Linger & Listen | Dr. Charlie Dawes

Man, I do. I bring you greetings from, from Hill City Church. We are in meet in Alexandria, Virginia and my wife Nicole isn't with me today. She's holding down the home court and. But I love, I got, I got a picture.

I'd love you to meet my family. I'd love to get a chance to see them. Look at this. Hey girl. Hey, hey, girl.

Hey girl.

What your name is? Girl? Hey, where you stay? You know. Sorry.

So this picture, a couple things that I want you to notice. A couple things about this picture. We have three children. I have almost a 17 year old, a 14 year old, an 11 year old.

They're not in that picture.

You see the smiles on our faces?

The kids aren't in the picture. Guys, I don't know if you, if you understand what this means and so I want to, I want to break it down for you. Days upon days, this couple here got a chance to enjoy uninterrupted conversation. Just think, just think about the miracle that that is. If you got teenagers in your house, you know exactly what that is.

We didn't have to answer one stupid question.

You ever, you ever been in a classroom and someone's like, oh, there's no such thing as a stupid question. Yeah, that's stupid right there. That's it. People that ask stupid questions say stuff like that. That is my wife of almost 25 years.

That is my baby's mama. All three of my kids, all three of my kids, we've been married 25 years consecutively. I like to make sure we to each other like these are things in this day and age. You just have to make sure you say. And so, yeah, love her deeply.

Let me show you a picture of the kids. No, there is no picture of the kids. We don't care about them today. It's about this couple. It's about us.

Got a chance to. We were in Italy for the very first time. That's where this picture's taken, in case you didn't know. Look how happy they are. God.

Still. I just want to go back there, guys. I just want to go back to that place. And they're like, oh, is it because it's Italy? No, because the kids aren't there.

Do you see? Do you see? You get it? We had a couple in our church and they asked us to do their wedding. And so I said, yeah, sure, we'd love to, we'll do the wedding.

And I thought it was going to be like in Woodbridge or something. Like all the marriage is like in Winchester. And it's. They're like, oh, no, it's in Tuscany. I was like, well, the devil is a liar.

I will go. Sure. I'll do your wedding. I'll do a funeral while we're there. Like, whatever you need, I'm here, guys.

And so we got a chance to do that and just had a great, great time. So I'm still living in that afterglow and just had a great, A great time. And I love getting a chance to be here with you guys. And so if you have your Bibles, will you open them up? Will you come with me to Exodus chapter three?

Exodus, chapter three. And let's just begin reading the text together. Says, now, Moses was tending the flock of Jericho. Excuse me, Jericho, Jethro, his father in law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness.

And he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. And Moses saw that through the though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight why the bush does not burn up. And 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. God said, take off your sandals for the place where you are standing as holy ground. And then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

And at this, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. And I've heard them crying out because of their slave drivers. And I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of the.

Up that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I've 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. Moses said to God, what?

Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? God said, I will be with you. And this will be the sign that it was I who have sent you, when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. So Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and I say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they asked me, what is his name?

And then, what shall I tell them? And God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you. And God also said to Moses, say to the Israelites, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. And this is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.

Church I want to preach a sermon to you for the next 2 hours and 47 minutes simply from this title. Linger and listen, bow our heads and pray once more. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word to us. It is indeed a lamp into our feet and a light into our path. In our life, we will have many teachers and we will have many instructors.

We will have people who will pour into us, they will shape us, they will care about us, they will lift us up, they will challenge us. But we will never have nothing or no one that is like your word in our life.

Break in past our intellect and break in past our emotions. We want to meet you in those places, but we don't want to stop there. God, would you enable us to move to that thin space, deep unto deep, spirit unto spirit, so that when we leave this place with confidence, we could say one to another, surely the Lord was in that place, and I'll never be the same God. We're not interested in an exchange of ideas, but we're interested, God, in being transformed, shaped, molded from the inside out. Do what only you could do.

In the precious and the powerful name of Jesus, we pray. Come on. And all God's people said, if I wanted to hand you this sermon, and I wanted to give it to you in a phrase that I don't want you to forget when you leave here today. It's simply this. God is not just interested in getting your attention.

