for myself how cruelly they're being treated by the Egyptians.
(10) It's time for you to go back: I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the People of Israel, out of Egypt."
(11) Moses answered God, "But why me? What makes you think that I could ever go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?"
(12) "I'll be with you," God said....
If we were to begin to think of some things in our world that require a "deliverer" or are in need of deliverance we would likely end up with a substantial list. You may think of something personal, a situation involving the church, our community, the nation, or the world.
Our world is in dire need of deliverance from terrorism, world hunger, cancer and heart disease, AIDS, devastating natural disasters. The list could go on and on.
Our world cries out for a deliverer. We may find ourselves or others around us crying out for a deliverer.
Who might God use to bring about the change?
Could it be you, or me? Could it some or all of us working as a team, much like those who served on the Second Continental Congress of 1776?
Most of us lead a fairly routine life. We all have routines, from the way we brush our teeth, to the route we drive to town or work, to the food we normally eat.
Our routines are important to us. They bring a sense of normalcy, they give us a feeling of balance and rhythm in a chaotic world. Routines can have great value. Our routines can keep us focused and on track, but if we become obsessive about them or locked into following them they can become harmful. They may make us so comfortable that we question God’s will for us. Just like Moses: "But why me? What makes you think that I can do anything great?"
What does it take to change a routine?
Moving to a new town, going on vacation, celebrating holidays, death or illness of a loved one, a deliberate choice to make a change, are some examples. We don’t all see God in a burning bush, but it doesn’t always take such drastic means to change our routines.
When our routines do change we can end up living different lives if the changes are drastic enough. Sometimes God will enter into our normal routines and when He does we may not be thrilled with the results. God may confirm or strengthen what we are already doing, or God may upset everything and change the direction of our life.
What does it take to get our attention? We spend the greater part of our lives not noticing most things around us. For instance very few of us could describe in detail everything we saw on the way to church this morning. Yes, we can list a number of things, but how many trees did we see? Which lawns were mowed? How many cracks are in the sidewalk outside? From sights to sounds to smells we roll them into life’s "background" unless something significant attracts our attention.
How many bushes did Moses walk by or see in his peripheral vision before he saw the one that was ablaze? It was in the middle of a very ordinary day that Moses encountered something that changed his life forever. The blazing bush captured his attention.
I ask, What gets your attention?
How does God capture your attention? Have you ever had any "burning bush" experiences? What kind of experience does it take to make you decid that it is critically important to "turn aside and look"?
Has God ever interrupted you when you were minding your own business?
Was there anything special about Moses’ bush? Or was it just an ordinary bush?
One writer said about this bush, "any old bush will do. A scraggly bush will do. A tall stately bush will do. A sick and dying bush would do."
What is true for the bush is also true for us. God can use ordinary bread and butter Christians like us.
Many times we are so stuck in our routines that we don’t allow God to capture our attention.
We are not always eager to hear that God wants our cooperation. It would be much easier just to sit back and let God take care of everything. We would be happy to sit on the sidelines and cheer God on, of course, but we would rather not be in the middle of the struggle. Yet here is another way in which God honors us, in that we do have actual freedom and responsibility. God works with us, but at the same time depends on us to do the things that we are capable of doing. God even expects us to learn from our mistakes.
God doesn’t need our help, but God wants our help.
God will do the "God parts" to deliver us. God does not do our parts for us.
Few people are called by God to be Moses figures. Most of us live on a smaller, less grand scale. This in no way means that we are not also called to play our part in deliverances, whether large or small. Mentoring a child through a church or other organization or driving one day each week for Meals on Wheels or working on a Habitat for Humanity home or working a potato drop for the Society of St. Andrew takes more effort than writing a check to those organizations, just as going to Egypt was harder for Moses than continuing to tend sheep in Midian. Many kinds of deliverance need human participation. The Meals on Wheels program, for instance, delivers much more that nourishing food, for many of the clients it also delivers them from loneliness and lack of companionship.
We may be more comfortable seeing ourselves primarily in the "Moses" position, as cooperating with God to help someone else’s plight. Can we also see ourselves in the "Israelite" position, being in deep trouble from which we can see no immediate way out?
Although we have probably not been oppressed as the Hebrews were, we all face situations that prompt us to cry out to God to save, rescue, liberate, or deliver us. The Bible promises us that God will be with us.
Yes Moses heard and followed God’s call. But note carefully what went before: the enslaved Israelites called out to God from their bondage. They had not given up all hope; they were willing to cry out to the Lord. What stops us from admitting our fears and needs to God?
Deliverance has two sides and we may be surprised to discover that as we do what seems our puny effort for a large cause, God is simultaneously delivering us from our own private bondages. How often do you hear people returning from mission trips proclaiming that they received so much more than they gave?
We all in some ways try to avoid God’s call. We are happy in our routines. Even some of the delegates at the Second Continental Congress in 1776 were indecisive. The Declaration of Independence went through many revisions before finding enough support. Even in it’s final form, the delegates of only 9 colonies signed it. Many colonists remained loyal to the king, even when the abuses were obvious.
We sometimes agree to change our routine only after much haggling.
When God is present, holiness abounds. Even though we may never see a burning bush we are even now standing on holy ground. We must always take our shoes off and show the proper respect due to God as we "stand on holy ground".
From the strut of the football player who just scored a touchdown to the sneer of the CEO defending unjust business practices, pride and arrogance are evident all around us. In the midst of such a culture, even Christians are sometimes tempted to "strut their stuff" as well. Bragging about church attendance, huge offerings, and square footage of buildings can deny God as being the giver of all of these things.
A few years ago a lady remarked with excitement in her eyes about the presence of a certain basketball star in her church’s worship services. An onlooker listened to her go on and on about the celebrity in their midst and quipped, "Well, you know God was there, too." Take time to stop and remember that after all is said and done, it is all about God.
Hulda Crooks began climbing mountains at the age of fifty-three. She climbed 11,500 ft. Mt. San Gorgonio in Southern Cal. twenty times. At age sixty six she made the first of twenty ascents of California’s 14,500 ft. Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states. Her last ascent was at age ninety one. She is also the oldest person to climb Mt. Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan.
Hulda started jogging when she was seventy two saying, "it made climbing so much easier." She also back-packed the two hundred twelve mile John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada, set a senior olympics world record in her age group for 1500 meters, and hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Before she died in 1997 at the age of one hundred one, Hulda, a Christian , expressed the guiding principle of her life: "When you have faith in a supreme power that you believe is alive and full of kindness and has a care for you, you’re not under tensions like other people. You develop a habit of trusting."
Trusting: so easy to say, so hard to do. At first Moses had trouble trusting God. He had questions about his ability to do what God asked. In the end, it was Moses’ trust in God’s promise, "I will be with you", that made the difference. When trust in God took hold of Moses’ life, he began to accomplish things he never would have imagined doing before. Do you suppose the same could be true for the rest of us?
Could one of us be the next underdog destined for great things in Christ?
