We continue in our journey in the Book of Exodus this summer and beyond, and today we’re gonna be looking at being qualified by failure. Things that happen in our lives that that are wounds, that are brokenness. That God is able to work with and redeem and even strengthen us even because of them, certainly through them.

Have you ever suffered a physical wound from which you never fully recovered? I have. I can remember it full well. I was at a Christian camp, I was 40 years old, uh, playing some pickup basketball games with a group of guys feeling pretty good, you know, come on. Hey. 40 years old. Couple games hung around with a younger crowd and after that second game, some fresh legged young guns came into the gym and asked if we wanted to run a third game.

And against my better judgment and ignoring what my body was trying to tell me, I said yes. And sure enough, just a few minutes in to that third game pivoting to go back up court, it’s when it happened, I could feel my Achilles tear. And I went down and I knew it wasn’t good. And even weeks later I, and years later, I still have the 12 inch scar to prove that that wound happened.

And truthfully, since tearing my Achilles, I’ve never been the same. I slowed down, put on some weight, certainly haven’t been able to run the way that I used to since that day and that day something tore physically. But as I’ve kind of reflected on it over time, I think something happened to me also emotionally even bumping against me spiritually.

There are times I ask God, why? Why’d you allow that to happen? And maybe you know that feeling. I read a poem once that left me both kind of stirred, but also saddened. It was written in the late 1800 hundreds by a poet named Hezekiah Butterworth, and it tells a story of a bird with a broken wing. And have you noticed how sometimes just one line can kind of capture some deep meaning?

Here’s how the line from this poem went, but the bird with a broken pin never soared as high again. To me, that message is clear, saying that really, once you’re broken, you will never be the same. In other words, once you’ve failed, you’ll never really recover. And if that sounds similar to you, maybe you’ve said it to yourself, maybe you’re even living with it today.

But I wanna challenge that assertion because that is not the message of the gospel. That’s not the message of Jesus or his cross or empty tomb. In fact, the Bible itself, it’s full of stories of broken winged people who, by the grace of God, soared higher than ever before. Over the past weeks, we’ve been learning about one of them, his name’s Moses, a man with a past, a man who knew failure, and now a man hiding in the wilderness with no plan for a future except just an ordinary day monotony routine.

But it was on an ordinary day at an or ordinary bush where God ignites a fresh calling for you. See, failure didn’t disqualify Moses. It actually qualified him. One of my favorite PA radio pastors growing up in college, his name is Chuck Swindall. He once wrote about Moses. God uses ordinary bushes and broken people to do extraordinary things, and he adds any old bush will do as long as God is in the bush.

And I wanna thank the ministry team here for getting that flame back here with us today, because I wanted to remind us of the burning bush, not just for Moses, but perhaps this could be a burning bush day for you. So I wanna read the, the our Bible text from the message today from Exodus chapter three.

You can follow along on the screens. 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 Horrib 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 closer. Said God, 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, I’ve 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 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, Hitite, 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. This is the word of the Lord. Let me pray as we continue, Lord God, of all creation, of all time, of all plans and purposes.

We read here about your plan and purpose for Moses, for your people, but it’s kind of in your timing and it’s certainly in odd ways that you do things well in our own lives. We may be in our own wilderness or feel like we’re in exile or in bondage. So would you meet us today and let us hear your words of promise and of deliverance, of presence and of calling?

I ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

I love to give this blessing most messages when I can. So please receive this afresh, dear friends, grace to you and peace from God, our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. One of the things that we can learn out of this text is first that God shows up. On ordinary days. I mean, this opening verse 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.

It’s like da, da, da. It’s kind of like what’s been going on every day. And he came to the far side of the wilderness, the Mount of Horrib, the mountain of God. I mean this, this opening scene, I mean, the verse isn’t very dramatic, like some Bible verses can be no lightning, no angels, no crowds, just the solitary man, some sheep and a stretch of dry wilderness.

