Beth Moore - The Art of Showing Up - Part 2
What would happen if we just let God be God over everything else that we cannot control? What would happen if we did not? Now, I don't feel weird about this because some of you have a babysitter with some kids and you're needing to stay in touch. Don't feel weird about what I'm about to say. I'm just simply saying, "What if we stayed focused? What if we didn't check TikTok during Bible lesson"? You understand what I'm saying? What if we didn't post right in the middle of Bible study or worship? What if we just, like, gave ourselves to it? Then I'm gonna tell you what I believe I can say based on the Word of God: you are not gonna miss the Lord. He's got you here for a reason and he's got me here for a reason.
And I'm gonna tell you something, if you'll show up, and I mean show up with everything in you, with your whole being, with every bit of your junk that you bring to the mix, every bit of it, every bit of the condition you're in, you drag every single bit of it in here, and go, "I'm here, present and accounted for, I'm focused. My chin is set like flint, and, Lord, I'm asking you to speak". Do you remember in Job, if you're familiar with Job at all, you remember that they do all this talking, Job's friends do all this talking about why he has suffered all of these losses and why he's going through this, just trying to come up with explanations. Then Job does a lot of his own talking. Then, toward the end of the book, God starts talking and he says, "Who is it that is speaking to me without knowledge"?
In other words, "Who's talking to me about something they don't know what they're talking about"? You understand what I'm saying? And so, God begins to say to Job, "Can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this? Can you put the stars in the sky? Do you know how the planets work? Do you give the seas its boundaries that it may not pass"? He says, "Can you do all of these things"? And in the 38 chapter, in the 35 verse, it uses a form of our key word "hinneni". It uses it in plural. Instead of, "Here I am," it says, "Here we are". And guess what the context is. "Can you send out lightning bolts, and they go? Do they report to you, 'Here we are'"?
Okay, get this with me, that God sends the lightning out from his throne, because, you know, the lightning is coming forth from his throne according to Revelation chapter 4. He sends the lightning out and when the lightning comes back to him it says, "Here we are," hinnenu. Hinneni is, "Here I am," hinnenu, "Here we are". What if you were the "here I am" and the "here we are"? And so, I have been so moved by the concept of: Will I spend my life scattered all over the place? Or am I going to show up before God and go, "You are what I'm doing here on this planet. In my work and in my play, in my worship, in my relationships. In my living and in my dying: here I am. Lord, you've fully got me. You've fully got me. You've got all my baggage that comes with me. All the relationships that are implied in this heart".
What if we completely showed up? Because that's what this lesson is about, the art of showing up, the art of showing up. So here's what I want to tell you. This is the first venue. I told you how many venues are we going to? Okay, we've already been to one, but I want you to be able to write it down, so this is, your first point, so to speak, it's your first location because in these geographical locations we're going to find enormous theological implications. So, here's your first point: The land of Shiloh, that's the first place we are, that's the place we are right now. The land of Shiloh: Where piety becomes a parody and revelation becomes a rarity. Let me tell you something.
One reason why this is so important is because what set the people Israel apart? Do you remember the watchword for them? Their doctrine, so to speak, the statement of their faith, the shema, which was found in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and started at verse 4. "Hear, O Israel," that what sets a people of God apart from the rest of the world is the ability by way of the Holy Spirit to hear the voice of God, and for us through the pages of scripture. That's how important it is. It is our distinguishing factor. It is in the things that we're going through when we not only read words on a page, but the Spirit of God moves in such a way that we're drawn into it and we hear what the Lord is saying through those words. Psalm 99:6 and 7 talk about God speaking to Samuel out of the pillar of cloud as he had previously with Moses and Aaron. He says Moses, Aaron and Samuel heard him speak out of the pillar of cloud.
