Services/Sermon in Rockford 04.08.2019

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

First, I have a wedding prayer. Drew Hall and Kaylee Pyrniss will be joined into marriage on Saturday, August 17th, at the Rockford Lestadian Lutheran Church. Let us pray on their behalf. Amen.

God, thou who hast established marriage, bless this covenant. Grant this couple one-mindedness and love, and make their home a Christian home. Amen.

Before we join into the opening prayer, I have a joy to bring you greetings of love and God's peace from very few scattered believers on the East Coast. We went there for services a couple of weeks ago, and it was a heartwarming weekend. As many of you know, there are not very many believers who mostly listen online and look forward to the next service when they have a minister visiting there. It felt very good and blessed to be able to serve them with God's gifts and God's greetings. They sent you their love and greetings and their thanks that they can have services.

We don't stop often to think how we live a luxurious life in that sense. We have services. We have Bible class. We have all kinds of gatherings. Camps are near and so on.

Let us close into the opening prayer and thanksgiving.

Righteous God, dear Heavenly Father, we thank you this beautiful Sunday morning for the day of rest. We thank you that we have been able to gather together to study your word and to receive the meal, holy meal of remembrance, the holy communion.

Dear God, you know where we came from. You know our joy, you know our sorrows and fears. And you know our weakness and our temptations. Dear God, we pray that you would serve us here. We cannot serve you, but you serve us. And we are very thankful and in a childlike mind pray that you would again serve us this Sunday. Give us hearing ears and believing hearts. And bless the spoken word for the edification of the congregation and the listeners. And for the glory of your high and holy name. Amen.

The church year has its own calendar. And on this Sunday, we are on Transfiguration Sunday. Transfiguration means that Jesus' outward appearance changed for a short period of time to that heavenly brightness and glory that he has and he had. And he was hidden from the world. Only three disciples were able to see it. And so these texts for this Transfiguration Sunday speak of God's hidden glory.

And I will read the Old Testament text from Exodus 3. I'll read verses 9 through 15 in Jesus' name.

And Moses said unto God, And that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt. And he said, Certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee. When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, And they shall say unto me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses, I am that I am. And he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you.

And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, The God of Abraham, The God of Isaac, And the God of Jacob, Hath sent me unto you. This is my name forever. And this is my memorial unto all generations. Amen.

Moses was 80 years old. He had lived two very different 40-year times. And the first one was in Egypt. Actually, there was, I would say, a third short period of time before that bigger kind of first phase. He was the very first years in his own, taken care of by his mother.

You remember the time when Moses was born? Every male child that was born to Hebrews should have been killed. And God spared Moses' life because every life is in his hands. Nobody dies against God's will. And nobody lives against God's will. God decides the day of birth, the day of death. And God decides, or sees every day in between them. He knows everything.

So, God had chosen Moses to be his servant. God can do that. It is his doing. And, I would ask, who else would do that, if not God? If we don't believe that God chooses his servants, who does?

Miriam, Moses' elder sister, saved Moses in another sense than God. God, or, I try to make it clear what I'm trying to say.

When Moses was born, in three months of age, he was put into a little basket and put into the river Nile. And the daughter of Pharaoh found him. And she was a woman. And she felt immediate bond to this baby child who cried very loud. Strong little boy. Three months old boy.

And this Pharaoh's daughter chose to save his life. But Miriam was, and is, a picture of a bigger sister, a believing bigger sister.

Miriam went to Pharaoh's daughter and suggested or asked, would it be possible, or would you like that I would find a mother who would feed this hungry child?

We understand the breastfeeding was the only way at those times. There were no formulas that you could go and buy. So, it was a question of life and death to find a wet nurse for this baby.

And the Pharaoh's daughter said yes. And I think that she understood from the very start that this will be the baby's own mother.

And I asked, who would have been the better wet nurse than the baby's own mother?

I thought about this many times how, in this piece in itself, would be for us a reason for a lengthy discussion. How God answered to their prayers and way above what they asked for.

They asked if they could keep the child, that the child would not be killed. And how did God answer? The Pharaoh's daughter said to the mother that care for this child and I will pay unto you.

It was the first time ever in the history of mankind that a mother was being paid for taking care of her own child.

I think when they got the news and they had a little bit of time to think about that, they had to laugh a happy laughter that see how God answered. That now we are being paid. We didn't ask for payment. But now we are being paid that we can take care of our own child.