He ultimately wants to get your life. He's not just interested in getting our attention, but he wants our lives. And so Moses is a beautiful picture of this. Moses is one of those characters that you don't have to have grown up or spent time in church circles to have a familiarity with him. There are some of you in the room.

In your generation, you knew the Ten Commandments would be part of the fabric of Television programming and cinema, people would watch the depiction of who Moses was. And for some of us in the room, we remember the prince of Egypt when that cartoon broke out. And then there are others of us in the room. We hear the name Moses and we understand him as a deliverer. And we know him to be the one who parts the Red Sea.

And we know all of these things. And this morning, what I, what I would hope is that we would, instead of coming back to this text with information and knowledge that we've acquired, that we would try to come to it fresh and anew. You see, Moses is of the, the ilk of the prophets of the Old Testament. And some of us, when we think about Moses, we don't think of him in terms of prophet, but. But at his core, he is the quintessential prophet.

He is the first prophet among those in the Old Testament. He was the mouthpiece for God. And here we are reading as every prophet has a call experience a moment where heaven summons them into work.

Now make no mistake, Moses, at this point in his life, he is not looking for leadership. He is not on the verge of success. But Moses, at this point of his life, in middle age, he's a fugitive, he's an outlaw. You remember that Moses, he comes onto the scene. He is, he is birthed into a family that is undergoing an onslaught from the government oppressing powers.

And that onslaught is trying to exterminate all Hebrew children born male, either by murdering them the moment they exit the womb or by throwing them into the river. There's a story in the text where the midwives revolt against this command of Pharaoh. Pharaoh says to the midwives, I want you to kill the babies who are male born of the Hebrews. I want you to kill them. And the Bible says this, and this is a line that we should grab hold of, we should put in our hearts.

It says, though they heard what Pharaoh commanded, they feared the Lord.

Might we live in a generation in a culture that is alluring and luring us, but may we have a fear of the Lord that will not let us go that way? So Moses as a baby is put in a vessel and sent up a river. Isn't it interesting that time after time God will put his people vessels and send them into seemingly harm's way, and yet they'll be protected. The Genesis text is supposed to be seen and heard in the life of what God's doing in Exodus. Why?

Because he's the same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God has been doing a work and he's continuing to do a work. God's people were established in Genesis. God's people were established in the patriarchs. And God's work is still established, even when it seems as there is a Pharaoh who knows not Joseph.

We're in the text right now where Moses is fleeing and he's running from his life. Because though he was raised in the house of Pharaoh, you and I know this to be true. Like family isn't family.

He was raised as a son of Pharaoh right up until he killed one of Pharaoh's men. And how many understand that living arrangement changed?

So. So he's despised by the family that took him in. The Egyptians no longer claim Moses and his people. The Hebrew children do not accept him. Why?

Because he's a sellout. They knew good and well who he was. You don't look like no Egyptian. You're one of us living with him. And we're not trying to hear anything you got to say.

So Moses has this moment where he sees the oppression of his people. He has this righteous indignation. He's longing for justice. And he takes matters into his own hands and he kills the Egyptian worker. And the reminder to us is you may have the right motivation, you may be in right in your mind and can be wrong in your hands.

So Moses is on the run and now we find him in middle aged living with his in laws, being employed by his father in law. Anyone in the room just willing to volunteer in middle age that you want to go back living with your in laws? Don't raise your hand, sir. It's not ideal. And be careful that we don't romanticize this text.

Be careful that we don't read into this that oh, he was looking for an opportunity and God was just crafting him and something was happening. No, it was a Tuesday and he was walking around in a wasteland.

He was herding sheep that weren't even his kicking rocks.

And the Bible says that there was a bush that was set ablaze and yet it was not consumed. And Moses, I love the way that the ESV says this, says that Moses turned aside the NIV gives us a little bit of the thought behind the text. If we were to quote it like the King James, it's simply this. What meaneth this?

