The God Who Qualifies and Purifies

[0:00] Almost everything up to this point in some way has kind of been like a marvel origin story of, okay, not exactly like a marvel origin story, but an origin story of Moses.

[0:11] And it's been focused around Moses. So we saw his kind of birth and his miraculous salvation through the river and then being adopted into Pharaoh's family.

[0:23] We saw his misguided attempt to bring salvation to his people that ended up in him murdering an Egyptian soldier and then causing him to flee into Midian.

[0:35] We saw him receive his call from God in the burning bush event. And then we saw last week his first attempt at fulfilling that call, that call of going back to Egypt and telling Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.

[0:52] We saw that first attempt last week that just ended up in Pharaoh punishing the Israel people even more. So that's kind of what's been happening up to this point.

[1:03] So like I said, this is a hinge because after this passage, a giant transformation takes place in Moses. So with one possible exception, from this point on, Moses doesn't act rashly like he did in Exodus chapter 2.

[1:21] He doesn't demonstrate the same fear and the same self-doubt that he has basically from that moment on, where he's constantly questioning God, constantly saying, well, God, I can't fulfill this call that you've given to me.

[1:37] Instead, after this passage, we start to see Moses acting directly as God's messenger, doing exactly what God calls him to. And if you've been following us and hearing Moses' complaints and questioning to God, you know that's quite a bit of a change.

[1:52] So this morning I want us to look at how that change happens, what happens in the life of Moses and what that means for us. So before we get into this passage, let's pray together.

[2:04] Father, we thank you for your word, that it shows us about you. It teaches us how to follow you, how to live according to the call that you place on our lives.

[2:17] And we pray that as we look at it this morning, that you reveal yourself to us and you continue to work in our lives, both individually and corporately as a church.

[2:29] We pray this in your name. Amen. Okay, so we're going to do things a little bit differently this morning. I'm going to read through the passage. Often when we read Scripture, we have you stand, but I'm going to kind of do some commentating as we go along.

[2:41] So you can remain seated as we go through, and I'll be stopping periodically. I'm also reading from the New International Version. I hold it up like you can read it from that far away.

[2:52] I can hardly read it, and it's right here. So I guess you can't read it. But I know that in your pews, sorry, a lot of you have the English Standard Version, just a different translation. So some of the words are different, but it's the same word.

[3:06] My ESV is too big to hold in one hand, so I brought this one this morning, which, by the way, is a terrible way to choose a translation. But like I said, they're from the same original.

[3:18] They're largely the same words. So let's read with me. Exodus chapter 6, beginning in verse 1. The Lord said to Moses, Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh because of my mighty hand.

[3:31] He will let them go, let the people of Israel go. Because of my mighty hand, he will drive them out of his country. So part of this being a hinge kind of text in this passage, we will notice a lot of repetition, a lot of summary of things that have happened before.

[3:46] So we've seen this call, this declaration by God a few times already, and God is just reiterating his promise of deliverance for the nation of Israel. Verse 2.

[3:58] God also said to Moses, I am the Lord. I appear to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name, the Lord. So this is again Yahweh, the covenant name that God gave Moses when he met him in the burning bush.

[4:15] But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. So he's saying, God's saying, I've had this covenant with the nation of Israel. I've been with your forefathers, Moses, and I've been revealing myself to them.

[4:27] But now I've revealed myself even more and pledged my allegiance to your people. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan where they lived as aliens.

[4:39] Moreover, and that's not outer space aliens, that's just foreigners in case there is any question about that. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

[4:52] Therefore, say to the Israelites, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

[5:07] I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

[5:23] I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord. So God is, again, making this promise of deliverance and tells Moses to go and to take it to Israel and tell this to Israel.

[5:37] So, verse 9. Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage. So Israel can't believe that God has this great promise to them because everything that they see around them tells them differently.

[5:53] They've been enslaved, and they can't listen to God because of their current disappointment. Verse 10. Then the Lord said to Moses, Go tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the Israelites go out of his country.

