The God Who Draws Near - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Exodus 3, God appears to Moses in a burning bush and begins to instruct him to deliver the Israelites from their Egyptian slavery.
Transcript:
Our scripture is taken from Exodus chapter three verses four through six. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses! And Moses said, here I am. Do not come any closer, God said. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.
Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
We love it when those who are famous rub shoulders with the common folk. Not for show, not for display as politicians often do, but rather because they truly welcome that human connection. Sports figures come most immediately to my mind given my social media feed, people ate it up recently that Drake Maye hung out on the sidelines of a local high school football game in Massachusetts and made conversation with the kids there. Brad Marchand, former Boston Bruin, returned to the TD Garden for the first time since being traded away and clips have circulated showcasing his emotional response and connection with the fans. Maybe you think about musicians who invite a kid who's their biggest fan up onto the stage to sing along with them. Or maybe a movie star who shows genuine humanity to maybe some fan or maybe some worker on their set when they could otherwise just ignore them. Yes, we do hate it when the rich and famous act like they're better than everyone else, but I think more than that we simply love to see that sort of warmth and nearness. It's a good thing.
It leads me to think about our relationship with God. Of course, when we think about him, there is a profound difference between him and us. A magnitude of difference that far outstrips the very trivial, trivial, superficial shine of difference between us and the rich and famous. They're, they're human beings like the rest of us. Thinking about God, then, and the difference between us and him, what is that difference? I want you to begin mulling that over as we come before the biblical text this morning. What is the difference, what is that distance between us and God? Who is he, who are we, and what leads him to have anything to do with us?
We might imagine that we're hardly alone in contemplating these things. We left off our study of Exodus with Moses's escape from the hand of Pharaoh, his exile in the wilderness. As you might recall, Moses is a Hebrew, a member of the people of Israel. Now, in the time of his forefather, Joseph, the Israelites found refuge in the land of Egypt because Joseph was second in command and had helped save that nation in a time of famine. But now the people of Israel have been enslaved for several hundred years under the tyranny of the Pharaohs of Egypt. They're in Egypt, but they are not Egyptians; they are surrounded by the pantheon of the Egyptian gods, but not one of these is the God of their fathers, none are the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses was miraculously delivered as a baby from Pharaoh's policy that every male child should be killed. He should have been slaughtered at birth, but instead, trusting in God's deliverance in the face of the unknown, his mother placed him in a basket in the Nile. He was found and adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh, and brought up in Pharaoh's palace, enjoying all the benefits that household had to offer even while his own people continued to suffer. But by the age of 40 his heart was turned to his people and to the God of his fathers. And in the defense of one of his fellow Hebrews, he killed an Egyptian slave master, and thus he became a fugitive and ultimately an exile in the desert. God does grace him with comfort. He's welcomed into the family of Jethro, a Midianite priest of God. He's wed to one of his daughters. And so Moses's life turns over from the comforts of a palace to a life of herding flocks.
Yes, we can imagine Moses leaning on his staff, looking off into the vast space of the wilderness, wondering where God is in all of this. Wondering who is God, really wondering if he and his Hebrew brothers and sisters really matter at all to this God, and then something happens. We pick up in Exodus three, looking at verses one through three. It says, now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I'll go over and see this strange sight, why the bush does not burn up.
So Moses is tending flocks, again in this vast wilderness, and it's the wilderness of of Sinai. You can see there on the map behind me that red dot, that's the area that he's in, says that he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. This is an alternative name for Mount Sinai. At least one commentator suggested that the whole mountain range was known as Horeb, but this is effectively, this is Mount Sinai. This is, in fact, where we'll find Moses and the people of Israel later on. It's where he'll receive the, the 10 Commandments. But it's here that he has his first face-to-face encounter with with God. Now as we see, it's a very mountainous area that he's in. It's not an easy territory to be to be going through, and as he is tending to his flocks there, he notices a bush that's on fire.