In fact, if Moses was kind of a journaling type of person, and I’m kind of guessing he was, I’ll bet you his entry that day could have been just one word. Routine, kind of would’ve been the same for day after day. Same old, same old, just another day. Same sheep, same desert. Same silence, but it’s in the silence and often the sameness that God loves to work for.

It was in that quiet, overlooked place on the far side of the wilderness that God lit a fire and met Moses. And what the Bible says here and emphasizes is important. And if you’re not careful, I think we can miss it. Moses, he wasn’t in a place of power or at some prayer posture. He didn’t have any prestige.

He wasn’t climbing Mount hob on some spiritual retreat treat. He was just doing what he’d been doing for 40 years, surviving really. And yet God met him there. But don’t we often expect God to meet us on some mountaintop experience during some re revival where we feel strong or steady or ready.

But I think the truth that I’m learning more and more is that most of the time God shows up on days that can feel like every other day, and that’s kind of his style. He just catches people just midday in their life. If you know your Bibles, think of Jacob. In the Old Testament. He had this dream of the heavenly ladder, not in some temple, not in some spiritual fast, a retreat, but in the wilderness while sleeping with a stone as his pillow running for his life.

Gideon was just during harvest, threshing wheat on the threshold in fear, and that’s when God met him in an angel called a mighty warrior, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Yeah, just a teenage girl in a no-name village. That’s when the angel greeted her saying, you are blessed of God. The Lord is with you. Now, why does God work this way?

I think in part it’s because he wants you to know he’s not just the God of the special moments, but he’s the God of the, of every Wednesday, of, of weary mornings or of just, just kind of get through it afternoons or of, of solitary lonely evenings or sleepless nights. It’s been said that the day God broke his silence felt like any other in Moses life.

Plain, routine, unremarkable. It was an ordinary day until it wasn’t. That’s the mystery of what Martin Luther calls in Latin de abscond. Deus. It means the hidden God. And here’s what he is trying to get after that. God’s glory, it’s not always found in grand gestures. God’s glory and power and intervention is often veiled.

It’s hidden. It’s hidden in a baby’s cry. It’s veiled in a rough hu cross or as in our text in a bush burning quietly, all alone in the wilderness. And so often when we ask where is God, we kind of expect his him to show up in a bolt of lightning or something. But instead, we maybe just get a, a gentle nudge, a moment of stillness or a friend’s unexpected call a scripture that you may have read a hundred times, but this time it kind of grabs you afresh by the heart.

God says in Isaiah 55, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways. My ways declares the. The Bible says in one Corinthians, it’s what Kerry just read for us earlier. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, the weak things to shame the strong. In other words, one way you can look at this is that God delights in using unlikely places, unremarkable people, and unlikely moments,

which if you allow me, lemme just ask you maybe a, a, a reflection personal question. If you’re feeling like you’re in a desert right now, what if that desert isn’t a detour, but maybe the very place that God plans to meet you and light or reignite a fire in your heart? Maybe you’ve been living on autopilot, maybe you feel forgotten or spiritually flat, or like your life significance is behind you.

Maybe you’re just doing your best to make it through each day. If so, then listen closely. The place, that place that might feel the furthest from God might actually be the place where he’s planning to meet you. And when he, when he meets you, when he shows up, it won’t be to shame you or to scold you.

It’ll be to call you by name as he did for Moses because the God of the burning bush still speaks today. He still ignites and he still redeems and sends. And you don’t have to do anything spectacular to get his attention. You just need to be ready to turn aside. And like Moses look, God shows up on ordinary days.

But secondly, God speaks to those who turn aside our our text. So Moses thought I will go over there and see this strange site, why the bush does not burn up. And for you, have you ever had anything odd happen or something unexpected or unexplainable, kind of break into the routine of your life? Something that caught your attention.

It caught it, maybe long enough to wonder about it, but then you move on from it. Imagine if Moses had done that. Imagine if he’d seen the bush and thought, well, that’s kind of strange. Hmm. But then just kept on walking, kept on talking and caring for his sheep, not talking to a sheep. Well, maybe that too, but maybe he just would’ve dismissed it, seen it, but shrugged it off.