[6:04] But Moses said to the Lord, if the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me since I speak with faltering lips? And here is where I kind of wish I had the ESV because this, what the NIV translates faltering lips, literally it means uncircumcised lips.

[6:20] So circumcision was a sign of the covenant. It was a sign of a purity before God. And Moses had this objection before about having lips that didn't work right.

[6:36] He talked, if you remember back to when Dave preached about the original call of Moses at the burning bush, one of Moses' objections was that he couldn't speak well.

[6:49] But here, he's coining a new phrase and saying that he's of uncircumcised lips and really pointing to the fact that not only does he not have the ability, but in fact God shouldn't even use his lips because they're not pure.

[7:01] They don't meet God's qualifications. Verse 13. Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron about the Israelites and Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he commanded them to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.

[7:16] And it's like we go to commercial break here because there's a narrative about what God is calling Moses and Israel to, and then all of a sudden it says these were the heads of their families.

[7:26] Now, if you're reading your Bible alone, that's usually a symbol to skip ahead a number of verses because you're entering into a genealogy. And there's two reasons why we tend to skip over genealogies.

[7:39] First of all, these are Hebrew names. They're very hard to translate and we're afraid of making a fool of ourselves. Well, I am willing to do that this morning and you should too. The other reason is because it just seems like a mess of names and we don't really understand the point.

[7:54] And so that's why we're going to put it up on the screen. We're going to take a little bit longer, and this isn't usually type of sermon type material, but I want us to see that this isn't just a throwing down of names. We're not reading the Canadian census here.

[8:05] These are arranged in a specific way, and it's not just a list of names, but they're going to a point. So we start with the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel.

[8:17] So if I had room, the slide is going to be filled, and it's going to look like a grade two or did it because that's my art skills. And if I had room, I would have put Israel or Jacob at the top because we're going to talk about the sons of Jacob.

[8:31] And remember, Jacob had 12 sons. The second last of them was Joseph, who originally went to Egypt. He ended up bringing his family to Egypt later. And then after a while, they became enslaved in Egypt.

[8:44] So the first son of Jacob was Reuben. The sons of Reuben, the firstborn son of Israel, were Hanak and Paolo and Hezron and Carmi. So there's the four kids there.

[8:55] The sons of Simeon. Simeon's the second child of Jacob. Were Jameel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shal, the son of a Canaanite woman. These were the clans of Simeon.

[9:08] These were the names of the sons of Levi, according to the records. It's Gershon, Kohath, Merari. There they are. And it says Levi lived 137 years. Now, you see, we can't project over here.

[9:21] And we should have nine more sons to go. But like I said, there's a specific purpose in this genealogy. And we're actually only going to get to Levi. Because here, the genealogy is recorded to record the family of Levi.

[9:34] But it's customary to put his older brothers in first. So now we're going to move down into the next generation. The sons of Gershon by clans were Libni and Shemai.

[9:47] The sons of Kohath were Amram, Izar, Hebron, and Uziel. Kohath lived 133 years. The sons of Merari were Mahali and Mushi.

[9:59] How would you like the name Mushi? It's okay. He's a little black box because he's not really important for this genealogy. We're focusing on Kohath.

[10:10] These were the clans of Levi, according to the records. Amram married his father's sister, Jochebed. We don't have time to talk about that. Who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amram lived 137 years.

[10:23] The sons of Izar were Korah, Nephag, and Zichri. The sons of Uziel were Mishael, Elzaphan, and Sithri. I should have practiced these.

[10:34] But it goes against my point of making a fool of yourself. So, Aaron, and we know Aaron. These are the same. We're going to get to this at the end. These are the same Aaron and Moses that we're reading about in the book.

[10:47] I lost my place. I apologize. Aaron married Eliashab, daughter of Aminadab, and sister of Nashon. And she bore him Nadab, and Abihayu, and Eliezer, and Ithamar.

