In this sermon, the speaker focuses on the story of Moses and the lessons he learned in the desert. The first lesson is the importance of knowing God, as eternal life is found in knowing Him. The second lesson is the need to wait on God and not get ahead of Him. Moses spent 40 years in the court of Pharaoh, 40 years in the desert with God, and 40 years serving God. The speaker also mentions that only 10% of the Billy Graham Crusades is what is seen on TV, emphasizing the importance of what happens behind the scenes. The sermon concludes with Moses being available to God, saying "Here I am" with no strings attached.

Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Exodus chapter 3, our 8th message on our desert survival series. I guess sometimes I get to thinking that I should rush. We need to be patient enough, I believe, to get all that God has for us out of the experience that we're going through, out of the trial, or maybe even out of a sermon. To me, it's a real treat to get to listen to a sermon, because somebody told me something back when I was in college that I've never forgot. Because many times when you're in Bible colleges, missionaries come, and sometimes they're not real great speakers or whatever. And the one that told me this was A. Pinner. He said, whenever somebody gets before you and has a message, you learn to get what God has for you out of that. Maybe it's not a great dynamic message. Maybe the guy can't speak real well or whatever. But if God has allowed him to speak to you or before you, then get what God has for you. There may be just one thing there. And I appreciate that advice so much. You can gain a lot of wisdom by listening to others, especially listening as God maybe wants to speak to you. I'm changing the title of this series from Moses, the man of God, to Moses, the servant of God, because we switch gears today in Exodus chapter 3 to where Moses will now become the servant of God. Last week we saw his burning bush experience in chapter 3, how he met God at the burning bush and all of the lessons there about the cross. We won't go back on that because of the time we need to keep going forward. But we have some new things to learn today. And we're going to see how Moses moves out now into the area of being a servant. And Moses is called the servant of God many times in Scripture, many times. As a matter of fact, when God was breaking in Joshua, you look in the book of Joshua, he kept referring to Moses, my servant, Moses, my servant, Moses, my servant. So I'm changing the title of this message. It's our desert survival series, and the title was Moses, the man of God, to the servant of God. Let's bow for prayer now. Father, would you meet us now? We've asked you to. And would you let your Holy Spirit teach us from your word? You've told us to preach the word. You've given pastors, pastor teachers, as a gift to the church to spend time in prayer and studying, to dig into the word, that we might spend this time, so we pray that we would take that which you have for us this morning. The many hours that you've invested in my life, Father, this week, I pray that the Spirit of God would take this and multiply it many times into these lives. In Jesus' name, amen. You know, Moses spent 40 years in the court of Pharaoh, and then 40 years out in the desert with God, and then 40 years serving God, leading the children of Israel out of the land. And I think sometimes we might tend to miss out on what is the most important thing. You know, John Musser, John's been communicating with me. He's down in Newton, Kansas now, concluding some meetings down there. But he said he went to the Billy Graham Center in Minneapolis, the headquarters there, and he's trying to learn all he can in these crusades. And he said that they shared with him that only 10% of the program was presentation. In other words, that the whole thing, the Billy Graham crusades, only 10% is what you see on TV. 90%, 90% is out of sight. They said they spent 45% of their time getting ready for a crusade, and then 45% of their time after a crusade with a follow-up. Moses spent one-third of his life out of sight. And I am just about inclined to believe that maybe the most important period of his life was that 40 years in the desert alone with God. We don't know very much about that time. But that was probably the most important time of his life, for without that time, he would have never had the last 40 years of service. And you know what? As he was out there, I just wonder, as he took off and left to Trelades, leaving Egypt, and he spent that time, here's what the crowds would say today, I don't know what they said then, but they would say, what a waste. Too bad. All that time out there in no man's land. Maybe somebody might like to say that about me. All that time up there in Nebraska. Where's Nebraska anyway, you know? And for sure, where's Gordon, Nebraska? And what's the Gordon Baptist Church? Just a little old church up there, insignificant, you know? They say that about Moses, or maybe about somebody. But you never know what God's doing. The Bible talks about how people despise the day of small things. Ah, God works in those small things. So what a waste, what a tragedy. And maybe about your situation. Maybe you've gone through a tragedy or something, and