Call to worship:
7 to him who made the great lights,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
8 the sun to rule over the day,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
9 the moon and stars to rule over the night,
for his steadfast love endures forever;Psalm 136:7-9
Gathering Video
Questions for reflection:
Exodus gives us a picture of waiting and watching? What do you think that was like for Moses, how has that been for you?
In knowing God, how do we better understand ourselves?
How can only looking in become a danger that prevents us from looking up and out?
What significance does God bring to “small hours?”
Corporate Prayer:
Our Father in Heaven,
We thank you that you are the God who makes a way. You are the Lord who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. As we follow Your Son and our savior Jesus, please empower us with your Spirit to work and wait well, where you have placed us.
In the name of Christ we pray,
Amen
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Notes//Quotes//Slides:
Text: Exodus 3:1-6
Title: God With Us
“What Moses does mean by this? Did he mean that he became a foreigner to those who no longer accepted him? To the Egyptians, the Hebrews, or that now he's in Midian and he doesn't belong here either? Moses is a misfit and he has this hybrid identity that doesn't really belong.”
— Dr. Carmen Imes
“What is the significance of the fire’s being in the bush but not of the bush? It indicates that the fire Moses saw was independent of the bush—it was not using the bush for its fuel. That’s why the bush wasn’t consumed. It was burning from its own power. It was self-generated. This is a biblical example of what we call theophany, meaning “God made manifest.” The God whom we worship is a spirit. He is invisible, and His invisible substance cannot be seen by the human eye. But there are occasions in redemptive history where the invisible God makes Himself visible by some kind of manifestation. That is called a theophany, and it’s what we see with the burning bush.” — R.C. Sproul
“God is not only identifying himself as Yahweh, the God who made a covenant with Abraham to bless him and multiply him and bring him into the land and make him be a blessing to all nations. Not only is He that God, but at the same time He’s defining who Moses is. He belongs in that covenant people and the God of his father is that God, the God Yahweh. So he's grown up in an Egyptian context where there are lots of deities, lots of temples, lots of priests worshiping these different deities, and in his first encounter with God he finds out simultaneously who God is, and who he is, and that settles things for him. Going forward, his hybrid identity gets resolved and I think this is how it works actually for all of us. When we come to fully encounter the God of the Bible (Yahweh who revealed himself in Jesus)…as we come to know Yahweh we come to know ourselves. There's no real way to know who we are outside of knowing who God is, who God has created us to be, and who He's called us to be.” — Dr. Carmen Imes
“Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. In the second place, those blessings which unceasingly distill to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain. Here, again, the infinitude of good which resides in God becomes more apparent from our poverty. In particular, the miserable ruin into which the revolt of the first man has plunged us, compels us to turn our eyes upwards; not only that while hungry and famishing we may thence ask what we want, but being aroused by fear may learn humility.” — John Calvin
“Yahweh is and always will be “God with”—God with those who faithfully obey his sending; God with his people in good times and bad; God with the poor and needy in their affliction; and eventually, Immanuel, “God with us.” —Christopher Wright
Questions:
1. Can I celebrate the slow nature of character building?
2. Am I attempting to know myself apart from looking outward and upward?
3. Have I truly encountered the God who is with me?