[11:01] The sons of Korah were Asar, Elkanah, Abiasaph. These were the Korite clans. Eliezer, son of Aaron, married one of the daughters of Putiel.

[11:13] And she bore him Phinehas. There we go. Okay. So, it might just look like a list of names, and I said it wasn't that. But notice, here we are tracking down the genealogy of two particular families.

[11:27] Levi to Kohath, and then these two sons. So, we have Aaron and Moses, and Aaron's descendants. And these are going to be the high priests of Israel. And then we have Isar's son Korah and his descendants.

[11:42] And those are, we're going to put this group on pause, and it's going to come up much later in Exodus. Dave, I have no idea how far along. But we have Korah leads a rebellion.

[11:53] And it's basically a rebellion saying, Aaron and Moses were not called to do what they said that they were called to do. And so, what we have is a very specific list showing us the people that God is calling to be used in a specific way.

[12:10] And I'm going to point out a few different things as we go on the sermon that this list is designed for. But one thing I will mention right off the top is usually when we list off genealogies, we take one family and we carry it all the way down.

[12:23] So, my mom has 12 siblings. And when I, that's a, I think that's a lot. It fills up, it fills up more than this does. And when I talk about that family, I talk about my mom's oldest brother and her, sorry, his kids and his kids' kids.

[12:40] And then I move to the next one. And so, you go down. You talk about the line. But this genealogy didn't do that. It went across first. And so, it's actually talking about the length of time. And that's going to be important as we go on.

[12:51] Okay. So, do you believe me that this will be relevant later? But I just wanted to take a minute to look at that. Let's continue reading. Verse 26. It was the same Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.

[13:06] They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. It was the same Moses and Aaron, I think, that they made their point there. Now, when the Lord spoke to Moses in Egypt, he said to them, I am the Lord.

[13:21] Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, everything I tell you. But Moses said to the Lord, since I speak with faltering lips, again, uncircumcised lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me? Okay.

[13:32] If, to your folly, you stopped paying attention to me because I was just reading or listing off names, now's your time to pay attention again. And keep your Bibles open because we're going to be referring to it as we go along.

[13:45] But remember how I said that this passage acted like a hinge to the book of Exodus. Well, prior to this passage, like I said, we have Moses questioning God at every turn. He doesn't think that God knows him well enough and realizes that Moses is of no use to God and can't be used by God.

[14:01] He doesn't think that God has the power or the care to rescue Israel from slavery. And he definitely doesn't think that he should have a role to play in it. And then after this passage ends, Moses changes and he begins to be God's representative.

[14:15] And we never see him question God again. So how does that happen? What changes for Moses in this passage? What changes so that he begins to obey everything that God commands him to do?

[14:30] And so what I want to do this morning is figure out what happens, what changed, and then figure out how that applies to us. Because we find ourselves in situations like Moses did all the time.

[14:43] Now, we might not have the same call that Moses has. Raise up your hand if God met you in a burning bush. Okay, so none of us. So maybe we look and we say, well, God didn't call me the same way that he called Moses.

[14:59] But it doesn't mean that we aren't called. We're called as individuals, as Christians, as followers of Jesus to act in a certain way. Now, maybe this is as simple as just demonstrating the love of God to somebody around us.

[15:13] Maybe somebody that we have a relational difficulty with and just trying to work through that and demonstrate the love of God to them. Maybe it's leading the way in forgiveness or reconciliation. Maybe it's a more specific call.

[15:25] It's something that you feel that God is calling you to do. Or maybe it's just a more general call about loving God and loving your neighbor. Whatever it is, I guarantee you that you are being called in some way.

[15:37] We're also being called corporately, right? I know that as a church, you have a mission. You have a call that you want to fulfill. I know this because it's on your website and it's on your bulletin.

[15:47] And if you look underneath the little logo, it says Squamish Baptist Church, exalting Jesus, equipping his followers, engaging the world. That's a call. Those are things that corporately, as a group of believers, that you want to accomplish.

