Questioning God

Well, good morning. It’s good to see all of you here today. Those of you that are joining us in person, those of you that are streaming in online or maybe watching later on demand, and of course, our friends that are streaming in from First Lutheran in Algonac.

My name’s Tim. If I haven’t had a chance to meet you, I get the privilege of being one of the pastors and staff members here. And if I haven’t personally met you, I would love it if after the service, I’ll be out in the middle of the West Lobby, if you wouldn’t mind coming up and introducing yourself, and it just gives me an opportunity to connect with you.

And also, thank you for joining us for worship today, as we are in week eight of our 12-week series on the beginning of the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible. And we’re just firm Bible believers, Bible preachers here at Shepherds Gate. We encourage people to bring their Bibles to church because we believe that this is how God speaks to us.

Amen? And you’re in for a special treat this morning because most of the text is God actually speaking to Moses. And if God is speaking to Moses, who else is he speaking to? And so if you wanna know the heart of God, you wanna know the voice of God, this is what you’re going to get today. Now, last week, you know that we were experimenting with adding pictures to the sermon slides.

That was because of our new pastor, Eric, who’s our discipleship pastor. He said, Tim, you gotta really embrace the people that are visual. You might remember if you were here, you were the service that actually clapped for the pictures.

So we’re gonna try it again this week. And so what I did to recap where we were last week, in case you weren’t here, is here’s my attempt at a visual book with no words. Okay, you ready? Here you go.

Here’s all the pictures I used last week. Make sense? No questions? Probably need a little context. So basically, where we left off last week was Moses and his brother Aaron actually made it to Egypt.

They have their first encounter with Pharaoh, who’s this ruthless dictator, who is enslaved to the people of God, what we call them the Israelites, for hundreds of years. And so the first time that they go and say to Pharaoh what God has actually told them to say, which is the famous words, let my people go, Pharaoh refuses. He’s not very happy with them even being there.

And so he decides to make it more difficult for God’s people. And instead of providing them the raw materials, he makes them responsible to now go and get the raw materials to build the bricks to expand his kingdom. And so you can imagine these people are already enslaved, their lives are already miserable, and now he’s just made it worse.

And so not only did he do that to the people, they actually physically abused the overseers. And the overseers are also Israelites. So these are the people that would have been responsible as they were going through building these different buildings all over the kingdom.

So much so that the overseers actually went back to Pharaoh and pleaded with them and said, look, can we just go back to the way things were? We’re okay if we just go back to you supply the materials, we’ll make the bricks, and we’ll keep building your buildings. And even after they poured their hearts out to Pharaoh, Pharaoh still refused, still told them they were responsible for the raw materials and still told them they had to meet the same exact quota as before. And of course, these guys are angry.

They go back, they find Moses and Aaron, they get in Moses and Aaron’s face. And this is what they said. This is where we left off.

May the Lord look on you and judge you. You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us. So imagine being Moses, imagine being Aaron.

You’re just doing what God told you to do. Now, not only is Pharaoh upset with you, your own people are upset with you. In fact, everybody hates you.

Anybody ever been in a situation like that? Anybody ever been in a situation where your whole family just hates you? And you’re just like, dear Lord, I don’t even know what I can do or how to get out of this mess. Now, you would think that Moses would remember the conversation he had with God in the burning bush where God told him, by the way, the first time you tell Pharaoh this, he’s not going to accept it. In fact, you’re gonna have to go multiple times and say the same thing over and over again.

But trust me, don’t fear, there’s a plan in place and eventually he will release the children of Israel. But for some reason, what we’re gonna read today, and if you have your Bibles and you wanna open to chapter five, we’re gonna start off on verse 22. This is not what Moses does.

Moses actually goes to God and says, why, Lord, have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak your name, in case you forgot, he has brought trouble on this people and you, it’s your fault, blaming you have not rescued your people at all. And so you can see the blame game and the finger pointing taking place. He’s crying out to God.

He doesn’t like the fact that he’s now the scapegoat and that everybody actually hates him. And you can kind of see in this plea to God just how aggressive Moses is actually being with his language toward God. Sometimes that’s what happens.

We read Scripture and we read it through kind of the safety lens where we think all Scriptures is all nice and cute and Jesus and bunnies and all of that. And what you find out when you’re digging the Scriptures the way that we do here is that there’s actually real raw emotions. Like people forget things and people add things and people subtract things and people sin.

And then what we do is we look in a mirror and we realize that we’re no better than they are. Amen. And so I want you to know today not only can you question God, you can cry out to God.

You can wrestle with God. You can tell him that there’s things in his book that you don’t like and that you wish you could change. You can tell him that.