So, Moses was in the believing home for the first few years. And during those years, believing parents and siblings taught him a lesson that he never forgot.

When Moses went into the Pharaoh's court and when he came to the age of forty, he refused to be called the Pharaoh's daughter's son and chose rather the affliction and trials and difficulty of a believer than living in sin in the Pharaoh's court. That's what Hebrews tells us.

Where was he being taught? Nobody taught it to him in the Pharaoh's court. Nobody was being taught at home during his first few years.

So, I say unto you parents, bless your children often. Bless them with the most beautiful message of the forgiveness of sins. And tell them that we are on our way to heaven. That we all live here only a short period of time. And we should make it to heaven.

This life is transient. It's short. Everything that we see around us is temporary. One day, a life will be taken away from us. And we receive according to our deeds, if we believed or not.

Speak of that to the children and grandchildren.

Second 40 years have passed. Moses had got married. And if the first 40 years were his academic studies, his theoretical part of his studies, the second one was very practical.

He lived and worked in that desert where he was going to lead the people for the third 40 years.

So, his life was divided into three 40-year phases. And the third was about to begin.

God had chosen him. God had educated him.

If you want to read from Acts 7, where Stephen speaks before he was stoned, he speaks of Moses also. How he learned, he was educated in all wisdom of Egyptians.

That proves, I would say, tells us that he was a rising star.

There are two men at least in the Bible that caliber: Moses and Paul. Both of them were above their peers in that time when they were oblivious of what their life would have been.

But God was teaching them and making them ready, preparing them for their life's calling.

And now, this 80-year-old man knew what Egypt was, what the superpower of the time was, was known, or he knew all the mysteries of that time in Egypt.

And then, God had brought his feet on the ground. He was no more a prince. He was a shepherd.

And that time, being a shepherd in that area, he was a duty of a professional. He had to know where to move the flocks in different phases or times of year. He had to know how to find water and food for his flocks in the desert.

Think about the proportions that God had planned for him. Six hundred thousand men above the age of twenty. All children, all women, and all their livestock were following him or he was leading them to the wilderness for the third forty years span.

And now, Moses saw a miracle. He saw a burning bush. There's fire. And we know what fire is. It gives warmth, it gives light, but it also consumes. It uses something for burning. And it produces ashes.

And now, Moses saw another fire. And it was all new to him.

I would simply say that there are two fires burning in this world all the time. And they both produce and give energy, warmth. They are two different kinds of fires.

One fire, which is this kind of a natural fire, it consumes. It turns wood or the burning combustible material into ashes.

But there is another fire which burns like the one but it does not consume.

And I would describe them as hatred and love, as the enemy of the souls and as God.

These are the two fires that are still burning.

God's love burns like hatred burns. But God's love does not consume. It does not change the combustible to ashes. It just burns and burns and burns. It gives energy.

Love does not turn any human being into a pile of ash. But hatred does. Hatred consumes.

That is why it is impossible to be bitter and believing at the same time. It is either or.

And now, Moses saw God's light. The bush was burning and it did not consume. And he went near and there he met God.

And God said, I have seen, and I have heard.

We have a living God who both sees and hears. He has heard the cries of the children of Israel. God had heard the prayers of the believers in the difficult time. And he had also seen the oppression.

And then, when the time came to relieve the Israelites from that burden, God took an action. And he said to Moses, I will send you unto Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

Oh, a nation. One man was called, You must bring my people out of Egypt.

And Moses said, Who am I? Who was he? He was a man. A believing man, yes, but a man. And nothing more than a man. A gifted man, yes, but still nothing more than a man.

Who, how could anybody think to take such a task upon himself?

You remember Korah. A few years later, Korah said to Moses, You have taken too much upon yourself.

Did Moses take? No. No, he didn't. God put him there. And it was impossible for Moses. And I think that's how God wants it to be. God wants to use those to whom it is impossible. God wants it to be that way.

God said, Certainly, I will be with thee. God promised, I will be with you. I will help you.

Elsewhere in the Bible, God says, I will put words into your mouth.

We remember this discussion between God and Moses. Moses, Moses, Moses, Moses, Moses, Moses. I would not say fought back but he resisted the call as long as he could until God became, I would say, almost angry.

And that is a lesson to us also. Let us not make God angry. There is a certain limit where we have to stop, where we better stop.

Zacharias, when the angel brought him news of John the Baptist being born, he went over that limit and God made him unable to speak.

How do you serve as a minister if you can't speak? So, he had time to think and ponder.