[16:00] Some of you are struggling to find your bulletins right now. So we each have these calls, whether they're individual or corporate calls. We each have a mission that God is calling us to. And maybe it's very specific or maybe it's just general.

[16:13] But in the end, we know that we have a call. And just like we have a call, we also have objections. We have these different reasons why we don't think that we are the ones who should be doing this.

[16:25] We have these different reasons of why we can't live out what God is calling us to do. And in this passage, we see three objections. Three reasons why we aren't on mission.

[16:36] The first thing you see is an objection from the nation of Israel. Do you remember in verse 9? Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and their cruel bondage.

[16:49] So the Israelites couldn't respond to the message of hope that Moses brought because their suffering was too great. And that's a role that the genealogy fills in here.

[17:00] That genealogy was six generations long. Seven, if you count Jacob, who was just mentioned at the top. And it points back to how long Egypt has been in bondage. So at the time, and we'll see this in a little bit, that when this event occurred, Moses was 80 years old.

[17:18] And he's part of the fourth generation to be in Egypt. Again, sorry, the fifth generation if you count Jacob. So his great-great-grandfather, Jacob, came to Egypt just before he died.

[17:31] But when Moses' great-grandfather's generation began to die off, the Israel people began to be oppressed in Egypt. And this passage reminds us of the length of time that that was.

[17:42] So to put it another way, there's six generations. That means that there were people experiencing the same oppression in Egypt that their great-great-great-grandparents were. So they're in the same position of slavery that their great-great-great-grandparents were.

[17:57] Now, last week we looked at our response when life doesn't go the way that we think it should. We talked about being in tough times. And again, I don't know what kinds of situations you're walking through.

[18:08] But I doubt that it is as difficult and as disparaging and as disappointing as being in slavery. And I also doubt that it's lasted for six generations.

[18:20] 400-odd years, something like that. So Israel is reminded of how long they've been in slavery. And their discouragement and their suffering is just so great that they can't listen to the hope of the message that Moses is giving them.

[18:36] The same thing is true for us, isn't it? When our situations are dire, when our situation is so different from what we expected that we just can't hear, we can't listen to what God says, even if it's a message of hope.

[18:49] I remember last year I was sitting beside the bed of a man in hospice. He was in the final weeks, it turned out, of a battle against cancer.

[19:00] At that point he wasn't doing any treatment. It was just about pain management and that wasn't even working. And I would sit there and pray with him and his wife and read scripture together. And I would have to pause frequently because a wave of pain would strike and he would just curl up and he would moan and I couldn't talk.

[19:19] And I remember sitting there and seeing the pain in his face and thinking at times about the hope that we were praying for and that we were reading in the scripture. And just in the face of this suffering saying, well, is it really, is it really true?

[19:35] Like everything that we see in this man, it doesn't seem true that there's hope. It seems to a point that God's abandoned him. And the overwhelming thing that I was witnessing was saying, no, this isn't true.

[19:49] And the truth of the hope that that man had was obscured by the suffering that he was going through. And that's exactly what Israel is feeling.

[20:01] Moses is declaring that their God will rescue them from slavery and yet they can't hear that hope because of the discouragement and the suffering of being in slavery for so long. Then immediately after, in verse 12, God tells Moses to go and give a message to Pharaoh.

[20:17] But Moses said to the Lord, if the Israelites will not listen to me, why should Pharaoh listen to me? If the Israelites won't listen to me, why will Pharaoh listen to me? And he is given this objection of failure.

[20:29] So Moses is saying, God, I can't go to Pharaoh. I went to Israel, my people, my family, and I gave them a message of hope. And they rejected it. I failed.

[20:40] How can I go to my enemy and give him a message of woe and say, release this whole nation of slaves that you have? I took the kiddie exam and I failed miserably. And now you want me to go and take a doctoral exam?

[20:52] I'm not going to pass. I'm a failure, God. You can see that because that's just happened to me. God, you got the wrong guy. So we're the same way too.

