We are in this journey through the Book of Exodus this summer and beyond, and today we’re looking at being qualified by failure. How things that can wound us even from our past God can redeem and actually then use us once we are broken. I, you don’t have to have a show of hands, but I think many of us could answer this in the affirmative.

Have you ever suffered a physical wound? Only to never really quite be the same again. Uh, it’s happened to a lot of us and, uh, I can remember it well happening to me. I was at a Christian camp. I was 40 years old playing, uh, some pickup basketball with a group of guys feeling pretty good, you know, that I could kind of hang around with the younger crowd, yet finished two different games and after the second game, I was gonna call it quits, but then a group of young bucks came in and they wanted to play a game themselves.

It’d be for me a third game. And against my better judgment, ignoring what my body was really trying to tell me. I said, sure, of course. And in just a few minutes into the game, I pivoted just to turn back up court and that’s when it happened. And I could, I could feel the tear of my Achilles and I went down and I knew it wasn’t good.

And I actually, I have the 12 inch scar, uh, to, to prove that story yet. And you may have scars as well. You know, truthfully, I, I’ve never been the same physically. I, I, right? From that time on, I slowed down, put on weight. I’ve never been able to run the way that I used to and something tore in me physically that day.

But over time I’ve realized it’s, it’s affected me not just physically, but also emotionally even bumping up. To me spiritually where I can ask God sometimes Why, why did this happen? And I have the scar to prove this. I once read a poem that left me kind of both stirred, but but saddened. You know how sometimes just a line from a poem can really.

Uh, something very powerful. This poem was written in, in the late 18 hundreds by Hezekiah Butterworth, and it tells a story of a little bird with a broken wing, and here’s the line, but the bird with the broken pin never soared as high again. And the message really of that poem, and that line is clear that once broken, you’re never really quite the same.

Another way to think about that is saying that once you’ve failed, you never fully recover. And maybe that’s a familiar feeling for you. Maybe you’ve said it to yourself, maybe you’re living it even this day. And I wanna challenge that assertion because that is not the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Bible is full of broken winged people, who, by the grace of God and his work eventually soared higher than ever before. And over the past weeks, if you’ve been with us in Exodus, we’re learning about one of these broken wing people. Moses, a man with a past, a man who knew failure and now. A man hiding in the wilderness with no real plan for his future.

But on an ordinary day at an ordinary bush, God ignites a calling for you. See, failure didn’t disqualify Moses. It actually qualified him. Qualified by failure. Pastor Chuck Swindall, my favorite radio. Preacher when I was in college once wrote about this story. God uses ordinary bushes and broken people to do extraordinary things, and then he says, any old bush will do as long as God is in the bush.

So I’m gonna read from Exodus chapter three. If you have your Bibles, your devices, you can follow along with me. We’ll read the first 10 verses. 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 Horab 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 will go over and see the strange sight, why the bush does not burn up. 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 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.

The Lord said to him, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I’m 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, parasites, HIEs, and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go, I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites. Out of Egypt.

The word of the Lord. Thanks to God. Let me pray as we continue, Lord God, of all things and people and time. You met a man who was broken and in your redemptive grace, you called him while you see us this day. And just as Israel was suffering, many of us are suffering with brokenness and burdens that are too much for us.

So I ask Holy Spirit of God now through your word that we might hear our part in your story of what you are continuing to do for your people to note what is going on and then to meet us, redeem us, and call us. I ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, dear friends, grace to you and peace from God, our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen. I wanna speak against this idea that you, you can’t ever fully recover from failure with this first assertion that God shows up on ordinary days. This opening verse. Now, Moses was tending the flock of Jetro, his father-in-law, the priest, Midian dun da da, kind of just continues on the same old, same old.

And Moses led the flock to the, our side of the wilderness and came to Hobe the mountain of God. So as our, as the scene opens in our text, I mean the verse, it’s not dramatic at all. There’s no lightning, no angels, no crowds. Just a solitary man, some sheep and a stretch of dry wilderness. In fact, you know, if Moses was the kind of person who’d keep a journal, I, I could imagine, imagine that day the entry be, the entry could be just one word, routine, same old, same old.