I find that so fascinating because here's this kid. Now, listen to me, do you remember anything about the Exodus story with the tabernacle? If you have any history with it, you know that after they built it according to the design that God had given them, when it was finished and it had been built according to God's design, then God's Spirit comes and, I mean, it just, like, takes it over in a cloud. There's nothing, no room for anyone. God is so full in that sanctuary and he occupies it. Well, no telling how long it's been since he was, functionally speaking, and certainly spiritually speaking, we know he's all present all the time, but there can be the fullness where there is a somewhat of the manifestation, not necessarily seen, just felt and sensed, the manifestation of God, no telling how long that had been absent.
But for whatever reason, that cloudy pillar that night, when that kid went to bed, before that next morning, before that light, when it was just about to go out, Samuel. Samuel, speaking out of that cloudy pillar. It had come into that sanctuary once more, no telling how long it had been. Do you know it will be 20 more years, from the time that man Samuel begins, then, to take his place as judge and priest and prophet, it will be 20 more years that they will stay oppressed by the Philistines. And I say that because you could have a mighty, godly leader among you that cannot force change among a people if his life depends on it. All he can do is preach the gospel and preach the way of God. All we can do is teach it. It's up to the person, up to the people to listen and receive it. Samuel is considered to be, alongside Moses, one of the greatest intercessors of all Israel, that's what Jeremiah 15:1 says.
So I want you to think with me how we have before us, when we get over to the New Testament, how many times, and I'm thinking of the gospel of Matthew when Jesus gets to the end of the parable he says several times in Matthew, "Let the one who has ears hear what I'm saying. Let the one who has ears hear". Then he says over and over in the message to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, what is it he says? "Let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches". If you have ears, hear with them. Hear with them. There's some terminology in Psalm 40 that in its most literal sense says that he was not asking for us to bring a sacrifice, he was asking for us to hear him when he spoke and it says, so the psalmist is saying he's showing up, "Here I am, I've come to do your will," and he says, "my ears you have pierced".
It's like pierced ears. No, what it means is, the most literal rendering of it is, you have cut out, dug out, my ears. It's kind of a gross thought, but think how profound a thing and how transforming a thing if this weekend God just cleaned out our ears. We don't even have to understand it; just welcome it and ask for it. Lord, give me ears to hear you more clearly. One of the things I pray several times a week it's one of my ongoing requests, I pray this series of "Open" prayers, "Open my mind to understand the scriptures, open my eyes to see the wonders of your Word, and open my ears to hear it". According to Isaiah 50, verse 4, "Open my ears to hear as one who has learned, who gives words to the weary". Lord, open our ears. Who will listen? The Holy Spirit says among us this weekend, "Who will watch? And who will respond"?
So just glance with me here, Exodus chapter 3, I want to read verses 1 through 11. That will be familiar to many. "Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock 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. Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within the bush. And 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?'" So, it wasn't unusual that a bush would be burning, lightning could do that. What was unusual is that the fire was not consuming, it was not destroying, the bush.
Now, this is very important because one of the things that I learned the hard way is that ungodly passions, there are all sorts of things we can be terribly passionate about, but ungodly passions only consume the one who bears them. It'll burn us up. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Just, I mean, burn us up until we're just like, we're ashes. But the thing about the holy zeal of the Lord, rightly appropriated, not his anger but his love and affection and goodness and kindness and joy and faith and wisdom, it doesn't burn up its vessel. It says in verse 4, "When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from the bush, 'Moses, Moses!'" And how does he answer him?
"'Here I am,' he answered. 'Do not come closer,' God said. 'Remove the sandals from your feet, for this place where you were standing is holy ground.' Then he continued, 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' And Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. And then God said, 'I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and I've heard them cry out because of their oppression. I know about their sufferings, and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land into a good and spacious land.'" And so he says in verse 9, "So because the Israelites' cry for help has come to me, I've also seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them, therefore, go. I am sending you to them".