[21:03] When we have failure in our lives, we say, well, we can't step out and do something because I'm never going to succeed. I'm just going to fail because that's all that's ever happened. And if you finish verse 12, we have that part that we talked about.

[21:14] Since I speak with faltering lips, with uncircumcised lips, Moses says. And this is the biggest objection. It's the only objection that's mentioned twice. Moses talks about having these uncircumcised lips.

[21:26] He's saying that he's unqualified for the mission that God is giving him because he can't talk well. He doesn't have the ability. But also he doesn't have the position with God. He doesn't meet God's standard. And this is a big deal.

[21:38] I mean, we don't like to talk about circumcision a lot because, well, I think that's pretty obvious why we don't like to talk about circumcision a lot. But maybe you remember two weeks ago, Dave preached from a passage that had one of the, to me, is the most confusing parts of Scripture in the Old Testament.

[21:54] And it was when Moses was going back to Egypt to fulfill this call that God had given him. And all of a sudden, God comes against him and tries to kill him or his son.

[22:05] It's a little difficult to tell in the passage. And the reason was because his son wasn't properly circumcised. And Moses is seeing, oh, this is a big deal. Like, to not meet God's qualifications, God's level of purity is a big deal.

[22:20] And it could have derailed the whole call that God had given. And it could have derailed this, could have ended this man's life. So this is a serious issue that Moses is drawing on and saying, God, I recognize now the height of your purity and your holiness.

[22:36] And I don't meet that. How can I be used by you? So we have these three objections. But now I want to look at God's response. There are a number of different responses and kind of half responses to the objections that God makes.

[22:50] Like I said, there's a lot of repetition in this passage. So some that we've already seen before. Like God talking about his power. He reversed himself as God Almighty. Or there are a number of things that reflect God's relationship with Israel.

[23:02] Even just his use of the name the Lord, Yahweh, which was the covenant name that he'd given. And a demonstration that Israel is his people and that he will work on behalf of them.

[23:12] But I want to focus on two other aspects of God's response that are quite significant. And the first one is God's plan. And again here, this is where that genealogy, that seemingly random list of names comes in.

[23:26] Because a big reason why it's included is because it demonstrates the plan that God has. Remember, it was a very specific look at the people that God was calling. You see all these generations.

[23:38] And they didn't just happen. Moses and Aaron didn't just end up on the scene. But God had been planning for them to come at a certain time. And God says yes to Israel.

[23:50] He says yes, your suffering is long. And you've been enslaved for a long time. But you know what's longer? My plan. Because that genealogy starts before Israel is enslaved. And it ends after Israel is enslaved.

[24:03] Phineas, the last one mentioned in that genealogy, was a high priest. The grandson of Aaron and the high priest in the era of the judges. Well after Israel had been liberated from slavery.

[24:14] And was inhabiting the land that God had promised to give them. And God reaches back into history. And he says remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And remember these people that came before you.

[24:26] Yes, your suffering is long. But my plan is even longer. It started before you were in slavery. And it won't end when your slavery ends. So while the genealogy emphasized the length of Israel's suffering.

[24:42] It also shows the breadth and the depth and the amount of God's plan. So God's plan was in action well before any slavery. The other thing that really jumps out to me in this passage is God's agency.

[24:56] So agency means who's doing the thing. The person who's doing the thing. And we talk about ultimate agency. And what that means is that the person, someone might do something. But it's not actually them that is doing it.

[25:08] They aren't the power. They aren't the volition. They aren't the authority behind the action that's happening. So to give you an example, my son is reading a book right now. And it's about a toy rabbit.

[25:20] And at one point, a young boy gets this toy rabbit. And he turns him into a marionette doll. He ties a string to two sticks.

[25:30] And he starts to make the rabbit dance. And the book says the rabbit danced. But we know that isn't actually true. The rabbit didn't have any power to dance by itself. It's not one of those books where it has this ability to move by itself.

