8/31/25 Exodus 3:1-10 “Ordinary to Extraordinary!”

28 Aug 8/31/25 Exodus 3:1-10 “Ordinary to Extraordinary!”

8/31/25  Exodus 3:1-10         “Ordinary to Extraordinary!”

As I was reading for this message, I discovered that the world has officially passed me by.  Whether I like it or not, we live in a world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media outlets.  I can sort of keep up with these things but as long as I have an ancient brain like this, it will never happen.  But in today’s world, communication is very important.  Our youngest daughter has been working and making money with mobile apps and films for iPhones and other mobile devices for some time.  For the life of me, I don’t understand how anyone can make a living doing these types of things.  Of course, I also know that there is big money in these apps.  I guess that I just don’t understand.  I sometimes wish that I was a senior in high school so that I could really dive into this stuff and understand it.  But I’m not so I guess I will just have to live with this ancient one year old phone.  We aren’t the only ones who think that communication is very important.  We have a book called the Bible that has been trying to communicate with us for centuries and most people are like me with an old cell phone wondering why things don’t work. Today, we are going to look at a well-known story about Moses and how God finally got his attention.  Let’s see if we can glean anything from this.

Eloy Gonzalez tells a wonderful Moses story that may not have much to do with what we are talking about but it is a great story about Moses. It seems that Moses appeared in the Rose Garden of the White House during the Bush administration.  A staffer recognized him and rushed to tell the President.  The President was so impressed that he ran out to greet Moses.  But to everyone’s shock, the moment Moses laid eyes on the President, he turned and walked away.  The President called after him but he kept walking away.  So the President sent Vice President Cheney to stop the great prophet and see what the problem was.  Cheney ran and called out to Moses and to everyone’s surprise, Moses stopped and turned around.  When Cheney caught up with Moses he asked him, “Moses, why did you turn your back on the President of the United States and walk away from him?” Moses answered, “You want I should talk to him? What, do I look like a sap? The last time I spoke with a bush I ended up wandering in the desert for 40 years!”  I think that we all might wander the desert at times in our lives.

Before we start I think we should recap a little as to what had been happening in the life of Moses.  If you remember he had been born to a poor Jewish woman at a time when the Pharaohs of Egypt were killing all the baby boys because there were getting to be more Jewish slaves than Egyptian people.  You see, sometime after the death of Joseph, there was a ruler change in Egypt.  This new ruling family decided that they would not honor anything of the old rulers so they decided that the Jewish people would be slaves.  Roughly 400 years later, Moses is born and this baby escapes death by being adopted by an Egyptian princess.  So Moses was born in rags but was raised in the riches of the Egyptian monarchy.

Toward the end of his first 40 years of life, Moses saw one of the Egyptian slave drivers beating on a Jewish slave.  Moses lost his temper and killed the Egyptian.  Then he had to flee Egypt as he was now a wanted criminal.  Moses settles in the wilderness of Midian, which by the way, is on the other side of the Red Sea from Egypt.  There Moses settles down, gets married and raises a family while being a shepherd.  If we know anything about shepherds, we could say that Moses is back to rags again, from rags to riches to rags.

So Moses has been a nomadic shepherd in Midian for forty years which makes him close to 80 years old.  Now I would guess that Moses has seen just about everything there is to see when it comes to herding sheep.  So Moses is wandering around talking to his sheep, you know calling them by name and all that.  At least I have read where the shepherds did this and the sheep all knew their shepherd.  Suddenly, Moses notices a burning bush.

This is the first part where skeptics and non-believers will say that there is no such thing as a burning bush like this and they would be right.  Only God can do something like this.  But the experts like to ignore God and try to tell us that this was the reflection of the sun off some kind of red bush of the area.  Now, I want you to think about this rather closely.  Moses would be an expert of the area after 40 years of shepherding.  Don’t you think he would know the difference between the sun reflecting off leaves and an actual fire?  Of course he would.  Moses might have been many things but he was not stupid!

The first thing that we need to remember here is that Moses is just like all the rest of us even today.  He is a fallen, broken man.  We have already mentioned that Moses was a murderer.  The great King David will join him as a murderer as will the apostle Paul.  Jacob was a liar and a conniver.  Joseph was boastful.  The list goes on and on as to all these great people of the Bible who were ordinary criminals.  But what I really mean by ordinary is that he would get up every day and put his pants on one leg at a time just like all the rest of us, if he wore pants, that is.

I also think he might have been ordinary like the rest of us in terms of noticing when God is calling.  I have to wonder if this is the first time God has tried to call on Moses.  Did you ever think about that?  I mean a burning bush is pretty extreme.  I think that maybe God had tried to call him by name and he didn’t hear.  Maybe he tried to call Moses by giving him a bumper crop or a nice raise.  Maybe God tried to call Moses by delivering him from a financial downturn or helping in a health recovery.  I think that this is the extreme when God burns a bush that doesn’t burn.  Only this extreme act will get Moses’ attention.

So now I ask you, what does it take for God to get your full attention?  How long has God been trying to talk to you and you are too busy to listen?  How many times has God saved your bacon from the fire and you keep walking along as if nothing has happened?  I would guess that everyone here is guilty of not paying attention when God calls.  I would recommend that you don’t wait for something drastic like an actual burning bush to pay attention.  Your burning bush could be your health.  It could be your finances.  It could be your loved ones.  Develop your prayer life like your life depends on it because it does.  It will help you see your burning bush.  I know because I don’t always listen either.  But I also know that life is so much better when you do listen and are obedient to Jesus.

