Order, Words, & Voices
10.01.23, No Reference Point , Exodus 1:8-2:10; 3:1-15
Order
Pre Worship Music
Call to Worship – Song Billy & Team
Lord Reign in Me
Father of Love
Call to Worship – Spoken Word Linda/Segun
Worship Response/Lord’s Prayer Rick
Reading Exodus 1:8-2:10; 3:1-15 Mitch
Songs Billy & Team
Jesus Name Above All Names
10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)
Message No Reference Point Rick
Music Billy and Team
10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)
Community/Peace Rick
Benediction/Closing Peace Rick
Post Worship Music
Music (slides) – Billy and Team
Lord Reign In Me
Verse 1
Over all the earth You reign on high
Every mountain stream
every sunset sky
But my one request
Lord my only aim
Is that You’d reign in me again
Chorus
Lord reign in me reign in Your pow’r
Over all my dreams
in my darkest hour
You are the Lord of all I am
So won’t You reign in me again
Verse 2
Over every thought over every word
May my life reflect
the beauty of my Lord
‘Cause You mean more to me
Than any earthly thing
So won’t You reign in me again
Father of Love
Verse
Father of love
Lord of all creation
I will bless Your name
Forever and ever
I will declare
Your grace and Your mercy
And tell of Your unfailing love
Chorus
Your lovingkindness
Is good to all
Your wings of mercy
Lift me when I fall
Your lovingkindness
Meets my ev’ry need
You cleanse me from unrighteousness
And You give new life to me
Verse
Father of love
Lord of all creation
I will bless Your name
Forever and ever
I will declare
Your grace and Your mercy
And tell of Your unfailing love
Call to Worship – Spoken Words (Slides) – Linda/Segun
We gather this morning for a moment, a moment of worship, a moment of praise. We gather with countless others in our community, our nation, and around our world who share this common path towards Becoming the Righteousness of God. We gather in places where there is suffering in ways few can begin to imagine.
We gather with those who have experienced victories and those who are hiding their suffering while standing in front of us with a smile on their face. We gather with those whose comfort is guarded with a vigilance that is ultimately impossible to maintain.
We gather for a moment of rest in our struggles, a moment of shared refreshment before God. We share a called, and yet chosen path, a path of grace and a path of works. May we continue to move forward on our path of becoming as we worship the God who is love.
Call to Worship – Responsive Reading (Slides) – Rick
Leader: Jacob’s son Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, taken to Egypt where he quickly rose in status and then, just as quickly, he fell into prison. He interpreted the ruler’s dream making him powerful in Egypt.
Response: Joseph listened, Joseph rescued, Joseph forgave. God was with Joseph through darkness and light.
Leader: Joseph was a hero in the foreign land of Egypt, his family, and his father were treated like royalty. When Jacob died, the nation grieved.
Response: A new ruler did not know Joseph, he did not care about Jacob. God had not forgotten his promise to Abraham and Jacob.
Leader: The new ruler was afraid of all the descendants of Jacob still living in Egypt. He didn’t care that Joseph had saved the nation centuries before.
Response: Egyptians adopted the fears of their ruler treating the Israelites with contempt. God was still present.
Leader: The ruler attempted to powerfully rule over the Jacob’s descendants – ruthlessly increasing their workload, stopping the birth of their male sons, striving to make their lives bitter.
Response: While their work was meant to defeat them, God had deliverance in the works.
Leader: God had not forgotten the Israelites, he sent a deliverer named Moses who had already been in their midst.
Response: God did not forsake the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God keeps his promises.
Leader: So Moses, a human who was himself delivered, was called by the God he could not fully recognize, a Lord he could not fully identify.
Response: The God who is like none other, the Lord who does not forget and does not forsake.
Leader: The God who is.
Response: The Lord who will always be.
Lord’s Prayer (Slides) – Rick
Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, On Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, while we forgive those who trespass against us. And, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
Reading Mitch
While tending his father in law’s flock, Moses saw that a bush was on fire but not consumed by the flame. Moses went to see why the bush was not burned up.
God called to Moses out of the bush, “Moses!” Moses said, “Here I am.”
