Living Out God’s Calling / Exodus 2:23-4:31
The Sacred Furnace of the Wilderness
If you have your Bibles, open to Exodus chapters 3 and 4. We are going to cover a lot of ground today.
If you remember the context, we find ourselves at a point where Moses tried to take life into his own hands. He tried to lead out of his own strength and his own gifting. It was an epic fail. He ends up being led by God out into the wilderness—running from his failure, running from those moments of stepping all over himself—and he ends up right where God wants him: out in the desert.
In the wilderness, God is going to shape him, mold him, and prepare him. As Shay mentioned last week, God did not bring Moses into the wilderness to end Moses; God brought Moses into the wilderness to begin Moses.
There is something sacred about this spiritual battlefield that God leads Moses into. I don’t know if you’ve ever stood in a place where the bravery of those who fought in service to a greater cause caused you to recognize the sacredness of the space. Years ago, I had the privilege of standing on the beaches of Normandy, on Utah and Omaha Beach. If you remember the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks’ character is trying to get the soldiers through what he called Dog One. He said, “Dog One is not open. I repeat, Dog One is not open!”
I stood right there at Dog One. I thought about the hundreds and thousands of young men who risked their lives, who demonstrated incredible bravery beyond what seems humanly possible—people who sacrificed themselves out of camaraderie and put themselves in harm’s way. In that moment, I honestly felt like I was standing on holy ground. There was something profoundly reverent about that place.
In many ways, the wilderness is that kind of place. For those of you who have had the chance to walk the land of the Bible, what’s interesting is that when people visit Israel, you might assume the highlight would be Jerusalem. Jerusalem is awesome, but it’s typically not the highlight. Or you’d think, “Oh, Jesus’ territory up in the Galilee must be it,” but that is rarely the highlight either. Most people who tour the land find that their most poignant moment happens in the wilderness—in the desert where it is wicked hot, where there is no relief, no respite, where they are thirsty as the day is long. In that moment, they feel that exact same sacredness.
The wilderness journey is a sacred, God-ordained furnace that shapes us into who God wants us to be.
Humility, Dependence, and Obedience
When Moses went into the wilderness, there were three fundamental lessons God needed to teach him. I believe these are true for our lives as well: God needed to teach him humility, dependence, and obedience. That is the journey of the wilderness. That is what God wants us to discover.
Looking back at my own journey, when I came to faith in Christ, God immediately took me into a wilderness. I had new life in Jesus, but old habits were hard to break. I found myself living in a state of dishonoring God—claiming Jesus with my mouth, but living completely differently. Scripture warns us about that path.
Proverbs 29:1 (NASB)
A man who hardens [his] neck after much reproof Will suddenly be broken beyond remedy.
God took me into the wilderness to break me and teach me those three things: humility, dependence, and obedience.
I remember getting my first ministry job. I thought to myself, I am going to change the world right here, right now. They have never seen anything like me. You can already see where this is heading. I stepped in as a former MVP football player from Fresno State, thinking, I am God’s gift to teaching. I know two whole passages in my Bible, and I teach them really well. Just invite me back, and you’ll get more of this good stuff!
Shortly after, the senior pastor called me into his office and asked, “Hey, are you a company man?”
I said, “What’s a company man? I don’t know what that means.”
He said, “Are you going to stay in Fresno forever? Are you going to go to seminary here in town and commit to this church for the next ten years?”
I said, “I don’t know. I think I’m going to go wherever God leads me.”
He looked at me and said, “Okay, yeah. That’s what I thought. We’re going to go ahead and let you go.” And he handed me a cardboard box.
I looked at him in shock: “Did you just fire me?”
“Yeah. Go clean out your office.”
Now, that is a wilderness. In those moments of humiliation, God began to teach me humility, dependence, and obedience. I didn’t ask for it, and I certainly didn’t enjoy it, but it was exactly what I needed. When God led me into that wilderness, He began to truly shape and change me.
That is where we find Moses. During the first chapter of Moses’ life, the issue wasn’t his weakness; the issue was his strength. When Moses tried to lead as a 40-year-old, he was too strong, too powerful, and too self-dependent. God wasn’t going to use that. That self-reliance ended in catastrophic failure. But now, in the second chapter of Moses’ life—an 80-year-old shepherd in the desert—God has broken him and shaped him. God had him right where He wanted him.
When God Hears the Groaning
Forty years feels like an eternity. We sit for forty minutes and feel like we are about to lose our minds, but Moses was out there for forty years. Yet God wasn’t only working in Moses; He was also doing a profound work in the hearts of the people of Israel.
