When the Lord ordered Moses to go to Pharaoh and ask him to let the Israelites leave Egypt, Moses had several questions for the Lord. Perhaps some well-founded insecurities. (Passages from Exodus 3:11 – 4:10) “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh? What if they ask me your name? What if they don’t believe me or listen to me? I am slow of speech and of tongue.” After the Lord answered all of these questions, Moses said (Exodus 4:13) “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.” At this point the Lord told him that Aaron his brother would help him, by speaking on behalf of Moses.
One thing I have learned from our Bible studies on Tuesdays and Wednesdays is that God can do anything, anytime, with anyone He wants - PERIOD! The Lord could have told Moses to go to Egypt and bring the Israelites out BY HIMSELF and it would have been done. However, God seemed to realize that Moses needed a little help, someone to walk with him on this journey. This is where Aaron (Moses’ older brother) comes in and together, well the rest is recorded in the Bible.
Okay, always enjoyable to reread Exodus, but what does this have to do with you and me? Good question. You may be aware that your session is currently searching for a new pastor. Searching for a pastor to nurture and help our congregation grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ is a significant task in and of itself. Add the restriction of not being able to physically meet with our congregation until we have a safer environment and it becomes a very difficult process.
As you might guess, session wants to be very deliberate about what we do and how fast we are doing it. It just so happens we are in this process on behalf of people we love and care deeply about. We want the best for them, and that may take additional time.
If you are still scratching your head going, what does this have to do with Moses and Aaron and us? Picture if you will, that our session is Moses. We have been charged with a very significant task, finding a new pastor for the most wonderful people we know. We (session) can do this on are own, but we are hesitant like Moses was. The Lord knew we need help and sent us “an Aaron” to walk beside us while we are in this process.
“Aaron” came to us, unsolicited, in the form of a question by our brothers and sisters at Calvin Presbyterian church. Was there anything they could help us with during our pastor search process? AMEN! Yes, was session’s response.
Over the last several weeks we have been blessed to have a variety of messages from gifted pastors in our area. One thing that has been missing is not having continuity in our sermons or a series of sermons on the same topic.
Beginning May 9th, Neil Trainer, Pastor at Calvin Presbyterian church is beginning a sermon series that Calvin will be sharing with us titled “Pandemic Practices”. We are very grateful for this opportunity to have our brothers and sisters at Calvin walk along with us during our pastor search process.
In exchange for the sermon message that Calvin will share with us, we have invited Calvin to share in our Tuesday and Wednesday Bible studies and monthly Women’s Association meetings. Details are currently being worked out.