A bush that's on fire by this mountain of God. And that's it behind me, the Mount Sinai. Now the curious thing about this bush is it was on fire, but the bush was not burning up. Now I do a little bit of volunteer firefighting, but you don't have to be a volunteer firefighter to know that that's not what happens with fire. When something's on fire, it gets destroyed. But the bush was not destroyed. He says, well, that's curious. I've never seen such a thing. And so naturally he goes over to check it out. Now, I don't know about you, but sometimes in my own imagination, I've imagined this bush being kind of small, but it could have been quite large. I mean, imagine if it was something the size of your Christmas tree, and just as flammable, you see one of those things go up. That'd be quite a sight to see this big flame. It's burning, but it's not going out. We don't know how big the bush was, but we don't have to think it was a little puny, a little bush that was on fire here. Now it says in verse two that there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.
Now it's already interesting that this bush is on fire and it's not burning up, but, and so often, I think we can just rush to that detail. But did you pick up on that? It says that the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the flames, angel of the Lord. Well, that's interesting. Now, the word angel in Hebrew is malak, and just as in the same in Greek, when we use the word angelos, it simply means messenger. It doesn't necessarily specify a particular type of spiritual being. At the very least what we have is this, the messenger of the Lord.
Now, what's really interesting here as we'll see go along, as we go along, is this angel of the Lord is in the bush, and yet we all know that God spoke to Moses from this burning bush. Let's go on and, and think about this more. Verses four through six. So it says, when the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses! And Moses said, here I am. Do not come any closer, God said. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
Now, I just want you to put the pieces together here. We've, it's been said that the angel of the Lord was in the bush, and yet here in these verses, it says that it is God speaking from the bush. And in fact, it says that Moses is afraid to be looking upon God. And this may lead you to think, well, which is it? Is it the angel or is it, is it God? Well, I, I wanna take us on a little biblical excursion here for you to just kind of wrap your mind around what is being revealed to us here. This is not the only place in which we see that the angel of God, the angel of the Lord, is interchangeable with God himself. We look at Genesis 31.
The angel of God speaks to Jacob in a dream. Says the angel of God said to me in the dream, Jacob. I answered, here I am. And we jump down to verse 13, and this angel of God says to him in the dream, I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now leave this land at once and go back to your native land.
Now the, the thing I wanna focus on here is that we have the angel of God speaking to Jacob in a dream and he says, I am the God of Bethel.
And if we wanted to go back to that passage in Genesis 28:13, the God of Bethel is the one that says to Jacob, I'm the Lord, the God of your Father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. So this isn't a different God, this is the same God of his fathers.
So there's this inter, interesting interchangeability between the angel and, and God. We go to Judges six 12 through 14, and I'm not gonna read all the verses here, but again, this is another case in which we see this interchangeability where the angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and is speaking to Gideon.
You see that in verse 12, when the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon. But then in verse 14, it says the Lord. And when you see the Lord in all caps, it means Yahweh, and that's the name for the God of Israel, Yahweh. We'll pick that up a little bit later on. It says, the Lord turned to him and said, go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you? Small details that should not be overlooked here. We get back into Exodus, we look at Exodus 23, 20 through 21. A little bit of a spoiler here, but I think it's important to, to point out. When God is preparing to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, he says to Moses, See, I'm, I'm sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I've prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my name is in him. Very interesting. You have this angel in whom God's name resides, and I'll actually, even as I was reading that now, it reminded me of Jesus' transfiguration where the Father tells Peter and John, listen to what Jesus says to you. Listen to what he says. We, we look at Deuteronomy four verses 37 through 38, thinking about this idea of this angel being sent ahead to prepare the way, and he, God's name is in him. But then in Deuteronomy four it says, it says that God simply brought them out. He says He brought you out of Egypt by his presence and his great strength. And then we could switch back to Genesis, to the angel doing this in Judges two, one, it says, the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, I'll never break my covenant with you.
It's the angel of the Lord saying this. And then, and then just one, one last verse here, just to kind of pick up on how, it's interesting how we seem to have this distinct person, but it also is, is speaking as God in Joshua five verses 13 through 15, as Joshua is standing outside the city of Jericho, says that he looked up. In Joshua five verses 13 through 15, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, are you for us or for our enemies? Neither, he replied, but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come. Then Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence and asked him, what message does my Lord have for his servant? The commander of the Lord's army replied, take off your sandals, for the place where you're standing is holy. And Joshua did so.