maybe they say, well, it's all over for you. You've had such a bitter experience. Such, you know, you're all over. Or many times in a death experience. We think it's all over, you know? But not if we have Christ. Nothing's ever over with Christ. Life just continues. And it's not a tragedy situation. Well, Moses learned, if I can give you a real quick little review, on about five things he learned. I keep learning all these things. But he learned these five things at least. Out there in that desert, he learned to know God. And if you don't learn to know God in your desert, in your trial, in your problem areas, with your burden or whatever, you just won't make it. He learned to know God. And you know, the Bible says that knowing God equals eternal life. John 17.3 says, This is eternal life, that we would know you and your Son Jesus Christ. Here's something else he learned. He learned to wait on God. And boy, if we're going to be a servant of God, we've got to learn to wait. Because the Master tells His servant when to move. And one of the things we sometimes do is we get ahead of God. We get ahead of our Master. And we get into trouble. So he learned to wait on God. And what do you do when you wait? The Bible says in Isaiah 40 and verse 31, Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. The world says waiting is a waste of time. And I guess this is one of my areas. I hate to wait. I went into the Air Force, and man, you had to hurry up and get somewhere, and then you wait. I don't like to wait, because waiting is associated with wasted time. But if we have to wait, God maybe hangs you up on a shelf somewhere, sticks you in the backside of the desert, while you're waiting to get to know God. Maybe if you have a situation, memorize scripture, meditate on things, use that time profitably. And then here's another thing. He learned to have faith. Knowing God equals eternal life. Waiting on God equals strength. While having faith equals endurance. You know what it said about Moses? You know why Moses could hang in there and do what he did for 40 years, leaving the children of Israel out of bondage to the Promised Land? The Bible says he could endure. In Hebrews chapter 11, 27, it says he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. One of the reasons we have so many Christian crack-ups is because there's no endurance. There's no faith. Their eye is not on God. Their eye is off on their situation, and not on God. So, the Bible says he endured because he kept his eyes on God. So, if you'll know God, then you'll learn to know Him by faith. The Bible says without faith, it is impossible to please Him. For he that comes to God must believe that He is, that God exists, and that God is also a rewarder of your faith. So, you've got to believe that God's going to do what you come to Him for. Without faith, He just won't work. That's the one principle essential. It's a principle here you need to learn. Faith. Then a fourth thing you learn. If faith produces endurance, then he learned also, and we saw this last week, to be emptied of self. To be emptied of self, because that equals being Christ-like. If you're going to be full of yourself, then there's not going to be any evidence of Christ living in your life. And one of the things that the desert experiences that we go through does, is it empties us of self. It brings us to the end of our self. It brings us to the end of our effort, of our sufficiency. You get out in the desert and there's no way to survive, what are you going to do? You're going to say, God, help me. I believe God allows us to have these things so that we would learn to depend on Him and not ourselves. So, He learned to be emptied of self. I've got a little poem here written by Theodore Munroe. It goes like this. It's a good poem. Oh, the bitter pain and sorrow that a time could ever be when I proudly said to Jesus all of self and none of thee. Yet He found me and I beheld Him bleeding on the accursed tree and my wishful heart said faintly some of self and some of thee. Day by day His tender mercies helping, healing, full and free brought me lower while I whispered less of self and more of thee. Higher than the highest heaven, deeper than the deepest sea, Lord, Thy love at last has conquered me, none of self and all of thee. There is the victorious Christian life. None of self and all of the Lord Jesus Christ in my life. That's what John said. He must increase and I must decrease. Well, Moses learned to be emptied of self. Moses learned that God can do more with you if you're nothing than if you're something. He started out to deliver Israel because he was something. He was a pharaoh candidate. He had all this training. He could lead Israel out. He was something. And God says, I can't use you if you're something, but I can use you if you're nothing. And so he emptied Moses of self for 40 years. And next week it's going to be good because we're going to see how we live. God came along to Moses and said, You ready to go? He says, Who am I? And he gave God five excuses. Next week we're going to look at the five excuses that he gives God and how that fits in with our life. But he was emptied of self, really. Matter of fact, God did a real good job on him. He had to get him pushing him, trying to get him going. But it was