God’s Presence Redeems the Waiting Room

Why does God make us wait?

Whether you're waiting for healing, direction, a relationship, or God to answer your prayers, waiting can feel frustrating and even confusing. But throughout Scripture, we see that God never wastes a waiting season.

In this message from Acts 7, Pastor Matt Shackelford continues the Dwell series by examining the life of Moses. Before God used Moses to deliver Israel, He first prepared him through years of waiting in the wilderness. The same God who worked in Moses' waiting room is still at work in ours.

You'll discover:

•  Why God often works while we wait 
•  What Moses' life teaches us about trusting God's timing 
•  How waiting prepares us for God's purposes 
•  Why God's presence matters more than immediate answers 
•  How Jesus meets us in seasons of uncertainty 
•  What it means to trust God when life feels delayed 

Your waiting season isn't a detour. It may be the very place where God is preparing you for what's next.

Scripture: Acts 7:17–43

Series: Dwell

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Transcript

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Let's take our Bibles. Let's open to Acts chapter 6. Acts chapter 6. As you're turning there, I've spent a lot of time in waiting rooms. It's probably an occupational hazard. I've I've been in a lot of waiting rooms. I've been by a lot of bedsides. That's pretty normal for my life. In fact, if you see me in the hospital, that's not necessarily a good thing. It means something's gone terribly wrong. This was my son Caleb. My son Caleb had to go to a waiting room, had to go to the doctor. That was his arm when he was just a little guy. He fell out of a tree. And uh that's a hard picture to look at. Amen? It's like, ugh. I bet that really hurts. And it hurts for the person that's in the waiting room, but it especially hurts for the person that's that's going through it. The person who's having to wait on pain relief. In fact, I love the difference between a major surgery and a minor surgery. Have you heard this before? The difference between a major surgery and a minor surgery, uh, it becomes major when it's happening to you. Amen. Uh it's a major surgery. It's especially hard when you're the one in the waiting. It's especially hard when it happens to you. And I I hate the waiting room. It's filled with this desire to escape. And honestly, when I'm in the waiting room, I don't know what to do. Now, here's the truth. You and I will go through countless waiting rooms in this life. Not just physical, normal waiting rooms, I mean even metaphorical waiting rooms. You and I will be found in that season of loss and betrayal or disappointment, disappointment with life, disappointment with your own decisions, disappointment with your career path. You may be that guy in your 40s saying, I wish I chose a different path in life. Oh, to go back and be in my 20s again and start over. You see, there's all sorts of disappointments in life, and it might even be with a relationship. There's this unresolved, awkward situation that you have right now, and it's a waiting room for you. You don't know how to resolve it. And the problem with those waiting rooms of life, we all have them. The problem is we tend to miss God's work in the waiting room, through the waiting room. Sometimes the goal is, in our mind, to get out of the waiting room, but God has us there to learn something, to teach us something, and we miss his forming work. That's the problem. It's though we want to escape the waiting room, God has a work for us in the waiting room. I'll never forget when my son broke his arm. And it put that picture back up one more time, Jennifer. Uh, whenever this was the reality of his arm, I'll never forget the doctor said, You may want to sit down for this. When we bend this thing back, you're gonna hear some popping and noise. And I said, I can take it, Doc. And uh, sure enough, I did sit down uh because of just how it turned my stomach. Uh, it was a pretty nasty thing. Um, there's a work though, there's a mending work in the waiting room. And God does that in each of our lives. God ends up resolving things, and we learn to appreciate his work in the waiting room. We tend to miss out on what God is doing. Today we're back in our series I have entitled Dwell. If you're just joining us, we want to welcome you to Central Church. I think I met like 12 families last Sunday that are visiting. I think we have 60 something, maybe even close to 70 people in the membership process right now. And we're so excited about all the new folks that are coming and being a part of the work here at Central. Our habit at Central Church is to work through passages of the Bible. We just, we think it takes a whole Bible to get a whole Christian. And so we tend to work through passages of the Word of God. We're in the book of Acts. In fact, we're right in the heart of Acts chapter 7. And really, let me give you some context. Stephen is correcting these Jews who have just killed Jesus, and now Stephen is experiencing persecution from them. Same crowd, same Sanhedrin that put Jesus to death, and they're in a very difficult situation. Stephen's in his own waiting room. And in this situation, Stephen is explaining something about the presence of God. You see, they're all about the temple and the temple mount and the Ark of the Covenant and holy places and boxes that that contain the presence of God. And Stephen is saying the presence of God cannot be contained. It's not contained in a box, it's not contained in a building. It's in fact it reaches to Mesopotamia. Last week we saw it reaches to Egypt. It reaches to the pits of life, the difficulties of life, the troubles of life. God is in those places. And Moses is today, we're going to look at Moses in the presence of God. And really what we're going to discover is that God's presence, it redeems our waiting room. God's presence is active in the waiting room. And Moses is a great example of that. I love Moses as a leader. He's imperfect. In fact, he will try to act too early. He will try to deliver Israel too early. He'll try to do it in his own power rather than the power of God. In fact, he will commit murder. He will actually slay an Egyptian, and he will try in his own power