So the commander's not called an angel here, but again, we have just an interesting parallel of this person who is present. And in this person's presence, you encounter the holiness of God. And it's interesting just to note here too, that Joshua bows before him and he's not scolded. Whereas we find later on in Revelation 22, in the midst of the revelation that the Apostle John is receiving, he bows before one of the angels, and the angel says, don't do that. I'm just a fellow servant. All of these things are little signposts. They're little clues pointing us to the reality of the nature of God, the triune nature of God, that he is one in being, and as is disclosed as you put all the pieces together, he's three in person. So the Trinity is not just a New Testament doctrine, it's a biblical doctrine.
And in fact, the Jewish scholars recognized this. There was a, a tradition of the two powers in heaven because they are, you know, they're careful readers of the scripture. They said, Hey, this seems like there's kind of two powers going on here. But very interestingly, the Jewish scholars after Christ showed up on the scene, talking about, you know, a hundred, about a hundred years after the time of Christ, they said, Hey, this seems a lot like Jesus, what they're talking about with this Trinity stuff and the Son of God. And so they abolished the teaching of that doctrine and that's why generally the Jews no longer talk about this doctrine of the two powers of heaven 'cause it kind of seems to point to the Trinity.
What this is all pointing to, of course, is in fact the revelation of Christ, the Son of God taking on human flesh. John, in his gospel in John one, one says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God. That's the sort of dynamic that we're seeing here. God's messenger is bringing the word of God to Moses, and that word is in fact the person of the son.
And we'll see some further testimony here of linking between God and Jesus's claim to be the Son of God. But in this encounter, God makes it clear to Moses that he's not a new God. He's the God of Moses' father's, and he is a Holy God. He's a holy God. And, and what this means is that Moses should take off his sandals and he shouldn't come too close.
Why is that? It's because God is a holy God, but we are not a holy people. We are sinful. We are broken. While he is totally perfect and righteous. We were created to reflect that holiness. We were created to reflect that perfection, but we do not, and, and sometimes I, I don't, I think we struggle to appreciate just how horrible and terrible that is. And the only way I can imagine to maybe try to communicate it is by analogy. It's almost like we were meant to live in harmony with God, to symphonize with him.
You can imagine a symphony, an orchestra. But instead of doing that, we decided, I'm gonna take my violin and turn the knobs all which way. And I'm just gonna play utterly outta tune. And so what was meant to be a beautiful symphony just sounds terrible. And you're just like, stop, stop playing.
And if you're listening to that, you'd be like, I just wanna leave the room. I, I, I think I wanna just go home. And it's that reality which makes it so incredible that we find this perfectly holy God drawing near to us. Not giving up on us and saying Bye. He draws near and invites us into his presence.
Rightly, this produces in Moses a holy fear. Yes, God is expressing his love towards Moses, and as we'll see to the, the people of Israel. The love of God, his presence is something that's very intense. God is not like this jolly old Santa Claus sitting in, in the sky. That's like comparing a candle, the warmth of a candle, which is very nice, to the sun.
Is God warm? Yes, but he's also awesome in power. And it's in this moment, in the face of this absolute transcendent might that God obliterates any question of whether he was too great to yet care for Moses and the Israelites. We continue on in verse seven, it says, the Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I've come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
So in hearing what God says here, we have to understand that he's speaking in some, what we would call anthropomorphic ways. What does that mean, Tom? What that means is that God is speaking in a human way so that Moses and us might understand what he's saying. God doesn't need eyes to see, doesn't need ears to hear.
It's not like he has to climb a ladder to come down to us. What he is trying to communicate here is that he's aware, he's aware, he knows what's going on, and also that he is really and truly present. He's not in a far off place, but he, he is in fact near, he is on the ground to deliver them. Now, God's promise to deliver them, God's promise to bring the people of Israel into the promised land goes all the way back to Abraham. We can go back to Genesis 12 and see the promise begin there, but we see it especially in, in Genesis 15.
Look at Genesis 15, verse 14, and we jump down to 18 through 21. In verse 14, we see the reality of the suffering that they're enduring being prophesied hundreds of years before. God tells Abraham, but I'll punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and said, to your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites. So the land that God was talking about then is the land that he's talking about now to Moses and he's telling Moses, I'm gonna keep that promise. I'm a God who keeps his promises. Now you can imagine Moses thinking, well that's great, that's great, 'cause I really didn't know where this was going. God, I was out in the desert. It just seemed all that, was all was lost. But then here comes the kicker, verse 10, God says to Moses, so now, go. I'm sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? And God said, I'll be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you've brought the people of out of Egypt, you'll worship God on this mountain.