Doesn’t mean he’s gonna change it. You can bring your doubts to God and say, God, I’m struggling in my faith. God, I’m struggling to understand this whole idea of church and what that means and walking in a relationship with you.

And God, I wanna believe you and I wanna live according to your word, but I have these things over here that I’m convicted by and sometimes they just don’t always line up and so it makes it difficult to figure out and how to navigate the world that I’m in. And you can even struggle to pray. Maybe you’ve cried every tear and you have no more tears.

Maybe you don’t know the words to say and all you maybe can breathe out of your mouth is help. God sees that. He knows that.

And he loves you anyways. He’s the one that sent Jesus for you. He knew all the hardships that we would face.

He knew that each and every day that you and I wake up that we are constantly drawn to sin. You are constantly drawn to do the wrong thing. To think the wrong thing, to say the wrong thing, to do the wrong thing, to be selfish with yourself and your time on this earth.

That is the fallen sinful nature that the scriptures teach us you and I will have this side of eternity. And the only way to get rid of this fallen sinful nature is to die or have Jesus come back. Just so you know.

It is not going away. But thanks be to God we also have the Holy Spirit that produces faith in our hearts and in our lives. This gift that God has given us.

And not only has he given us the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit actually gives us wisdom and guidance and direction and comfort and peace in the midst of all of the uncertainty and difficulty that we face in this life. And obviously the greatest gift of Jesus Christ and what it is that he has done for us through his work on the cross and when he came out of that tomb and he declared victory for you and for me. But there is this constant battle, the tension that we live in this side of eternity which is exactly what we are seeing with Moses in this text.

So make no mistake, faith can coexist. Your faith, my faith can coexist with our questions, with our doubt, with our pain and in our suffering. And even when we pray we are allowed to question God.

We also should get really good at confessing to God the things that we know are sins in our lives. We are allowed to petition God for our requests and the requests of others. And then this last one which is what I always encourage people to do is at the end of your prayer is to surrender to God.

To say God whatever situation I’m in or the person that I’m praying for is in I might not fully understand where this is going but I believe in you and I trust you and in your way and this one’s even harder when we say and in your time you can hurry along God, hurry this along but I’m gonna trust that you are at work. Amen? Because this is the problem that I find. Can I just tell you this morning? I find the problem is our prayers are just too safe.

Like how many of you you woke up this morning and you prayed for the USA to whip Canada’s butt this morning? You’re like, they have enough gold medals. That poor country right now is in mourning. Do you realize that? There’s probably not a single person that’s in church in Canada because that is their sport.

The fact that they actually opened up bars and restaurants and liquor stores and allowed them to buy liquor at 6 in the morning because this is hockey is such a national treasure to them. You wanna pray a prayer? Pray for them. They’re gonna need lots of prayers today.

They’re probably none of them are going to work tomorrow either. Right? Our friends to the north. But so often that’s what happens.

Our prayers are just too safe. Sometimes they’re just static prayers. And what I mean by that is there’s these repetitious prayers that we just know and so we repeat them because maybe they’re from our childhood.

And sometimes it’s good because we’re teaching our kids to pray and so we pass them down to them. The difficulty is if we’re just saying them to save them to get through a prayer and we’re not actually consciously thinking about or believing that God is actually going to work and do something in that prayer. How about salty prayers? Anybody pray a salty prayer this morning? Anybody get really mad at God this weekend? No one.

You guys are all good with your relationship with the Lord? Or you just didn’t pray this weekend? Because sometimes this happens. Life is so good and things are going well and so we don’t really feel the need to pray and so we look at prayer as just going to God when something’s bad or there’s a diagnosis or there’s a difficulty. And so instead of continually offering prayers to God and prayers of petition to God sometimes those things can get pushed aside.

And again, surrendered prayers of not my will, God, but yours. And not my direction, your direction. Not my timeline, God, but your direction for our lives.

But I can tell you this and you’re going to see this in the text that if you question God you also have to be prepared for God to question you right back. Do a study of the New Testament. You will see over and over again Jesus is the genius communicator because so often when confronted by people people would ask him questions.

He would respond with a question. That’s why you hear us in our sermons a lot. We ask you questions because we want you to think about and process what it is that’s in the text and how it actually applies to your own life.

Flashback to the very beginning and by the way whenever God asks a question it’s called a what? What kind of question? It’s a rhetorical question. He’s all knowing. He already knows the answers.

Go all the way back to the garden with Adam and Eve when they sinned. God shows up and says where are you? Is he playing hide and seek with Adam and Eve now? Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat from? I mean he knows the answer to these questions. Flashback to what he already told Moses in the burning bush.

Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I the Lord? There’s another guy in Scripture. His name’s Job and God strips everything from his life. He loses his wife.

He loses his kids. He loses his business. He loses all of his finances.

He’s reduced down to a homeless guy that even his own physical body is completely full of sores. I mean you just talk about hitting rock bottom. There was no other place for Job to go.

It’s very similar to the children of Israel in the passage in Exodus. How could he possibly go? And Job if you read his book spends most of the time trying to figure out what God is up to until finally God responds and one of the ways God says to Job is this. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? I mean that’s pretty salty don’t you think? That’s pretty direct.

I mean we can ask direct questions of God but trust me God is also going to ask direct questions and be confrontational with us as well. And when he does it it’s because he loves us and because he knows what is actually best for us. Now this is what’s really cool because in verse 1 of chapter 6 God says to Moses now you’re going to see what I will do to Pharaoh.

Because of my mighty hand oh he’s going to let them go but it’s going to be according to the timeline that I see fit. Because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of what he thinks is his country. We are going to make his life so miserable with a series of events that are about to take place that eventually he will tell you that you were allowed to take them out of Egypt and out of captivity.

God also said to Moses I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty but my name the Lord I did not make myself fully known to them. I also Moses established my covenant between myself and mankind.

I made this promise with them that’s what covenant means to give them to the land of Canaan where they resided as foreigners. I didn’t even completely fulfill the entire promise until now with you. In fact moreover if you forgot even though I already told you I have heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are enslaving and I have remembered the covenant that I made.

I’m still unfolding my perfect plan for you and the children of Israel and for all of mankind because this is all part of the redemptive plan of what Jesus is going to do for every human being on this planet. So you can imagine how difficult this is for the children of Israel. They hear it they’re living it they’re trying to figure out you know is this really actually going to happen in our lifetime.

Now mind you folks they have been enslaved for over 400 years. Do you know that we have not even been a country? Like this year we’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of America. Like put that in perspective.

I don’t know about you but if I was one of them I’d be like I think God’s joking. Like is this really actually going to happen? Is he really going to free us from this bondage that we’re in? And now these verses that I’m about to read this is so important. This is like the key part of all of the verses today because you are going to hear the heart of our God because he turns to Moses and says you now are going to go back to the Israelites and this is what you are going to say.

I am the Lord I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people and I will be your God.

Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob. I am going to give it to you as a possession signed God.