with his own timing, and he is rejected by God's people. It will say in this passage, they did not understand. And God sends him into exile, but what we discover is that the waiting rooms are not wasted. In fact, you need to hear that this morning. And whatever you're waiting on, it's not a waste. God is going to use it. God is going to grow you through it. So today I want to talk about what to do when you're in that waiting season. Maybe you're waiting on an answer, maybe you're waiting on a relationship, maybe you're waiting on a diagnosis. You are waiting. God is going to use that in ways you never expected. Let's take our copies of God's Word. Let's stand together in honor of God's Word. Acts chapter 7, starting in verse 17. Acts 7, verse 17. But as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt until there arose over Egypt another king who did not know Joseph. He dealt shrewdly with our race and forced our fathers to expose their infants so they they would not be kept alive. At this time Moses was born. He was beautiful, and he was beautiful in God's sight. And he was he was brought up for three months in his father's house. And when he was exposed and when he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in words and deeds. When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand. And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, Men, you are brothers, why do you wrong each other? But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? At this retort, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Sinai, of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight, and he drew nearer to look. There came a voice of the Lord, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. And Moses trembled and did not dare to look. Then the Lord said to him, Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place you are, the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their groaning, and I've come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, who they rejected, saying, Who made you a ruler and judge? This man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. May God bless his holy word. May God speak to us each. May God teach us about the waiting rooms of life, and may God grow us in dependency and trust. You may be seated. Now, before I give you the big idea of this passage, I want us to see three obvious structural divisions in the passage. I love it when a text is divided evenly and it's obvious. I want you to notice this with me. There are three divisions in this passage. In fact, three times you'll see the phrase 40 years, 40 years, 40 years, 40 years. In verse 26, verse 30, and in verse 36, we see 40 years. And there are three divisions of this passage. You're going to see the palace, you're going to see the desert, and you're going to see him at the bush. Three periods of time. And this is reminiscent for me of a leadership principle. I heard, I think it was Lencioni. He said something along the lines that there are basically four divisions to a man's life, four divisions to a person's life. In fact, we'll put those up on the screen. He says you can basically in your twenties be a friend, a worker, and a student. You just don't know much. And so these are this is the best hope. You can learn a lot, you can work a lot. In fact, the glory of a young man is his strength. You can work a lot, right? So be a friend, be a worker, be a student. And then in your 30s, you become a warrior. You you start building. You start growing. If you're a business owner, you you grow your business, you you lead out in your business, you go after new clients, you do all this stuff in your 30s and you grow, grow, grow. Then you enter in your 40s, the king phase. Maybe it's age 45, where you get to this place and you oversee all that you have won, all that you have accomplished, all that you've learned, all that you've won, all that you've accomplished, and then you finally get to age 55 or 60 and you become the sage, teaching all the previous generations how they can live with wisdom, right? Now I've seen this as a universal truth. I've seen this in it basically every job. I've seen this in every, whether you're in ministry or whether you're working in the secular field, I think this is a true reality. Now, Moses shows us a different pattern. There are three phases to Moses' life. In fact, let's put those back up on the screen, Jennifer. There's the palace, and this represents his education. He's growing up, Prince of Egypt. His preparation to launch. Maybe this is his warrior phase. Maybe this is that phase where he's learning to fight. Then there's the desert. I love this one because he's learning that he's really a nobody. He thought he was somebody when he was in the palace. This is like that guy who graduates college and they've got a lot still to learn. He's learning in the wilderness that he's nobody. And then in that last phase at the bush, he learns what God can do with a nobody who knows he's a nobody. It's pretty powerful, these divisions of life. They're almost universal. What's the big idea? Well, the big idea is don't let your weight terrorize you, let it teach you. In fact, if you're in the waiting room of life, waiting on a job, waiting on a friend, waiting on a family member, waiting on a prodigal son, waiting on a sickness, if you are in the weight of life, don't let it terrorize you. We need to become learners. We need to let it teach you. And I think there's three points this morning. We need to see our preparation. We need to see the postponement, and we need to see the provision. There's a preparation. God's preparing us in the palace. He's preparing us to suffer. There's the postponement. We all have that time in the wilderness where we have to learn some things and learn that we're really a nobody. And then there's the provision. God will do his miraculous work of providing for you in those difficult days. And so let's make a start of it with this first one. Let's talk about God's preparation in the palace. We see several ways that Moses actually gets preparation. And we need to learn not to refuse God's preparation. Notice, first of all, he's prepared with promises in verse 17. It says in verse 17, as the time of the promise drew near, Moses is watching the