It was just another day. Same sheep, same desert, same silence. But isn’t that kinda exactly how God loves to work for? It was in that quiet, that overlooked place, as O text says, on the far side of the wilderness that God had lit a fire. And what scripture emphasizes here, if you’re not careful, you could easily miss it.

Moses wasn’t in a place of power. He wasn’t on a, on a prayer walk. He had no power or prestige. He wasn’t climbing Mount Hoon for some spiritual retreat. He was just doing what he’d been doing for 40 years, just surviving. And yet that’s when God met him there. And don’t we often expect God to speak to us kind of on mountaintop experiences during a revival or when we, we feel strong or steady or ready.

But I think the truth can be more times than not, that God shows up on days that can feel like every other day, and that’s his style. I mean, if you know your Bible, Jacob, he had his dream of the heavenly ladder, not in some temple, but he’s actually in the wilderness sleeping with a stone for a pillow actually running for his life, and God shows up.

Gideon. Was just threshing wheat and harvest time at the threshold, actually kind of cowering in fear. And that’s when God showed up. And an angel of God called a mighty warrior Mary, the mother of Jesus, just a teenage girl in a noname village when the angel greeted her. Blessed are you, the Lord is with you.

And why does God work this way? Then and now. Why? I think it’s because he wants you to know he’s not just the God of the special moments, though he is, but he is also the God of every Wednesday of weary mornings of just get through it afternoons or of solitary evenings or even sleepless. It’s been said the day God broke.

His silence felt just like any other in Moses’ life, plain, routine and unremarkable. It was an ordinary day until it wasn’t, and this is the mystery of what Martin Luther calls the Deus Abscond. The, it means the hidden God, Latin for the hidden God. And, and we just sing about it and holy, holy, holy. Did you catch that though?

The darkness hide thee hard to see your glory. Well, here’s what Deus abscond us means that God’s glory isn’t always found in grand gestures. It’s often veiled. It’s hidden. Hidden in a baby’s cry, hidden in a rough hue cross. Or as in our text hidden in a bush burning quietly on the far side of the wilderness.

So often I think when we ask, well, well, where is God? We’re looking for like a, a lightning bolt, but instead God is there often, always, and I think sometimes it’s just a gentle nudge in like a moment of stillness and quiet. God can be present in a friend’s unexpected call in a scripture that we’ve maybe read a hundred times, but this time it takes on some new meaning as it grabs our heart.

God says this in Isaiah 55, for my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways. My ways declares the Lord. And in one Corinthians, the Bible says, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. The weak things to shame the strong. It’s what Jonas just read for us earlier. In other words, God delights in using unlikely places, unlikely people, and unlikely moments, which I think can lead to a personal question for some of us this day.

What if the desert you’re in right now, what if it’s not a detour, but what if it’s the very place? That God plans to light or relight a fire in your heart. Maybe you feel like you’ve been living on autopilot or maybe you feel forgotten or spiritually flat, or that your life significance is behind you in your past, or maybe you’re just going through the day doing your best just to get through it.

If that’s you, then listen closely. The place that may feel furthest from God might be the exact place he is planning to meet you and do his deepest work. And when he shows up, when God speaks, it won’t be to shame you or to scold you. It’ll be to call you by name like he did with Moses because the God of the burning bush.

Still speaks, still ignites, still sends today, and you don’t have to do anything spectacular to get God’s attention. You just need to turn aside and look for indeed, God shows up on ordinary days. Second, God speaks to those who turn aside. In our text it says, so Moses thought. I will go over and see this strange site, why the bush does not burn up.

Have you ever had something odd or unexpected or unexplainable, kind of break into the routine of your life? Something that maybe caught your attention but just long enough to kinda wonder about it? But, but then you move on and it goes really ultimately unnoticed. Imagine if Moses had done that. Imagine that.

If he had seen the bush burning and thought, oh, that, that’s kind of strange. Oh, gotta get after the sheep, and he just kept walking on. What if he dismissed it or shrugged it off? Told himself he was too busy or just too tired. He would’ve missed not only one of the most significant events of his life, but in all of human history.