God said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry out of their mistreatment.”
“I know their sufferings, so I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring the Israelites to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
God continued, “I have heard the cry of the Israelites and I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. Now, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
God replied, “I will be with you, and you will fully understand that it is I who sent you after you have brought the people out of Egypt, and then you will recognize that you, along with the freed Isrealies, are freed and serving Me on this mountain.”
Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is this God’s name?’ what shall I say to them?”
God said to Moses, “Say, I am who I am. Say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’
‘This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.’” Exodus 3:1-15
Music (Slides) Billy and Team
Jesus Name Above All Names
(Will repeat this one verse 2-3 times – will do it again after 10,000 reasons)
Jesus name above all names
Beautiful Savior glorious Lord
Emmanuel God is with us
Blessed Redeemer living Word
10,000 Reasons (Bless The Lord)
Chorus
Bless the Lord O my soul O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before O my soul
I’ll worship Your holy name
Verse 1
The sun comes up
it’s a new day dawning
It’s time to sing Your song again
Whatever may pass
and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing
when the evening comes
Verse 2
You’re rich in love
and You’re slow to anger
Your name is great
and Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness
I will keep on singing
Ten thousand reasons
for my heart to find
Verse 3
And on that day
when my strength is failing
The end draws near
and my time has come
Still my soul will sing
Your praise unending
Ten thousand years
and then forevermore
Tag
Worship Your holy name
Lord I’ll worship Your holy name
Ending
Sing like never before O my soul
I’ll worship Your holy name
Worship Your holy name
Worship Your holy name
Jesus Name Above All Names
(probably just 1-2 times)
Verse 1
Jesus name above all names
Beautiful Savior glorious Lord
Emmanuel God is with us
Blessed Redeemer living Word
Message (Slides) Rick
In 2019 when I ventured to the Mexico border with ten other pastors we were frequently stopped by border patrol to show our passports. They would frequently open the doors of the vans and request that we all pass our passports to the agent. The first time this happened, we were on the US side of the border and once the agent had looked through all the passports he called our name and return our passport. Then he came to the one for which he called out ‘Richard”. Three of the eleven people in the van, including myself, reached out our hands. Three. So, the then said, ‘Okay, this one belongs to ‘Richard Alan’, again three hands reached out – he even asked us how we spell ‘Alan’ and all three of us spelled it the same unusual name. There were three of us with the same first and middle names, three of us known by the same name since birth.
Names have an odd impact. When we name a child after a renown relative or historical character that child may then be expected to carry the weight of that remembered individual. We often give new names, nick names to children who do not seem to fit their name.
This is Moses’, and really even God’s, monumental question found in our passage today as they both were confronted with this need – what name is appropriate for a being who has no reference point, for whom there is no comparison or already established word that would accurately identify the being?
First, though, let’s take a few steps back in the story, back before a name for God was the concern. Back to Moses’ first encounter on the mountain.
[Slide – leave up until notified after next Slide] Dennis Olson describes this the initial moments of Mose’s encounter with God, ’After being chased out of Egypt and away from his Hebrew people, Moses is out shepherding sheep for his Midianite father-in-law. Out in the wilderness, Moses stumbles upon “the mountain of God” known as Mount Horeb (also known as Mount Sinai.’
(Dennis Olson, Charles T. Haley Professor of Old Testament Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ)
I was was immediately struck by two elements in Dennis Olson’s introduction. First, we have the mentioned of the 3 people groups that were significant in the life of Moses – The Egyptians, the Hebrews, and now, the Midianites. The second thing is Olsen’s use of the word ‘stumbled’. Moses stumbled upon God – or, better said, ‘Moses stumbled upon the place where God was waiting for Moses to show up.’ Truth is, there is a lot of ‘stumbling upon’ in the journey of the Israelites. Actually, we still do a lot of ‘stumbling upon’.
[Slides] The Israelites were a group of stumblers just like we are. They had stumbled along and constantly found that God was waiting for them there, wherever ‘there’ was.
