God Calls                                                                                           5/15/49

 

Scripture:  Exodus 3: 1-12

 

Text:  Exodus 3: 4;  “God called unto him out of the midst of the bush ---- He said, ‘here am I.’”

 

One of the most substantial characters in human experience is Moses.  His life is one of dramatic intensity, though not always sensational.  In today’s discussion, we are not particularly concerned with his childhood, nor with his rearing in a land of cruel taskmasters and miserable slaves, but rather with a little of his life as a mature man.  The story of Moses’ awakening opens with Moses peacefully tending the sheep which belonged to his father-in-law.  As he went about the day’s duties, he had an unusual experience.  It seems that the voice of God called to him as he looked at a little burning bush.

 

“God called unto him out of the midst of the bush --- and he said, ‘Here am I’” and listened.  Part of the conversation went like this: God, speaking to the man in the lonely quiet of the desert, said, “The cry of the children of Israel is come unto me ---- come now, and I will send thee, thatt thou mayest bring them forth out of Egypt.”  Moses answered at once.  He was startled, as any man might be.  “Who am I that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

 

After all, it was no pleasant assignment.  Himself a Hebrew, he had in infancy been found, adopted, and reared in the royal household of Egypt.  As an impetuous young man he had lost his temper one day at the beating of a Hebrew slave by an Egyptian task master, slew the Egyptian, hid the body and then fled for his life to a neighboring country.  There he had lived in peace and security; he had married and prospered.  Why should he go back to the land of despotism and misery, of cruelty and hatred, to carry out a major revolution?  No wonder he was startled!  But that is the way God’s call came to Moses - startling, sudden, dramatic, insistent.

 

There have been a few persons in every age whom God has awakened, changed and directed in such personal fashion.  John Wesley was one.  Spiritually floundering as a priest of the Anglican church, determined about his duties, and yet profoundly dissatisfied, he one day had his heart strangely, and satisfyingly, warmed.  He set about a career of ministry to those neglected folk who needed the Gospel and the friendship and help of someone who cared.  His efforts resulted in a great revival of religious devotion that has not yet entirely spent itself.

 

Martin Luther was another.  Luther’s father was a manufacturer, prepared to give Martin an education in the law.  Several events shocked the young man into a different choice.  An intimate friend of his was killed in a duel.  He himself twice escaped death by a narrow margin - once by severe illness, then by lightening which struck the earth with terrific force only a few feet from him.  The shock of these events set his mind at study until he came to some bed-rock convictions about the nature of living.  He entered the priesthood.  When the storm of Reformation thinking broke over him, there came a day when he stood in hostile hearing and said, “Here I stand.  God helping me I can do no other.”  That stand helped to bring about the reformation, both from without and from within, of a church which had grown corrupt.

 

There are moments when God enters the affairs of some with suddenness, and He changes lives to serve some purpose of His own.  It is as though God placed a finger on a man here, or a man there, and said, “I want you at a place where your growth and service will be more effective.”  Something of this sort happened to Moses.

 

For most of us, God calls in no such dramatic setting.  As young men and women, we go to school, prepare for a vocation in some specific skill, for homemaking and a career.  Presently we take up our duties at desk or shop without - so far as we can tell - an “Aye” or a “Nay” from any unusual voice.  We are perhaps prone, therefore, to divide those who are supposedly called of God from those who seem not to be so called.  Of course we are wrong in this assumption.  If God spoke to Moses out of the fire, he also spoke to Jeremiah in a whisper, as it were.  He is present in nature and in human events.  God is present in the majestic crash of thunder.  He is also present in the quiet glory of the sunrise.

 

Do you remember when you first located the North Star in the sky at night and realized that mariners have for ages guided their ships by watching that star which seems to be a fixed point in the heavens?  The North Star has not moved one ship’s rudder to right or left.  But it is there, silent, luminous, brilliant for you to watch.  You depend upon it in your calculations as to where you are and which way you are going. 

 

Perhaps most of us must take the initiative in looking for God’s will.  If He does not call in a whirlwind, He calls in a whisper.  But for every one of us, there is His calling.  See what this story of Moses has to say to every man.

