Exodus: Taking the Road Out
Part 3
“Take Off Your Shoes”
Exodus 3
Let me read to you from the book of Exodus Chapter 3, the second book of the Bible. And we began just a few weeks ago to look at this whole story that the early part of Exodus gives to us of the deliverance of the Israelites from their slavery and bondage in Egypt. We’re calling it “Taking the Road Out”.
And we come to a very crucial event in this whole story today and I am going to read from Exodus Chapter 3. I am going to read the first 14 verses. There is nothing we can miss out without losing something crucial to this story. So Exodus Chapter 3:1:
“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 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.’
“And 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, because he was afraid to look at God.
“The LORD said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their 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 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, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.’”(I practised that verse earlier.)
“ ‘And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
“ ‘So now, go. I am sending 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 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.”
Moses is eighty years of age when this incident takes place. The story so far is that he has been born to Hebrew slaves at a time when it was very dangerous for Hebrew babies to be born because the policy was to cull the Israelite people in Egypt by throwing the baby boys into the Nile.
Moses’ parents had kept him at home and hidden him for three months and then probably he got a little too noisy. After three months they put him in a little basket covered with pitch and tar; put it into the Nile amongst the bulrushes. His elder sister Miriam came and stood on the banks and just kept an eye on him.
And one day Pharaoh’s daughter pulled up to bathe, found the baby, took him home, adopted him as her own, gave him the name Moses, which means ‘drawn out of the water”.
And Miriam had run alongside and said, “You need a nurse for that baby; I’ll get one for you.” And Moses’ own mother was paid to bring up her own child in the palace of Pharaoh, the safest place for a Hebrew slave to be, the most protected place to be.
And it must have been his mother who told Moses who he really was. “You don’t belong here. You are not an Egyptian; you are a Hebrew.”
At the age of forty he saw an opportunity to kill an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew slave and he killed him. Maybe his strategy was to get the Egyptians one by one because the book of Acts tells us that he wondered why the people didn’t recognize that God was using him to deliver them.
But it was by his own strategy, by his own tactics. And somebody found the body of the man he had killed and the word was sent to Pharaoh who then looked for Moses. And Moses fled from Egypt; went out to the Midian desert, got a job with some girls who were looking after sheep, married one of them and spent the next forty years living in the Midian desert; as the King James puts it, on the backside of the Midian desert.
And one day after forty years of this, forty years of looking after sheep, one day as he was leading his sheep, he saw something, which was not unusual in the Midian desert, a bush burst into flames. In the heat and sunshine of the desert, spontaneous combustion might take effect and a bush might ignite. But before very long it would burn itself out and be just a heap of ash on the ground.
But this bush, Moses looked again, it was still burning; went on with his work; it was still burning. Later looked again - still burning. Probably had his lunch, looked again; it’s still burning.
And he said, “Why does the bush not burn up? I will turn aside” (that’s the way the King James puts that – I love that rendering) “I will turn aside. I will deliberately turn aside and see this great sight.”
And as he did so, God spoke to him from within the bush.
There are several times in the Old Testament Scriptures when God appears in some physical, tangible form. Theologians have given a name to those appearances. We call it either a Theophany or a Christophany, if we want to specifically identify it with Christ as a pre-incarnate appearance.
And a number of times God appears in some physical form. Sometimes it’s in the form and shape of a person. In this case it was in fire. That’s how God often spoke to Moses; He met him in fire on Mount Sinai as well.
And Moses didn’t know this was God. He just wondered why it is that this burn does not burn out as a bush normally would.
And by the way, there are times when you see God at work – sometimes in somebody’s life, sometimes in a situation. And if you are wise, you will turn aside and ask why is it that something is going on here that is not normal? Why is it that there is something that is inexplicable here?
I know the people who have had the biggest impact on me as a Christian have been Christians whose lives have caused me to stop, turn, look, scratch my head and say, “What is their secret?” And discovering it is God in them that is their secret.
Moses turned to this bush and when he did so, God spoke to him from within the bush. “Moses! Moses!” He knew him by name. God knows everybody by name.
And Moses responded, “Here I am.”
And notice the first thing God said to Moses then was this,
“Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing is holy ground.”
I find that intriguing. I will tell you why. You would think God would have more important things to talk about to Moses than his shoes, wouldn’t you? Don’t you find it strange that the first thing God says is, “Take off your sandals.” I mean why? Is this a question of etiquette? When you talk to God take your shoes off?
It is an Eastern custom? There are Eastern customs related to footwear and shoes and the soles of your feet and so on.
Is God simply conforming to custom? Or is there something very significant and important in this? And I suggest to you that there is. And we’ll come back to Moses’ shoes in just a moment. But to understand the significance, let me read you what God said to him in Verse 6:
“Then he said this, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’
Verse 7:
“ ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…”
Down to Verse 9:
“The cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.”
Do you notice who God is talking about in those verses? He is talking about Himself. Eight times. He says, “I am the God of your fathers, I have seen the misery of my people, I have heard them crying out, I am concerned about their suffering, I have come down, I will bring them into a land, into a good and spacious land filled with milk and honey. Their cry has reached me. I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
Eight times – “I, I, I. Moses; I am going to deliver the Israelites. I have seen. I have felt. I will do.”
And I imagine Moses got excited, very excited. He probably thought to himself, if he didn’t say, “That is fantastic! At last! We have been praying for this for years. At last, You are going to do something! Wonderful! You have come down to rescue us. You will take us back to the land You gave to Abraham, the land of Canaan. You are going to deliver us. We have been praying for this for years. This is fantastic. So how are you going to do it?”
Verse 10:
“ ‘So now, go. I am sending you…’”
“I beg Your pardon?”
“I am sending you.”
“Excuse me, I thought You just said You were going to do it. You just said that You have seen our misery, You have heard us crying out, You are concerned about our suffering, You have come down to rescue us, You have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing us. You just said You were going to do this. So why do You now say, ‘I am sending you’ to me?”
“Well, Moses it is absolutely true that the only explanation for what happens is that God will do it, but Moses, My way of doing things is through people. I have a simple strategy Moses: you. I am sending you.”
You see God’s strategy in the world is people. If you are a Christian this morning, and most of you are and if you are not as yet, I trust you will become one very soon, but I would be pretty sure that for the vast majority, if not universally so amongst us, God’s means of drawing you to Himself was another person. Maybe you saw somebody’s life that was different and it whet your appetite to find out what made them tick.
Maybe it was that you listened to somebody preach the Gospel and through it God convicted you of your need and you responded to Christ.
It may be that through somebody’s teaching of the Word of God you have slowly begun to understand and you have made a response to Christ.
You can be sure that somewhere along the line some other human being was involved in the process because God’s means of working in the world is people.
That’s why often in Scripture you find God looking for a person. As in Ezekiel 22:30:
“I looked for a man” (said God) “among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. Therefore I will pour out my judgement on them.”
“I looked for a man, a person, some body who would stand in the gap on My behalf,” said God “and I couldn’t find somebody. Therefore the judgement that might have been averted will come upon the people.”