We fail to recognize the fact that the Hebrews, the Israelites, really didn’t know God at this point in their journey. Their ancestor Abraham had surely passed down the stories of creation and the flood to his descendant Isaac. Abraham had told him of God’s promise of blessing, which Isaac passed on to his son Jacob. Jacob had told these stories to his sons, but then the stories were left to 3rd, 4th, and even more distanced story tellers over the course of centuries until they arrived at Moses. Over the course of these centuries – rulers gradually dismissed the significance of the the descendants of Jacob living in their country. The story depended on those who knew little to pass along everything in order that this people would know their God. Centuries of stumbling along. Centuries during which God was not absent only silent, God was waiting for their stumbling to bring them to him on this mountain called Horeb, or Sinai.
[End Screen Share]
And then, Moses, a man rejected by everyone he thought was his people, stumbled upon a burning bush from which God spoke.
In the ancient world, mountaintops were imagined to be the dwelling places for the gods (little g). There, on the mountain, Moses encounters this burning bush which was not burning up, a bush that was in flames yet not being destroyed.
Fire is a frequent symbol of God’s (big g) presence in the Bible. Fire is an element that we, as evolved humans, have a partial understanding. We know it’s burn hurts, and we also know that it can destroy. Fire keeps us at a distance, it hides what is going on in the midst of the fire, while at the same time, the light from the flame provides a illumination on everything going on outside of the flames. Fire burns until it consumes and then it burns no more – except for this fire on this Holy mountain where Moses stumbled onto God’s presence.
This fire is the moment of change in the relationship between God and human. For it was this moment in which God spoke to a human, something that had been done before, but this time, the message was differnt. Moses was being called to go to a people in a way that was new. This was personal with Moses, but it was also about to be personal with a people.
And from the bush, still hidden in the core of the flames, God speaks. God tells Moses to take off his shoes for he is standing on Holy ground/Holy soil.
This command was not really a surprise to Moses. Even having grown up in a household that worshiped the false gods, this same show of respect for the false gods was a constant in his childhood memories growing up in an Egyptian family. However, this was different, Moses had truly stumbled upon Holy soil. While many in his Egyptian culture called places ‘holy’ this soil was different. This practice was familiar, but in reality it now was very personal.
Removing your shoes had a secondary inference as well, this may be an even more important fact than the idea of God’s holiness. Taking off shoes was also a practice when entering a home, whether a tent or a building. This too, in many cultures is a gesture of being home. It signifies a state of belonging, that you are home, welcome, affirmed, embraced, and accepted regardless of your past, present, and even your unknown future.
Remember, this was a moment in which Moses had been rejected by his people the Hebrews and by his people the Egyptians. And, that was not all. Now that we was an guest of the Midinanites, he was a foreigner, he was one to be suspicious of, one to be guarded around. He was unacceptable, he had no real home. He even made a public statement of this fact when he named his first son, Gershom, whose name meant ‘I am a stranger, I do not belong here or anywhere.’ In a way, this status of Moses, a status that was true wherever he went – this status extended as an inheritance to his children.
Moses’ taking off shoes on this holy soil held a load of significance. Somehow, standing before this burning bush from which God spoke, Moses understood he now belonged, he was home. There, on that mountain, Moses, the alien to all human communities and peoples, was now at home. Moses found that his true home was not necessarily with humans but it was with God, the God of his ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob.
With shoes removed and standing on holy soil, Moses was home. He began to settle in but was interrupted as God called him to leave and return to those who had rejected him. Moses was to return to the place which was not his home. God called Moses to go back to Egypt to return to Pharaoh and to the Hebrews in order to lead the Israelites out of their miserable slavery in Egypt and to the guide them to the promised land of Canaan. Moses resisted God’s call with a litany of objections. When that did not work, Moses referred to his own resume and his complete lack of any qualifications that would have made him suitable for this task.
[Slide until notified to end screen share] God responds, “None of that matters – I will be with you.”
Moses was convinced that the Hebrews will immediately reject his leadership; that his leadership will be doomed from the beginning.
Moses asks, “Who is it I am going to say you are? What am I going to say is your name? Do they even know that is your name? None of us know you except in relation to our forefathers’. How else do they know you God? Do they refer you in the same way they do all the gods of Egypt?