Of course, Moses is going to go, "'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?' He said, 'I will certainly be with you...'" And still it becomes this going back and forth with God over, "Well, I can't even speak, I'm not even a good speaker". One of the things that I love, that I have to appreciate, it's not that I love it so much, it's just that I have to appreciate it, is when in Exodus chapter 4 Moses replies to the Lord, "Please Lord, I have never been eloquent, either in the past or recently or since you have been speaking to me". In other words, "Even your presence has not changed the way I speak". I mean, you're very, the very sight of you in front of me and I'm still exactly the same poor speaker that I was. And he goes, "Who placed a mouth in humans but me? I will", I love how one of the translations says, "I will be with your mouth".
Does anybody besides me, I can't think of a way that I need the Lord more than to be with my mouth, just my mouth, just my mouth. Okay, so we're at the second venue and here is the name, this is the description of our second venue: The Desert's Far Side: Where the self-exiled hide, but Mount Horeb abides. Now, you can hide in plain sight because you know I'm going to ask if any of you have been hiding. You know what I'm talking about? Sometimes we just do hiding by, "I'm so busy," but, really, we embarrassed ourselves the last time we got out of the boat and tried to walk on water, and so we're not trying that again, and so we're hiding from people and we're not going to serve anymore because, like, you saw what happened last time.
And so we're just like hiding out in plain sight but hiding, the self-exiled, the self-exiled. Anybody just totally out of communication with anybody in the community of faith? Self-exile, for a hundred different reasons. You get, 99 of them could be wonderful, I mean, reasonable, where people go, "I don't blame you, I don't blame you". But here's the beautiful part of it. We can be: He's run; he's run because he did something in an impulse when he saw the Hebrew people back in Egypt being oppressed by their Egyptian task masters. He ends up killing one of them, and so he's like, then he gets told on and then he has to run for it. So, he's hiding, it's just, like, out in the middle of nowhere, far side of the desert, self-exile. But there he walks right in, the far side of that desert, to Mount Horeb.
Now, what is Mount Horeb? Mount Horeb, Horeb is an alternative name for Mount Sinai. So, they're both the same thing. So, this is the mountain of God. Do you notice with me that it says, when he says, "Moses, Moses," "Here I am". He says, "Don't come closer because the place where you're standing is holy ground". What was it about that voice that would make him go, because remember, this, "Here I am," is not just locational. In the context that you and I are going to study this weekend, when this Hebrew wording, often when this Hebrew wording is used, this hinneni, and it's, "Here I am," it's not just, like, "I'm right here. Honey, I'm right here". Somebody looking around, "I'm right here, I'm right here. I'm in the bedroom, I'm in the kitchen".
It's not that. It's like, look up. I'm here, here. I'm right here. Here I am. Not just, "I'm here," but here, here, right here I am. What is it about the voice of God? I think about Mary Magdalene. Do you remember in John chapter 20 when she's just, like, totally freaked out because the body of Jesus is missing? She doesn't even realize that she's talking to him. She's just all like, "Where did they put his body? I'm going to go get him". And it's not, you know, he finally just puts her out of her misery and goes, "Mary". And the way he says it, she immediately knows it's him, immediately knows it's him. And there's something about the way God says your name and you would know it was him. How would you recognize his voice? You will know it's him by knowing his words in scripture, knowing the way his Spirit works.
And then there's the exile, the running, the hiding. There's a place where... there's a good hiding, where God put Moses in the cleft of rock, till his glory passed by. But there's being hidden by God and there's hiding from God, and we wanna get over that hiding from God. Turn with me lastly to Isaiah 6 before we conclude tonight, Isaiah 6. Oh, you know this one well. In fact, I think, probably, if I said, "Where is the place off the top of your head that when someone responded to God with, 'Here am I,' or, 'Here I am,' what does it make you think about"? And many of us in this room would go, "Well, it would be that part in Isaiah". In Isaiah chapter 6 where Isaiah sees the glory of the Lord and the question comes, "Who will go for us? Whom shall we send"? And he says, "Here am I".