Exodus 2:23-25 (NASB)
Now it came about in [the course of] those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of [their] bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice [of them].
In this wilderness season, the people of God finally learned to do something they hadn’t been doing: they prayed. They looked at their harsh circumstances, and for the first time recorded in the text, they cried out to the Lord.
Notice what happens when they cry out: God hears their groaning, He remembers His covenant, He sees the sons of Israel, and He takes notice. When they finally pray in their distress, God is moved to action.
If you find yourself in bondage, walking through oppression, or enduring an overwhelming season, stop trying to just “man up” and fix it in your own strength. Stop for a moment, fall on your knees, and pray. See what God chooses to do on your behalf.
Holy Ground and the Great “I AM”
Meanwhile, back in Midian, God shows up in a spectacular way.
Exodus 3:1-3 (NASB)
Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, ‘I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.’
Moses is pasturing the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, on the west side of the wilderness near Mount Horeb—the mountain range where Mount Sinai sits. What is Moses doing? Nothing flashy. Nothing extraordinary. He is simply being faithful, blooming where he is planted, tending sheep in obscurity.
And right there in the ordinary, God breaks 430 years of silence.
Exodus 3:4-6 (NASB)
When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then He said, ‘Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ He said also, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
The Angel of the Lord appears in a blazing fire within a bush, yet the bush is not consumed. This is not a random brush fire or desert heat combustion. The definite article matters here: it is the Angel of the Lord. Throughout the Old Testament—rescuing Hagar in Genesis 16, stopping Abraham on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22, standing before Balaam with a drawn sword in Numbers 22—the Angel of the Lord is a theophany, a visible manifestation of God, which many scholars understand to be the pre-incarnate Christ.
God calls out, “Moses, Moses!” and tells him to take off his sandals because the ground he is standing on is holy ground. Moses hides his face because he is terrified to look upon God. Much like Isaiah in Isaiah 6, when confronted with the unfiltered holiness of Yahweh, Moses is overwhelmed by his own unworthiness.
Exodus 3:7-10 (NASB)
The LORD said, ’I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. ’So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. ’Now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. ‘Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.’
God tells Moses: “I have seen the affliction of My people, I have heard their cry, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.”
Simply put, as C.S. Lewis wrote in The Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan is on the move!
If you are Moses listening to this, you’re thinking, That is amazing! Wow, God, good for You! Sucks to be them back in Egypt, but I’m so glad You’re going to fix it. Because remember when I tried to help forty years ago? I ended up killing a guy, everyone rejected me, and that’s why I’ve been out here stepping in sheep dung for four decades. So, great news, Lord! You go get ’em!
And then comes verse 10: “Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people out of Egypt.”
That is a massive “wait, what?” moment. Moses immediately pushes back: “Who am I that I should go?”
Have you ever asked God that question? God puts a ministry, a neighbor, a bold step of faith on your heart, and your first reaction is, “Who am I? Look at my past. Look at my baggage. Look at my insecurities!”
“Who am I?” is completely the wrong question. God immediately redirects him to the only question that matters: Who is God?
Exodus 3:11-14 (NASB)
But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’ And He said, ‘Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.’ Then Moses said to God, ’Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM’; and He said, ’Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’’
God says, “Certainly I will be with you.” When Moses asks what name he should give to the people, God reveals His covenant name: “I AM WHO I AM.” Yahweh—the self-existent, eternal, uncreated, ever-present God. The God who needs nothing, depends on no one, and never fails.
Facing Your Past
Before Moses can lead the people into freedom, God asks him to do one of the most painful things imaginable: he has to go back and face his past.
It is easy to hide in Midian. Out in the desert, nobody knows your name. You can reinvent yourself and live a quiet life. But God says, “No, son. You have to go back. You have to face the Hebrew elders who rejected you, and you have to face Pharaoh, who considers you a fugitive and a murderer.”
I remember right around my wedding in June of 1998, the pastor marrying us asked, “Have you ever thought about moving back to Fresno to do ministry?”
I said, “Not a chance! Are you kidding me? I’ll go to Bakersfield before I go back to Fresno. Anywhere but Fresno!”
It wasn’t that I hated the city; it was that too many people knew me there. Too many people remembered me from high school. Too many people had seen me doing keg stands at parties. Too many ex-girlfriends. I told the Lord, “I will serve You anywhere, but please don’t send me back to my hometown. It’s humiliating.”
And it was as if the Lord whispered, That’s the entire point.
Humility, dependence, obedience. Jesus said that a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown. God uses the places of our past failures to strip away our self-reliance so that His power is put on display.
