¹Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ²There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” ⁴When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

⁷Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

¹¹But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” ¹²He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”        Exodus 3:1-12

In this passage the author of Exodus recalled for his readers the call of the great liberator.

 We come to our fourth campsite in our yearlong journey through the Bible. I have encouraged the congregation not to over pack.  Take only what you need – a Bible (one in print and audio), a copy of Ellsworth Kalas’ The Grand Sweep: A Bible Study for Individuals and Groups, the Weekly Devotional Guides found in every Sunday’s worship guide, and prayer (ask God what God wants you to see in the day’s reading and what God wants you to do). Today’s campsite is at the base of Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, and in this passage, known as the mountain of God, because God showed up there.  I have been there.  St. Katherine’s Monastery was built 1600 years ago on the spot where the burning bush stood. St. Katherine’s has been since before the advent of Islam and even though it is in Muslim populated region, it continues in peaceful coexistence. Robert Cates wrote, “Nothing is ever the same after a person becomes aware of God.”  He cites Moses, Pharaoh, the Israelites, and the Egyptians whose lives were forever changed once they became aware of God.

So today at this campsite, I am glad that we have the scouts with us.  For over one hundred years the scouting programs here in the United States and all over the world have been training boys and girls in all sorts of skills and matters of character.  And all over the world they have the same motto – Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts – Be prepared.
                            

Be prepared to see what God sees.

Moses was invited into a relationship with God. He was not looking for God, but God was looking for him. God was revealed through a bush that seemed to have spontaneously ignited, not all that uncommon in the hot desert sun of the Sinai, but it was not being consumed. God saw in Moses someone that Moses could have never seen in himself – the great liberator. So he called to him, “Moses, Moses.” The repetition in Hebrew conveys the same thing as it does in English – urgency, importance. I was listening to a reporter talk about his visit to Shenzhen, China recently. He said the 32-year-old city of 14 million people is growing so fast you have to be careful when traveling. His driver had taken an exit ramp on the highway and stopped, because the exit ramp stopped – 85 feet in the air – and the only thing to indicate this was a single orange cone in the middle of the highway at the end of the ramp.  If the driver’s name would have been Moses, I am sure that Mike Daisey, the reporter, would have shouted, “Moses! Moses!” The Lord then told Moses to take off his shoes before coming any closer. This is a sign of respect and servitude. Then God told Moses what he had seen. Well, it was more than seeing.  The Lord had seen the misery, heard the cries of affliction, been aware of their sufferings, and had come down to do something about it.  But that was not all that God saw – God saw the Promised Land where the Lord longed to place the abused slaves. It was a land that God described as “good and broad.” Milk and honey was an expression of fertile land and spacious. Can you imagine what this would sound like to a people confined to a brick making station by slavery? God saw a lot. He saw Moses, he saw Pharaoh, he saw the Israelites, he saw the taskmasters, and he saw the Promised Land.

One of the reasons that this church has partnered with the people in Belmopan, Belize is because we have seen the site where a school can be built, we have heard of the difference that high school can make in the lives of students who want to go to school but have no school to attend, we have become aware of a church who is tackling this need and inviting others to join them. There are over 1,000 high school aged students who want to go to school, but the state cannot afford to build them one. This is a city of 312,000 residents. I do not have to tell this community the difference education makes in a person’s life. Nevertheless, a couple of stats jumped out at me. While the national unemployment for this relatively poor country is at 23%, those without a high school diploma have a 32% unemployment rate.  Those with a high school education have only a 12% unemployment rate.  And that is just a statistic about jobs.  When you consider quality of life for these individuals and the future of this country moving beyond a third-world country into being a developing country, religion and education are crucial. We have the chance to encourage both.

Of course, partnering with Belize also builds servants here in our young people and their sponsors as their world is widened through service. That’s why I am excited about the Valentine Banquet and Project Belize, people who participate start seeing what God sees. Be prepared to see what God sees – potential in you, problems in the world, and the promise of a better land (one that is good and broad). Be prepared.
        

Be prepared to go where God sends.

