We continue our series on Moses and an exodus looking at a, a theme of Take my Hand. And it’s really an invitation that God gives to his people in scripture and even to us today, especially at times when we might feel kind of stranded and like the, the, the wheels have come off in life that ever happened to you or have you ever been stranded? I mean like really stranded, maybe. You know, it’s in a geographic location, but we can also, I think, feel stranded spiritually or emotionally in our relationships. It’s like you wake up one morning and you kind of realize, Hey, I didn’t think I’d be at this place in my life at this time. Things certainly aren’t going as I had planned, or even who I’ve become. What is it that can make us feel stranded? Sometimes it, it might be a diagnosis. A job loss, a betrayal, an aging body, or perhaps just the slow ache of dreams that don’t come true. I remember a time vividly being stranded as a geographic stranding. It actually happened Christmas Eve, 1980. It’s a while back. My brother and I, we were two teenagers and we were trying to, we’re on a road trip to make it from Minnesota. To British Columbia for Christmas to see some friends. Our fam, our parents had left for Cameroon earlier that year to begin a, a new career as missionaries in Africa. So we were on our own. Now, those of you who were alive to remember 1980, come on, there were, there was no GPS, no weather app, no cell phone. For us, all we had was our 19 64 2 door hard top Thunderbird and Iran McNally Atlas. Remember those? Love those. And unbeknownst to us, a blizzard brewing up in North Dakota. And so there we were, took off at night and somewhere around three in the morning just south of Minot. In the pitch black cold of winter, the T-Bird died. I mean, just completely. No lights, no engine, no power, no heat. Turns out the alternator had failed and then the battery had gone down to nothing. And so with that, so did every ounce of confidence that we had for our road trip. We were stranded, I mean, truly stranded. It certainly wasn’t what we had planned. So we sat there in the car in the dark. The wind is howling outside. Snow is starting to pile up on the windshield. We are praying in that darkness. Just two kids with no backup plan stranded. Then headlights, actually red and blues swirling in the, in the rear mirror. I’d never been so grateful to see red and blue lights blinking behind me in a car before, uh, a highway patrol pulled up behind us and drove us into Minot to a garage. We had a friend in town. They paid for the alternator repair, and we were back on the road. After this Christmas miracle, the joy in our hearts and, and a renewed sense of hope, but the story of our stranding doesn’t end there. Later that evening, Christmas Eve, we crossed into Canada. I. And it was just bone biting cold, like minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and we were in Regina heading up to Saskatoon. We stopped for gas, but it was just so bitterly cold and windy outside. I didn’t check the oil engine oil like I usually did. And yes, just 30 miles north of town. I still remember coming down that into that valley near Lumsden, Saskatchewan. The engine just made noise and then seized up. Whoa. I mean, I’d run it dry of oil just froze. Dead again, and this time for good. And there we were, five 30 in a different country, two teenage boys, Christmas Eve stranded a second time. Again, on the side of a rural highway in the dark, in the cold alone again, and then headlights again. A driver pulled up behind us and ended up taking us up to a tow company in the valley. The owner on Christmas Eve towed our car up to his shop and then let us warm up in the office that was in the basement of his home kindness that we never saw coming, and for which we were so grateful. But we were still stuck, so we made some phone calls and arranged then for a bus to come and pick us up on an unscheduled stop on this highway. And so we packed up all we could in our baggage that we could carry, and then prepared the left, leave the rest in the carcass of that T-Bird. And that night as we’re kind of waiting for time to pass for the bus to come along, my brother and I, we’d each been given a gift from our parents wrapped up. We knew they were t-shirts, but we just kind of, you know, it’s Christmas Eve, so hey, we kind of took each other’s gift behind stuffed sniffles said Merry Christmas. And it’s ’cause it’s kind of a pathetic gift exchange. But we were doing our best. Well, there we are, about 10 o’clock that night out again in another storm brewing, walking up the incline of this highway waiting. We hope for a bus who’d stop by to pick us up. And then one more miracle, another set of headlights.