But our text says this. When the Lord saw that he, Moses had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush. Did you catch that? That God didn’t speak until Moses turned aside? I mean, God had already lit the fire. He’d already prepared the holy ground, but the conversation didn’t start until Moses Jr.

And I think in here is a, a spiritual truth that, that God doesn’t force his voice on us. He invites us and then he waits for us to notice and to respond. It’s often in the ordinary things. That God is doing something strange to get our attention. Isn’t that what can happen to us as well? And you probably haven’t seen a burning bush, but it might be a diagnosis, some kind of a detour in your life.

Maybe it’s a moment of beauty that just captures your heart or a season of pain that that pierces your routine. It might be a hymn lyric that just hits differently. A friend’s comment that lingers, a longing, you can’t explain. We all want God to speak, right? And to make his will clearly known to us, his presence unmistakable.

But I think we can often blow right past the burning bushes in each day of our lives because we’re so busy with our own agendas or expectations. We’re multitasking our way through life and. Missing the miracle that happens on the margins. Martin Luther once wrote, God speaks to us through his word, but it is we who must hear it.

Scripture says it this way, be still and know that I am. Jesus himself says, behold, here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door. There’s that invitation to respond in faith. Notice a pattern, God initiates, but then he waits for us to respond in faith. He lights the bush, he knocks on the door, but he never kicks it down.

And so the question becomes, are we paying attention? Have we slowed down enough to observe and then turn aside toward, this is what I’m learning about in my, there’s a, a men’s leadership breakfast group I’m a part of, to learn to observe what’s going on in everyday life and to learn to look and to listen what God might be doing or saying in the seemingly ordinary events of everyday life.

And lemme try to bring this closer to home. And ask, is there something in your life that kind of feels, I don’t know, kind of just noticeably a little bit off something that’s tugging at your heart or un unsettling some assumptions you’re carrying. Listen, don’t rush past it. Don’t brush it off. That interruption might be a divine invitation.

That inconvenience. Might be God’s way of saying, come closer. I’ve got something I wanna show you and share with you.

You know, I don’t think Moses really had any idea what turning aside that day would lead to. I don’t think he was expecting to hear God’s voice. He wasn’t looking for a commission or a calling anymore, a new assignment in life. He’d been disabused by all that, living in the wilderness. He was though just he was curious and willing, and that was enough, and that’s often all that God.

Calls from us as well, not perfection, not some 10 step plan, or our own willpower, just a heart that says, Lord, I’ll turn aside. I’ll listen. God still speaks to those who stop, who notice and who make space. God shows up on ordinary days. Second, God speaks to those who turn aside. And third, and finally, God calls failures.

To be deliverers. I mean, if we’re being honest, if you were to write a story like one of the greatest deliverers of all time, someone who would face off and show down with Pharaoh, someone who challenged the most powerful empire in the known world, someone to lead millions of people out of slavery and bondage into freedom.

Moses was probably not your guy. Okay. Yes. Once he lived in Pharaoh’s palace, yes, he had passion, but hey, that was 40 years and one homicide ago, and Moses is now 80 years old. A fugitive, a foreigner, a failure. And then God says this, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying.

I’m concerned about their suffering. So now go, I’m sending you to Pharaoh. And I can imagine Moses heart just stop, like at that point, like me. No, God, you’ve got the wrong person. I, I tried it once, you know, I blew it. I buried a body. I ran. But that’s exactly the moment says to Moses, yes, you and why?

Because Moses failure had finally emptied himself of his pride and his self-reliance. Back in Exodus chapter two, when Moses killed the Egyptian task master, we looked at this previously. Moses acted on instinct not calling. He tried to be the deliverer in his own strength, but now he, he’s not stepping forward anymore.

He’s shrinking back, and that’s when God says to him, now you’re ready. Now you know it’s not about your strength or your skill or your resume. Now you’re finally humble enough to be used, and that’s the kind of person God loves to call. Not the overly confident but the available. Not the polished, but as Jesus would say, the poor in spirit.

