Howdy. You know we've been starting to have more
of the sermon slides for about two years now
and when I first started putting them up one
of the times we did it I was showing a math example
up there on the screen and a few teachers were
like oh hey that's awesome and everybody else
said please don't teach us math. I think I scarred
a few people. It was a rough day. But just in
case I'm not bothersome enough already with that,
I also taught physics. So one of the hardest
things for the students to grasp whenever we
were learning physics was the nature of light.
See, the thing is that light, it gives us energy
in these little packets. They call them photons.
Pew, pew, pew, pew. and one bit at a time, pew
pew. It's not this smooth, continuous flow, and
that's what light sounds like too, pew pew pew
pew. But you have to realize is that light, though,
it's not just a little particle. It also behaves
like a wave. Because if it were just a particle,
you would never be able to see it around a corner.
It would never be able to reach all these other
places where you turn on the light and it somehow
Manages to creep into every dark corner You see
that's when their faces got a look just like
about half of yours right now Okay, that mix
of confusion and just a little bit of quiet rebellion,
you know It's it's as if to say that doesn't
make any sense. Just tell me what to put on the
test And they were right in a way It doesn't
make sense, not by the categories that we're
used to, but it's still true. It works. Light
just works. It's a particle and a wave, not one
or the other, somehow both. But I remember realizing
something at that moment. When something doesn't
make sense, many people don't say, if it's true,
I'll try to understand it. Instead, they say,
if I don't understand it, then maybe it's not
true. I saw this again whenever I gave them an
assignment on Einstein's theory of relativity,
which apparently was in the actual curriculum,
and the idea that time and space change depending
on how fast you're going and the weight of gravity.
And I told them, well, this has been proven to
be true, What do you think? And most of them,
even though they knew it had been proven to be
true, said, well, I just don't believe it. Not
because there wasn't evidence, but because it
didn't make sense to them. And I think it's something
that we never quite outgrow. We're more comfortable
deciding whether something feels right than asking
whether it is right. When something about God
doesn't make sense to us, when he doesn't act
the way that we expect, or when his plan doesn't
fit our categories, our first instinct is not
always to trust him. It's often to question whether
God's grace and his love and his very presence
are even real. how often things are not going
the way we're expecting, and we wonder if that
means that God has somehow forgotten us. But
God, even more so than light, doesn't fit inside
the boxes that we make for him. He's not controlled
or contained by our understanding. He just is.
He acts. He moves. He reveals himself. And just
because we can't fully explain him doesn't mean
he isn't there. It just means he's greater than
what our minds can hold. And that's the tension
that Moses encounters in Exodus 3. And he's not
searching for a miracle right now. He's just
living life. He's just doing his job. He's tending
sheep. He's living his life. He's raising a family.
The 401k is doing well. The pension has already
been achieved. He's doing great with the deductible
on his insurance. And fortunately, the kids,
the college fund, it's pretty well settled. Things
are good. The excitement of Egypt is long behind
him. Whatever dreams he once had of making a
difference, they're buried under the routines
of survival the day to day. And that's when God
decides to speak to him. Out of nowhere in the
middle of an ordinary day, the divine breaks
in. Somewhere between the Wheaties of the morning
and reading the daily paper, God decides. to
show himself to Moses. And it's important to
remember, though, that Moses never really fit
in anywhere. He didn't fit in in Egypt because
he was a Hebrew, the ones who were oppressed.
But he also didn't fit in among the Hebrews because
he grew up in Pharaoh's palace, privileged, taken
care of. But after all of that, though, after
he killed the Egyptian who was abusing the Hebrews,
He didn't fit in anywhere at all, because now
he had a criminal record, a man living with his
regrets and feeling that there was no place for
him in society. Yet that is the man God calls.
Not when Moses has his life together, but when
he's simply tending someone else's flock in the
wilderness. So when Moses hears God's voice,
he's understandably hesitant. He wants to know
how this could possibly work. Why would anyone
listen to him? What if they don't believe me?
What if they ask who sent me? He's not just asking
for a name. He's asking for reassurance, for
something solid to stand on. And what God gives
him isn't a formula or a strategy. or one of
those really quick phrases that you can come
up with and just chant well. It's his name. He
gives him his name. I am who I am. It's a name
that means both presence and promise. It's as
if God is saying, I will be who I will be. I
will do what I will do. My being is not dependent
on your understanding or your comfort. For a
man who had never quite belonged, that's an invitation
into something that's larger than just belonging.
