Month: May 2023

Digging in Deeper: Exodus 3:2-4

Leave a comment

“Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush. As Moses looked, he saw that the bush was on fire but was not consumed. So Moses thought, ‘I must go over and look at this remarkable sight. Why isn’t the bush burning up?’ When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ ‘Here I am,’ he answered.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How good are you at paying attention to what’s going on in the world around you? Some people have a keen eye to catch every detail of their surroundings. Others seem more like they walk around in a permanent fog. This can be tricky when we serve a God who sometimes likes to be subtle. It often feels like it is hard to catch what God is trying to say. We just wish He would do something big and flashy like set a bush on fire without burning it up, and then speak out of it when we draw near…just like Moses got here. Let’s talk about what’s going on in this famous God-encounter and what it might mean for us.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Exodus 3:1

Leave a comment

“Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

On occasion people will compare the times in which we live our lives to those before us. Usually this is done in a spirit of nostalgia, and we don’t come off looking very good. I’m not typically a fan of this. Nostalgia is a deceptively tough master that will leave us longing for a past that never really existed and discontented about the present. That being said, there is one point in particular at which we come off looking worse than our forebears that I would like to give some attention to this morning: We don’t like to wait for things. Humans have never been well-known for patience, but in our instant society, we’re particularly bad and getting worse. This creates problems when we serve a God who literally has all the time in the world. We get a glimpse of this as we move into the next part of Moses’ story. Let’s talk about it today.

Read the rest…

Something Different

Leave a comment

“Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your name throughout the earth! From the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have established a stronghold on account of your adversaries in order to silence the enemy and the avenger.” (Psalm 8:1-2 CSB – Read the rest)

A little something different for you today. I did not preach yesterday because it was Youth Sunday and the kids led the service. Instead of something more from me today, I thought I would share with you how the service went. In particular, take some time and listen to the testimonies and messages from these terrific teens. They really did a great job. Speaking in front of people is tough. Sharing what God has done in your life in front of other people is even tougher. Yet here are five young people who stood up and did just that. The leadership of our young people wasn’t limited to what happened on stage earlier. We had youth running the sound board, the slides in the room, and even the livestream itself. They all did an incredible job leading the church in worship from every different position. You can fast forward to the speakers if you don’t want to sit through the whole service, but take some time today to be impressed with what our young people put together to give glory to the Lord.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: 1 Corinthians 6:18

2 Comments

“Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The Bible is just an antiquated set of restrictive rules that were put in place centuries ago and without any understanding of what the modern world is like. They were hardened by a bunch of prude men who were looking to tell people what they could and couldn’t do with their own bodies. They look to limit our freedom and take all the real fun and joy out of life. The Scriptures often get a bad rap today and the lyrics often run right along those lines. As a result, when people hear that “the Bible” says they shouldn’t do X, Y, or Z, they often roll their eyes and do it anyway because life is better when it’s fun. Besides, modern science has conclusively shown that the Bible can’t be trusted. But what happens when modern research starts to discover that the Bible wasn’t – and isn’t – perhaps so wrong as we’d like to believe? Let’s ponder that question for just a bit together today.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Exodus 2:23-25

Leave a comment

“After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor, they cried out, and their cry for help because of the difficult labor ascended to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the Israelites, and God knew.” (Read the chapter)

Have you ever been in a season when it seemed like some awful situation was never going to end? I remember a period of a few months a number of years ago when one of us was sick constantly. It felt like we were never going to all be healthy at the same time again. Perhaps compared with your situation, that sounds like a vacation. When we are walking along the bottom of a deep valley, it is easy for hope to dim to the point we start to believe we’ll never walk in the light again. Take heart. This next part of the story reminds us that is not ever really the case.

Continue reading “Digging in Deeper: Exodus 2:23-25” →