I am sure that Moses was excited about the news from God, once he recovered from the sheer fear of being in the presence of the Almighty. The Lord had just assured him that he had seen the misery, heard the cries of affliction, been aware of the sufferings, and had come down to bring them up. Moses once cared deeply about those slaves, until he was threatened by one of them.  Now he was a fugitive, on the run for having slain an Egyptian whom he saw beating a Hebrew slave. And he was a failure.  He had tried to promote peace among the quarreling slaves who turned on him asking, “Are you going to kill me like you did the Egyptian?”  To this fugitive and failure that was quietly tending his father-in-law’s sheep, the Lord said, “So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” It was a two-fold mission – he had to confront the most powerful man on earth and lead a people out of slavery into being a nation. Is it any wonder that Moses would duck and weave the Word of the Lord trying to avoid this mission?

God will do that – send you to places that you would have never imagined. God will take a pastor from church in Virginia, move her across the country with her husband and place her in a church that just happens to need a pastor. God will take an Aggie returning home from North Carolina where she had done graduate work and been active in a church there, to rally this church to feed 5,000 people during the past Lenten season. God will send you to places you never would have even thought about.

This past Friday Tammy, Chelsea, Zachary, and I went to a funeral for a friend that we met in Pattison about 18 years ago. Thelma Hynes was one of the saints of the church that God sent our way to welcome us to that congregation and nurture us in so many ways.  As we were planning her service, Thelma’s granddaughter shared a note that she had received from her grandmother 21 years ago.  In that note was this encouragement:

“Follow the heavenly stars as they guide you to a fulfilling life brimming over with hope, happiness, love, trust, courage and faith. 

Keep your bright spirit, be ready to help others and in so doing, your life will become richer and more fulfilling than you can even imagine.

With much love, Grandmother

I mentioned at her memorial service that not only was this a note of encouragement, it was a mini autobiography.  This was how Thelma lived her life – prepared to help others, to go where God sent, and as a result her life was richer and more fulfilling than she could have even imagined. Jesus looked at his disciples after his resurrection and said in John 20:21, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Are you prepared to go where God sends you?  As the scouts will tell you, you never know when or where God might send you.  Be prepared.
                            

Be prepared to follow where God leads.

The Lord did not tell Moses, “I will heal your slow speech.”  Instead, the Lord said, “I will be with you.” This is a huge promise, because when Moses comes to the end of his rope in Exodus 33, he will insist that God go with him. “If you don’t go with us, we won’t survive,” he said. This is a consistent promise in the scriptures – God will be with us.  The last words of Jesus that Matthew recorded was a promise, “I will be with you always, to the ends of the earth.” 

Michael Williams has included a lot of rabbinic stories in his commentary on Exodus. One of them I found quite intriguing.

When Moses was in Midian keeping sheep for his father-in-law, Jethro, one of his young sheep ran away. Moses left the rest of his flock to run after the lamb that fled. The faster Moses ran and the more he shouted, the faster the sheep ran ahead of him. Finally, the sheep found a quiet pool in a shady spot and stopped to drink. When Moses saw this, he said, “How foolish I was. You only wanted a drink and by chasing after you I made the situation even worse. You must be tired by now.” So he placed the lamb on his shoulders and carried it back to the flock.  Seeing Moses’ compassion for the sheep, God said, “This is the one I want to lead my people out of slavery in Egypt.” (Exodus Rabbah 2.2)

I doubt that this really happened, but I do like what it says about God who leads with compassion. Moses could rest assured that this God would be with him.

Not only did God promise to be with Moses, the Lord also said, “and I will give you a sign.” No, the sign wasn’t the staff that could turn into a snake or the water that would turn into blood or the ten plagues that are remembered every Passover. The promise was success, “You shall worship God on this mountain.”

Standing at the base of that mountain drinking my morning coffee was an amazing moment in June of 2010. It was there and then that I remembered this scripture and all by myself began worshipping God. I’ve been there, but not just once a year and a half ago. The mountain of God and the burning bush are just two places where God showed up in the midst of an ordinary day. It could happen anywhere at anytime.  It could happen here, today. Be prepared.

Be prepared to see what God sees. Be prepared to go where God sends. Be prepared to follow where God leads. The first thing these scouts learned (in their packs, troops, and ships) is to be prepared. It’s a motto that we all might want to adopt. Be prepared. Amen.