It's about participating in the living purpose
of God Himself. But you've got to remember, Moses,
he probably didn't know the traditions or the
stories, Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, the way that
the other Hebrews did, because they had spent
all that time listening and learning. from the
elders. So when God tells him, I am the God of
your fathers, he's not just giving Moses words
that he's going to say, he's actually giving
him a connection to a history that he never truly
felt part of. He's being drawn back into the
story of his own people through the revelation
of God. But here's the turning point. Even after
seeing the burning bush, even after hearing the
voice, even after realizing he's not actually
crazy with either one of them, he still has to
decide whether or not to trust it. The people
are going to have to do the same as well. Just
like those students who had to decide whether
to believe once what I taught them went beyond
what made sense, Moses had to decide whether
to trust God beyond what felt comfortable to
him. Because in the end, faith is not just about
what we can actually explain because we learned
it in confirmation class. It's about who we trust
when the truth is bigger than what we grasp.
But that same theme continues in Luke 20, when
the Sadducees come to Jesus not with an honest
question, but with a test. Whenever somebody
comes up to me, and says, hey, I want to ask
you a question. I'm not going to lie. I'm always
nervous when I hear that. You know those times
whenever somebody says that they're trying to
just ask you an honest question, or have an open
debate, or let's just kind of put everything
on the table, and you always wonder, yeah, but
I think you're trying to trick me. Because how
often is it that people want to get into difficult
questions when they don't already have it in
the back of their mind about how to make you
look stupid? But you see, the sadducees, the
reason why they were sad, you see, is because
they didn't believe in the resurrection. They
come up with an example that's meant to sound
absurd, okay? Instead of telling the story of
seven brides for seven brothers, they have the
one bride for seven brothers. They tell a story
about a woman who marries seven brothers one
after another because each of them dies without
leaving a child For the kids it was a movie seven
brides for seven brothers. It's it's somewhere
on streaming go find it. It'll be great But Jesus
they ask in the resurrection whose wife will
she be? And I got to make sure I point out to
you, it's important to realize their question
is not actually about marriage. That's not the
reason they came to talk to him. It's about control.
They're trying to control the conversation to
expose what they think is ridiculous about the
resurrection. The details about marriage and
inheritance, those are just props for an argument
that they're starting. And Jesus says that in
the resurrection, people neither marry nor are
given in marriage. We need to be careful. This
is not about Jesus dismissing marriage or saying
that relationships won't matter. If you're kind
of thinking, hey, I kind of like my spouse. I
think it would be nice to spend time with them
in heaven. It's okay. You can do that. He's not
talking about that. That was not the point. He's
talking about how the systems of this world,
the legal, the social, even the religious ones,
they don't carry the same meaning in the age
that is to come. Marrying, which in this context
was talking about the man's initiative, and then
being given in marriage, which at that time was
a woman's legal status, These were both parts
of a world that were defined by property, inheritance,
death. What happens to what you have whenever
you pass away? It was asking questions about
the legal ramifications. But in the resurrection,
the old structures, they just don't apply. Because
death itself no longer defines what's even possible.
But what's fascinating, though, is that even
within the story of the Sadducees, Their logic
fell apart. I mean, even before going into it,
anyone who knew that, I mean, technically, the
first one was her husband, because all the other
ones, when they married her, were giving her
children, or supposed to, to pass on the first
husband's inheritance. But notice, Jesus is intelligent,
but He doesn't bother untangling the details.
He doesn't care. He moves straight to the heart
of the matter that they actually were focused
on. He is not the God of the dead. He is the
God of the living. Jesus doesn't just say it
though. He proves it. His own resurrection doesn't
just blow a hole in the Sadducees logic. It blows
open the limits of what we even thought was possible.
The resurrection is not just rebutting somebody's
theological argument. It's the evidence that
God is not bound by death. He's not bound by
time. He's not bound by our categories of what
makes sense. The Sadducees wanted to keep faith
neatly divided. This life or the next. What we
can see or what we can't. Human power or divine
promise. And we should just focus on the here
and now and stop bothering us with this crazy
resurrection talk. But in Jesus, the false boundaries,
they collapse. The resurrection reveals God is
not setting up a choice between caring for this
world or caring for the next. It's about redeeming
both. Life now and life eternal. They don't compete.
It's one continuous story held together by a
living God and a God of the living. When Jesus
rose from the grave, He didn't just conquer death.
He connected heaven and earth. He showed that
God's power, it's not waiting until the end of
time. It begins now in every act of trust, every
step of faith, every moment that we dare to believe
that what's possible for us is still possible
with Him. The issue here is not marriage, it's
mindset. The Sadducees cannot imagine a world
that operates beyond their categories of life
and death, marriage and inheritance, control
and power. So if they can't control it, they
mock it. And they ridicule what they don't understand.