P.S. I am the Lord and if you’re Moses and you’re hearing this how excited are you to go back and to tell the children of Israel this? You’ve already told them once and the last time you told them you actually brought them hope and their response was to worship God and now here again God just downloaded everything that you are to say and you are to trust that God is at work in this situation. Now this is when we would expect when the children of Israel heard this they would say you’re right that’s right the first time you came you made this promise we believe that God is speaking in and through you and whatever is happening it’s just not right now like we’re not in the time frame right now for this to take place we need to be patient and isn’t that always the hardest thing to do? Can I just tell you some of the things that I struggle with? You know we’re in this building campaign here at Shepherd’s Gate called Faith Forward and I have never ever had my patience stretched more than through this whole thing. I alluded to it a couple weeks ago and I just can’t imagine I would never have imagined the obstacles that we’ve had to overcome and I have prayed multiple times God why are you making this so complicated? Hey God did you forget we’re trying to build a church here on 23 mile I’m not building my own business my own brand I mean worshiping in the gym is great but we eventually want to get out of the gym and we want to build and be able to be in our new worship center amen? And I’ve actually joked and this is me I say to our general contractors and to those that are working on this project I’m like you don’t realize how patient this church has been with me I say every year this is the year that we’re going to break ground and then we don’t break ground we haven’t even moved a spoonful of dirt at this point and I said if we don’t break ground I’m pretty sure someone’s just going to get a shovel and they’re going to put me in the hole that they did okay? So I need all of you that are part of this project to make Shepherds Gate your number one priority but here’s some good news after all of the hurdles we had to overcome with our friends that are south of us and the deed restriction and they finally signed off on that even though that took months and that’s a whole long drawn out story then we ran into issues with Shelby Township and we were like what’s going on with Shelby Township but thanks be to God we have friends that work at Shelby Township and so we made some calls and we said here’s the situation and here’s what they’re not happy about with the plans and is there any way that you guys can all get in the same room and figure this out and then can you also issue a statement on nice beautiful Shelby Township letterhead so we can give it to Chick-fil-A so we can finally move into a purchase agreement and sell that parcel to Chick-fil-A so that we can build our church and do you know what happened on Friday? The Red Sea parted and the email came through and it went immediately to Chick-fil-A and Chick-fil-A actually responded right away and said that they got it folks this is crazy we’re finally through all of those mountains that we were just singing about in that song all we have left is the purchase agreement so this is what you need to pray for lawyers pray I have no hair left so you know there’s nothing else to pull out pray I don’t have a heart attack all that we need is our lawyer pray for our lawyer his name’s Bob easy name everyone say Bob I’m going to tell him you’re all praying for him now pray for Bob and then pray for the Chick-fil-A lawyers because there’s six things in the purchase agreement that all they have to do is fine tune and agree on and then there’s no reason that we won’t be able to move forward and finally do what we believe God is calling us to do amen so thank you for your patience with us in all of this and so here he is he’s got to go back and he’s got to report this news to them and he’s you know he knows he has to do it because God told him to do it and so of course when he gets in front of the people of God they did not listen to him and this time they’re not going to accept his message and the reason is is because they’re so discouraged and because they’re under such harsh labor if you actually dig into these words in the Hebrew it actually means these people are completely broken there is nothing left in them to give some would say they were so just completely mentally emotionally and physically exhausted has anyone ever been like that in life? you ever been there with a situation whether it was a personal situation or a situation with a family member or a close friend and all the walls are coming in and there doesn’t seem to be any way out and yet somehow this is part of God’s plan somehow God repeats this pattern in human history and part of it is refining us and what it is that he’s trying to teach us how many of you you want to pray prayers of God put me in the grinder God put me through the difficult testing God help me to become more patient see a few weeks ago I got a phone call some of you might recognize this name how many of you recognize the name John Beauregard anybody recognize the name John Beauregard if you don’t most of you probably won’t he was actually the lead pastor here at Shepherds Gate two pastors ago and he hasn’t actually his last year was actually think about this his last year here was 20 years ago now so he hasn’t been here in 20 years but he still calls me he still checks in he still keeps track of what God is doing here at Shepherds Gate and he still prays for us and he has this insane ability like he gets me and then he’ll also get me does that make sense you ever have somebody like that in your life like he’ll say okay what’s going on and how are things going and he can ask certain questions about the church and about the position and you know the intricacies of what’s taking place here and yet somehow God uses him as a vessel to speak into me and it’s always breaking something down in my life because a few weeks ago he asked this question he said Tim okay great glad to hear you know things are moving with your building program and things are going well at the church and this and that and you know you have some staff members that you’re you know trying to fill so right now we’re looking for a full-time worship director and we’re also trying to find a full-time student director and so thank God that JJ’s heading up the search for the worship director and Eric’s heading up the search for the student director and we’re hoping and praying that at some point this year we’ll have both of those positions filled but he also knows you know the burden of being in a building project because he was the pastor when we built the gym and he said this he said tell me where you’re having fun like what kind of that’s not a that’s not a pastor to pastor question what are you talking about he’s like what are you doing I’m like I’m working what do you mean I’m stressing out that’s what I’m doing that’s what you’re supposed to do you worry and you stress out and you doubt and then you worry and you stress out and you work harder I said John did you forget I got two teenagers like I don’t have a life like they’re completely convinced that I just exist for them and so whatever they have going on I’m like their you know Uber driver and I have to drive them everywhere and pay for everything and do everything like I don’t have a life and he kept pressing into it he’s like no where is the joy in what it is that you’re doing in all areas of your life he said Tim what does the scripture say that that the blank of the Lord is our strength the so you know the scripture the joy of the Lord he’s like this