Great verse in 2 Chronicles 16:9 is that
“The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect towards him.”
In other words the eyes of the Lord are running to and fro. What is He looking for? Somebody who will let God show Himself strong; not looking for strong people who will be strong for God but people who will let God show Himself strong in them and through them.
God’s strategy is people. And you know when we talk about reaching our world, when we talk about being missional as a community of God’s people in this church and reaching into our community, it is not going to just happen. It is going to take place as God finds willing, obedient, dependent people who are willing to be available to Him.
You see God doesn’t send angels to evangelize because His method is not angels; His method is people. Now the word angel literally means messenger; that’s the meaning of the word angel. By definition, angels are waiting for God to give them instructions (tell me what to do; that’s my job).
But it’s interesting God never sends angels to the mission field – it would be a lot cheaper if He did of course. They wouldn’t need plane tickets, wouldn’t need feeding. If there’s any problem they could just disappear. Or if someone shot them, let the bullet go right through and out the back and say, “now what are you going to do next?” I mean this would be great, wouldn’t it if angels could be missionaries? It would be a lot more convincing wouldn’t it?
I mean if God sent an angel to knock on your neighbor’s door it would be a lot more effective in telling him about Christ, or them about Christ, than you knocking on the door because they know you with all your weaknesses. And you feel slightly embarrassed and slightly intimidated.
Wouldn’t it be great if an angel knocked on their door, tucked his wings behind his back and when they opened the door, say, “I have come to talk to you about Jesus Christ”. And then to give some credibility he would flap his wings in front of them. Don’t you think they would sit up and take notice?
If we could announce next Sunday morning the angel Gabriel will preach in this pulpit, we would have to put on extra services. There would be stacks of people. But he won’t be here. I’m afraid it will just be me.
There are others ways in which God could do His work but He has chosen the way in which He does His work, and He works through people. “So Moses, it is absolutely true the only explanation for the deliverance of Israel from Egypt will be that I, God, will do it.” God will do it. “But I am sending you because you are the means by which I am going to do it.”
And I suggest to you that is why God said,
“Take off your shoes”
“Because Moses, it is I, God, who will be responsible for what happens. But I am going to do it in your shoes.”
“…for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
The word holy means to be set apart, set apart for God. “And Moses, I am going to send you on a mission and every place where you set your foot will be holy ground, set apart for God because I am going to be in your shoes.
Have you ever wondered about a verse in the book of Isaiah 52 and Verse 7 that repeats again in the New Testament? It’s a verse that was read to me the day that the church that I was part of when I was much younger commissioned me to go into full time ministry. And before they prayed for me I remember one of the elders reading this verse. And at the time I thought “what an interesting verse, what an unusual verse”. This is the verse:
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.”
What is interesting is why the feet? Wouldn’t it make more sense if it said, “How beautiful is the mouth of the one who brings good news?” That would make more sense wouldn’t it? How beautiful is the mind of the one who brings good news. How beautiful is the heart, maybe, of the one who brings good news. How beautiful is the personality of the one who brings good news. All of those would make a lot more sense than saying, “How beautiful are the feet of the one who brings good news.”
So why does it say it? I suggest to you because the first part of your anatomy, which God requires, is your feet. Before He is interested in your ability, which He is interested in, He is interested in your mobility. Are you ready to be in the right place?
You know we are told to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. It is interesting to go through the members of your body and see what the Scripture has to say about them. And I suggest to you the first thing God asks you for is your feet.
And when He has got your feet the next thing that He needs is your eyes. There was an occasion in John 4, Jesus was with His disciples, sent them into Samaria; He stayed back at a well outside the city. And a woman came out and He talked to her, and you know that story.
And His disciples came back and were amazed to see Him talking to this woman. And He said to them, “ I sent you to reap a harvest you did not work for. I sent you on your own to see if you would notice this woman coming out with an empty heart in the middle of the day - when you only go to collect water in the heat of the day, if you are ostracized by the community (and she evidently was).”
She had been married five times, living with a man she wasn’t married to now. And then He said to them this: “Open your eyes and look on the fields. They are ripe and you missed it.”
So when you give Him your feet and you say, “Lord, where do you want to put my feet?” Then open your eyes.
When you have opened your eyes then open your ears and give Him your ears. Jeremiah 23 talks about people who spoke messages from their own minds and from their own ideas. And Jeremiah reprimands them in Jeremiah 23:22, it says,
“Who has listened and heard his word?”
And God says,
“If they had stood in my council” (that is, they had listened to Me), “they would have proclaimed my words to my people.”
So you give Him your feet, (where do You want me to be?). Open your eyes and look. Open your ears so you are listening from heaven and then give Him your tongue and your mouth.
I love that verse in Isaiah 50:4:
“The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.”
Listen, there is little more satisfying than listening to an instructed tongue – instructed in the things of God. And there is little more frustrating than listening to an uninstructed tongue that is not speaking the truth as it comes from God.
So He says, “Give Me your mouth and I will give you an instructed tongue.”
So if you want to present your body as a living sacrifice, give Him your feet, take off your shoes, open your eyes, open your ears and let Him instruct your tongue.
Now that’s just a little detour, but you know, you can be willing to speak for God and you can be willing to work for God, but if your feet are in the wrong place, you will be of no value, no use.
Now it’s one thing to say, “Lord, please use me provided it’s here in Toronto, provided it’s not more than a radius of 100 kilometres to my family, so I can visit them often. Lord, I surrender my children to you but please don’t take them off to Africa or South America where I will only see them every few years.”
You can’t do that. You can’t do that.
“Take off your shoes, Moses.”
Have you ever taken off your shoes before God? Moses’ response to God saying, “I am sending you” is in Verse 11. Moses said to God,
“Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
“I mean God, do You want a list of reasons why I asked that question? A. I am eighty years old. It is not the time to start anything new. B. I am a failure. I mean I did have access to the highest courts of Egypt. I lived in the royal palace, the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, first name terms with all the leaders of this nation. I did have that opportunity once; it is true. But I blew it. I have been forty years hiding in the desert, a refugee. I may once have been powerful in speech but I am not anymore. I spent forty years every day with sheep. I can do a good “Aaah- men”, but that’s about it.”
What did God say in response to that “Who am I”? Did He say, “Actually Moses, you don’t realize this, but you know, being with those sheep has been great training. You are going to have another herd, another flock, but they are going to be a lot wilder than these sheep. You have been living with your wife’s family, with your in-laws for forty years; boy, you think that’s tough; you wait till you get these Israelites out there in the desert.”
God didn’t say any of that. Do you know what God did? He totally ignored Moses’ statement, Moses’ question. “Who am I?”
He totally ignored it. This is what He said – Verse 12:
“And God said, ‘I will be with you.”
“Moses, you are forgetting something. I am sending you. I am asking you to take off your shoes to surrender your feet to Me. But you are forgetting I said I have heard their cry, I have come down, I am concerned about their suffering, I will bring them out of this land, I will bring them into a new land flowing with milk and honey. It is I who is going to do it. Moses, I will be with you. It will be God in Moses’ shoes.”