They reject what they cannot explain. And we
do the same thing all the time. We create our
own little Sadducee scenarios. We come up with
extreme examples. that we put out there as straw
people and ridiculous comparisons to try to make
our point and to show we're comfortable, we're
justified in it, and anybody else trying to push
us, don't bother me, you're ridiculous. I can't
talk about this with my spouse because if I do,
it'll be the end of the world. I can't tell my
child no or put rules on them because they're
going to think I don't love them and throw a
fit. I can't welcome these type of people into
my life because someone might think I approve
of everything they've done. We frame our choices
in these little false dichotomies of either this
or this. All or nothing, right or ruin. But when
we do that, we're doing exactly what the Sadducees
did. We're trying to trap truth inside these
boundaries of our own comfort. Because the resurrection
like the burning bush, it's It's God's declaration
that we cannot be trapped. God will be who He
will be. He's going to work in His own way and
in His own time. And our part is not to try to
reduce the mystery into something safe or sensible.
We're just supposed to trust God with whatever
the next faithful step is. Even when we don't
yet see the whole picture. Because when we do,
If we're following God in faith when we don't
see the whole picture, then we discover that
God's reality is larger, richer, more alive than
anything we could have imagined. Because if we
could imagine it, then it's not nearly as good
as it could be. What do we do with all this though?
Because honestly, we're not that different from
Moses or the Sadducees. We feel inadequate, uncertain.
sometimes even unqualified for what God calls
us to do, like Moses. We look around and we think,
who am I? Who am I to speak? Who am I to lead?
Who am I to believe that God could use me? And
God is looking and saying, I will be who I will
be. It's not whether you're going to be enough.
It's that I will be. And God's promise is that
it's not that you have it all figured out. It's
that He'll be with you even when you don't. So
like the Sadducees, we often, we let our discomfort
masquerade as logic. When something doesn't fit
our ideas, we call it unrealistic and unreasonable.
And when God's ways don't fit our expectations,
we treat them as if they cannot be true. But
faith isn't about explaining mystery. It's about
walking within it. You see, when we stop chasing
the comfort of tidy answers, when we stop saying,
it's got to be this because I don't think the
other things make sense to me, something begins
to shift in us. We start to notice that how much
of our decision -making, how much of it's been
shaped by what felt convenient instead of what
felt faithful. Instead of saying, This is what's
in front of me. When do we start saying I'm gonna
wait for God to show me what he wants? You see
we begin to see how easily that we've been settling
for what other people told us was reasonable
Instead of asking for what God was actually saying
Sometimes waiting on God means stepping back
from the quick fixes or the easy answers The
ready -made plans that promise certainty but
drain our faith It might mean refusing to rush
into the next opportunity just because it looks
secure. It might mean pausing before you send
that message, before you sign that paper, before
you take that job, and instead asking, God, where
are you in this? And if you're not, show me not
to do it. Waiting on God doesn't mean doing nothing.
It means doing the slow, deliberate work of listening.
The kind of listening that makes room for God's
timing instead of forcing our own. It means listening
to sit in the tension between promise and fulfillment
without trying to fill the silence ourselves.
And often that's where God begins to move. He's
in the waiting. He reshapes what we desire. He
changes us. He teaches us to trust Him. not only
for the outcomes that we want, but for the direction
He leads. He exposes where we've been relying
on approval, control, comparison, and He replaces
those things with something far stronger, His
presence. Because when you stop taking what the
world offers as good enough, you make space for
what is truly good, the presence of the I Am.
who does not need your timeline or your plan
to keep his promises. And in that stillness,
when you stop trying to force God into your categories
and instead wait on him to reveal himself, you
begin to see glimpses of his nature. Mysterious,
steady, radiant, like light itself. And think
about light. It's not a wave, it's not a particle.
But the moment you try to force it into a box,
you miss out on what it really is. If we can
stop forcing God into what makes sense to us,
then maybe we can see who He really is. So God
is not what we may find easy. But God doesn't
need to be simple in order to be good. He doesn't
need to fit into our plans in order to be faithful.
He simply is. So the invitation is this, trust
the I AM more than your I understand. Let go
of the need to have it all make sense before
you say yes. Let God reveal in His own way and
time what you cannot yet see. Because when you
do, you'll start to notice something. The bush
still burns today. The voice still calls today.
And the resurrection still happens when each
and every person believes in Christ Jesus. And
when it does, that is when life, real life begins
again. Thanks be to God.