[25:43] Instead, what was actually happening was the boy was making the rabbit dance. The rabbit wasn't the agent. It was the little boy who made the rabbit dance. And so what does that mean for that passage?

[25:54] Well, I'll give you a minute to answer. But I want you to look at your Bibles again. Have them open. And look for how many times God says to Moses or someone else, you will do this.

[26:05] Compared to how many times God says, I will. What do you find? It's okay to answer. What do you find? I'm a little ways away from you.

[26:18] And you don't have a microphone, so. Let's look. Verse 1. Then the Lord said to Moses, Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh because of my mighty hand. He will let them go because of my mighty hand.

[26:29] He will drive them out of his country. God also said to Moses, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I did not make myself known to them, but I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan where they lived as aliens.

[26:44] Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites from whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. Therefore, say to the Israelites, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

[26:54] I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and mighty axe. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

[27:06] Over and over and over and over again in this passage, God is constantly declaring things that he will do. There is only one thing he asked Moses to do. Just talk, Moses. Just say the thing that I tell you.

[27:19] Everything else, God will do. Everything else, God will do. So Moses' objection is, God, I can't do this because I'm a failure. And God's response is, I'm not asking you to do anything.

[27:32] I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it through you. So it doesn't matter if you're a failure, because I'm going to do the work. Okay, because God is ultimately the one who is doing the work.

[27:44] So the objections were that there was the discouragement of the nation of Israel and the suffering of Israel. And God's response is, yes, you are suffering, but my plan is even longer than your suffering. And then Moses' objection, that I'm a failure, God.

[27:56] I can't do it. And God's response, but I am going to do it, Moses. All I'm asking you to do is to just speak. And because I am doing it, I'm not a failure, and it will succeed. And then we have, finally, our third objection that we looked at, that Moses speaks with uncircumcised lips, that he's impure, that he's not capable of doing the role, and he's not able to do it because he's impure.

[28:20] To answer that objection, I want to look at the part of the passage that we haven't read yet, in chapter 7. So look with me there, beginning in verse 1. Then the Lord said to Moses, See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.

[28:34] You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I will multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you.

[28:48] Then I will lay my hand on Egypt, and with mighty acts of judgment, I will bring out my divisions, my people, the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt, and I bring the Israelites out of it.

[29:01] Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them. Moses was 80 years old, and Aaron was 83 when they spoke to Pharaoh. What you have in this passage, again, is a continuation of that same point of God's agency, his ultimate agency, that he is the one that is going to do the work.

[29:19] But what really stands out to me is verse 1 there. The Lord said to Moses, See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh. See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh. What God is calling Moses to is something that's a very deep call.

[29:35] He's saying, Moses, you're going to represent me. But even more than that, when Pharaoh sees you, he's going to see God. I have made you like God to Pharaoh.

[29:46] So Moses is going to be a stand-in for God. When Pharaoh sees you, he's going to see me, God says. Now I want you to understand the gravity of that.

[29:56] Remember, Moses was saying that he wasn't even able to act as God, do anything for God. He wasn't able to accomplish anything for him. And now God is saying, not only are you going to be used by me, but you're actually going to be a stand-in for me.

[30:11] Now that doesn't mean that Moses had the same power of God. It doesn't mean that Pharaoh was going to worship Moses. But it means that God was going to represent himself so clearly through Moses that when Pharaoh saw Moses, it would be as Pharaoh seeing God.

[30:25] And that God would do all this work through Moses. I don't understand how that's possible, that God could use someone who's self-described as impure to that degree.

[30:37] So how is that possible? Well, at first it doesn't seem like it really matters because that's a pretty amazing call that Moses has and it might be a historical understanding to try and figure out how God could use Moses in that way.

[30:52] But it doesn't matter for us because there's no way that God calls us to be the same. God doesn't say, people will see you and they'll see God. Except that's exactly what he does. You see, when Jesus was preparing to leave his disciples, he taught them that the followers, that his followers, the followers of Jesus, the church, would be the body of Christ.