And what qualifies Moses, you see, and what qualifies you and me to be of use to God is the life of God within us, working through us. Moses is not being invited to go and work for God, but to be a worker with God where God will be working through him.
I said before that before God is interested in our ability, He is interested in our mobility. But before He is interested in our mobility, He is interested in our availability. Available to what? To God Himself to work in and through us.
“I want your availability Moses; give Me yourself. I want your mobility Moses; give Me your shoes. I want your ability Moses (Chapter 4 Verse 11) “Who made your mouth?”
“I have given you ability but it won’t be effective until you are available and you are mobile – your shoes have been given.
And so the logical question then is “If You are with me, who actually are You – who are You?” Now he didn’t say it quite as bluntly as that; he used the old trick where in Verse 13 and 14 he said,
“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?’ What shall I tell them?”
It’s a great way to ask, you know, a difficult question – say, you know, this is not for me; this is for my friends. “If they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I tell them?”
I have had people come to talk to me and they’ll say, “I have a friend” and they’ll tell me about their friend and I’ll say, “What’s your friend’s name?” and they’ll say, “Well that’s beside the point.”
“Is your friend’s name the same as your name? Is it actually you, you are talking about? Because we can talk much more directly if it is about you.”
And they sometimes say, “Yes, it’s about me.”
It’s a lot easier to say, “I have a friend.”
Well that’s what Moses says. “If they ask me, what should I tell them?”
And God answers, Verse 14,
“God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ This is what you are to say to the Israelites, “I AM WHO I AM” has sent me to you.”
Now this doesn’t sound a very cooperative answer, does it? You know, “what is your name?”
“I AM WHO I AM”
“Well, I know You are who You are, but who are You?”
But actually it is a very wonderful answer. God did not say, “ My Name is I WAS at the burning bush. So remember your call, remember your commission and that will keep you going.”
He didn’t say that.
He didn’t say, “I WILL BE in the land of Canaan, on the other side of the Jordan, ready to welcome you when you get back and slap you on the back and say, well done good and faithful servant.”
He didn’t say that.
He said, “I AM at any time, in any situation, in any crisis, when your back is against any wall, Moses, I AM totally sufficient.”
I know somebody who said that he was looking at this passage and asking himself, “how can I best – is there a good word to describe the name God gives to Himself, “I AM?” And he came up with this word that His name means “always”.
I found that helpful. “Always.”
There are three tenses – past, present and future – you only ever live in one of those tenses. It’s the present. We don’t live in the past – we remember the past. We don’t live in the future – we look and anticipate the future. We live in the present.
And God’s name, I AM, which, by the way is the meaning of the English name for God, Jehovah – probably more accurately, Yahweh. It means, “I AM”. He is, present tense, always. Always what? Always enough, always sufficient, always competent, always able.
When I was a boy of 12 I first met Major Ian Thomas, who later became such a big influence in my life (I have referred to him before). And I gave him my New Testament. I asked him to sign his name there because I recognized in him something that was attractive to me and I knew he had something, which I hadn’t understood. Although I was only 12 – I had just become a Christian not long before – and he wrote in my Bible (I still have it), in my little New Testament,
“All that God is you have. You cannot have more and you do not need to enjoy less.”
All that God is, you have. “Moses, you want to know who I am? I AM WHO I AM. I AM always.” All that God is you have. You cannot have more and you don’t need to experience less.
“And Moses, it is in your shoes I am going to work. But this is not about you going and doing things for me. This is about Me doing things through you. So the big question you need to ask is not are you up to the task? The big question you need to ask is Am I up to the task? Do you believe that I am sufficient?”
Because the basic principle of Christian living and Christian service is that you can’t do it and God never said that you could. But He can do it and He always promised that He would.
Have you given your shoes to God? It’s an interesting study, which we won’t do fully today – just a couple of comments – to follow Moses’ feet after this and see what God said about his feet. God talked about his feet and his shoes several times.
He said to him a little bit later, “Every place where you set your foot will be yours.”
Why? Because God will be in your shoes. You set your foot; it will be holy ground, set apart for God.
When Moses died and Joshua replaced him, God said to Joshua, “I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses.”
Moses died; Joshua was his successor and God said, “What I was with Moses I will be with you, and specifically where you place your feet, I will give you, as I promised Moses.”
And Joshua too had to come to that point of taking his shoes off. Because in Joshua Chapter 5, when they were about to take the city of Jericho – you may remember was the first big obstacle to get into Canaan was to take the city of Jericho, and as they were waiting for that, Joshua noticed a man that he didn’t recognize amongst the people. And he looked dangerous because he had a drawn sword in his hand. And so Joshua went across to him and said,
“Who are you? Are you for us or are you for our enemies? Whose side are you on?”
And he answers,
“Neither, but as captain of the Lord’s army I have now come.”
“I am on nobody’s side. I am captain of the whole operation.” And Joshua recognized this is another Christophany, another physical appearance of God, because Joshua fell face down in front of Him. And he said to God, (you read this in Joshua 5)
“What message does my Lord have for his servant?”
In other words, I recognize You are God in human form and You have come here not just to be an observer; You have come to do something. What have You come to tell me? What great message have You brought me?”
You know what God said to him? The Lord replied:
“Take off your shoes.”
I imagine Joshua probably said, “Wow, You have a thing about shoes, don’t You? I mean Moses told me this.”
And God might well have said, “Yes, Joshua I have a thing about shoes. Joshua, unless you take off your shoes, unless you surrender them so I am going to be in your shoes as I was in Moses’ shoes, so every place where you set your foot will be yours as it was for Moses.”
And the next verse says that Jericho was tightly shut up and the Lord said to Joshua, “I have (past tense) delivered Jericho into your hands but, put your shoes on and with the people, walk around the city, around the walls, once a day for six days. On the seventh day, go around seven times. All you have got to do is just walk. Carry the Ark of the Covenant in front of you and at the end of the seventh time, on the seventh day, stop and shout,” and the walls fell down. God gave them the city.
“Joshua, I am going to be in your shoes if you will give them to me.” And as it was God in Moses’ shoes, so it will be God in Joshua’s shoes.
Going back to Exodus Chapter 3, God showed him, “Moses, you have got to understand the terms of this operation.”
I am going to pick out five things just very quickly; give you a sentence for each; they all begin with D. And these five things will be true of Moses’ work, are true of all service in the name of God, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is going to be a directed work, first of all. Verse 10:
“So now, go. I am sending you.”
“I am sending you.” It is a directed work.
The agenda is not Moses’ agenda; it is God’s agenda. You see you can never have God’s power for our plans. We can only have God’s power for God’s plans. It is a directed work (“I am sending you”).
It will be a delivering work. Verse 8:
“I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians.”
This is going to be a work of rescuing and delivering because a directed work under the lordship of Christ would also be a delivering work because the ministry is to deliver people out of their old life and into the fullness of life that God has for us.
It is going to be a dangerous work. Also in Verse 10:
“So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh.”