clock. He's watching his watch. He realizes that promises were given to Abraham. In fact, it says that which God had granted to Abraham. There are promises, and he's remembering what were those promises. There were land promises, there were people promises. I will make you great, I will make your name great, I will make your people great. He realizes that there are promises, and specifically, I think here that these promises are pointing at the timeline. You remember in those promises that God gave to Abraham, he said, there's going to be a season, there's going to be a while for 400 years where you, your people, your children are suffering and they are mistreated. And Moses is saying, I think we're near the end of that. I think this is the end of the timeline. It's time. The time of the promise is drawing near. And so he is actually prepared. He is steeped in the promises of God. And that's a great pattern for other Christians. And this is one way that you and I will be ready for the waiting rooms of life. Don't neglect this. You need to realize that every time you read your Bible, every time you come to service, every time you come to men's breakfast, every time you come to Girls' Night Out, you are steeping yourselves in the promises of God. You are preparing yourself for the worst day of your life. You're reminding yourself of the promises that we have in Christ. And I would even say this: we have greater promises than Abraham. We have promises in Christ that life will not always exist under the curse. That life will not always be this way. That we will not always have bodies that are failing us. We will not always have the curse of sin to deal with. There's coming a day when Christ will break through the heavens, he will come back for his people, and we have to store up those promises. You need to think about your devotions that way. That every devotion you have, that every gathering as the church, you are steeping yourselves in the promises of God so that you will be ready when your middle of the night phone call comes and you're in the waiting room. So prepare. Prepare. Moses was prepared with promises. So notice also another preparation is pressure. Write that down. It's a sub point, second sub point. There's promises, but he's also prepared in the waiting room with pressure. See, we we tend to respond wrongly to the pressure of our time. Moses did too. We have all kinds of pressures on us. Pressure tends to make us angry. In fact, I had several people this week, uh, including my wife, uh, who said, I'm watching the news and I just get angry at what's going on in our world. Anybody feel that way? Anyone watch the news, watch the elections, watch the different things happening in this world, and you just get angry. I'm watching uh Europe fall to Islam, uh, France and the UK, and it's it's it's just angering. It's sad to me. Moses experienced the same thing, and you might even write this down. What was the pressure on Moses? It was the loss of societal values. That's one thing that was pressure for Moses. It was the loss of societal values. Look at verse 16. Another king. The word another, the in the Greek, the LXX, it's heteros. It's a it's one of a different kind. It's one of the same. He's the same, but he's different. Same kind of king, but he's a different kind of king. What's that mean? Well, he didn't know Joseph. It's interpreted by the next phrase. It's one who didn't know Joseph. Now, this doesn't mean that he forgot Joseph. This doesn't mean that he had no knowledge of Joseph. It's the idea that he made the decision not to care about Moses. He cast off the values, the appreciations of the previous generation. So the idea of Joseph, the deliverer of Joseph, it was sort of thrown away. And this is true in a country. When you're watching the news, when you're seeing the elections, when you're seeing in our time the rise of communism, the rise of socialism, people that are forgetting American values. This is happening for us. And a country that decides that the past doesn't matter, the truth is they lose the advantage that was provided by the past. You see, we're standing on a lot of privileges, we're standing on a lot of resources, we're standing on a lot of things that was afforded to us by a previous generation. And when a country decides those values no longer matter to us, we start losing those freedoms that that generation provided to us, and that's what we're seeing in this. It's a cultural pressure that Moses is experiencing. Now the Jews will be attacked rather than loved and appreciated. What's the point? Well, that pressure only serves us. You need to see it that way. As a culture, as a society, those things are only actually serving you. It's pushing us into a better world. You see, we tend to put our hope on this government and on this nation, and we tend to put our hope on this season, and really we stop looking for the world to come. C.S. Lewis said it so well. He said, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Our pressures are actually serving us by pushing us into the next world. By loosening our death grip on this life, this world, this government, this society, and making us long for another world. Your pressure actually makes you bold, it makes you courageous, it makes you not put your hope on a senator or a president or a government. It makes you put your hope on Jesus Christ for the world that is to come. It's actually preparing us. God prepares us with pressure. Notice more pressure. In verse 19, an unjust government. In fact, I would even say a wicked, an evil government, a government that allows sin, a government that promotes sin. Do we experience that in America? Yes or no? Afraid so. Verse 19, nothing new under the sun. He dealt shrewdly with our race. What did he do? He forced our fathers to expose their infants so that they would not be kept alive. Infanticide. The greatest sin of our time, the greatest sin of our government, the greatest sin of our society is not socialism, it is not communism. The greatest sin of our time is infanticide, the murdering of little children in the womb. There is forgiveness through repentance, for any who have engaged in that. But God has repurposed our injustice that we feel that God has repurposed all that pressure, not to break you, but