I find myself wondering if this was an unexpected question for God. This whole creation, humanity, and free choice thing was still rather new. Up to this point God had never needed a name. Humankind had never established a word that would be adequate to name God – there was no reference point in all of the human vocabulary or the human experience other than in relation to our failed forefathers.
[Slide] God replies, “I am who I am. I will be who I will be.”
God was not offended by Moses questioning. God was not troubled by Moses, nor the Hebrews’, inability to name God. Except for assigning God to their forefathers – forefathers who lived centuries ago, a group of men who they had heard about but never met because they lived and died generations ago, centuries ago.
I think, maybe, that this was a bit of a surprise to God. God is God, God will always be God. God is God. But Moses was right, the gods of Egypt were not really gods, and they were definitely not The God. However, the Hebrews, after generations spending their lives in Egypt among those little g gods, it was all a bit cloudy even to them. It was not a surprise to God that these ‘other gods’ had muddied the waters of knowing God.
For God, there were, and there is, no duplicates. God is God, God has always been God, and God will always be God.
[Slide] Later, after the Hebrews learned from Moses that God’s name is ‘I am who I am, I will be who I will be’ they shorten the name to ‘Yahweh’. A divine name built on the Hebrew verb ‘to be’ because now they knew God is God and what all that means identification wise is still to happen, ‘to be known’. Thus, we begin to see the ‘to be(s)’ come about as the Hebrews, in their new personal understanding of God, see the activity and hear the words defining God, often spoken by God.
[Slide] “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt
[Slide] “I am a jealous God, punishing but showing steadfast love.”
[Slide] “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell with you.“
[Slide] “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.”
[Slide] “I am gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.”
[Slide] “I forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin.”
And many more name add ons spoken by God about God.
[Slide] God is God, and God is yet to be fully named.
[Slide] How do you define God?
[leave slide up until we move to prayer]
Music (Slides) Billy and Team
10,000 Reasons (Bless The Lord)
Chorus
Bless the Lord O my soul O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before O my soul
I’ll worship Your holy name
Verse 1
The sun comes up
it’s a new day dawning
It’s time to sing Your song again
Whatever may pass
and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing when the evening comes
Verse 2
You’re rich in love
and You’re slow to anger
Your name is great
and Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness
I will keep on singing
Ten thousand reasons
for my heart to find
Verse 3
And on that day
when my strength is failing
The end draws near
and my time has come
Still my soul will sing
Your praise unending
Ten thousand years
and then forevermore
Tag
Worship Your holy name
Lord I’ll worship Your holy name
Ending
Sing like never before O my soul
I’ll worship Your holy name
Worship Your holy name
Worship Your holy name
Community (Slides) Rick
- Next Sunday, In Between, Deuteronomy 5:1- 21; 6:4-9
- Next Book Discussion Luncheon, ‘Making Sense of the Bible’, Some Books available in entry was -$15, or link on web page will take you to Amazon order page (audio, or library app), luncheon will take place in October (date – TBA)
- Celebrating Excellence Banquet, Sunday, October 29, 6 free GF Seats Available – speak with Rick
Benediction (Slides) Rick
As we leave this place we continue on this journey fully dependent on the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are on this path because of God’s extravagant grace and by our own choice. We are connected to the soil and the pursuit of becoming the righteousness of the Holy God. This is a pursuit that gives us no choice but to face the struggles and wrestle them through. Through which we are blessed.
We move forward even when we cannot see, we dive into the flowing provision even when the waters appear difficult, we hope even when our despair threatens to consume us, we love because that is the sole path and purpose of becoming. We wrestle through even when our body, and every muscle within us, is exhausted.
And, when our faith seems worthless, when hopelessness rules our reality, and when hatred seems to consume our world, we still choose to move forward in trust, to hope in the empty grave, and to love because that is our path, that is our call.
Closing Peace Rick
Leader: May the Peace and Hope of the Lord go with you.
Response: And also with you.
Leader: Go in the Peace and Hope of the Lord.
Order, Words, & Voices 