This is the passage. Would you look with me at Isaiah 6? I want to start reading at verse 1 and I'd like to read to verse 8. It says this, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. And seraphim," that translates as the burning ones, "were standing above him; and they each had six wings: and with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Armies; his glory fills the whole earth. The foundations of the doorways shook at the sound of the voices, and the temple was filled with smoke".
"And then Isaiah says, Woe is me for I am ruined because I'm a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a glowing coal that he'd taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and he said: Now that this has touched your lips, your iniquity is removed and your sin is atoned for".
Now, so far, we've not heard a peep from God himself. We've heard Isaiah speak, we've heard here one of the seraphim speak to Isaiah, we've heard Isaiah speak and say, "Woe is me for I'm undone". But so far, we have not heard anything from the Lord, and now we hear the voice of the Lord asking, "Who should I send? Who will go for us"? And that's when Isaiah says, "Here I am. Send me". I want you to hear this little portion. This is Dr. John Oswalt out of New International Commentary of the Old Testament on Isaiah 6:8 and he says this, I'm quoting him directly, "That Isaiah is neither directly addressed nor coerced is suggested. Perhaps it is so because Isaiah does not need coercion, but rather needs an opportunity to volunteer".
I just love this because, remember, you and I are trying to plant ourselves in these locations. We're trying to look back over our lives and go, "Oh, I remember that season of hiding when I was on the desert's far side". Or, "I remember my time in Shiloh when I thought this was going to just be the most spiritual thing I've ever done and all they did was gossip". Or, "I remember this, I remember this," or, "I remember that". This is that opportunity where you're just waiting for an opportunity. Like, "I'll do it. Send me". So he says, "...but rather needs an opportunity to volunteer. Having believed with certainty that he was about to be crushed into non-existence by the very holiness of God and having received an unsought for, and unmerited, complete cleansing," I love this question of the commentator, "what else would he rather do than hurl himself into God's service"? Is anybody listening? Are you kidding? That? To serve him? Him?
And to have all my unworthiness already answered by the atonement? And when we think, what did the coal have to do with it? Well, in the sanctuary, of course it would have been the blood of the sacrifices that would have dripped onto the coals that would have either been at the brazen altar or the altar of incense, either one would have come from the same exact fire, they would have come from the brazen altar where the sacrifices were. So, the implication is to be cleansed by the blood, to be cleansed by the blood. And so, John Oswalt's saying, "What would we rather do than go, 'You're who I want to serve'"? "Those who need to be coerced are perhaps too little aware of the immensity of God's grace toward them. So, unlike Adam and Eve..." I could not believe that he said this because it had already begun to occur to me how that would have been the contrast from the beginning.
Listen to this, "Unlike Adam and Eve, who sought to hide from the searching voice, Isaiah, permitted for a moment to eavesdrop on the councils of God, and he cannot keep silent. 'Would I do?'" he says. "Such a grateful offering of themselves is always the cry of those who have received God's grace after they have given up hope of ever being acceptable to God". "Would I do"? So, here's what Oswalt is saying, and it's why it blew me away. I've never one time considered these passages like this, to where he is, what he's suggesting, is that Isaiah is an observer in this scene. He's not a main figure in the scene, he is observing it, and he's hearing all of this going on fully apart from him. All the angels are praising God.
Now, we're tracking with all of that. But that when they say, "Who will go for us"? They're saying it, he's suggesting, that the question is going... now of course, God knows exactly what he's going to do, but the question is going out to the whole council, and by that I mean there's the Godhead, three in one, and then there's all the angels, all the messengers that just do God's bidding. And so, he's just watching the scene. He's reacting to the holiness of God. But when the invitation goes, "Who should we send"? He's like, "Would I do? Would I do"? I want somebody to know here tonight: You'll do. See, this is what, "Here I am," is about. It's the reverse of the fall in the garden. When they hid, when God came walking in the garden and said, "Where are you"? "Well, I hid. I hid". "Here I am" said, "I'm not hiding. Not hiding from you, not particularly hiding from anyone else". Although, if you want to hide, then you'll won't hide. But here I am.