to make you more bold for Christ, more bold for the truth, more bold for people, more helpful to speak truth in love, more clear-headed to confront evil, and that's exactly what will happen with Moses. Moses will rise up and speak against societal injustice. He's being prepared. God uses pressure to prepare him. God uses promises to prepare him. Write down this one. God uses privilege to prepare him. Write that down. Now that's a buzzword in our time. Privilege. All kinds of privilege. You've got privilege, and this is the truth of the text, and this is the truth of living in America. All of us are privileged. You just are. We're the wealthiest nation. The only nations that are ahead of us are small nations like Sweden, right? You go to cities like Geneva and places like that. We discovered that on our on our trip last year. They're very wealthy nations, but they're very, very small as well. As a nation, the United States is one of the wealthiest, most privileged nations in the world. And then we see that in Moses. Moses had tons of privilege, and he's determined not to waste it, but to use it. He's determined to make it a launch pad. He's been prepared with all sorts of privileges, and you have to. Let's just write down a few. He had favor, write that one down. In fact, verse 20 says, at this time Moses was born, he was beautiful, beautiful in God's sight. Now that's kind of funny to me. Can we just pause on this and reflect on the irony of this? He's calling himself a beautiful baby. Who wrote this text? Moses. He's saying, I was one cute kid, alright? I could never get away with something like that. Folks, today, point number one in my sermon is I was the cutest kid of all. Amen. I could not say that. Moses is writing this and he's saying he is beautiful in God's sight. Now, now we need to know this. I do think there's a deeper understanding of this, but Moses does this in other places. He does it in numbers. In numbers, it says that Moses, the man Moses, was very meek, more than all who were on the face of the earth. Who wrote that? Who wrote that? Moses. It would be like him saying, I am the humblest. I am the humblest person on the face of the earth. Yeah, I could never get away with something like that. I think, though, if we go back to that previous verse, the ESV translation gets it right. It's not just that he was a beautiful kid. It's more than that. He had a favor of God upon him. It's the favor of God to do some certain task. He was favored by God to be a great leader. He was favored by God to do some great task according to God's will. That's one privilege he had on him. Another privilege, look at this one. He had the privilege of wealth and adoption. In fact, verse 25. Tells us that the Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. Remember the story? Children are being sacrificed. Children are being murdered. The midwives of Egypt are instructed to murder those children as soon as they come out. All the Jewish babies are told or they're told those babies should be put to death. And you have a conscientious objection. Not Moses. He was not murdered. He was put in an ark. He was put in a basket, dipped in tar. And he was put down the stream. He was found by the Egyptian princess. He was adopted. It was a life of privilege for Moses. Now, where most people would use that life for money and for wealth and to grow their own wealth. In fact, we see that. The elite always tend to do this. They use their position, they use their power to gain resources, to gain money. We see that even in our own society. Recently, our elected officials not voting to say that insider trading is illegal with members of Congress, which is unfortunate. They're allowed to do that. Yep, they use their power in order to get money, to get resources. Moses actually sees his position as a place of launching. He sees it as a place to be used for God. In fact, in Hebrews 12, he he despises his position when compared to the ministry that's afforded him. Look at Hebrews 11, verse 24. It says, By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He actually laid that aside. He was willing to relinquish that right, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He didn't allow the pleasures of sin to sway him. You see, Moses sees his privilege and he sees it as preparation for ministry. He doesn't see it as the end all. He uses his position, and from that position, he gives, he serves, he counsels, and that's what we're to do. We're to be peacemakers, we're to be counselors, we're to use all that God has entrusted to us for ministry. Are you doing that? Are you using all that God has entrusted to you for ministry? Are you using your education? That's another privilege of Moses. In fact, in verse 22, we see that he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He had a great education. Think about that with our kids going back to school. Education is the one gift that no one really wants to get. They want to avoid it, and it's really a privilege. His education did something for him. What did it do? Well, it made him mighty in his words and his deeds. Now, this is really fascinating to me because this was the one thing that Moses said he was not good at. In fact, he would say to the Lord, Lord, I don't want to speak. I don't want to go in front of Pharaoh. I can't speak that well. I can't speak good. I'm, in fact, if you look at the passage, he'll actually say, I'm slow of speech, or I have uncircumcised lips. Go to that next slide, Jennifer. It actually says in Exodus 4, I'm slow of speech and of tongue. I have uncircumcised tongue. I have uncircumcised lips. I can't do this. And then he'll actually say, Oh Lord, please send someone else. I don't want to do this. I don't want to go and confront the king of the world. I don't want to go and be the spokesman for your will. I don't want to do this. And that's when the anger of the Lord burns against him. It wasn't that he couldn't do it. No, he was mighty in words. He was mighty in deeds. It's that he didn't want to do it, he was afraid. Moses will succeed at times in this, he will fail at times in this. And the point is, he's the most educated Jew on the face of the earth, and yet he's neglecting the gift and the preparation of his education. Here's the point. All of your