 

1)  For one thing, it says that the standards of God and the standards of man may, and often do, differ.  Moses’ own standards changed sharply upon heeding the call of God.  When he put his will completely at the disposal of God it was as though God’s wisdom became his wisdom.  What would earlier have been quite impossible with Moses, now became possible -- that he should introduce a bedraggled crew of slaves to freedom and lead them in it -- the freedom of personal responsibility.

 

Artists picture Moses as a man of massive shoulders and large body, at work on a task that would have broken a weaker man.  The Hebrews were difficult to lead.  They had long ago forgotten how to take care of themselves.  They blamed Moses for their troubles with greater ease than some of us bleat against the government for ours.  They certainly favored a government that would do everything for them.

 

Yet for forty years, Moses kept telling them that they were free men, responsible for themselves.  “You are not murmuring against me,” he told them.  “You are murmuring against God.”  [Exodus 16: 8].  They couldn’t see it.  When he went off to the mountain to get his spiritual bearings, they slipped off their gold ear rings and brought their gold vessels and melted them into a golden calf which they might worship.  At least this deity which they had created might see to it that they had food, they thought.  Moses came down from the  mountain with God’s Ten Commandments -- each addressed to the individual person.  “You must have no other gods.”  “You must not steal, murder, commit adultery.”  “You must honor the wisdom and experience of your parents.”  “You must remember God in the holiness of the Sabbath day.”  Each commandment asserted again that a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, must exercise self-control, must be responsible for his own words, his own deeds, his own welfare.

 

Generations later, Jesus was to add that “you must love your neighbor,” [Mark 12: 31]  stand ready to help him in his self-control.

 

Still, in the main, the Hebrews couldn’t see it.  Even after they had completed 40 years of wilderness wandering and had entered the promised land, they continued to grasp for a “benevolent despot” - a ruler who would tell them what to do.  Samuel was the last strong man to hold out against it.  At last, in bitter remorse, he gave in and let them choose a king.  And their history became a pathetic, bloody, sorry thing.  God’s wisdom was a mystery to most of them.  Their standards were the standards of self-concerned men, different from the standards of God.

 

Each man as he follows his vocation must be prepared to accept this difference in standards as he heeds the calling of God.  There is a calling to every one of us to accept God’s standards.

 

2)  There is another lesson for us in this story of Moses.  We know that Moses responded to the call.  But how did he manage to overcome his reluctance?   How does anyone respond to such a demand as God oft times places upon him?

 

A.  One quality that helps is imagination.  Moses was miles out in a desert, away from peoples’ arrogance and stupidity and suffering.  But he had a good imagination as to their need and desperation.  He heard God say, “The cry of the children of Israel has come unto me.”  It wasn’t the impact of sound waves on his ear drum.  It was the cry of imagination, heard by a man who was informed on the need.  Imagination makes us aware of human needs.  It shows us those needs against the background of God’s purpose.  And seeing those needs we hear God’s call --- like the Quakers’ development of a “concern.”

 

We haven’t too much intellect.  We are not as intellectual as we usually think we are.  Much of our “knowledge” is the analytical kind that can pick a watch to pieces but lacks imagination to put a watch together.  We cry out about the evils of a social or economic system and pick it to pieces.  We have an abundance of theory about what kind of economy will rid the world of its grossest evils.  Some of it is important.

 

But our troubles are not so much with systems as with human hearts that use, abuse, manipulate the systems.  Economic paternalism can be benevolent, as it has sometimes been.  Or it can be wickedly selfish and despotic as it has often been.  Socialism and communal possession might be, in the hands at least of a small Christian community, a mutual blessing for all.  Or, seized and used by ambitious, ruthless men of power, it can become a sickening despotism such as we have been seeing to our bitter sorrow.

 

Our gross troubles are with the heart, the intent, the heedless selfishness of stubborn individuals --- most of us individuals!  No system will ever relieve us of personal responsibility to learn, and practice the precepts and will of God for us in our particular calling.