Exodus 3:19-21 (NASB)
’But I know that the king of Egypt will not permit you to go, except under compulsion. ’So I will stretch out My hand and strike Egypt with all My miracles which I shall do in the midst of it; and after that he will let you go. ’I will grant this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and it shall be that when you go, you will not go empty-handed.
God tells Moses up front that Pharaoh will resist, but God will stretch out His hand with wonders, and when the Israelites finally leave, they will plunder the Egyptians. The deliverance won’t come because Moses is a stud; it will come because Yahweh is God.
Stop Playing Small Ball
Even after God reveals His name and promises His presence, Moses continues to object in chapter 4.
Exodus 4:1 (NASB)
Then Moses said, ’What if they will not believe me or listen to what I say? For they may say, ‘The LORD has not appeared to you.’’
“What if they don’t believe me?” Moses asks. So God gives him three miraculous signs: his staff turning into a serpent, his hand becoming leprous and then restored, and water from the Nile turning to blood. God answers every doubt.
Yet look at verse 10:
Exodus 4:10 (NASB)
Then Moses said to the LORD, ‘Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’
Moses says, “Lord, please, I have never been eloquent… I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
Now, Acts 7 tells us through Stephen that Moses was actually powerful in speech and action in Egypt. So what is Moses doing here? Forty years earlier, Moses tried to lead out of his natural talent and got completely crushed. His reaction to that failure was to overcorrect: Using my gifts blew up in my face, so I’m just going to pretend I don’t have any gifts. I’ll play small. I’ll be timid and call it humility.
That is not biblical humility. Biblical humility is not playing JV ball. True humility is stepping fully into the identity and gifts God gave you while giving all the glory and credit to the One who made you.
How many believers in the church today are sitting on the sidelines because they tried to step out for God once, it blew up, and they got hurt? So now you play “small ball.” You sit on the bench, downplaying your gifts, thinking that your passivity is spiritual. It’s not. If God gave you leadership, lead! If God gave you the gift of communication, speak! If God gave you the gift of encouragement, encourage! Do not let past failures sideline the calling of God on your life.
Exodus 4:11-14 (NASB)
The LORD said to him, ’Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes [him] mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? ‘Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say.’ But he said, ‘Please, Lord, now send [the message] by whomever You will.’ Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and He said, ’Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he speaks fluently. And moreover, behold, he is coming out to meet you; when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.
God tells Moses, “Who made man’s mouth? Was it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will teach you what to speak.”
When Moses finally says in verse 13, “Lord, please send anyone else,” the anger of the Lord burns against him. God permits Aaron to go with him as a spokesperson, but Aaron would end up being a constant thorn in Moses’ side. It is always better to step out scared and obedient than to settle for disobedience.
After Moses returns home, takes his family, and deals with personal obedience in his own household regarding the covenant sign of circumcision, he meets Aaron in the wilderness. They gather the elders of Israel.
Exodus 4:31 (NASB)
So the people believed; and when they heard that the LORD was concerned about the sons of Israel and that He had seen their affliction, then they bowed low and worshiped.
When the people hear that the Lord has seen their affliction, they bow down and worship.
Living Out the Greater Deliverance
Moses is a shadow pointing forward to the ultimate reality: Jesus Christ.
Moses was driven into the wilderness because of his personal failure; Jesus entered the wilderness in victory and endured temptation in perfect obedience. In John 8, Jesus stood before the religious leaders and boldly declared, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
John 8:58 (NASB)
Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.’
Jesus is the greater Redeemer. He does not merely rescue us from the physical oppression of an earthly Pharaoh; He delivers us from the eternal bondage of sin, death, and Satan.
If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you have been redeemed. You are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that He prepared beforehand for you to walk in.
Ephesians 2:10 (NASB)
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Stop playing “yeah, but” with God. Stop letting past mistakes keep you on the bench. God took Moses through the wilderness to teach him humility, dependence, and obedience so that he could be used mightily. God wants to do the exact same work in your life today.
Let us stop shrinking back in fear. Let us step boldly into the calling God has given us, fully trusting in the great I AM.
Let’s pray together.
Father in heaven, thank You for Your Word that challenges us, pushes us, and lovingly refuses to leave us where we are. Lord, forgive us for the times we have played small ball, making excuses for why You can’t use us. We pray that You would teach us true humility, utter dependence, and radical obedience. We don’t want to downplay the gifts You have entrusted to us; we want to use them boldly for Your renown. Thank You for Jesus, our great Deliverer, who conquered sin and death so that we could walk in freedom. Empower us this week to live out our calling for Your glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.