pain, all of your trouble, all of the difficulty, the hardships of life have been preparing you to be a minister to someone else. You need to recognize that. You and I need to recognize our education as opportunity. You and I need to recognize the gifts of God, that his promises, our health, our mind, your business, your family, your wealth, your resources. It's all preparation, and we need to be determined not to waste that. God wants to see you use your preparation to serve him. I was so encouraged. And by the way, I just want to encourage you as a church. I'm seeing this. This is one of the most fun seasons of ministry here at Central Church. I'm just seeing ministries launch in every direction. I feel like every week we're launching new ministries. This was last Monday. We had a large team going out to share the gospel in Memphis. Large team out there sharing their faith and cooking hot dogs and some even some young people out there learning how to share their faith. I talked to one of them. He said, I'm just listening right now. I'm getting my education by listening to others share their faith, and soon I'm going to be sharing my faith. That's what one of your young people said. And then a group went out to Calvary Rescue. This is a great group, a great team that went out to Calvary. They're not wasting their preparation. Here's a group at Men's Breakfast. We had a great group of men yesterday at Men's Breakfast, receiving preparation for ministry, receiving the opportunity. See, we need to value the preparation because it's the preparation that makes you successful when you come to the pits of life, when you come to the waiting rooms of life. Are you preparing? Are you taking it in? Are you receiving it? Do you see it? It's not just your preparation, though. How do we not waste the waiting room? How do we succeed in the waiting room? Number two, write this one down. We have to see and not rush God's postponement in the desert. Don't rush the postponement in the desert. There are seasons where you will fail and you will struggle, and it will seem like the will of God is being postponed for your life. It will seem like God has given you no. Sometimes it's no, sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's go. But there were other moments where God will say no or slow. And it feels like, man, this is really hard. I love this story. Someone told me this story yesterday, and I snuck it into the sermon. There's a great story about a young man who was going to college and he went into his classroom, and the college professor said, Listen, you're coming up on your final exam. Do not be late. If you're five minutes late, you will not take this exam. I'm going to shut the door and lock it. And sure enough, the day of the exam came, and the young man and his friend, they had stayed out the night before, stayed up too late, and they slept in. The alarm clock goes off. They run to the classroom. It's already empty. The test is over. And the young man says, you know, let's get an idea of an excuse. What's going to be our excuse? I know as we drive to class, let's tell him we had a flat tire and it was unavoidable. And they decide to lie. And so they go into the classroom and they say, Prof, you've got to let us take this exam. We had a flat tire, we were on the side of the road, had to change it out. It was terrible. You've got to let us take it. And sure enough, the professor relented and said, Fine, you can take the exam. I'll let you. You sit over here, you sit over here. And they both were relieved and they sat down and they both opened up the exam booklet and it only had one question. And the question was, which tire went flat? You want to talk about a couple of guys losing their mind in that moment, right? There are those moments by our own decisions that we find ourselves in exile. There are those moments where by our own decisions that we find ourselves in the wilderness. And the question is, is there a future for us? And why? Sometimes it's not a decision you made, sometimes it's just situations. Why postponement? Let me give you some reasons for the postponement in God's will. Sometimes you're not ready. Write that down. Sometimes you're not ready to lead. Look at verse 23. Moses is immature. In fact, it says it came into his heart to visit his brothers. This is a good desire. He wants to reconnect with his family, his brothers. One was being wronged, and what does he do? He struck down the Egyptian. This is premature. This is immature. He took matters into his own hands. The first time he will go with murder. The second time he will learn to depend on the will of God and go with miracles. He tries to do it in his own will. He's immature. Why the postponement? Sometimes it's because you're not ready. Sometimes, write this one down, it's because they're not ready. The people you're seeking to lead aren't ready. In verse 25, he supposed his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation. Come on, guys, it's been 400 years. It's time. The eschatological clock, the end times clock. It's the end of the promises of God. It's time. He supposed they would understand, but they don't. They did not understand who made you a ruler over us. This is one of the most modern statements in the Bible. Don't you hear that? Isn't that the American individualism right there speaking out? Who made you the ruler? Who made you the boss? Who made you a judge over us? That is as modern as it gets. But I think beneath it there's a psychological truth. Let me help you understand this. People are twice afraid of losing something as they are of what they can gain. People are twice as afraid of losing something as they are of gaining something more. People are afraid. People live this way. You hear it in these little phrases like, don't rock the boat, right? Don't poke the bear, right? Keep the status quo. In fact, you may remember, I've told you this before. That phrase, status quo, it comes from a church in Israel. It comes from a church that has had a ladder on the roof. In fact, here's the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and there has been this ladder right down here under this window. In fact, zoom in on that. Let me get a different picture. Right here, there's a ladder, and it's been there forever. The