What's going on here? That looks strange different. You see, for you and I, if we're going to linger and listen, one of the things that we have to keep in mind into the forefront of our heart is that curiosity is key.

Curiosity is key. Finish this phrase if you heard this growing up, curiosity killed. Isn't that a weird way to live? In other words, if you keep paying attention to something, if you investigate this, if you look into these things, you better stop doing that because curiosity will get you killed. But it seems to me that the biblical narrative says that curiosity might lead me to an encounter with God.

How many times have you walked into this place, the activity of God rippling in the room, And you ignored it.

You passed by it semester after semester. You get an invitation to join a connect group and you, ah, I'm busy. Work, you know, the thing. I got stuff.

I've grown up in church my entire life and I just. I find it fascinating the excuses that we make to not get involved in the things that God will use to transform us. God will use to put us back together. God will use to summon us.

Listen to me. I care deeply about your growth and your walk with God. And I don't know how you can do it without being found in community. I just, I don't. If I were to give you a real strong, harsh sort of word, we're actually not offered in the Christian tradition to do it any other way but to be not spectators, not tourists, but to be pilgrims, to be curious and Moses here again, I can't stress this enough.

It's an ordinary day. There's nothing about the soil that is any different on this day versus how it had been time and time again as he had passed through there. There's nothing in the text that tells us this is the first time he ever wondered this place. So what it gives us the picture is this is a familiar place, an ordinary place that he would pass by, and yet this time he notices a bush is set ablaze.

The question goes in my mind, were there other times that bushes were on fire that he passed by? Question in my mind is, how long had the bush been on fire?

How long has God been waiting for you to turn aside and take a look and linger and be curious?

It's a phenomenon happening in spaces of faith where people want to inspect God.

That one. They want to inspect God. They want to kick the tires, they want to survey the land, yet they don't want to surrender to God. And make no mistake, friends, God is not looking for attention just so that he's noticed. He wants to be known.

And please understand the difference. Nicole and I will celebrate in just a few days. We will have. We will have been dating for 30 years.

30 years. I wish to you that I had a romantic story of the way in which we met. I wish I did. However, the story I have has yielded almost 25 years of marriage, 30 years of dating, three amazing kids. The first words that I ever uttered to the woman that God would call and appoint to be my soulmate was, hey, girl, let me get some candy.

She was selling candy for the cheerleading team, and I'm an idiot in class. And I was like, oh, hey, I'm lingering and listening. You know what I'm saying? I'm lingering and listening. Y' all call that stalking.

Now we just call it an approach. I knew where that girl's classes were. I'm just letting you know. Just so happened to pass by. What are you doing here, Crazy?

Don't you have such and such classes, period? Yeah, you know, I just knew. I knew where she was gonna be. Hey, girl, let me get some candy. First words I wrote her to her resident history.

I noticed, but I wanted to be known. Listen to me. I noticed her when I was 16. I noticed her. I know her now.

She noticed me at 16. Head full of hair, Just luxurious hair, just a treat.

But now I'm known. I'm known.

Come on, you know this in the room, don't you? Being noticed is nowhere near being known. And, friend, can I. Can I encourage you? Some of you here, you've been in a space, you've been noticing God.

You've been noticing the activity. You've been. And his invitation to you and to me is to be known. What that requires, though, is that you and I have to follow some instructions that go along with the invitation. And to Moses, the instructions were simple.

Take your shoes off.

He calls out to Moses. He says, moses, Moses. Moses. Response is, here I am. And then God says to him, don't come any closer.

Take your shoes off. The place that you're standing is holy ground. I just said to you that it's the same dirt that it's been. How did it become holy? Because the presence and the purpose of God set it apart.

How do things in your life and in my. How do they become holy? How do they become sacred? Not because we infuse it with value and meaning, but that's what we want to think. We want to think that we made something sacred that we.

We did. No. No. It is the purpose and the presence of God that sets something apart. So think about the things in your life that are known as sacred.