So, Mary is, I would say, to us the highest example. She couldn't understand. Very understandably, she could not understand. She was not married. She had not known a man.

And the angel said, You shall be with the child. How is it possible?

But when the angel said that it's God's doing, she said, Let it be so. She allowed God to decide and guide and lead. She allowed God to make decisions. She said, I am just a tool in his hand.

And finally, Moses had to accept it. He had infirmities. He, in his own eyes, he was not capable of being a leader of a big nation.

And I would say that his assessment was right. He was not able to, despite his gifts, despite all the experience of life that he had.

Now, when looking back, we see how perfect match he was for the job. Better than anybody else.

But nobody is able and capable on their own to do the work of God's kingdom, no matter what.

But with God, we have everything. And God promised, I will be with you.

And as he said, wasn't it in Jeremiah, that I will put my words into your mouth? And so he did.

And I once made a little research. I went through all ten plagues in the Bible. And I checked who spoke.

If you want to take a look, it's interesting.

The first, was it two or three, Aaron spoke. God said, Aaron will be your spokesman. And sure enough, Aaron spoke.

And the next one, both Moses and Aaron spoke.

And the following ones, only Moses spoke.

God increased the gifts even in the work.

So, Moses was not as poor a speaker as he thought he was. He was able to speak. God gave him confidence and added gifts.

Why? I would say for two reasons. Because he was obedient and because he was humble.

God has gifts and he wants his gifts to be used. But he only uses those who can both serve and believe at the same time.

I can't explain it any better.

We see it from the parable of the talents where he gave one five, the other two, and the third one.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that in our language, talent means ability to do something.

Actually, the talent was the name of amount of gold or silver, meaning money.

So, God gave different amounts of talents to different servants. And those who served gained more.

And the one who chose not to serve, he was taken away. That talent was taken away from him and given to him who had ten before, given to him who had the most.

And it speaks of Moses in one incident in his life that he was the most humble man in the world.

That's the goal.

Dear brothers and sisters, that's the wonderful perfect goal for us.

He was the most humble. That is a goal.

May God help us to be humble in our hearts, not in the words only, but in the reality.

And then, Moses asked, What is your name? Who sent me? When I go to the Israelites, who do I say sent me?

And that's, I remember, as a young man, when I first read it, I thought, this doesn't make sense.

And the more I've lived, the more I like this name.

It's a definition of God.

God said, My name is I am.

What does it mean? It means it does not say that I was or I will be. It is I am.

God is eternal. He is.

And it's so meaningful. It's so revealing and important that he gave it as his own name.

We know God has given or has been given many names. Yahweh, and the Israelites say Elohim, and so on.

There are many names to God.

But just like for Jesus, there were so many names for him.

But this name, I am, it's a definition of God. That's how God is. He is.

It also means he doesn't change. It's the same God.

And then, God said that he is the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and God of Jacob.

And this is my name forever. And this is my memorial unto all generations.

That is God.

Dear brothers and sisters, we have a living God, a true God. Not an idol. Not a statue. Not an unknown, unnamed image or the image with the name.

But we have an actual God who is here now. He's fully aware of us all.

He knew, he knew if you took a shower this morning, how many hairs you lost in the shower.

Did you think about washing your hair that if you lost a hair, God knew it?

It's pretty amazing. I just, it does not fit into my head.

God knows us so well. But that is what kind of God we have.

And he's full of love for us. He has good will to give us a kingdom.

And when we now are becoming ready to come to communion, it is a meal of remembrance.

God fears that we forget. So this meal says, Do not forget.

What do we forget? We forget what God has done for us. We forget how powerful, almighty God is.

And we only tend to look around us in this where we are.

All that we see is created by Him.

God speaks even today.

I thought when we sang the first song or hymn before the sermon where it speaks of if the nature could speak, they would praise God.

God speaks in many ways.

God speaks in the nature. God speaks in the faces of nations, in the faces of people.

God speaks in His word. And God speaks through believers.

God speaks through man and a woman and a child.

God is a living God.

Let us not forget that we are before His eyes every day.

And He is all-seeing eyes, sees our inner thoughts, our motives, and deepest thoughts. Nothing is hidden from Him.

And therefore, it is so important that we are sincerely and openly before His face.

Dear brothers and sisters, uplift your hearts and believe all sins forgiven in Jesus' name and precious atonement blood and be of good comfort.

Can I believe my sins forgiven? I want to believe together with you.

In Jesus' name, Amen.