We can imagine why Moses thought that this mission was too much for him. Once again, he's a fugitive from Egypt. He is an outcast. He's an exile, and at this point he is around the age of 80. He's not a spring chicken, and so we can imagine it would be very right and appropriate for him to ask, who am I to do this? There is a proper sense of humility that we can have as we contemplate the mission that God calls us to do.
But there's a difference between a proper humility and a false humility, a false humility that's looking for excuse, that's saying, well, I just, I couldn't possibly do that. You should find someone else. The key here is God's response to Moses in verse 12. He says, I will be with you. I will be with you. God has drawn near to Moses. He is going to stay with him and with the people of Israel, and this is a great reminder to us as we contemplate the call that God has placed upon us. It's not about our strength, it's not about who we are. It is about the God who is with us.
And God tells Moses he's going to have, give him a sign that he is who he says he is, and that the people will be delivered from Egypt and they are gonna worship on this mountain where he is right now. That's kind of cool. You think about, Moses is right there and he's saying, you're gonna come back here and all the people are going to be with you, and you're gonna be worshiping me.
But Moses has another apprehension. We see in verse 13. It says, Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they asked me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I am has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, say to the Israelites, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever. The name you shall call me from generation to generation. So Moses is anticipating a problem as he goes to the people to try to persuade them that he's received this mission from God.
You can almost imagine him thinking, especially since they, they were a little fresh to him before when he had killed that Egyptian slave driver and then he tried to break up a fight between two of 'em. They're like, oh, you're gonna kill me too? So he's like, they're gonna ask me, oh really? So who's this God that sent you? What's his name? And so Moses asked, what should I tell them?
And God tells them that you should tell them that I am, that I am. In Hebrew that's haya aser haya, which is where we derive, it's not an exact copy, it's where we derive the name Yahweh, which means to be, or you could say, God is saying, I will be what I will be. Now what does that mean? What God is saying is there is that he is pure being itself.
He's eternally existent. He depends on no one or nothing else for his existence. And in fact, he is the one who in fact hold, holds all of reality together. There's no instance in which we could say, God could not exist and we could, or that anything else could. If God does not exist, nothing exists. Absolutely nothing exists. Now, there is a distinction between us and God. It's, we're not pantheists here. There are some religions that say we're all part of God, the wood, this pulpit's part of God, the trees are part of, we're not saying that, but what we're saying is that everything that exists comes from God and without God, nothing exists.
Now there's something that notable happens hundreds of years later on in the course of Jesus's ministry as it relates to this testimony of God's name being I am, we see in John eight verses 56 through 59, jesus is getting cross-examined by the Jews and they say to him, your father, Abraham. Well, Jesus says, your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad. And then they respond, you are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham! And then Jesus says, very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am.
And what is Jesus doing there? He is making a little bit of an illusion there to what God just told Moses here, using the divine name I am and applying it to himself. Now again, to just kind of connect back to all those verses we covered about the angel of God, the angel of the Lord speaking as God. None of this makes sense unless Jesus is, unless Jesus' claim is in fact true.
Jesus helps explain all this honestly. But this is a great example of sometimes people open up the New Testament, they open up the gospels, and they say, I just want Jesus to just say that he's God. Well, what we find in the gospel is the testimony of the things that Jesus actually said to those around him, and as we see him making this allusion, testifying to him enough, to who he was, is enough to get these people prepared to kill him. He says that, it says at this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds. Why? Because it was not his time. He was, it was God, the father's will, that he should be crucified on the cross.
We see very clearly as we, and this is why it's so important that we read the Old Testament and the new testament, and we see clearly that Jesus is claiming to be God. He's claiming to be divine, and this is in fact why the Jewish leaders conspired to kill him. It wasn't 'cause he was a nice guy. It was because they understood the sorts of claims that he was making about himself.
Moving on to verses 16 through 22, we finish out God's instructions up to this point in this chapter, there's more to cover in the next chapter. We're not getting into that today. God tells Moses, go assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt, into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites-- a land flowing with milk and honey, which, just as a side note, means it's an abundant land. It's, it's a, it's a fruitful land. Continue on to 18, the Elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the King of Egypt and say to him, the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God. But I know that the King of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I'll stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I'll perform among them. After that, he'll let you go. And I'll make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people so that when you leave, you'll not go empty handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you'll plunder the Egyptians.