This was a driver who pulled up next to us. He rolls his window down and he says, well, he probably thought, what are you two idiots doing out here? But he just said, Hey, what are you guys doing out here? And we said, we’re waiting for a bus to take us to Saskatoon. And he pauses and he smiles. He says, get in. That’s where I’m going. And just like that, this Christmas, good Samaritan drove us all the way to the front door of our friend’s home in Saskatoon. That night we slept in warm beds on Christmas Eve, and the next morning we worshiped with friends at church. Yeah, it, it really was for me. In the end, the most unforgettable Christmases of my life stranded. But God was still with us. Have you ever been there? I’ll ask again. Stranded in life, maybe feeling it, and it’s not just a geographic or an engine car issue like that, you just don’t quite know how you got to where you’re at right now. It’s just that you did not expect to be there. How did this happen and what’s God up to? And that’s where we find Moses in our text in Exodus chapter two. So if you have your Bibles or devices, turn with me there. I’m gonna be reading from that in just a bit. Moses, if you’ve been following with us over these last weeks, once a prince in Pharaoh’s courts, now he’s a refugee in the median wilderness, stripped of title, of reputation, of purpose, of meaning. But God wasn’t finished with him. God hadn’t. In fact, this desert was exactly where God would meet him and reshape him. Moses would later write about both himself and his people and the children of Israel as Anne Red for earlier. Remember the days of old, he found them. In a desert land, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him. He guarded him as the apple of his eye. That’s how Moses could reflect back at this time. Moses came to realize, but I don’t think he knew it at the time, his desert, it wasn’t a dead end. It was a doorway into God’s future. And that same wilderness can be the such for you also. So whether in the cold of winter or the bare and heat of the desert, whatever wilderness you might be in today, God still whispers to you. Take my hand, and I’m telling you today that if you are in your own cotton wilderness right now, hold, hold on. God hasn’t forgotten you. He’s not done writing your story. His word is your life. So take it to heart and take his hand. Let me read together a text from Exodus two, beginning at verse 21, and Moses was content to dwell with the man and he gave Moses his daughter, Zipporah. She gave birth to a son and called his name for, he said, I’ve been a sojourner in a foreign land.
During those many days, the King of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham and with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and God knew now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law. Jethro the priest of Midian. And he led us flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to horrib the mountain of the Lord. That’s where we’ll end our test text. This is the word of the Lord. Let me pray for us as we continue. Lord God, every in the Bible, you’ve given on purpose and there is meaning to it back then. There’s meaning for us today. So come Holy Spirit and aliven your word in our hearts that we might hear the words of encouragement, the invitation to faith, and the strength to continue that each of us need. I ask in Jesus’ name, amen. My dear friends, receive this blessing first as we continue grace to you and peace from God, our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Let’s get right into this point. One, the desert strips, so God can shape is what I mean. 40 years earlier. So before our text, 40 years Moses, he’d been royalty, educated, powerful, a leader in Egypt, but then everything unraveled. He tried to be a hero. In his own terms. We looked at that a couple weeks ago and it backfired. He ended up killing Egyptian, bearing the body in the sand, and then he ran for his life and now he’s in a land of Midian where Moses is nameless titleless and he thinks probably useless. Our text summarizes what happens to Moses this way.

Moses agreed to stay with the man. It’s kinda like a previously for Moses. Here it is. Listen to this. Moses agreed to stay with the man who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to his son and Moses. Then ham, meaning I’ve become a foreigner and a foreign land. Now that’s kind of a strange text, isn’t it? But let’s unpack that a bit. Have you ever, if you’ve ever named a child, was there an intentional meaning behind that name? For Moses, he names his son Ham, which in the Hebrew it means a stranger there. I mean, this is grief language. Moses isn’t describing just geography. He’s naming the ache of an identity lost. I’ve become a foreigner. He’s saying not just in land, but in calling and in purpose. And I think that sometimes God lets us be stripped of all the things that we lean on, position, or plans, or our own perception of power or purpose, pride, because those things can keep us from leaning on God. Martin Luther wrote this. It is God’s nature to make something out of nothing. That is why he cannot make anything out of somewhat who is not yet nothing. What if this season of wilderness you and is God helping you become nothing, so he might reshape you into a new creation? In your desert, God’s not trying to destroy you. He’s trying to reshape you. It’s kind. It’s a pattern throughout scripture. Look at Joseph. If you know your Bibles betrayed, imprisoned before being number two, leader in Egypt. David hid in caves fearing for his life before eventually being given the throne of Israel. The Apostle Paul spent years in Arabia and Tarsus before his missionary calling. Even Jesus was led into the desert for 40 days by the Holy Spirit to be tested before his public ministry began. And yet we want answers fast, don’t we? We’re kinda like microwave people, but God I think works more like a. Slow cooker, doesn’t he? I mean, it’s like slow motion, sometimes slow formation that God is doing. Peter himself very precocious, wants things right now, writes this in his first epistle. Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time if you figured out that God’s timing isn’t always yours. I. In due time in God’s timing. So here’s the takeaway. If you feel like you’ve lost your identity or purpose in life, remember, God isn’t done. He’s doing a deeper work in the shadows of each day according to his timetable, the desert strips so that God can shape. Second, the wilderness is where we learn to listen. In Exodus three verse one, our text says, now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horab the mountain of God. And it’s kinda hard to miss the irony here, knowing Moses’ story, former Prince of Egypt is now a shepherd in Midian, and he’s leading not people but sheep through scrub brush and desert wasteland. And it’s here in obscurity and monotony that he encounters. God let that sink in. God didn’t meet Moses and the palaces of Egypt. He met him in the pastures of the wilderness. My favorite radio pastor when I was in college, Chuck Swindoll reflects on this very passage, the desert strips from you, all the things you hang onto for comfort, all the things that kept you from hearing God’s voice. And isn’t that true? Sometimes the noise of trying to reach for success or the clutter of desiring comfort can drown out God’s voice, but in the wilderness. When your calendar is empty, the soundtrack is silent and your heart is cracked open. God can finally get a word in. I think that’s why scripture repeatedly shows the desert as God’s classroom. Elijah, it’s in the mountain wilderness. He heard the still small voice of God, not in the winter fire, but in the silence. God’s people. Israel wandered for 40 years in the desert, not because God got lost, but as to teach his people dependence upon him. Moses wrote about this later in his life, and it’s a passage that Jesus himself would later quote, he writes in Deuteronomy eight. Remember how the Lord your God led you to humble and test you to teach you.

That man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Sometimes the very place you want out of is the place from which God is speaking, and when he speaks, there are words of grace. Jesus said this, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. A takeaway. Don’t despise the silence you might feel yourself in. Don’t resent the slowness of God’s hand. ’cause it might be where God’s voice is clearest. The desert strips. So God can shape the wilderness is where we learn to listen. And finally, the God who calls is the God who comes. The New Testament retelling of the story of Moses does. So with this very brief overview statement. When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian and after 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush. We’re gonna look at that more next week, but 40 years, come on. That’s more than some of us have been alive. Well, a few of us here today I guess, but I mean that’s longer than any of us. Wanna wait. 40 years. 40 days? Come on. 40 minutes, but 40 years, man. That’s plenty of time to think God’s forgotten you. Yes. But God did not forget Moses, and after 40 years he came to him. And he comes to us today. Also, I think this is how God works with all of his people, including you. ’cause you see the gospel, the good news of God’s love for us in Christ. It’s not about us trying to climb to get back to God in our own time table. The gospel’s about a God who descends, who kind of climbs back down into our wilderness. Jesus himself didn’t stay in heaven. He humbled himself, Philippians tells us and entered the dust of our world. Jesus faced loneliness, temptation, rejection, betrayal, and he went to the cross willingly so that nothing, not even death, could separate us from him. He’s able to relate to what you’re going through. The writer of Hebrews says this for, we do not have a high priest who’s unable to empathize with our weaknesses. Conclusion, result, let us then approach God’s throne, a grace with confidence. This is the same God who today says to you, take my hand, walk where I lead. Fix your eyes upon me alone. Because you see, you may not know what will happen next, but you can know the one who knows it. You may not know what tomorrow holds, but you can know the one who holds tomorrow. That’s what the faith walk is. Hebrews again says in Chapter 11 verse one. Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. So you may not see what God is up to in this season of your life, but know this, God will not waste your wilderness experience and he will not let go of your hand as you place it in His as you do. He’ll assure you. Even if you don’t know what tomorrow holds. You’re not alone. You’re not abandoned or forgotten.

I’ve got you. Lemme just kind of wrap this up simply as I can. Your past is not a prison. Your present wilderness, it’s not a waste. And your desert is probably where God does his deepest work. And maybe you feel like you’re stranded right now, or forgotten, maybe even finished. But the cross says something other, the empty tomb. Says otherwise. Jesus himself says, take my hand, keep your eyes fixed upon me. Better reach back for the old days thinking they’re better. Trust me with your present and your future that you can’t yet see, and that may be the very next step of faith. God is calling you to today. Faith doesn’t mean you understand it all. But faith means that you trust the one who does. And maybe someday, like Moses, probably not today, but someday, you’ll look back at this wilderness season and say, that’s where God did his deepest shaping work within me. Join me in prayer, Lord Jesus, you walked into the wilderness of our lives so that we would never be alone. When our dreams turn to dust, you offer us, offer us your hand when you can’t see the way forward, you say, trust me, follow me. So give us the faith to trust you, the, the grace to walk with you, and the hope that even this dry land, this desert, can bloom once again. I ask in your precious name, amen.