Burning Bush and Pentecost

May 31, 2020 · Ben Hoyer · 26:03

Marking Pentecost and beginning a series on what it means to be the church, this message turns to Exodus 3 and the burning bush, where God sees the affliction of his enslaved people and acts to deliver them, connecting it to the racial injustice and protests of 2020.

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It's forest family. Playing that for us. That was really a great start. We're hopefully getting to a point where we can start to welcome you. Some of y'all here with us on Sundays. We're planning to have to open up the building on Sundays for y'all starting on the 14th. We're not this coming Sunday, but the Sunday following that.

I'm really looking forward to that. Seeing some of your faces, of course, will keep streaming for folks who want people to be able to make decisions that are right for them and their family and be able to participate with us still. We'll keep streaming, but we hope that some of you will be able to join us here. Not this Sunday, but the following Sunday. I think it's the 14th. We've been spending the last several weeks, this whole sort of Easter season, pulling thoughts out of this book called Poverty of Spirit by this German theologian.

He suggests, and I really like it, that this notion of the poverty of spirit that Jesus uses in the Beatitudes is one of the keys to becoming a fully human and being able to live in the way of Jesus. Embracing our limitations, recognizing that what it is to be human is to be fundamentally limited.

And that as we embrace the limitations, we meet the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of Christ in the Church. And so we finished last week, we finished that book with this principle that in your weaknesses, you are strong because if you don't grasp poor control, try and become God in the face of your weakness instead, sit in your weakness and call out to the God.

That's the place where God meets you. And when God meets you, then he comes with all of the capacity of the God of creation and life and animates your weakness and takes you out into life empowered by the resurrected Christ. This is how we then live resurrected lives now, coming from weakness into it, connecting with the God and then moving back out into life. And with that realization that we now on this side of Easter have the capacity to live powered by the resurrected God, I want to spend the next several weeks thinking about what it means to be the Church.

That's an interesting question for us in this kind of COVID economy and as we were coming back together, but also it's perfectly timed this Sunday the church has the church has historically commemorated Pentecost. And Pentecost was this festival that came after Passover, went by several different names, but was a large enough harvest time festival that people came from all over.

The Jewish diaspora came from all over into Jerusalem to celebrate this harvest festival, this feast of first fruits. And it's there where God through his spirit, released his spirit on his people and launched the church out. So we're going to think about what it means to be the church, but in order to get to that celebration of Pentecost, I want to think a little bit about the context. Some of the challenges and the distinctives of the church throughout time.

And especially now as we as we're in this weird space where the legacies of slavery and the systemic racial bias in our systems and in each of us is being played out for us on the streets of cities across the country. On our social media fees in our own heads and mind. And I don't have answers for that.

But I do see some themes in scripture that people of faith, people of God can be consistent with our people throughout time. And so it starts with another story of fire in Pentecost. God comes with these tongues of fire and settles on top of his prophets and he comes in fire in another place. And this is a story I'd like to start with this morning. In the beginning of the book of Exodus. I'd love it if you look there with me. It's maybe a story that is gets referenced, but hasn't been read a whole lot.

Exodus is the second book in the copy of the scriptures. So there's Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers due to Ron and I want to look at Exodus chapter three at this point in the history of our people. God had ushered them into Egypt back in Genesis and he brought them there in order to protect them from a famine and he protected them through the storehouses of Egypt. And so Egypt was sheltered because they were housing the people of God and they lived there for a couple of centuries.

And then for the last 200 years they are enslaved and brutally enslaved and go through genocide and Moses of course is this one that saved miraculously by God grows up in Pharaoh's house realizes he's actually in Israel. And then the Lord is in the midst of the world and is living a separate life fine outside of Egypt when he has this experience where he's shepherding sheep. If you look at Exodus chapter three.

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father in law, Jeff throw the priest of Midian and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to for the mountain of God. He was playing a fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked and behold the bush was burning yet it was not consumed. And Moses said I'll turn aside and see this great sight why this bush is not burned up.

And when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see God called out to him from the bush. And then say Moses Moses Moses says here I am. And then God said don't come near take your sandals off for the place where you are standing is holy ground. And then God says I am the God of your father the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob and Moses hate his face for he's afraid to look at God. And then God said I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their task masters.

I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land and land flowing with milk and honey to the place that came nice to the sites. This is when you understand the story if we took the time to read Moses this whole story we would recognize that Israelite women are having to kill their babies that the Egyptians are not only brutal task masters enforcing slavery.

But they are systematically eliminating all the young men from a race of people. And when you read the story you realize this is going on far longer than it ought to go on. And as you read the story you begin to wonder where is God in the midst of this struggle. When people are dying at the hands of injustice. That's why this story called out to me this weekend because God calls Moses right to his presence and says very clearly he says surely I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt.

And I have heard their cry. When God sees and hears when he remembers in scripture then he comes with action. It's interesting because we like to predict the time that he does that sort of thing and we would like to predict how he does it.

Consistently in the story of scripture what we learn about the character of God is that he does things in his own time. But but he does things in his own time and also does not let evil go unpunished. To the story of Exodus I think that I first realized this was a couple years ago how much the color of your skin in the context and culture that we live in can affect the way that you read the story of scripture.

I was growing up in church and then even through my education as I looked at the story of the Egyptians and the Israelites of the plagues and the Passover of the Red Sea crashing down on top and killing all of the Egyptian army of God avenging his own. I had perpetrated against them for the injustice that they lived under for generations, for centuries.

God avenging his own. I had to in my own head and in explaining God's actions to people I had to apologize for why God would be killing the Egyptians. It felt like I had to like explain away like like I know God is doing this but he's still a good God. And a couple of years ago I read I heard a message from an African American preacher on this story, the story of the of God liberating the Israelites from Egypt.

And there was this sense of of God riding into defend and rescue his own. There was no apologizing for the vigor or the vengeance of God because it came in defense of his people. And I was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was

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for Adam and Eve and it's the question for you and I do we rest in our limitations identify with the character of God or do we grasp for craft for power prestige and money. When we look at the story of God or the story of scripture God has always found in the place of the marginalized. The place of the victim. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he himself locates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And he

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