[31:14] He said, as my father sent me, so I send you. So in the same way that God said to Moses, you will be like God to Pharaoh, God says to the church, you will be like me.

[31:25] You will be like God to the world. So God says to Squamish Baptist Church, you will be like God to Squamish. But how does that happen? How is it possible that God uses people to represent him?

[31:42] Don't we, like Moses, have uncircumcised lips? Aren't we impure? Aren't we unable to be used by God in this way? Aren't we sinful? How, if we're honest, can we represent God?

[31:55] To answer that, I want to close by looking at what is probably the clearest passage giving this role to Christians. It's in 2 Corinthians 5.20. You can turn there if you want. I'll also put it up on the screen.

[32:07] It says, we are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

[32:18] Now I want you to notice the similarity of this commission to the one that God gave Moses. What does it mean to be an ambassador? Maybe the clearest way we can understand it is just think of the types of ambassadors that we have nowadays, and that would be an ambassador from a foreign country working in another country.

[32:34] And that ambassador is the official representative of their country to this foreign country that they're working in. So for example, a man named Ian Burney is the Canadian ambassador to Japan.

[32:46] So when Mr. Burney speaks to the Japanese government, or when he speaks to the Japanese people, he speaks with the authority of the government of Canada. He speaks to the Japanese people at some event, and he speaks on behalf of Canada.

[33:01] So to put it another way, Mr. Burney is like Canada to the nation of Japan. He is our representative. And at times, he speaks a message of peace. And at times, he might speak a message of condemnation or of correction.

[33:15] Whatever is in the benefit of us as our nation and what we want to do, he represents us to the nation of Japan. And the same is true for ambassadors of Christ. Our role is to represent Christ to the world.

[33:28] Just like Moses' role was to represent God to Pharaoh. Now ambassadors are carefully chosen. It's my understanding that Prime Minister Trudeau does not just walk out of his house and find the first person that he sees and appoint them to an ambassadorship.

[33:44] But instead, they're carefully selected people to represent our entire country to this foreign nation. But that leads us right back into Moses' objection. He said that he had uncircumcised lips and we would probably have the same objection.

[33:58] We can't be an ambassador of you, God, because we don't look like you. We are not qualified. We don't have the ability or the purity to represent God. Now we could spend another hour on this subject alone, but I want us to look at the very next verse in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21.

[34:18] God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might be the righteousness of God. We could not have this commission in 2 Corinthians 5, 20 if verse 21 were not true.

[34:34] Because you know what? Moses was right. His lips were uncircumcised. He was impure. He was not able to represent God in any way. He was sinful. Just like Abraham was.

[34:45] Just like Isaac was. Just like Jacob. Just like David. Like Isaiah. Like Jeremiah. Like Peter, John, or Paul. Just like Dave, or me, or you.

[34:56] We are all impure. We are all sinful. We are all unable to represent God. We're unable to fulfill the mission that God has given us. That is unless Jesus, who knew no sin, came to be sin for us so that in him we might be righteous.

[35:18] We might be able to represent God. We might be able to demonstrate him to those around us. And because he has Squamish Baptist Church, you can be like God to Squamish. And this is good news because maybe you're like Moses and you've been avoiding whatever God has been calling you to for most of your life or for the last several years because you just know that you're going to fail or because you can't do it or any time that you go to share the gospel with somebody, all you hear whispering in the back of your head is, well, remember what you did last week?

[35:49] Are you sure you want to talk about Jesus to that person? Because, you know, you're not representing him well. You're sinful. You're not righteous. This person isn't going to listen to you.

[36:01] Remember in those moments that God has made you pure not on what you have done, but what he has done on our behalf. So your sin doesn't disqualify you only because there was a righteous, unsinning one who lived that life in your place and is now calling you to be his representative by his power and by the power of his spirit to those around you.

[36:25] So my prayer is, Squamish Baptist Church, that just like Moses and Aaron did, you will do just as God commanded you.

[36:36] Let's pray. Let's pray. Thank you.