Told himself he was too busy or too tired. If he had done that, he would’ve missed not just one of the most significant moments in his life, but if you think about it, really in all of human history. Our text says in verse four, when the Lord saw that he’d gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush.

Did you catch that there? God didn’t speak until Moses turned aside. God had already lit the fire. He’d already prepared the ground, but the conversation didn’t start until Moses chose to draw near. And I think in this as a crucial spiritual truth, God doesn’t force his voice on us. He invites us. He waits for us to notice and then he responds.

It’s often in the ordinary things that God does something strange to get our attention. Isn’t that kinda what can happen in our lives if we’re paying attention? And yeah, it may not be a actual burning bush. But it could be a diagnosis, it could be a relational detour speed bump. It could be a, a moment of beauty or a season of pain that, that pierces our routine.

Uh, a song lyric that just hits differently or a friend’s comment that lingers or a longing you can’t explain.

I think we all want God to speak, to make his will made clear, his presence, unmistakably felt. But I think we can often blow right past the burning bushes in our lives because we’re so occupied with our own agenda or set within our own expectations. We’re kind of multitasking our way through life, but missing the divine miracles happening on the margins on the periphery.

Martin Luther once wrote, God speaks to us through his word, but it is we who must hear it. The Bible says that this way be still. And know that I’m God. Jesus himself says, here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in. Notice the pattern, God initiates, but he waits for us to respond.

He lights the bush, he knocks on the door, but he never kicks it down. And so I think the question becomes, are you paying attention? Have you slowed down enough to notice and be willing to turn aside? It’s what I’m learning in my, uh, morning Men’s Leadership Breakfast Group. We’re learning how to observe what’s going on in everyday life and to learn to look and listen, to see what God might be doing or saying in the seemingly ordinary events of everyday life.

So lemme just try to bring this a little closer home for you. Is there something in your life that, that God wants to use to get to your attention? Something that maybe feels a little off, something that’s tugging at your spirit or unsettling your assumptions about things? If so, listen, don’t rush past it.

Don’t brush it off. That interruption might be a divine invitation. That inconvenience might be a way of God saying, Hey, pay attention. Come closer. I’ve got something to show you.

I don’t know, but I, I don’t think Moses had any idea what him turning aside would lead to. I don’t think he was expecting to hear God’s voice or that he was looking for a commissioning or a calling or some new assignment. I think after 40 years it was, he was just kind of curious and willing, and that was enough.

It’s often all that God needs from us. Also, not perfection, not some well thought out, 10 step plan. Just a heart that says, Lord, I’m attentive. I’m listening. I’ll turn aside. I’ll listen. Because God speaks to those who stop, who notice, who make space. God shows up on ordinary days. God speaks to those who turn aside.

And third, and finally, God calls failures to be deliverers. I mean, if we’re honest. If we were to write a story of like one of the greatest deliverers of all time, someone to face down Pharaoh, someone to challenge the most powerful empire in the known world, someone to lead millions of people outta bondage and, and centuries of slavery into freedom.

Moses would not be your guy. Okay? Yes. He had once lived in Pharaoh’s palace. Yes, he had passion, but that was 40 years and one homicide ago. And Moses is now 80 years old, 80 A fugitive, a foreigner, a failure. And then God says this, I’ve seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I’ve heard them crying. I’m concerned about their suffering.

So now go. I’m sending you. To Pharaoh, and I gotta imagine Moses heart stopped me. You’ve got the wrong guy. Hey, I tried once, you know this, I blew it. I buried the body, I’ve run and now I’m here. But that’s exactly the moment that God says to him, yes, you. And why. I think it’s because Moses failure had finally emptied him of his sense of pride and self-reliance.

Chapter earlier in Exodus two. We looked at this a few weeks ago. Moses killed that Egyptian task master and he was acting on instinct, not calling. He was trying to be the deliverer in his own strength. But now he’s not stepping forward saying, yeah, I’m your guy. Now he’s shrinking back and saying, who me?