Pharaoh; the king of one of the mightiest nations on earth? And Moses would have known Pharaoh because he had grown up in the royal palace. We don’t know what generation this Pharaoh was but even if he was forty years younger than Moses, which could have been possible and it was his aunt or great aunt who had adopted Moses, he would have known the story of this Hebrew slave, found in the river, brought home, nurtured and brought up in the royal palace. And in the end he had turned against the Egyptians and turned against the family of Pharaoh, killed an Egyptian, fled to the desert. He would have known all about Moses. He would have known he was probably one of the most wanted men in Egypt.
“Go to Pharaoh. It’ll be dangerous Moses. Sometimes it’s hard work and dangerous work; I am sending you to Pharaoh.”
Fourth thing: it will be a disappointing work. The Lord said, Verse 21(this is Chapter 4 Verse 21 now – a little bit later),
“I will harden his heart; he will not let the people go.”
“Moses you are going all through this to find yourself seemingly running into a brick wall. He will not let the people go.”
And you know, in Christian living and service, we have to be utterly realistic; there is repeated disappointment. God often promised that.
When Isaiah was commissioned in Isaiah 6 God told him to go and speak to the people who will,
“Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.”
I tell you, it is very frustrating when people are ever hearing but never getting it, never getting it, never moving out of what they already knew and getting it, people who see but they never perceive, never grasp it. Instead, he says, their hearts will become calloused.
Hearts don’t stay the same, by the way. They either soften under the Word of God or they harden under the Word of God.
It’ll make their ears dull and their eyes closed. Isaiah was commissioned to a ministry of repeated disappointment.
David Shepherd, who later became a bishop in England, ran a well-known youth ministry in London called “The Mayflower Centre”. He wrote a book on youth ministry based on his experience. One of the things he said was to work with young people, you need an infinite capacity for being disappointed and being let down.
You see the beginning of life, you see growth taking place and then suddenly it’s crushed and you don’t see that person again. He was writing about young people; it’s not just about young people of course; it’s about people generally. If you are going to serve God well, you need an infinite capacity for becoming disappointed.
“Moses, you are going to have forty years of disappointment as well. The people; their hearts will grow hardened to God, even though they are being rescued.”
And in the wilderness years that’s exactly what happened, but here’s the fifth D: it will be a directed work, it will be a delivering work, it’ll be a dangerous work, it’ll be a disappointing work, but it will be a dynamic work because Chapter 3:20:
“I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. And after that, he will let you go.”
“Yes, you will run into the dangers and you will run into the disappointments but – but, stay with it Moses; I will accomplish the purpose for which I am in business. I will.”
And we rest in that; we have to rest in that. We rest in the fact that His Word does not return void. We rest in the fact, “If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear fruit, things will happen,” said Jesus.
This is what it means to serve God and this is what it means to be a missional people. That we take off our shoes.
The only explanation for the bush that did not burn out was that God was in the bush. The only explanation for Moses, who will for forty years lead the people, is that God will be in Moses.
And do you know what Moses said forty years after the burning bush in Deuteronomy 29:5 just before he died and just before the Israelites actually entered into Canaan? He said,
“During the forty years I led you in the desert, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.”
Those were pretty good sandals, don’t you think? They did not wear out in forty years.
God was in Moses’ shoes and once Moses had surrendered his shoes to God and God was doing His business, but in the shoes of Moses, in the person of Moses, Moses’ activity became completely identified with God’s activity and God’s activity became completely identified with Moses’ activity. He was not a worker for God; he was a worker with God. And Moses’ job was to adjust his life to the activity of God - his activity to God’s activity, his agenda to God’s agenda, his plans to God’s plans, his objectives to God’s objectives.
And Moses demonstrates so well that principle Paul spoke about in Colossians 1:29, speaking of his own ministry. He said about it,
“To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”
“I labor,” says Paul, “I struggle,” says Paul “but it’s in His energy which so powerfully works.”
And Moses struggled? Of course he did. Moses labored? Of course he did. I wouldn’t exchange places with Moses for anything in those forty years in the wilderness with a people who were constantly bickering and fighting and resisting the will of God.
“But I labor, I struggle,” he might has said, as Paul said “with His energy.” And the bush doesn’t burn out.
Next week I am going to talk about the fact that God asked Moses for a second thing at the bush. He asked him for shoes and then He asked him for his staff. “What’s in your hand?”
“It’s my staff. I’m a shepherd.”
“Throw it down.”
We’ll talk about that next week. But I wonder, this morning, have you ever taken off your shoes? Have you got beautiful feet? What are beautiful feet? They can be flat like mine; look like a fish.
But beautiful feet are the feet on the mountains of those who bring good news. How beautiful are those feet because God is in their shoes.
And when your feet belong to God, He will put you in the right place at the right time for the right purpose, and you can enjoy the adventure of everyday saying, “Lord, I am available to You so if things go wrong today in my life that’s okay because I am going to be in the place You want me to be even if it goes wrong according to my plan.”
But keep your eyes open because you might come into some ripe fields, and your ears open for a word that sustains the weary. It’s the adventure of the Christian life.
And as we close this morning I wonder if you would take off your shoes and say, “Lord, my feet are available to You. My feet are available to You.”
I wasn’t actually meaning it literally – I see some of you starting to do that – but why don’t we, in a moment of prayer, symbolically? We have participated in symbols this morning – the symbol of the body of Jesus (the bread), the blood of Jesus (the wine).
Symbolically just say, “Yes, Lord.” If God has spoken to you - let’s have a moment of quiet prayer - and if God has spoken to you, just slip your shoes off and I am going to ask you to stand and I will pray for those standing in their stocking feet. And you are saying, “God, I give You my feet, my shoes, that the ground is holy on which I stand, set apart for You.”
Let’s pray together and in the moment as I pray, if you want to participate in this - and it’s symbolic; you are saying to God, “I give You my feet.” - would you take your shoes off? Literally take them off.
Lord – and I will ask you in a moment to stand and I will pray for you – but let me just pray as you are doing that – Lord, You know what is going on in our hearts and Lord we see in your Word that when you are at work, not only are people responsive like Moses but people harden like Pharaoh.
Lord save us many hardened hearts at this place this morning. save us from hardening. that our hearts don't become callused, but rather they become supple and open. We don't know what you want to do with us. but it's everyday knowing your promise, if we acknowledge you you will direct our paths, you will direct our feet, you will put us in the right place. We trust you for that lord Jesus. If you have taken off your shoes, and that's a symbol of your heart's response, would you just stand and I'm going to pray for those who are standing, that there will be something fresh and new that God will do in their lives.
Lord I pray for these many folks that are standing at this moment. Thank you for the victories that are being won in their hearts and lives. We don't want this just to be a novelty, we want this to be, Lord, a symptom of a very deep work in our hearts and lives, a deep response of love and surrender and availability to you and mobility that you put us where you want to put us. and do with us on a day to day routine of life. Do with us what it is that you will do that brings benefit and blessing and enrichment and life and light and love to other people. Lord by the Holy Spirit, breathe encouragement into the hearts of the folks that are on their feet and bless them as they yield themselves as a blessing to others. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Part 3
“Take Off Your Shoes”
Exodus 3
Let me read to you from the book of Exodus Chapter 3, the second book of the Bible. And we began just a few weeks ago to look at this whole story that the early part of Exodus gives to us of the deliverance of the Israelites from their slavery and bondage in Egypt. We’re calling it “Taking the Road Out”.