church is owned by multiple denominations of people claiming to represent Christ. And they made a deal. They said, nothing can change while it's under the shared ownership. One group has the key, one group owns this part, one group owns this part, and nothing is allowed to change. And so when they made that deal, when they struck that deal, the ladder was left out on the ledge doing repairs, and that no one has ever been allowed to remove it ever since. Isn't that interesting? And that's where the phrase, keep the status quo, comes from. Comes from a church status quo, comes from a church in Israel. And that's a lot of people. They don't want to have change because they're afraid. They're afraid, they're not ready. They're in bondage. And the timing is off. And so Moses is dealing with that. Sometimes you're not ready. Sometimes they're not ready. Sometimes people are afraid of change. I'll tell you, I talked about dating last week with some of our young adults, and some of them in second service went kind of crazy right over here when I talked about this. I told them, you gotta be brave. You gotta, you gotta, you know, be brave. Ask her out, you know? And uh all the young adults went crazy in second service. I remember when I was dating my wife Ashley, or actually I should say it this way, when I tried to date my wife Ashley. This was uh 20, this was 23, 24 years ago. Uh I knew as soon as I saw her she was gonna be my wife. She didn't know that, but I knew that. And uh I confidently asked her out. I went up to her and said, Hey, would you like to go to dinner? And I would love to take you out to to dinner. And she said no. Now she had a pretty good excuse. She actually was engaged, she had a ring on her finger. I think that's a pretty good excuse, amen. Um and I kind of had to, I kind of had to, oh, okay, I had to back off. And it was one of those situations. I didn't I didn't know it at the time, but uh eventually she would drop the zero and get with the me. Uh she would drop that loser, all right? And eventually the timing would work out for us both, okay? And I'll never forget that moment. How awkward it was. I I just thought she was the one, and I knew she was with the wrong person, and it was awkward, and I there I am, I'm waiting. Sometimes you're ready, sometimes they're not ready, sometimes you're not ready, and they're ready. And there was this beautiful dance of trying to figure out God's will. Don't miss this. In all this resistance, in all this issue of timing, Stephen is actually not talking, he's not talking about your marriage relationship. He's not talking about really even Moses. In all of this, he's actually talking about Jesus. He's giving example after example. He's like, Man, every time you say you want a deliverer, every time you say you want you want this relationship to God, God sends his person and he essentially says, here they are, here's your deliverer, here's your savior, and you reject them. That's the pattern over and over and over again. And you keep rejecting your deliverer. And he says, You're still not ready. Jesus came, what'd you do to him? You you you killed him. You rejected Joseph, you rejected Moses, you rejected Jesus. Moses fails because he's rushing the timing. And he has to learn, and we have to learn to get the timing right. Why the postponement? Sometimes they're not ready, sometimes you're not ready. Sometimes God has a lesson for us to learn. What does Moses learn in the wilderness? Look at verse 29. He became an exile in the land of Midian. He has to learn dependency. This is a land where you have to trust God. It's not a land flowing with milk and honey, it's barren, it's wilderness. It's exile. It's a land where he has to learn dependency on God. He has to learn not to run ahead of God. He has to learn to trust God. It's those three phases of Moses' life. He's the prince. He's trusting himself. He's now a wilderness Bedouin. And he's having to learn to trust God in exile. Fourth, the third 40 years of his life, he's going to learn what God can do with a nobody. Thinks he's somebody in the palace. He learns he's nobody in the wilderness. He's going to learn what God can do with a nobody at the bush. He's learning dependency. When you're waiting, don't miss what God is trying to teach you. He's trying to teach you to depend on him. He's also learning some things about the home and about personal leadership. Notice it says it's in this period of his life where he became the father of two sons. A lot of families in the room. Let me just talk to you just for a second. There's so much you learn from being a father that a job cannot teach you. Is life hectic right now? Are you changing diapers? Are you are you chasing kids? Are you busy, busy, busy? Is it difficult? Always cleaning the house? Things always breaking. You're feeling the pressure of those early years of marriage and those early years of being a father, being a mother. I just want to encourage you in this, guys. This is, I told someone this just the other day. These are the best years of your life. You have this short window. You have this short window when your family is all under your roof and everyone's healthy and everyone is together. Don't waste these years. These are very precious years. Moses is not wasting these years. He's in exile. Things have not gone well in his career path. Things have not gone well in his life. But I'll tell you one thing that is going well is his family. He's having children. And he's learning to love his family. And he's learning to lead his family. And he's having devotions. And he's growing and he's responding to God's word as a father. He became a father. You may be failing in every part of your life, but if you win here, you've won it all. Because God will use this exile, God will use the waiting room to prepare you for more ministry, to prepare you to be used in a greater way. Nothing matures you like having a family. Sometimes God will do this in your life. Pruning's a good thing, yes? I remember I planted this honey crisp apple tree in my yard when we were living in Ohio. There were apple orchards all around us. And we planted this tree, and the first year it actually put on an apple. I couldn't believe it. It never bore another set of apples ever again. It's just