"Is God Calling You?"

The church had financial responsibilities and Everybody was asked to help. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it. But you know who did it? Nobody. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done. Then the church grounds needed some work, and Somebody was asked to help. But Somebody got angry about that, because Anybody could have done it just as well and, after all, it was really Everybody’s job. In the end the work was given to Nobody, and Nobody did a fine job. On and on this went. Whenever work was to be done, Nobody could always be counted on. Nobody visited the sick. Nobody gave liberally. Nobody shared his faith. In short, Nobody was a very faithful member. Finally the day came when Somebody left the church and took Anybody and Everybody with him. Guess who was left. Nobody!

We may find some humor in the story of Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody, but friends I would suggest to you that such will be the experience of Christians in the local church within the next decade without the Church’s direct focus on real discipleship so as to train and raise leaders. And while leaders certainly includes identifying new pastors, I would ask us this morning to not view leadership in the church so narrowly.

When God calls you to membership in a church, he literally places you there for a purpose. To be a member of a church means that God has already saved you and you have confessed the name of the One who has saved you publicly before the church by identifying with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ through baptism. In saving you, God has not done it so that you can ride a pew until Jesus returns. Ultimately in saving you, God has purposed your life as an instrument to bring him glory, and in specifically working that out, God calls each of his redeemed children to serve others.

What compels the Christian church is the love for God that God has given to us when we were saved. We serve him because we love him. And because we love God, our hearts are joined to the very heart of God in that we love others. Reminding ourselves that the love that God gives us is described in the New Testament as a verb - that is, it’s love expressed by action, not love expressed by emotion - we most fully express our love for God and love for others by taking serious the mission that the Lord Jesus left to you and to me as redeemed children of God:

Matthew 28:19-20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

Indeed, the most loving thing we can do is find our place in support of God’s mission.

Early Points

As we press on in our Chronological readings and studies, I hope that you begin to see that God is on mission. As we read in Genesis we are given so much of the background to the fallen nature of this world yet God plants the seed of faith that takes root in the person of Abraham. This seed takes root and matures into a people, a nation, who is far removed from their lands when God raises a leader named Moses to deliver the nation of Israel from Egypt. As the story of God has unfolded before us in our readings, we know that the immediate mission is to deliver Israel Exodus 3:8 “out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” This is exactly what God told Moses at the burning bush and what is still in sight in the text before us this morning.

Where last week we saw God mobilize the nation and set them out to move towards the land of promise, now they are in the land of Moab and God has called Moses up on to the mountain range known as Abarim to lay his eyes upon that land which flows with milk and honey. And notice what God says to Moses in after calling him up to see the land off in the distance Numbers 27:13 “When you have seen it, you also shall be gathered to your people, as your brother Aaron was.” For Moses to “be gathered to” his people is a reference to his impending death. If you go back and re-read Exodus 3, you will find where God calls Moses and the call very specifically is to lead Israel out of Egypt but never does God even hint to Moses that he will lead Israel into the Promised Land.

Now, in recalling facts about Moses’ call, I offer them without any intention of undermining the fact that Moses disqualified himself from ever setting foot in the land of promise. God reminds Moses of this fact in Numbers 27:14 which recounts the events of Numbers 20 where Moses disobeyed the Lord and took glory from God when he struck the rock at Meribah.

Did you see how Moses responds to the Lord’s accusation? Look with me at Numbers 27:16-17 “16 “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation 17 who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.””

The Lord calls Joshua to fill this charge, to succeed Moses in leading the nation of Israel and Moses testifies to this before the entire congregation of the nation by making Joshua stand before them and the priest Eleazar as Moses laid his hands upon Joshua, commissioning him as the Lord directed.

With the humility of a man who has followed God and has grown in the knowledge of his sin, the actions of Moses in this text reveal to us that God’s mission is greater than any individual. In other words, what God is doing and what God will do in the course of time as we know it is God’s mission. God owns it. We, like Moses, can do no better than set our eyes with a distant gaze on what is to come and trust that God will bring it to fruition in his time.

Middle Points

What must it have taken to bring Moses to arrive at this place before the Lord and his mission? I raise this question because Moses is a complex character. I’m not sure if we make enough of Moses as a man who is driven by his passion, but I would remind us all this morning that he flees pharaoh’s court in Exodus 2 after he slays an Egyptian who was roughing up his Hebrew brethren.

Later, after Israel has been delivered from the hand of pharaoh, when Moses is at the top of Mt Sinai and is meeting with God, the nation becomes impatient and fashions for themselves an image of the god they believed liberated them and worship it. When the One True God was ready to pour out his wrath for Israel’s disobedience of the first and second commandments, it was Moses who is moved by his passion for the people of Israel to intercede for their welfare.