And we come to a very crucial event in this whole story today and I am going to read from Exodus Chapter 3. I am going to read the first 14 verses. There is nothing we can miss out without losing something crucial to this story. So Exodus Chapter 3:1:
“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 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.’
“And 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, because he was afraid to look at God.
“The LORD said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their 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 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, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.’”(I practised that verse earlier.)
“ ‘And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
“ ‘So now, go. I am sending 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 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.”
Moses is eighty years of age when this incident takes place. The story so far is that he has been born to Hebrew slaves at a time when it was very dangerous for Hebrew babies to be born because the policy was to cull the Israelite people in Egypt by throwing the baby boys into the Nile.
Moses’ parents had kept him at home and hidden him for three months and then probably he got a little too noisy. After three months they put him in a little basket covered with pitch and tar; put it into the Nile amongst the bulrushes. His elder sister Miriam came and stood on the banks and just kept an eye on him.
And one day Pharaoh’s daughter pulled up to bathe, found the baby, took him home, adopted him as her own, gave him the name Moses, which means ‘drawn out of the water”.
And Miriam had run alongside and said, “You need a nurse for that baby; I’ll get one for you.” And Moses’ own mother was paid to bring up her own child in the palace of Pharaoh, the safest place for a Hebrew slave to be, the most protected place to be.
And it must have been his mother who told Moses who he really was. “You don’t belong here. You are not an Egyptian; you are a Hebrew.”
At the age of forty he saw an opportunity to kill an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew slave and he killed him. Maybe his strategy was to get the Egyptians one by one because the book of Acts tells us that he wondered why the people didn’t recognize that God was using him to deliver them.
But it was by his own strategy, by his own tactics. And somebody found the body of the man he had killed and the word was sent to Pharaoh who then looked for Moses. And Moses fled from Egypt; went out to the Midian desert, got a job with some girls who were looking after sheep, married one of them and spent the next forty years living in the Midian desert; as the King James puts it, on the backside of the Midian desert.
And one day after forty years of this, forty years of looking after sheep, one day as he was leading his sheep, he saw something, which was not unusual in the Midian desert, a bush burst into flames. In the heat and sunshine of the desert, spontaneous combustion might take effect and a bush might ignite. But before very long it would burn itself out and be just a heap of ash on the ground.
But this bush, Moses looked again, it was still burning; went on with his work; it was still burning. Later looked again - still burning. Probably had his lunch, looked again; it’s still burning.
And he said, “Why does the bush not burn up? I will turn aside” (that’s the way the King James puts that – I love that rendering) “I will turn aside. I will deliberately turn aside and see this great sight.”
And as he did so, God spoke to him from within the bush.
There are several times in the Old Testament Scriptures when God appears in some physical, tangible form. Theologians have given a name to those appearances. We call it either a Theophany or a Christophany, if we want to specifically identify it with Christ as a pre-incarnate appearance.
And a number of times God appears in some physical form. Sometimes it’s in the form and shape of a person. In this case it was in fire. That’s how God often spoke to Moses; He met him in fire on Mount Sinai as well.
And Moses didn’t know this was God. He just wondered why it is that this burn does not burn out as a bush normally would.
And by the way, there are times when you see God at work – sometimes in somebody’s life, sometimes in a situation. And if you are wise, you will turn aside and ask why is it that something is going on here that is not normal? Why is it that there is something that is inexplicable here?
I know the people who have had the biggest impact on me as a Christian have been Christians whose lives have caused me to stop, turn, look, scratch my head and say, “What is their secret?” And discovering it is God in them that is their secret.
Moses turned to this bush and when he did so, God spoke to him from within the bush. “Moses! Moses!” He knew him by name. God knows everybody by name.
And Moses responded, “Here I am.”
And notice the first thing God said to Moses then was this,
“Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing is holy ground.”
I find that intriguing. I will tell you why. You would think God would have more important things to talk about to Moses than his shoes, wouldn’t you? Don’t you find it strange that the first thing God says is, “Take off your sandals.” I mean why? Is this a question of etiquette? When you talk to God take your shoes off?
It is an Eastern custom? There are Eastern customs related to footwear and shoes and the soles of your feet and so on.
Is God simply conforming to custom? Or is there something very significant and important in this? And I suggest to you that there is. And we’ll come back to Moses’ shoes in just a moment. But to understand the significance, let me read you what God said to him in Verse 6:
“Then he said this, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’
Verse 7:
“ ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…”
Down to Verse 9:
“The cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.”
Do you notice who God is talking about in those verses? He is talking about Himself. Eight times. He says, “I am the God of your fathers, I have seen the misery of my people, I have heard them crying out, I am concerned about their suffering, I have come down, I will bring them into a land, into a good and spacious land filled with milk and honey. Their cry has reached me. I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
Eight times – “I, I, I. Moses; I am going to deliver the Israelites. I have seen. I have felt. I will do.”
And I imagine Moses got excited, very excited. He probably thought to himself, if he didn’t say, “That is fantastic! At last! We have been praying for this for years. At last, You are going to do something! Wonderful! You have come down to rescue us. You will take us back to the land You gave to Abraham, the land of Canaan. You are going to deliver us. We have been praying for this for years. This is fantastic. So how are you going to do it?”
Verse 10:
“ ‘So now, go. I am sending you…’”
“I beg Your pardon?”
“I am sending you.”
“Excuse me, I thought You just said You were going to do it. You just said that You have seen our misery, You have heard us crying out, You are concerned about our suffering, You have come down to rescue us, You have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing us. You just said You were going to do this. So why do You now say, ‘I am sending you’ to me?”
“Well, Moses it is absolutely true that the only explanation for what happens is that God will do it, but Moses, My way of doing things is through people. I have a simple strategy Moses: you. I am sending you.”
You see God’s strategy in the world is people. If you are a Christian this morning, and most of you are and if you are not as yet, I trust you will become one very soon, but I would be pretty sure that for the vast majority, if not universally so amongst us, God’s means of drawing you to Himself was another person. Maybe you saw somebody’s life that was different and it whet your appetite to find out what made them tick.
Maybe it was that you listened to somebody preach the Gospel and through it God convicted you of your need and you responded to Christ.
It may be that through somebody’s teaching of the Word of God you have slowly begun to understand and you have made a response to Christ.
You can be sure that somewhere along the line some other human being was involved in the process because God’s means of working in the world is people.
That’s why often in Scripture you find God looking for a person. As in Ezekiel 22:30:
“I looked for a man” (said God) “among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. Therefore I will pour out my judgement on them.”
“I looked for a man, a person, some body who would stand in the gap on My behalf,” said God “and I couldn’t find somebody. Therefore the judgement that might have been averted will come upon the people.”