One of the things I want us to rekindle and embrace afresh is the sacredness of marriage. And marriage isn't sacred because I say so it's not sacred because your pastor says so. It's not sacred because somebody in a political office says so. It's sacred because God's presence and God's purpose is in marriage, which sets it apart. And the danger for us is if we're not careful, we will turn the things that God calls sacred and we will treat them as common.

And doing that is blasphemy by definition.

So for us, we are to have this awareness that God requires a shifting in us. Be curious, but understand that curious will take you so far. Because there's a moment your curiosity has to yield to consecration. And what that looks like is you gotta. You gotta take some things off.

It's almost as if God is saying to Moses, moses, can I call you Mo?

He said, you can't come into my presence. In the same manner that you walk around this wasteland. There's some things in you that have to shift. There's some things in you that you need to take off. Some of you in the room, you need to let the Holy Spirit bring to the forefront of your heart and to your mind the things in your life that you need to take off.

Some of you have been carrying anxiety, and some of you have been carrying doubt and fear and anger. Some of you have been carrying pain. Some of you have been carrying resentment. Some of you have been carrying fear. Some of you, you had faith in a season and you launched out.

And now you are terrified that you're out here in this thin space and you don't know how God's going to come through. And you're carrying that. And it's almost as if God would say to you just what he said to Moses, hey, don't come any closer. Don't bring that any closer.

God doesn't ignore that Moses is wearing shoes. He just tells him that those shoes aren't appropriate in his presence. God's not saying to you all that those things that you're carrying and feeling and holding, that they're not real. What he's saying is if you'll cast them aside and enter in that there's a purpose waiting for you. But you can't receive the purpose and the plan that God has for your life.

If you're remaining attached to the things of an old season, come close enough to hear him, but don't come too casually that you miss him. Curiosity must friends then become consecration. In our life, we can't just be fascinated by God, but we must be surrendered him. When God says, take off your shoes, don't Hesitate. Take them off.

Why? Because the place that you're standing is sacred. It's holy. Not because you infuse value into it, but because God did. So here's what this means.

Think about this. This room. Look around. Sacred, holy. Because God's presence is here.

And God has a purpose. And God has set it apart. Now take this into your life. Your living room. Come on, what is it?

It's holy. It's holy ground. Your office at work, holy ground.

The sports field that you spend hours upon hours upon hours upon hours of your life at. Joyfully. Joyfully. It's holy ground. You see, many of us, we go, no, no, there's no way that can be holy.

Not with a coach my kids have.

That's you infusing value to it. The value is infused by God's presence. And his presence is there. And his purposes, though they may not be plain to you and me, his purposes are there. In other words, the bush was burning long before Moses was aware of it, but it caught his attention.

Some of you right now, you've been calling your life a dumpster fire.

And I'd like to offer to you today that it's just a burning bush.

It's just a burning bush. It's an opportunity, it's an invitation for a voice to call out to you. The same voice that said, there's a ram in the thicket. The same voice that said, joseph, let's have a wrestle. The same voice that calls to Moses and tells him to go.

The reminder to you and me is the voice that calls us out is not just to give us an encounter and some goosebumps.

The encounter with God was always intended to send us into a purpose for a people.

So shame on you if you come into this place and you lift holy hands and you worship God with your mouth and you refuse to step into your home, your schools, your work, and not see those as God's people. You've been sent to lead out.

Never been an intention for you to come in here and just have an experience.

Come on. You think Jesus died on the cross just so you can have an experience? Go to Disney World.

He desires us to know him because in the knowing him, we can't help but wanting and desiring for other people to know that near is his name. Near is his name. Moses says to God, he says, you want me to go? You sure? You remember I tried to do this once and it backfired.

You remember that time kind of murdered that guy?

I'm living with my in laws. God These aren't even my sheep. You want me to go? Later on, Moses would get even. After God's telling him that he'll be with him.

Moses goes, but I stutter. Isn't it just like us that we'll want to argue with God? God's telling me his identity, tell me his purpose. Moses is just right because he's so hung up on who he's been, he can't imagine what God has for him. Can you hear me in the room today, there are some of you that are so hung up on the past that's back here.