can’t be a burden you have got to figure out how to turn this around and find those moments when you can just enjoy ministry enjoy your family and enjoy what it is that God has called you to do and I’m telling you I got off the phone with him and I got mad I was like I don’t joy I don’t give him joy go make another spreadsheet and maybe that’s for somebody else today maybe you’re in that same situation and you’re letting your life circumstance steal your joy and that’s not what God wants for you that’s actually not what God has for you even in the midst of a difficulty even in the midst of uncertainty this is what God says to Moses hey dude you’re going back in you’re going to go tell Pharaoh a second time that king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country what? no come on can’t we just get to the last plague can’t you do what you did in Genesis where you just you know showed up and did some stuff like why God why do you have to drag this out and of course here’s where you get to see Moses in all of his humanity because he says to God if the Israelites will not listen to me why would Pharaoh listen to me I’ve been there done that already tried did what you told me to do and it’s because I speak with uncircumcised lips see before at the burning bush when God called him into this role he said that I have an issue public speaking I’m not very good at communicating you picked the wrong person God you should really find somebody else to be your mouthpiece this is a really important role and at that time all Moses was thinking about was the physical world now all of a sudden he’s upping the ante because he’s using these words on purpose this uncircumcised lips he is now saying I don’t have the spiritual authority to talk to Pharaoh I don’t have the spiritual authority to talk to the people of God it is not getting through in fact the opposite is true I am a fallen sinful human being and that’s why my lips are uncircumcised God I don’t want to do it please stop pushing me to do things that I don’t want to do and as I was looking at these passages this week and I was mulling it over and over and over again I just kept going back to this one word trust do we actually trust that God is at work in our lives do we actually trust that God is at work in our world no matter who’s in office or what’s happening and you know the Olympics are all supposed to bring us together and make us all you know one and world peace and all of those other things do we think that that’s what it is or do we actually believe that God will fulfill all of the promises that he gives us in his word because here’s what I was convicted by this week why is it when God says go we know that God tells us to do something we are so quick to say no sometimes we even had a word before that why or why when he says believe this is my word it’s the word it’s the living breathing word of God this is what’s best for you this is what produces faith in your heart this is how you know who God is and so often we reject that and say I don’t need you God I don’t need to pray I don’t need your instructions I can do this on my own or what about when he says be be my follower be my disciple be my witness which means we have to go and tell other people about the hope they can have in Jesus we always say we have an excuse couple days ago I went into a very large store with my older son Henry and it’s a really bad idea to go into this store on the weekends funny that you guys all know the store I’m talking about and I was already stressed out because my son has a permit and he drives and he drove into the parking lot of Costco where people are just lose their minds they lose their minds I don’t know what it is about that corner of Utica Shelby Township so like just getting into a parking spot when I don’t have control of the steering wheel I just and my wife actually doesn’t take me to Costco for two reasons one we always run into people from Shepherds Gate and she says it always takes three times as longer when I take you than if I just go myself and number two we always spend more money if I’m there because I’m like you’re not going to believe all the stuff I found there we didn’t even know we needed but for whatever reason I was sent to Costco with a very specific list from my wife and as soon as we walked in now they make you scan the card which is annoying to me and we come around the corner and I see a guy that used to be a member of the church sitting on the couch and he’s looking down on his cell phone and I went crap and I’m like well he’s not a member here anymore I don’t have to talk to him do I he’s got a new church new pastor and I’m just like oh and just everything and my son heard my uh and I said walk faster and he’s like why and he’s like oh he’s like why don’t you want to talk to him and I was like we’re not going to talk about this I don’t want to talk to him he’s one of those guys wears a lot of cologne and then if you hug him you smell like him for the rest of the day like every every reason to not talk to this guy was racing through my mind get the blueberries get the nonfat Greek yogurt and get the heck out of that place right just boom boom I know where they’re at I know what to do I know how to get out of this place and I never use self-checkout I love people I will spend all day in Costco talking to people that I know or don’t know and for whatever reason I made the horrible decision to get in the self-checkout line hoping and praying that this guy and his wife would not see me in there or bother me or talk to me and we get up there and I have all of these heavy water things that she asked me to get and they took away the scanner and I I lit the guy up from Costco the Costco employee and I was like why would you take away you want me to pick these things up why do you guys have to make everything so difficult and he walked away because I was a big jerk to him and then after we rang it up and my son was like dude you really need to chill I actually went up to the Costco employee and I said I’m so sorry he’s like and he literally was like whatever okay did my part but this is what it comes down to does God have good plans for our lives but what if they’re not our plans what if it’s not what we have dictated to him that we want to see happen are we willing to surrender our lives to him and believe and trust that he has our best interest in mind see we’re going to end by singing the song Good Plans the worship team is actually going to join me up here at this time and I want you to think about this because God’s good plan for Jesus was to nail him to a cross that’s how it ended for the son of God his one and only son that his sacrifice and modeling his life for you and for me this side of eternity would be lives of living and sacrifice to him and as we embrace that as we fully enter into the reality that we’re constantly drawn to go our own way and to focus on ourselves yet God in his grace and his mercy wraps his arms around us and loves us and forgives us and what’s so interesting about the song that we are about to sing is that it’s intertwined with the 23rd song which is often read at funerals and what’s fascinating about the 23rd song is the very first line which I have a hard time getting through just so you know because the 23rd song starts with these words the Lord is my shepherd do you believe that if the Lord is my shepherd then I have everything that I need in the person and work of Jesus God help us help us to be obedient to you and what it is that you’ve called us to do and thank you for your unending love grace and forgiveness that each and every day we wake up your mercies are new every morning amen let’s stand and let’s sing this song together