Great verse in 2 Chronicles 16:9 is that
“The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect towards him.”
In other words the eyes of the Lord are running to and fro. What is He looking for? Somebody who will let God show Himself strong; not looking for strong people who will be strong for God but people who will let God show Himself strong in them and through them.
God’s strategy is people. And you know when we talk about reaching our world, when we talk about being missional as a community of God’s people in this church and reaching into our community, it is not going to just happen. It is going to take place as God finds willing, obedient, dependent people who are willing to be available to Him.
You see God doesn’t send angels to evangelize because His method is not angels; His method is people. Now the word angel literally means messenger; that’s the meaning of the word angel. By definition, angels are waiting for God to give them instructions (tell me what to do; that’s my job).
But it’s interesting God never sends angels to the mission field – it would be a lot cheaper if He did of course. They wouldn’t need plane tickets, wouldn’t need feeding. If there’s any problem they could just disappear. Or if someone shot them, let the bullet go right through and out the back and say, “now what are you going to do next?” I mean this would be great, wouldn’t it if angels could be missionaries? It would be a lot more convincing wouldn’t it?
I mean if God sent an angel to knock on your neighbor’s door it would be a lot more effective in telling him about Christ, or them about Christ, than you knocking on the door because they know you with all your weaknesses. And you feel slightly embarrassed and slightly intimidated.
Wouldn’t it be great if an angel knocked on their door, tucked his wings behind his back and when they opened the door, say, “I have come to talk to you about Jesus Christ”. And then to give some credibility he would flap his wings in front of them. Don’t you think they would sit up and take notice?
If we could announce next Sunday morning the angel Gabriel will preach in this pulpit, we would have to put on extra services. There would be stacks of people. But he won’t be here. I’m afraid it will just be me.
There are others ways in which God could do His work but He has chosen the way in which He does His work, and He works through people. “So Moses, it is absolutely true the only explanation for the deliverance of Israel from Egypt will be that I, God, will do it.” God will do it. “But I am sending you because you are the means by which I am going to do it.”
And I suggest to you that is why God said,
“Take off your shoes”
“Because Moses, it is I, God, who will be responsible for what happens. But I am going to do it in your shoes.”
“…for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
The word holy means to be set apart, set apart for God. “And Moses, I am going to send you on a mission and every place where you set your foot will be holy ground, set apart for God because I am going to be in your shoes.
Have you ever wondered about a verse in the book of Isaiah 52 and Verse 7 that repeats again in the New Testament? It’s a verse that was read to me the day that the church that I was part of when I was much younger commissioned me to go into full time ministry. And before they prayed for me I remember one of the elders reading this verse. And at the time I thought “what an interesting verse, what an unusual verse”. This is the verse:
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news.”
What is interesting is why the feet? Wouldn’t it make more sense if it said, “How beautiful is the mouth of the one who brings good news?” That would make more sense wouldn’t it? How beautiful is the mind of the one who brings good news. How beautiful is the heart, maybe, of the one who brings good news. How beautiful is the personality of the one who brings good news. All of those would make a lot more sense than saying, “How beautiful are the feet of the one who brings good news.”
So why does it say it? I suggest to you because the first part of your anatomy, which God requires, is your feet. Before He is interested in your ability, which He is interested in, He is interested in your mobility. Are you ready to be in the right place?
You know we are told to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. It is interesting to go through the members of your body and see what the Scripture has to say about them. And I suggest to you the first thing God asks you for is your feet.
And when He has got your feet the next thing that He needs is your eyes. There was an occasion in John 4, Jesus was with His disciples, sent them into Samaria; He stayed back at a well outside the city. And a woman came out and He talked to her, and you know that story.
And His disciples came back and were amazed to see Him talking to this woman. And He said to them, “ I sent you to reap a harvest you did not work for. I sent you on your own to see if you would notice this woman coming out with an empty heart in the middle of the day - when you only go to collect water in the heat of the day, if you are ostracized by the community (and she evidently was).”
She had been married five times, living with a man she wasn’t married to now. And then He said to them this: “Open your eyes and look on the fields. They are ripe and you missed it.”
So when you give Him your feet and you say, “Lord, where do you want to put my feet?” Then open your eyes.
When you have opened your eyes then open your ears and give Him your ears. Jeremiah 23 talks about people who spoke messages from their own minds and from their own ideas. And Jeremiah reprimands them in Jeremiah 23:22, it says,
“Who has listened and heard his word?”
And God says,
“If they had stood in my council” (that is, they had listened to Me), “they would have proclaimed my words to my people.”
So you give Him your feet, (where do You want me to be?). Open your eyes and look. Open your ears so you are listening from heaven and then give Him your tongue and your mouth.
I love that verse in Isaiah 50:4:
“The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.”
Listen, there is little more satisfying than listening to an instructed tongue – instructed in the things of God. And there is little more frustrating than listening to an uninstructed tongue that is not speaking the truth as it comes from God.
So He says, “Give Me your mouth and I will give you an instructed tongue.”
So if you want to present your body as a living sacrifice, give Him your feet, take off your shoes, open your eyes, open your ears and let Him instruct your tongue.
Now that’s just a little detour, but you know, you can be willing to speak for God and you can be willing to work for God, but if your feet are in the wrong place, you will be of no value, no use.
Now it’s one thing to say, “Lord, please use me provided it’s here in Toronto, provided it’s not more than a radius of 100 kilometres to my family, so I can visit them often. Lord, I surrender my children to you but please don’t take them off to Africa or South America where I will only see them every few years.”
You can’t do that. You can’t do that.
“Take off your shoes, Moses.”
Have you ever taken off your shoes before God? Moses’ response to God saying, “I am sending you” is in Verse 11. Moses said to God,
“Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
“I mean God, do You want a list of reasons why I asked that question? A. I am eighty years old. It is not the time to start anything new. B. I am a failure. I mean I did have access to the highest courts of Egypt. I lived in the royal palace, the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, first name terms with all the leaders of this nation. I did have that opportunity once; it is true. But I blew it. I have been forty years hiding in the desert, a refugee. I may once have been powerful in speech but I am not anymore. I spent forty years every day with sheep. I can do a good “Aaah- men”, but that’s about it.”
What did God say in response to that “Who am I”? Did He say, “Actually Moses, you don’t realize this, but you know, being with those sheep has been great training. You are going to have another herd, another flock, but they are going to be a lot wilder than these sheep. You have been living with your wife’s family, with your in-laws for forty years; boy, you think that’s tough; you wait till you get these Israelites out there in the desert.”
God didn’t say any of that. Do you know what God did? He totally ignored Moses’ statement, Moses’ question. “Who am I?”
He totally ignored it. This is what He said – Verse 12:
“And God said, ‘I will be with you.”
“Moses, you are forgetting something. I am sending you. I am asking you to take off your shoes to surrender your feet to Me. But you are forgetting I said I have heard their cry, I have come down, I am concerned about their suffering, I will bring them out of this land, I will bring them into a new land flowing with milk and honey. It is I who is going to do it. Moses, I will be with you. It will be God in Moses’ shoes.”