fascinating to me. Apparently, I broke the rule. You're not supposed to actually allow apples to bear fruit on their first year. In fact, if they start budding, you're supposed to go up and kind of pinch off all the buds on that tree and don't let it bear fruit. Why? Because if you let it bear fruit in the first year, you'll get 30 years of terrible fruit. In that first year, it's supposed to be putting down deep roots. It's supposed to be growing a thick trunk. It's supposed to be preparing for a season of fruit. It doesn't mean that you were supposed to initially launch and have great fruit. I was thinking this is, I bought the best apple tree on the lot. Turned out to be a dud the entire time I lived in Ohio. One year of fruit, not good fruit, but some fruit. And it was because I let it launch too early. Sometimes God does that in our lives. Sometimes He's just pruning and He's trimming back in preparation. So, so have you taken a step back in life? Have you taken a step back on your calling, your career, your relationship? You need to see that. That this is truly, it's just postponement. God, learn to accept and don't rush God's postponement in your life. Learn to accept that postponement as a gift from God. Moses is sidelined, but he chooses to win in the home. He's a faithful father, he's a faithful husband. He's going to receive God's pruning. He's going to receive God's forming focused on what God is working inside of him, learning dependency. Are you learning that dependency in your postponement? Are you growing in integrity, growing in conviction, growing in love, growing in service? Are you doing the basics? If you win at home, God will give you more ministry to win at. Final point, we're done. We need to not refuse God's preparation. You have received preparation for those waiting rooms. Don't refuse it. We need to stop rushing God's postponement. There are lessons for us to learn in the desert. You all have a desert. Lastly, you need to not reject God's provision at the bush. I love this last section. I've just been so blessed by verse 30. From a man who was a failure, from a man who broke God's law, from a man who tried to do it his own way. And he may even be thinking God could never use me again. He may be thinking, well, here's the consequence for my stupidity. I can't be used by God. I've wasted my life. What does God say to such a man? Forty years had passed. There it is again, the 40 years. An angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai. The wilderness. He's living in a rejected land. He's living in a rejected place. He's probably feeling even rejected by God. And yet the truth is, God was with him. God had been preparing him, and now he's hearing the voice of the Lord. God's not done with Moses. There's still more to do. And so here's the great lesson if you're experiencing failure here this morning. Here's the great lesson if you just say, I've blown it, I've messed my life up, I keep messing my life up. God is a God that returns to his children and gives the second chance and the third chance and the fourth chance and the fifth chance. And here's the truth. If you have failed, rise up, man of God. Rise up, woman of God. Get up. The righteous man fails, seven, he falls seven times and then rises. That's what Psalm says. The righteous man falls. He fails seven times, then rises. Get up. God has pursued Moses again with a relationship. God has pursued Moses a fresh time. Have you failed? Have you walked in darkness? Have you walked in failure? And maybe it's relationship failure. Maybe it's moral failure. Maybe you have a lying tongue. Maybe you have pornography-seeking eyes. Maybe you have all sorts of personal, painful, hidden sins. And God is saying to you afresh this morning, get up, man of God. Rise. There's a work to be done. He's not casting you aside. There's something new for you. And he gives us even a new perspective on disappointments. Notice verse 33. Moses is living in the wilderness. I don't like where I live. I don't like my environment. I don't like my job. Verse 33 take off your sandals. The place you are standing is holy ground. See, this is the truth. When God is near, hard grounds become holy grounds. When God is near, hard grounds become holy grounds. And this is absolutely true. The best job in the best town will feel like hell on earth if God's not in it and God hasn't called you there. But the hardest job, the hardest job you're ever going to be in will feel like pure joy if you know that it's God's will. We need a new perspective. That our disappointments, our disappointments are actually purposeful to push us back to Christ. Notice verse 34. I've surely seen affliction, groaning, and I've come to what? Deliver them. God sees where you're at, he knows where you need to be, and best of all, he knows how to get you there. God has a clock for your waiting room, and it is ticking away, and he knows how much you can take. He knows how much the pressure is, and he has a plan for rescue. That's good news. And all of this is leading to what Stephen will say in verse 35. Skip ahead. Look at verse 35, chapter 7, verse 35. Stephen will use Moses to show the need of a greater savior. This Moses, whom they rejected, saying, Who made you a ruler and judge? This man, God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. This man led them out. Who's Stephen talking about? Who's he really talking about? Moses? Mm-mm. He's evangelizing. He's telling the audience that's going to kill him. You say you want a savior, but you rejected Joseph. You say you want a savior, but you rejected Moses. You always reject your Savior. And you even rejected Jesus. God sent him, you rejected him too. And Stephen will have this mic drop moment where he literally will say something absolutely stunning to the crowd. In fact, if you skip ahead to the rest of chapter 7, which is where we're leading, he's going to say, you stiff-necked, you uncircumcised in heart and ears, you stiff-necked people, always resist the Holy Spirit. Your fathers did, and so do you. That's a mic drop. He's going to drop the mic, they're going to stop, start dropping stones, right? This is a dark moment. And it says that they're going to be cut to the heart. What's the point of this? The point is that you in this room can