And what I just want to tell you is the blood is a great camouflage. The blood of Jesus will cover your past in a way that God no longer sees it. And yet you and I, we're clinging to that thing, white, knuckled. And sometimes we're unable to hear and see what God is calling us into. Moses says to God, he says, but do you know who I am?

And Moses say. He says, moses, I'm with you. Now hold that, that promise. He says, moses, I'm with you. Moses says, okay.

He says, so if I go, like, like, who do I tell them is sending me? Like I do. I tell them the voice from the bush. Like, they're not going to recognize this.

You see, in that time, it's no different than really us today. We. We want the name of our God so that we can manipulate. If you are the God of the harvest, let me know that. So now I know how to maneuver you.

If you are the God of the sun, moon and stars, tell me that. Because now I know what my parameters are. I know where to set my expectation. I know where to make my requests. So in other words, he says.

He says, listen, all the gods, all the gods in Egypt have a name. What's your name?

Please do not see this as him just wanting to become friends. He's wanting to know where are the handles that I can hold on to, that I can bring you, that I can be in control.

And God says to him, he says, I am who I am. I am who I am. Moses. Okay, how I write that on a business card.

He says, I. I am who I am. Now hold that with verse 12. What? He says, I'll be with you. The very, very definition, the very, the very fabric of the name of God is how he is known.

And he is known by his nearness. He is not desiring to be the God who delivers and the God who saves. Now, didn't he say that? I've heard. I've seen, I'm responding.

Don't hear me saying that our God doesn't see, that our God doesn't hear, that our God doesn't respond. He is a miracle working God. But if you and I are not careful, we only will respond to him by way of the outcomes. And miss, We'll know him by how we've noticed him.

And God is not interested in being noticed. He wants to be known. And he says, moses, I just, hey, my presence is with you. When you get there and they ask you who's sending you, it's the presence. It's the presence.

You step on your campus on Tuesday, the presence is with you. You walk into that board meeting, the presence is with you. You sit down at your kitchen table to have a heart to heart with a person you have mileage with. But there's some fractures, there's some aches, there's some pains you might have tossed around some words. And it seems as if this relationship that is sacred, that is set aside and set apart by God and it seems like it's on the brink and you don't know if, if it's going to make the distance.

Can you hear me today? The presence is there. And where the presence is, it means that pharaohs do not get to be in control. Where the presence is, it means that the oppression that has been very real will not keep you from turning wastelands, ordinary spaces into the mountain of God where the people of God will worship. This was never just about Moses.

Why? And God tells him, he says, moses, I'll show you that this isn't just about you. He said, because the place that you're having an encounter is going to be the very place that everybody has an encounter with me. Everybody going to know my name. Because you lingered and you listened long enough to hear me call yours church.

Will you bow your heads with me all across the room? Heavenly Father, we thank you, we praise you.

That your identity, God is bound to the promise of your faithful present.

Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. Are you here today?

And you would just simply say, charlie, I'm curious.

I'm curious about God. I'm curious about this Jesus. Notice what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that you have all the answers. I'm not saying that you have all of the questions you want to ask.

But you're curious.

The curiosity to turn aside, the curiosity to linger, to listen. The curiosity that says, I want to take a. I want to take another look. I want to take a longer look.

Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. Are you here? And you just say with an uplifted hand, you say, charlie, I'm curious. I'm curious about Jesus, maybe for the first time. I'm curious about what God wants to do in my life.

I'm curious about. About what he's up to right now. Something is stirring. Something is moving in my life. I don't have the language for it.

I don't even have a way to really, even fully articulate it. But something is happening subterranean. There's a bush ablaze.

Just curious. If that's you, will you lift your hand? I want to pray with you. I want to pray for you. You're curious.

Yeah. Yeah.

Curious about what God's doing. I'm curious about this Jesus who saves.

Heavenly Father. You see every hand. You know every life. You know every story.

God, I pray that you give them the courage to turn aside. Let that curiosity. Let it be embraced and wrapped in courage. And God, I pray that yout would lead us to a place of consecration.

We'll take our shoes off. We'll stay a while. Have your way in us. In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray Amen.