So verses 16 and 17 are kind of a reiteration of what God has already told Moses, and he's saying now you should tell what I told you to these elders of the people, you're to go with them to Pharaoh, to say, you need to let us go into the wilderness to worship our God, to offer sacrifices to him. Now, of course, God intends more than this, more than just a little excursion out into the wilderness for them to worship God, but it's a starting place.
And just even that small ask, that the people would be allowed to go out into the wilderness to worship the one true God is gonna be enough to make Pharaoh dig in his heels, and it's going to be Pharaoh's defiance against God's command that is gonna be used as kind of a useful foil to reveal God's glory.
He's going to bring plagues upon Egypt and he's going to deliver the people of Israel by his mighty hand so that the Egyptians will see, and especially the people of Israel will see just who he is, that he is, in fact, the great Almighty, one true God.
And what's more, we see that in verses 21 through 22, that as they head out, they're not gonna go empty handed. as they go out, it says every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you'll plunder the Egyptians. Now when you think about it, this is very, just, because these people have been enslaved, it is like they're getting back wages. But what's more, all these things are God's to give, and what we see here is once again, that God is going to provide for his people. He's going to take care of them. It's another sign that he's going to be with them.
Now as we just think about this whole episode, I think many of us think if only we could have that burning bush encounter, if only. Well, first off, I think it would probably be a bit terrifying, to be honest. It'd be a little scary. But besides this, you must see that we've received something so much greater.
We have encountered the living Christ. The son who appeared to Moses in the burning bush became human. He was born a child and grew to be a man, and he lived among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. He is Emmanuel, God with us.
The son drew near and took upon himself our curse, our penalty, the debt of our sin, and made things right for us with God even while there was nothing wrong with himself. He didn't need to do that, it's this very fact, that he was perfectly righteous, that made it so that he could make things right between us and God. He drew near to draw us to himself. And speaking to Moses, he said, come no closer, because the divide remained. But in the flesh, he tore down the curtain of division between us and God by his death and resurrection. Jesus tells us in John 12:32, and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
And that's what we see around us. We encounter the living Christ in the church, both here and across the globe. God encountered Moses in this manner to assure him of his presence, that he intended to keep his promise and to give Moses his marching orders. We are assured of Christ's presence with us today as we go on mission here.
Hear the words of Christ to his disciples, and we are among his disciples, in Matthew 28 verses 18 through 20. Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. What more do we need than this, that Christ is with us? What more must God do to prove to us that he is with us than to send his one and only begotten son to us? We know in Christ that he is with us. And if he is with us, as Paul says in Romans 8:31-32, if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
Moses recognized that he was no match for Pharaoh on his own. If the recognition of your weakness leads you to rely ever more upon Christ, then praise God. But if the recognition of your weakness causes you to despair of answering God's call upon your life, upon all of our lives, then it's because you lack faith when God tells you that he's with you. You lack faith when God has shown us He's with us by sending his son. You're carrying a cross? Look at the one who carried it before you. Death and ruin seem to await you? Look at the one whose best friends, his disciples, scattered in his great hour of suffering and sorrow. Look at the one who was laid to rest in a borrowed tomb, and then see that tomb empty three days later. And then see those disciples gathered around the risen Jesus. And then see those disciples scattered to the ends of the earth with this news of salvation, no longer slaves to fear, but confident that Christ is with them. The God of our fathers is with us. We are never forgotten. He keeps every promise. So let's go.
Let's pray.
Dear father, we stand in awe before your word. It's so awesome to read how you are showing all these little signs, all these little clues disclosing us, disclosing to us the wonder of who you are.
How wonderful whole, wonderfully holy and righteous and faithful and good you are, how loving you are, father, and also just the, the mystery of yourself that you are one God who is three in person, and that just as you spoke to Moses through your word and the person of the Son, so you have sent your word to us to become flesh so that we might become your children.
Father, we, we give you praise for your faithfulness towards us, drawing near to us so that we might be brought to you. And now father, we pray now we would go forth in faith. And that we would not dwell upon our weaknesses, but that we would trust upon your strength, the strength of your presence who is with us, and that because you are with us Father, we can trust that whatever you have called us to do, it will happen.
Father, we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God and hear the preaching of his word. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)