And what qualifies Moses, you see, and what qualifies you and me to be of use to God is the life of God within us, working through us. Moses is not being invited to go and work for God, but to be a worker with God where God will be working through him.
I said before that before God is interested in our ability, He is interested in our mobility. But before He is interested in our mobility, He is interested in our availability. Available to what? To God Himself to work in and through us.
“I want your availability Moses; give Me yourself. I want your mobility Moses; give Me your shoes. I want your ability Moses (Chapter 4 Verse 11) “Who made your mouth?”
“I have given you ability but it won’t be effective until you are available and you are mobile – your shoes have been given.
And so the logical question then is “If You are with me, who actually are You – who are You?” Now he didn’t say it quite as bluntly as that; he used the old trick where in Verse 13 and 14 he said,
“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?’ What shall I tell them?”
It’s a great way to ask, you know, a difficult question – say, you know, this is not for me; this is for my friends. “If they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I tell them?”
I have had people come to talk to me and they’ll say, “I have a friend” and they’ll tell me about their friend and I’ll say, “What’s your friend’s name?” and they’ll say, “Well that’s beside the point.”
“Is your friend’s name the same as your name? Is it actually you, you are talking about? Because we can talk much more directly if it is about you.”
And they sometimes say, “Yes, it’s about me.”
It’s a lot easier to say, “I have a friend.”
Well that’s what Moses says. “If they ask me, what should I tell them?”
And God answers, Verse 14,
“God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ This is what you are to say to the Israelites, “I AM WHO I AM” has sent me to you.”
Now this doesn’t sound a very cooperative answer, does it? You know, “what is your name?”
“I AM WHO I AM”
“Well, I know You are who You are, but who are You?”
But actually it is a very wonderful answer. God did not say, “ My Name is I WAS at the burning bush. So remember your call, remember your commission and that will keep you going.”
He didn’t say that.
He didn’t say, “I WILL BE in the land of Canaan, on the other side of the Jordan, ready to welcome you when you get back and slap you on the back and say, well done good and faithful servant.”
He didn’t say that.
He said, “I AM at any time, in any situation, in any crisis, when your back is against any wall, Moses, I AM totally sufficient.”
I know somebody who said that he was looking at this passage and asking himself, “how can I best – is there a good word to describe the name God gives to Himself, “I AM?” And he came up with this word that His name means “always”.
I found that helpful. “Always.”
There are three tenses – past, present and future – you only ever live in one of those tenses. It’s the present. We don’t live in the past – we remember the past. We don’t live in the future – we look and anticipate the future. We live in the present.
And God’s name, I AM, which, by the way is the meaning of the English name for God, Jehovah – probably more accurately, Yahweh. It means, “I AM”. He is, present tense, always. Always what? Always enough, always sufficient, always competent, always able.
When I was a boy of 12 I first met Major Ian Thomas, who later became such a big influence in my life (I have referred to him before). And I gave him my New Testament. I asked him to sign his name there because I recognized in him something that was attractive to me and I knew he had something, which I hadn’t understood. Although I was only 12 – I had just become a Christian not long before – and he wrote in my Bible (I still have it), in my little New Testament,
“All that God is you have. You cannot have more and you do not need to enjoy less.”
All that God is, you have. “Moses, you want to know who I am? I AM WHO I AM. I AM always.” All that God is you have. You cannot have more and you don’t need to experience less.
“And Moses, it is in your shoes I am going to work. But this is not about you going and doing things for me. This is about Me doing things through you. So the big question you need to ask is not are you up to the task? The big question you need to ask is Am I up to the task? Do you believe that I am sufficient?”
Because the basic principle of Christian living and Christian service is that you can’t do it and God never said that you could. But He can do it and He always promised that He would.
Have you given your shoes to God? It’s an interesting study, which we won’t do fully today – just a couple of comments – to follow Moses’ feet after this and see what God said about his feet. God talked about his feet and his shoes several times.
He said to him a little bit later, “Every place where you set your foot will be yours.”
Why? Because God will be in your shoes. You set your foot; it will be holy ground, set apart for God.
When Moses died and Joshua replaced him, God said to Joshua, “I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses.”
Moses died; Joshua was his successor and God said, “What I was with Moses I will be with you, and specifically where you place your feet, I will give you, as I promised Moses.”
And Joshua too had to come to that point of taking his shoes off. Because in Joshua Chapter 5, when they were about to take the city of Jericho – you may remember was the first big obstacle to get into Canaan was to take the city of Jericho, and as they were waiting for that, Joshua noticed a man that he didn’t recognize amongst the people. And he looked dangerous because he had a drawn sword in his hand. And so Joshua went across to him and said,
“Who are you? Are you for us or are you for our enemies? Whose side are you on?”
And he answers,
“Neither, but as captain of the Lord’s army I have now come.”
“I am on nobody’s side. I am captain of the whole operation.” And Joshua recognized this is another Christophany, another physical appearance of God, because Joshua fell face down in front of Him. And he said to God, (you read this in Joshua 5)
“What message does my Lord have for his servant?”
In other words, I recognize You are God in human form and You have come here not just to be an observer; You have come to do something. What have You come to tell me? What great message have You brought me?”
You know what God said to him? The Lord replied:
“Take off your shoes.”
I imagine Joshua probably said, “Wow, You have a thing about shoes, don’t You? I mean Moses told me this.”
And God might well have said, “Yes, Joshua I have a thing about shoes. Joshua, unless you take off your shoes, unless you surrender them so I am going to be in your shoes as I was in Moses’ shoes, so every place where you set your foot will be yours as it was for Moses.”
And the next verse says that Jericho was tightly shut up and the Lord said to Joshua, “I have (past tense) delivered Jericho into your hands but, put your shoes on and with the people, walk around the city, around the walls, once a day for six days. On the seventh day, go around seven times. All you have got to do is just walk. Carry the Ark of the Covenant in front of you and at the end of the seventh time, on the seventh day, stop and shout,” and the walls fell down. God gave them the city.
“Joshua, I am going to be in your shoes if you will give them to me.” And as it was God in Moses’ shoes, so it will be God in Joshua’s shoes.
Going back to Exodus Chapter 3, God showed him, “Moses, you have got to understand the terms of this operation.”
I am going to pick out five things just very quickly; give you a sentence for each; they all begin with D. And these five things will be true of Moses’ work, are true of all service in the name of God, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is going to be a directed work, first of all. Verse 10:
“So now, go. I am sending you.”
“I am sending you.” It is a directed work.
The agenda is not Moses’ agenda; it is God’s agenda. You see you can never have God’s power for our plans. We can only have God’s power for God’s plans. It is a directed work (“I am sending you”).
It will be a delivering work. Verse 8:
“I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians.”
This is going to be a work of rescuing and delivering because a directed work under the lordship of Christ would also be a delivering work because the ministry is to deliver people out of their old life and into the fullness of life that God has for us.
It is going to be a dangerous work. Also in Verse 10:
“So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh.”