Then once more, in Numbers 14, after the report of the spies who were sent into the land of promise to spy out what awaits the nation in Canaan, the nation of Israel raised a cry and grumbled against Moses out of their lack of faith in the very God who delivered them from Egypt and had provided for their every need in the deserts of the east. The Lord, who was aware of the people’s despising him, is ready to strike Israel with pestilence and disinherit them. God is ready to erase Israel and start with another group of people and yet moved with passion for the people once more, Moses intercedes on behalf of Israel.

Yet here in this text, Moses offers no intercession. I find this to be particularly challenging considering what the Bible reveals to us about the person of Moses in light of what we see occuring in the Christian church today that is so ready to make gods out of mere men.

Imagine for a moment if you were Moses, looking out from that mountain top at the place you have been leading people to. It’s been your destination for as long as you can seem to remember. You have bled for it. Sweat and tears have been a part of your every day. How easy would it be to tell yourself that arriving at this destination is the reward that God has held in store for your years of faithful ministry?

Now, I want to make sure we’re framing this within the context of ministries within the church.

For example, as a children’s ministry leader, maybe what started as a God-given desire to introduce young hearts and minds to the basics of the gospel has drifted. The thrill of leading a child to Christ years ago has you less interested in one-to-one relationships and more focused on developing and promoting a vacation bible school with the goal of not just being the best-attended in town, but the best-attended in the county because you’ve never heard anyone speak of such a successful VBS in the history of the church.

Maybe you were introduced to youth ministry by serving as a sponsor for a summer camp where you joined the students in the oft-occurring emotional manipulation borne from high energy music and preaching to exhausted minds that you’re now convinced that you are among a select few who know best for the welfare of teenagers, acting to safe guard them and the ministry while serving as the trusted well from which teens can draw from year after year at some of the most awkward and sensitive years in their lives.

Maybe you are convinced that you have arrived at the destination of your ministry in holding down your pew or viewing regularly from Bedside Baptist on Sunday mornings. The Jesus you serve is the cheap one you that were sold where you prayed a prayer at one point or another, but being generous with your time or your skills or your resources is not among the fruit of the spirit that you have received. Rather, you are content to give of yourself the least you can because you’re already on the membership rolls and, what more can someone really want of you? With every sermon or every invitation to join in on kingdom work, you filter on a basic question: What’s in it for me?

It’s easier than you would think to convince yourself of things like this when in ministry, by the way. As Paul Tripp wisely notes, no one is more influential in your life than you are, because no one talks to you more than you do.

You may not realize it, but we are engaged in an unending conversation with ourselves and it’s not beyond the realm of comprehension to remind ourselves of where we believe God has met us personally and preach to ourselves a gospel that is rooted in our personal sense of righteousness, to preach to ourselves a gospel that ascribes to ourselves some great ability and power, or to preach to ourselves a gospel that convinces us that between our ears is all the wisdom needed for our place of ministry.

Here’s the dangerous thing as we look out upon the beauty of the destination that we have only imagined…it’s that we will forget the One who has done all the work to bring us to that point and to be quick to exchange the glory of God for something less, namely…ourselves…as we wrap up our identities in our ministry rather than God himself. The ministry…be it the children or youth…or the family that we use an excuse about why we cannot commit to service in the church…they all become idols unto themselves and we are convinced that they cannot carry on without us there.

And the consequence here is terrifying for when we become so wrapped up in ourselves and exchange the glory of God for other things, the ministries we have passions for are no longer places where God’s mission is carried out. Discipleship does not take place. Training up a new generation of leaders is absent. There is no Joshua because the destination is ours to seize, not God’s to deliver.

Late Points

This selfless compassion and love for others in support of the mission of God is what the Christian is called to. The demand for each Christian is to fully abandon ourselves, trusting in God for our salvation and for his shepherding.

We see a foreshadow here in Moses’ prayer where he petitions the Almighty to provide a new leader who will lead by example for the benefit of the congregation and so Numbers 27:17 “that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.”

Though the immediate answer to the prayer is God’s recognition of Joshua, the prayer is ultimately answered in Jesus Christ. As the Lord Jesus walked the earth in his Incarnation, he was teaching his disciples about the gospel and kingdom work. Jesus was training a new generation of leaders in the knowledge that the cross was still before him and that after he was to resurrect, he was to ascend to join the Father. Jesus knew that though his time of physically walking the earth would be limited, the physical representation of gospel and the advancement of his kingdom would continue on well past his ascension and laborers who are faithful to God’s mission would be needed to reach the lost. That’s what Jesus was teaching when we read in

Matthew 9:35-38 “Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then [Jesus] said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.””