There is something else to notice here.  Moses is walking along doing his herding thing, you know, yip yapping to the sheep and all that.  Then he sees something that he has never seen before in his 80 years of life in the burning bush.  Please note that God has done nothing yet except put this old burning bush out where he can see it.  So old curious Moses decides to turn aside and walk over to investigate.  Nothing happens until Moses makes a move.  It is only after Moses has gone to investigate this miraculous event that God speaks to him.

You see, you are the same way.  You have to make a move towards God before He will respond to you.  Right here in the Old Testament we see that our response to God is to be the same as I try to tell you every week.  First of all, if you don’t know Jesus Christ as your personal savior, get off your path and investigate that burning bush.  Confess you sins to Jesus and make Him the Lord and Savior of your life.  This is the promise of the burning bush.  You see, once we are God’s children, He will do anything for us but first we must turn aside from our lives.

I think that one of the problems we have today is that we don’t turn aside from our lives to look at this miracle of the burning bush.  We are too busy.  I think you might know that I really don’t like the word busy because I feel that being busy is just an excuse for not doing things.  Your priorities aren’t right is a better way to put this.  What we end up doing is taking a glance at the burning bush and then continuing on our way to some event or events in our lives that we feel are much more important than Jesus Christ.  Oh, we may say we love Jesus but heaven forbid if we should ever give Him any time except maybe on Sunday morning and that is if we don’t have golf game, football game, or some other minor activity that interferes.  I’m here to tell you today that you are not too busy.  That is the farthest from the truth.  You just don’t have your priorities in the right place.

People, let me try to help you with your priorities.  First of all, think about a normal day for you.  Think of the down time you have.  You aren’t always doing things, unless you are having a bad day and sometimes that happens, sometimes but not often.  See, it isn’t too hard to find some time when you aren’t running here and there, being too busy.

Now that you have 3 minutes of time out of 1440 minutes in a day, think about who you are dealing with and compare this with who you are.  The God of the universe wants to spend three minutes every day talking with you.  This is the God who has made everything we see in the world and also all what we don’t see.  This is the God who is talking to every Christian in the world on a very personal level all at the same time.  We all know who God is and we can only imagine His power because it is beyond our imagination.  We can only be in awe of about 1% of God because that is about all we as humans are capable of understanding.

All God wants is a few minutes of your time. Did I forget to tell you about the love that God has for you?  That’s what this is all about!  Use this time to talk to God in your car or as you wait or where ever.  It’s that easy.  He will not interfere with your life unless you turn aside and take a look.  Satan is the one who has filled your day with wrongful priorities.  Satan has made you too busy!  Jesus is the one who will help you to get your life back together so that you aren’t too busy!  I have not met one person in my life that is too busy for Jesus.

But remember that Jesus won’t help you unless you first turn aside to look at the burning bush.  This is for Christians also.  We Christians are like Moses when he walked right by the other ways God may have tried to get his attention.  We have to make that first move.  We have to ask Jesus to help us with our schedules.  We have to ask that He help us put our marriages back together.  You have to ask Jesus for help in putting your finances in order.  However, Jesus probably won’t answer if you just nod at the burning bush as you are walking by or if you are just giving Him a little lip service as you continue about in your ‘busyness!’

And this brings us to why all of this is so important.  It is important to pay attention and when Jesus calls that we stop and listen because God absolutely loves to use ordinary things and ordinary people to accomplish His goals.  Every one of these people God used in the Old and New Testaments were ordinary in every sense.  Like I mentioned, we have several murderers like Moses and Paul who became absolute leaders in our church.  We had thieves and liars who led God’s people.  We even had a bully in Samson who was one of the judges of Israel.  The point of many of these Bible characters is that they were far worse people than we are if we judge them according to our harsh standards.  However, I don’t think we have any murderers in our midst.  I don’t think we have anyone who is bad enough that God will not love them and use them to further His Kingdom.

You see, we put restrictions on ourselves.  I’m probably the worst person of any of us if you look at my history.  I’ve been divorced and I still loved the Lord but I thought that there was no way He could ever use me.  I was satisfied to be a secondary person behind the scenes in building God’s church.  I thought that there was no way I could ever be a pastor because of who I had been and all the rules in the church.  But look what God has done.  Never think that God can’t use you because He can and will if you just pay attention and turn aside when He calls you.  Jesus loves all of you more than I can say and He wants you to have the fullest life possible by carrying out His word.  This is the best offer you will get today so take it, let God rule in your life and put aside your busyness!

Maybe the point of this whole story is that God isn’t looking for extraordinary people.  He is looking for ordinary people to do extraordinary things of which God provides all our supplies and ideas.  Maybe you should help sponsor a revival meeting.  I’m thinking that if a bunch of us ordinary people get together to put this on, then God will provide the extraordinary.  When God gives the extraordinary, then great things will happen, things like a burning bush or the parting of the Jordan or Jesus walking on water.  You see God is an extravagant God.  He is an extraordinary God.  If we do these little things for Him, then he will help us to find the unsaved with the message of salvation.

That is all that God has ever wanted.  He wants all people to spend eternity with Him.  He helps us in extraordinary ways.  Let’s start to pray for revival in your area and that it would spread to other areas.  Let’s notice this burning bush of revival and follow Jesus to where ever He wants us to be.  Jesus loves you and will care for you through all things and that is promise.  Aren’t you glad Jesus first loved you?  Let’s pray.