And we’re gonna look more of that next week. But this is when God says to him. Yeah, you Moses, because now you’re ready. Now you know that 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 puts it this way. The gospel is intended for those who are poor, afflicted and bruised. Hmm, there it is. Wounded. That’s Moses and that’s most of us if we’re honest. But here’s the truth, God doesn’t ask, are you perfect? He asks, are you willing? God’s answer to Moses and to us, and this is the secret, he says, I will be with you.

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, it’s not about your record, it’s about God’s redemption in your life. And I think here’s what can take the truth even deeper. The God who met Moses in the flames would one day go through danger and even death himself, the same I am who spoke in that bush, would one day take on flesh and blood and be broken for us.

He would stand in our place, carry our shame, and bear our scars. And for this, Jesus has the scars to prove it. The prophet Isaiah writes about it this way. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The judgment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed.

You ever thought about it that, you know, after Jesus resurrection, his scars didn’t disappear and he would show them to his disciples? Uh, remember that post resurrection encounter between Jesus and his disciple, Thomas? Jesus says, put your finger here. Reach out to your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.

Just as for Thomas, perhaps, so for you also this day, your savior doesn’t hide his wounds from you. No. He uses them. And now Jesus takes your wounds, your regrets, your mess-ups, your failures, and he says. In me. You are forgiven. You are mine. And I’m not done with you yet. Romans eight says, the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you.

One of the things this means is that you are not stuck in your past, in your failure. You don’t have to try to climb your way up, out, back up to God because Jesus has already come all the way down to you. And now Jesus scarred but risen. Jesus calls you yes, even you to be a messenger of his saving grace.

So today maybe you’re asking, how do I know God is really present with me in what feels like a wilderness? Or what if I failed too badly or wandered too far, or waited too long? Maybe you’re feeling, how can I trust his promises when I feel so empty? Insider, where’s Jesus when I can’t quite feel him to be real?

Or what if you feel like I’m, you’re just surviving, going through the motions with no fire left? If that’s you, then hear this. If you’re tired of pretending, if you feel like you are standing on dry crack ground, if you’re aching for peace or clarity, or just one more chance, this may well be your burning bush moment.

You don’t need to go looking for God because he’s already come looking for you. So let me close by asking you how might you respond in faith to God’s promise today that he’s with you and that you’re qualified by failure? Well, like Moses, be willing to turn aside, make space this week. To slow down, to stop, to listen.

Maybe it’s just five quiet minutes on your patio. Maybe it’s opening your Bible up again, or maybe for the first time in a long time, maybe it’s praying, Lord, here I am. And, and meaning, meaning it with whatever brokenness you’ve got, turn aside or maybe take off your sandals. The ground that you are standing on it, it’s holy ground.

It may be grief. It can be holy. It may be failure. God can make it holy. Maybe it’s regret or waiting or feeling unseen or forgotten. That may very well be the place that God meets you on holy ground or third, clinging to God’s promise. Find, find a promise of God in his word, and then let it speak to your fear or your pain.

Write it down. Pray it to God, memorize it. When is the last time you memorized the verse of scripture? Let it anchor you when your emotions contend to, to cut you off. Or you can drift or, or sweep you away. Or finally look to Jesus, not with some grand event in the sky, but in the the fire of your life, of your day.

He’s already in your story. He’s not waiting for you to clean yourself up. He’s walking with you right now and continually whispering words of grace and truth and calling you toward himself. You may feel like Moses wandering wounded or wondering if your chance has passed, but here’s the truth. You don’t climb your way to God.

God comes all the way to you. He meets you not with shame, but with his spirit, not with judgment, but with promise, not with abandonment. With Jesus himself who was forsaken. So that you need never be when you need peace, when you need grace, when you need one more chance, you’ll find it because God has found you first.

Join me in prayer.

Lord Jesus, I thank you that you are the God of second chances, the God of, of still burning bushes. Thank you for seeing us, not as our failures would say, but as redeemed vessels of your grace and by your spirit through the promise of your word. Reignite in us your call, restore what’s been broken, heal what’s been wounded, and fill us with your Holy Spirit that you might use us for your glory.

I ask this in Jesus’ precious name and for his sake, amen.