From what I just read, we can conclude at least two things: first that the church needs laborers because the harvest is plenty and second, that the sheep need a shepherd. Friends, Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd. He is the one that Moses prayed for and he is the one that every single person in this room is searching for. The Bible says that God has put eternity in the hearts of every man and woman, and in searching for a hope that goes beyond death, it is Jesus alone across the expanse of all human history who can make this claim: John 10:10 “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Jesus laid down his life to atone for our debt before a holy God. That debt is something each of us owe and it is a debt of sin. We each have sinned, friends. God cannot tolerate sin and our sin must be paid for. In every sense, no matter how insignificant you believe your sin to be, each sin we have committed amounts to declaring ourselves to know better than God and to disregard him. Do you know what God said to Moses at Meribah for striking the stone that disqualified him from entering the Promised Land? He told Moses that he would be punished in such a manner, not for his disobedience, but his unbelief. And it is in the wonder of the gospel that God the Father would strike God the Son so that in his death, God would himself die so that each who trust upon Jesus Christ unto salvation can be shepherded into the resurrected life.

Application

Oh, this means so much when it comes to how we Christians are to view serving others.

If you have ever flown on a commercial airplane, you’ll remember that there are pre-flight instructions that the stewardess gives to every passenger. Among those instructions is to make every passenger aware that the plane can lose cabin pressure at any time and if that happens, oxygen masks will drop down from overhead. The stewardess will tell you that you should be aware of those who are around you, taking note of those who may need your help in getting their own mask on like the elderly or children. But the instructions are very clear, before you render aid to anyone else, you put your own mask on first.

Worldly wisdom would say that makes sense, but in the gospel, when we work out loving God and loving others in the course of making disciples, because of what Jesus has done in the cross in sacrificing himself, worldly wisdom is turned upside down. As we live the resurrected life, because Jesus Christ has saved us and made us new men and new women, if those masks drop in the course of serving others, keeping God’s mission first and bearing witness to Jesus means we help others get their masks on before we ever even think about putting our own on.

This message is entitled “Is God Calling You?” because of the theme of call that is in the text before us as we see leadership transition from Moses to Joshua, but let me bring us back to that broader sense of service to Christ and call that I asked us to consider earlier.

To answer the question, yes.

Yes, God is calling you to place your trust in him for salvation and publicly confess him as Lord. It is only lies of the devil that would have you believe that God cannot forgive you and that God cannot love you. Rebuke the devil and repent of your sin, today.

Yes, the call to salvation is also a call to serve. It is only lies of the devil that would keep you on the sideline. Rebuke the devil and get in the game.

Yes, God equips you to serve by endowing you with at least one gift by the power of his Holy Spirit. It is only lies of the devil that would have you believe that you cannot be useful to God. Rebuke the devil and glorify your Savior.

Yes, God calls you to join a church in membership to support the mission that God has given to the Church specifically. It is the devil who would tell you to avoid joining and remain apart from the body of Christ.

Yes, God expects that you remember that the mission and the ministry is his. It is only lies of the devil that would invite you to look upon the kingdoms of the world and their glory and believe that they can be yours. Rebuke the devil and remember what has been written, Matthew 4:10 “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ”

I hope we each took to heart last week’s message. If you weren’t here, go back and watch it because we are on a journey as a church and we take seriously our sense of mission as a church that support’s Christ’s mission for creation. We have many opportunities for service here and needs for genuine discipleship. I pray that you have not dismissed the Spring Training event that is coming up on Saturday, March 26th. That event is for everyone in this church, no matter of your place of service or lack thereof. We will have three different tracks of offerings running simultaneously that will further equip or introduce you to matters of teaching the Word of God, offering spiritual care, and principles of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Breakfast and lunch will be provided and your children will be cared for. Abandon the sentiment of what’s in it for me? and stop searching for the least that you can offer to the One who gave his all for you.

If you are a disciple of Jesus Christ today, be grateful that everybody didn’t assume that somebody would share the gospel with you, which we all know is something anybody could have done, but unless somebody had taken the interest in you, compelled by the love that God has for them, then nobody would have introduced you to Jesus.

The question to be answered now is whether you’re part of the everybody in the church who knows anybody can join in Christ’s mission to make disciples, but expects somebody else to take it seriously. Or has God in his Spirit testified to you through his Word that in saving you, he has called you to support his mission?

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