be caught up in all sorts of forms of religion. I can gather for church, I can listen to Christian music on the radio, and still have a heart that's unchanged. And that's exactly what Stephen is saying. You're caught up in Judaism. You've got all sorts of forms of religion, but you don't have a circumcised heart. You don't have a changed heart. You don't have the new man. If any man's in Christ, he's a new creation. And you need to make sure in your waiting room, dear friends, you need to make sure that you see God's greatest provision. God certainly provides for us with a relationship. God certainly provides for us a new perspective on disappointments, but his greatest provision is Jesus Christ. Don't miss Jesus. God wants you close to Jesus Christ. And so the question is, are you going to harden your heart or are you going to soften your heart on the day when you're confronted with the need of a relationship with Jesus Christ? And this is how God does it. He sheds his blood for you. He rose from the dead. That if you would trust in him to enter into a relationship with him of faith, hope, and love, God would save you, and God would be with you in your waiting room. Back in 2023, I was in urgent care, another waiting room. This time it wasn't me, it wasn't my children, it was actually my mother-in-law. And uh she had a laceration on her eye. She woke up and her eye just had excruciating pain. And I drove her up to the urgent care. It was a Saturday morning. She had the dancing feet in the waiting room, you know, just so much pain. Just dancing feet. And I started to look around and I started to just notice this whole room was filled with a community of sufferers. In fact, there was a young man there. He was 23 years old, and uh his dad was with him. He had been he had been grinding on metal, and a piece of hot metal flew up into his eye. And uh he had the dancing feet too. I noticed that my mother-in-law had dancing feet, he had dancing feet, they both had eye problems, and uh we were just working through that, and I just felt like, man, here I am, a pastor of Central Church. I've been prepared, I've been, I've got provisions, I've got privilege that many other have many other people have not. And I need to share the gospel, I need to comfort this family, I need to just pray over them. And so right as I was working up the courage to go and do that, um, man, it was it was it was kind of frustrating, probably not for him, but but um we ended up getting separated because they took us back and they took him back, and I was like, I missed my opportunity. I'm in the waiting room and I miss my opportunity to evangelize, to be a witness for Christ. And there was a brief pause, 30 minutes. They got they got my mother-in-law fixed up, and we go back out to the waiting room, and he's back out too. And uh, this was a great moment because I got to go and sit by him. After this postponement came the fulfillment. I got to sit by him, and his dad, who I think was a Christian, he I don't think was a Christian. I got to share the gospel, and I got to just pray over these two. And I felt God's presence in the waiting room. As we talked about the promises of God, the hope of God. What's the point? You will have a waiting room that's coming to you soon, maybe as soon as today. God doesn't want you to waste your waiting room. He wants you to use it. God wants you to draw near to him. God wants you to realize not and refuse to waste your preparation, to don't rush the postponement, to trust him for the timing. And don't reject all that God has provided you. Don't resist it. With your heads bowed, with your eyes closed, I want to respond. In fact, I want to just talk about this for a second as we respond. I want to do something a little different this morning. I'm going to invite a prayer team up to the front. You guys go ahead and come up right now. If you're on that prayer team, I've invited several individuals just to come forward and to be a part of this prayer team. And actually, I want to use this song as a time to respond. I see Pastor Greg up here, I see others coming. I see Jim and Charlotte coming. We have some elders, we have some pastors, I see others coming forward. Some guys from the evangelism team, some who are counselors. And maybe, guys, if you just kind of spread out maybe along the front here, I think that'd be good. But what I want to do is I want to use this song as a time to respond. There are some of you who are in the waiting right now. There are some of you who are who are waiting on the Lord to resolve a situation. Maybe it's a sickness. Man, maybe, maybe it's just a situation. And you would just confess, you would say, This is really hard for me. I'm in a season of dissatisfaction, I'm in a season of pain, and I don't know what to do with it. And it's central, here's one of the things I'm burdened with, friends. We need to be a responsive people. When the word of God is preached, we need to respond to the word of God. We need to respond to what God is doing. And I want to invite you to do that right now. If there is anyone who wants to come up and say, you know what, I just would need prayer. Would you pray over this situation in my life? Would you would you pray over what God is doing in this hard season that I'm going through? We want to open that up right now for this opportunity. And so I'm going to ask Michael to lead us in a song. And I'm going to invite you, come. Come and pray. Come and respond. I see a couple right over here, here, here, here. Come and respond and use this song during this song to come and pray over whatever the situation is. Would you stand together in honor of this moment and in honor of what God's doing in this room? Father, we lift up this moment of response. Lord, I pray for courage over families. Even right now, I pray that men and women would begin moving towards the front. Men and women would begin coming down and praying with these prayer partners, that there would be no fear, there would be boldness, there would be courage, Lord, to respond to the Word of God. There are many who are in the waiting room right now. And we've all been there. And so, Father, would you give courage to those who are feeling the urgency of the Word of God? We ask this now, and it's in Jesus' name. Amen.