Martin Luther writes about it this way. The gospel is intended for those who are poor, afflicted and bruised. Ooh, there it is, wounded, and that’s Moses, and that’s most of us if we’re being honest. But here’s the truth, God doesn’t ask, are you perfect? He just asks, are you willing? And God’s answer to Moses and to us is this, here’s the key, I will be with you.

And that’s the game changer. It’s not about Moses’ resume, it’s about God’s presence. And for you and me today, it’s not about your record, but about God’s redemption. And I think here’s what can take this truth deeper still. The God who met Moses in the flames. Would one day walk through danger and even death himself, the same I am who spoke from the bush, would take on flesh and blood and would be broken for us.

He would stand in our place, carry our shame, and bear our scars, and Jesus has the scars to prove this. The prophet Isaiah writes, he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed. You know, Jesus scars didn’t disappear after his resurrection.

Even when Jesus appeared to the disciples, he showed them his hands in his side. Remember that? Post resurrection encounter between Jesus and his disciple Thomas. He said, put your finger here, reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe. And just as for Thomas, so also perhaps for you this day, your savior doesn’t hide his wounds from you.

He uses them. And now. He takes your wounds, your regrets, your mess-ups, your failures, and he says, in me, in Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re mine, and I’m not done with you yet. Romans eight says, the spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. This means that you are not stuck in life because of your failure.

You don’t have to try to climb your way back up to God because Jesus has climbed down all the way to you already, and now the scarred, but risen, Lord Jesus calls you yes, you to be redeemed and be a messenger of his saving grace.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on in the life of all of you right now, but maybe today you’re asking, how do I know if God is really present in this season of a wilderness that I’m in? Or, what if I failed too badly or wandered too far or waited too long? Maybe you’re feeling, how can I trust God’s promises when I feel so empty inside, or where’s Jesus when I can’t seem to feel him?

Or what if I’m just surviving, going through the motions with no fire left in me at all? Well, then let me say this to you directly and personally if you’re tired of pretending, if you feel like you’re standing in your life right now in dry cracked land, if you’re aching for peace or clarity, or just one more chance.

Then this indeed today may be your burning bush moment. You don’t need to go looking for God. He has already come looking for you. So how might God be calling you to respond to turn toward him today in faith? Well first turn aside, make some space this week to stop and listen. Maybe it’s five quiet minutes just on your back patio.

Maybe it’s opening your Bible again or after a long time. Maybe it’s just praying, Lord, here I am and meaning it with whatever brokenness you’ve got. Turn aside. Second, take off your sandals name that holy ground. Moses didn’t know that was holy ground. He just thought it was a wilderness. But for you that holy ground, it might be grief.

Maybe it’s failure, maybe it’s regret or waiting, or that holy ground might be feeling unseen, but that’s the very place that God wants to meet you. Take off your sandals. Third, clinging to God’s promise. Find one in his word that you can hang your hat on that speaks to your fear or your pain or your questions.

Write it down. Pray it out loud. Memorize it. When was the last time you memorized the verse of scripture? Let God’s promise in his word anchor you when your emotions can tend to either cut you adrift or sweep you away. And finally look for Jesus, not in the sky, but in the, in that burning bush in your everyday life.

He’s already in your story and he’s not waiting for you to clean yourself up. He’s walking with you right now and whispering to you grace and truth, and calling you closer to him and leading you forward. You may feel like Moses wandering. Wounded or wondering if maybe your chance has passed. But here’s the truth.

You don’t climb your way to God. God comes all the way to you and he meets you not with shame, but with the spirit, not with judgment, but with promises of grace, not with abandonment, but with Jesus whom who was forsaken, so that you need never be. When you need peace, when you need grace, when you need just one more chance.

Look to Jesus. You’ll find him because he’s already found you first. Join me in prayer.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the God of second chances and still burning bushes. Thank you for seeing us not as our failures, but as redeemed vessels of your grace Reignite in us your calling, restore what’s been broken. Fill us with your spirit and use us for your glory for ask this Jesus in your precious name and for your sake.

Amen.