Pharaoh; the king of one of the mightiest nations on earth? And Moses would have known Pharaoh because he had grown up in the royal palace. We don’t know what generation this Pharaoh was but even if he was forty years younger than Moses, which could have been possible and it was his aunt or great aunt who had adopted Moses, he would have known the story of this Hebrew slave, found in the river, brought home, nurtured and brought up in the royal palace. And in the end he had turned against the Egyptians and turned against the family of Pharaoh, killed an Egyptian, fled to the desert. He would have known all about Moses. He would have known he was probably one of the most wanted men in Egypt.
“Go to Pharaoh. It’ll be dangerous Moses. Sometimes it’s hard work and dangerous work; I am sending you to Pharaoh.”
Fourth thing: it will be a disappointing work. The Lord said, Verse 21(this is Chapter 4 Verse 21 now – a little bit later),
“I will harden his heart; he will not let the people go.”
“Moses you are going all through this to find yourself seemingly running into a brick wall. He will not let the people go.”
And you know, in Christian living and service, we have to be utterly realistic; there is repeated disappointment. God often promised that.
When Isaiah was commissioned in Isaiah 6 God told him to go and speak to the people who will,
“Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.”
I tell you, it is very frustrating when people are ever hearing but never getting it, never getting it, never moving out of what they already knew and getting it, people who see but they never perceive, never grasp it. Instead, he says, their hearts will become calloused.
Hearts don’t stay the same, by the way. They either soften under the Word of God or they harden under the Word of God.
It’ll make their ears dull and their eyes closed. Isaiah was commissioned to a ministry of repeated disappointment.
David Shepherd, who later became a bishop in England, ran a well-known youth ministry in London called “The Mayflower Centre”. He wrote a book on youth ministry based on his experience. One of the things he said was to work with young people, you need an infinite capacity for being disappointed and being let down.
You see the beginning of life, you see growth taking place and then suddenly it’s crushed and you don’t see that person again. He was writing about young people; it’s not just about young people of course; it’s about people generally. If you are going to serve God well, you need an infinite capacity for becoming disappointed.
“Moses, you are going to have forty years of disappointment as well. The people; their hearts will grow hardened to God, even though they are being rescued.”
And in the wilderness years that’s exactly what happened, but here’s the fifth D: it will be a directed work, it will be a delivering work, it’ll be a dangerous work, it’ll be a disappointing work, but it will be a dynamic work because Chapter 3:20:
“I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. And after that, he will let you go.”
“Yes, you will run into the dangers and you will run into the disappointments but – but, stay with it Moses; I will accomplish the purpose for which I am in business. I will.”
And we rest in that; we have to rest in that. We rest in the fact that His Word does not return void. We rest in the fact, “If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear fruit, things will happen,” said Jesus.
This is what it means to serve God and this is what it means to be a missional people. That we take off our shoes.
The only explanation for the bush that did not burn out was that God was in the bush. The only explanation for Moses, who will for forty years lead the people, is that God will be in Moses.
And do you know what Moses said forty years after the burning bush in Deuteronomy 29:5 just before he died and just before the Israelites actually entered into Canaan? He said,
“During the forty years I led you in the desert, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.”
Those were pretty good sandals, don’t you think? They did not wear out in forty years.
God was in Moses’ shoes and once Moses had surrendered his shoes to God and God was doing His business, but in the shoes of Moses, in the person of Moses, Moses’ activity became completely identified with God’s activity and God’s activity became completely identified with Moses’ activity. He was not a worker for God; he was a worker with God. And Moses’ job was to adjust his life to the activity of God - his activity to God’s activity, his agenda to God’s agenda, his plans to God’s plans, his objectives to God’s objectives.
And Moses demonstrates so well that principle Paul spoke about in Colossians 1:29, speaking of his own ministry. He said about it,
“To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”
“I labor,” says Paul, “I struggle,” says Paul “but it’s in His energy which so powerfully works.”
And Moses struggled? Of course he did. Moses labored? Of course he did. I wouldn’t exchange places with Moses for anything in those forty years in the wilderness with a people who were constantly bickering and fighting and resisting the will of God.
“But I labor, I struggle,” he might has said, as Paul said “with His energy.” And the bush doesn’t burn out.
Next week I am going to talk about the fact that God asked Moses for a second thing at the bush. He asked him for shoes and then He asked him for his staff. “What’s in your hand?”
“It’s my staff. I’m a shepherd.”
“Throw it down.”
We’ll talk about that next week. But I wonder, this morning, have you ever taken off your shoes? Have you got beautiful feet? What are beautiful feet? They can be flat like mine; look like a fish.
But beautiful feet are the feet on the mountains of those who bring good news. How beautiful are those feet because God is in their shoes.
And when your feet belong to God, He will put you in the right place at the right time for the right purpose, and you can enjoy the adventure of everyday saying, “Lord, I am available to You so if things go wrong today in my life that’s okay because I am going to be in the place You want me to be even if it goes wrong according to my plan.”
But keep your eyes open because you might come into some ripe fields, and your ears open for a word that sustains the weary. It’s the adventure of the Christian life.
And as we close this morning I wonder if you would take off your shoes and say, “Lord, my feet are available to You. My feet are available to You.”
I wasn’t actually meaning it literally – I see some of you starting to do that – but why don’t we, in a moment of prayer, symbolically? We have participated in symbols this morning – the symbol of the body of Jesus (the bread), the blood of Jesus (the wine).
Symbolically just say, “Yes, Lord.” If God has spoken to you - let’s have a moment of quiet prayer - and if God has spoken to you, just slip your shoes off and I am going to ask you to stand and I will pray for those standing in their stocking feet. And you are saying, “God, I give You my feet, my shoes, that the ground is holy on which I stand, set apart for You.”
Let’s pray together and in the moment as I pray, if you want to participate in this - and it’s symbolic; you are saying to God, “I give You my feet.” - would you take your shoes off? Literally take them off.
Lord – and I will ask you in a moment to stand and I will pray for you – but let me just pray as you are doing that – Lord, You know what is going on in our hearts and Lord we see in your Word that when you are at work, not only are people responsive like Moses but people harden like Pharaoh.
Lord save us many hardened hearts at this place this morning. save us from hardening. that our hearts don't become callused, but rather they become supple and open. We don't know what you want to do with us. but it's everyday knowing your promise, if we acknowledge you you will direct our paths, you will direct our feet, you will put us in the right place. We trust you for that lord Jesus. If you have taken off your shoes, and that's a symbol of your heart's response, would you just stand and I'm going to pray for those who are standing, that there will be something fresh and new that God will do in their lives.
Lord I pray for these many folks that are standing at this moment. Thank you for the victories that are being won in their hearts and lives. We don't want this just to be a novelty, we want this to be, Lord, a symptom of a very deep work in our hearts and lives, a deep response of love and surrender and availability to you and mobility that you put us where you want to put us. and do with us on a day to day routine of life. Do with us what it is that you will do that brings benefit and blessing and enrichment and life and light and love to other people. Lord by the Holy Spirit, breathe encouragement into the hearts of the folks that are on their feet and bless them as they yield themselves as a blessing to others. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.