 

B.  Of course imagination is not enough.  We need to have our will power to do the right reinforced.  Moses not only had the imagination to heed a call, but the will to stick to his calling.  I suspect that the average American particularly needs more long term, long remembering, persistent, unfailing will power.  We easily become satisfied, forgetful, neglectful.  The struggle with evil is a long term fight.  The struggle for right is a never ending effort.  Our chief deficiency is the kind of will power that will stick to a good course through thick and thin for a lifetime.  If, for instance, the members of the church of Jesus Christ were fired with a more enduring determination, there would be less dependence on variety of program to spice up the activities and “keep us coming” as it were.

 

The word “duty” is in grave danger of being dropped from our speech.  I once heard a man speak slightingly of it - a man who had a complete theological seminary training and degree, but who had no thought of being ordained or of undertaking a pastorate or even of encouraging his family in any responsibility for their church.  He was a nice fellow, and personally kind to me.  But the world will go to the devil for all he can, or will do to make it better by the grace that waits to work in us.  We need a strengthening of our wills which is the “work of God’s spirit” in hearts receptive to Him.

 

Several years ago an important meeting was held in the Cleveland Municipal Auditorium.  It was the first plenary session of the second national conference of the United States National Commission for UNESCO.  The general theme was “Paths to Freedom and Security.”  It was definitely what is called a “secular” meeting.  Two speakers had had their say.  Both were good.  But they said nothing to get excited about.

 

Then the chairman presented the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education of the United Kingdom -- Sir John Maud.  Sir John, a tall sandy-haired Englishman stepped briskly to the microphone.  In a matter of seconds the audience awoke to his infectious smile and radiant personality.  They perceived a keen mind behind smile and personality.  Sir John made clear his own belief in the achievements of UNESCO, and the promise it holds, as an effective organization for contributing to the peace of the world.  But nothing unusual was said by him up to that point.  Then, with disarming frankness, asking his hearers for their indulgence, he spoke very personally (I think I have formerly called it to your attention.)  Let me read to you some of what he said:

 

“You will forgive me for being personal here.  I share our common faith in the possibility of human fellowship.  But my personal faith is in something much more particular than that.  I believe that the world, and all of us, were made by God.  That Jesus Christ lived and spoke the truth to us.  That it’s possible to live in fellowship because we are sons of one Father, and because His nature, and ours, is to love.  And I believe that we can learn to live in fellowship because the power of the Spirit is here to work in us if we choose.

 

“I don’t, of course, for one moment suggest that UNESCO should adopt any such faith -- Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan, Hindu, Confucian, or Marxist.  I do suggest that if UNESCO is to crown its present achievements and fulfill its promise, it must make increasing drafts upon the spiritual resources of men of all religions.  That is necessary to sustain us through the frustration and disillusionment that any man of good will must expect today.  It is also necessary, if we in UNESCO are to help the world where the world most needs help: to resolve the spiritual crisis of our times; to release creative energies, and give men reasonable hope of life in fellowship.”

 

Here is a layman with a sense of calling!  A man, competent in his chosen field, bears witness to his Christian vocation.  It is not a full statement of his religious faith.  But it is enough so that about 2,000 delegates quickly caught the spirit of Sir John’s address, and when he was finished gave him a real ovation.  Later they crowded abut him with their well-wishing at a social reception.  Later still, at the closing plenary session, Sir John again voiced his own deep Christian conviction.

 

There are thousands of Christian laymen and laywomen who, just as effective as clergymen, are serving in their vocations, with a devotion and faithfulness similar to that of Sir John Maud.  In this muddling time of history, we need more - many more - who are not afraid to recognize the calling of God, to confess their faith and put it to service right where they live and work.

 

Perhaps God is calling, out of some bush, to you at this crucial moment!  Perhaps the Holy Spirit speaks to you, to me.

 

------------------

 

Dates and Places delivered:

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, May 15, 1949.

            Wisconsin Rapids, June 5, 1955.

            Wisconsin Rapids, April 30, 1961.