self also holding back. I guess the thing about it is when we become a Christian, we are never completely emptied of self as long as we have this whole sin nature within us. Self is not eradicated and removed when we become a Christian. We do not grow in our Christian life to a point to where we are completely sinless. No. The Christian life is a day-by-day experience where we gain victory by denying self, dying to self, dying to sin, saying no to it. Lord, you just live. You give me victory in this area. It's a day-by-day experience. And we do that from the day we're born spiritually to the day we die or the day the Lord comes back in the air and gets us. Well, Moses learned that God can do more with you if you're nothing than if you're something. And here's the key statement. I'm going to say it several times. It's this. I'll say it very simply this first time. Moses learned that being was more important than doing. Being what God wants you to be is more important than doing because if you will be what God wants you to be, the doing will come out of it naturally. Well, he took off on the doing. God set him aside in the desert to make him into what he wanted him to be. So the being has to come forth. So he went into that desert something. And you know what? He came out nothing. And when we come out nothing, we say, God, I can't solve my problems. I've got this desert. When we come to the point to where we just do nothing and say, Lord, I can't do it. I'm nothing. I haven't got the strength. I haven't got the power. Would you do it? God says, I've been waiting. You've been kicking up dust and complaining and hollering and everything. It's about time you turn to me. When we learn to just do that naturally all the time to be our first response, then we really can go. Now that brings us to our passage in Exodus chapter 3 and verse 5 where we'll pick up verse 2. Remember God revealed himself as self-existent and Moses said, I'm going to turn aside and see this burning bush. How come it wasn't consumed? And we saw many valuable lessons in that last week. And then verse 4, God saw that he turned aside and the Lord said to him, Moses, Moses. And Moses said, here I am. You know what Moses is saying? I'm available. What do you want, Lord? I'm available. No strings attached. I'm not tied down to nothing. Got these few little old sheep. Got a little family back here. But really Moses was available to God. I wonder if many times we can't do what God wants us to do because we get so tied down to other things that we're not free. And we're not sensitive enough to maybe that he wants us to do something. We get involved maybe with things or something. And it ties us down. I know for myself this has been a case. Well, God revealed himself to Moses and here's how he revealed himself in verse 5. And he said, draw not nigh hither. Don't come any closer. Take off your shoes from off your feet for the place that you're standing is holy ground. Now what are you going to do? You're going to do what God says to do. And that's exactly what Moses did. He removed his shoes. Now God revealed himself to Moses as holy. As a holy God. And I'm not going to take off on the holiness of God. We could. But I'm going to take off on a different tangent today on how the holiness of God affects a man when he comes into the presence of a holy God. A while back I was going to do a study and do a series on the holiness of God. And I got started in it and I had to stop. I couldn't handle it. The holiness of God, how holy our God is, is a subject I don't feel worthy to touch. Maybe someday I might try to touch it at a distance. But the holiness of God is a vast realm of the depths of God. Well, how does it affect us though? We can handle that. Because if we're going to know Christ and we're going to know Him in a way that's going to affect our life, then we can get some things out of it for ourselves. What is man's response supposed to be to a holy God? Here it is. It's all bound up in this one little statement. Take off your shoes. Take off your shoes. If you're going to know God, if you're going to stand in His presence, if you're going to serve Him and love Him and be what He wants you to be and do what He wants you to do, you're going to first have to take off your shoes. And that's what He says. Moses, take off your shoes. Now, why the shoes? The shoes would be the symbol of humility. Very humbling. Yeah, take your shoes off. It was a symbol of humility. You know, the first step to being saved is a step of humility. When we come to know Christ as our Savior, if we won't take this step to humble ourselves before God and admit that we are sinners, repent of our sins, we'll never be saved. And a lot of people think they're saved, but they've never humbled themselves before God. They've never been broken over their sinfulness. And this is where we have so many people that are professing Christians. They say they're a Christian, yet they can go out and live in sin. They can live in adultery. They can commit fornication. They can live as a drunkard. They can live as a homosexual. They can live however they want to and say, it's fine, I'm a Christian because I received Jesus. But they never did because He hasn't changed their life. When Jesus comes in, He changes your life. They've never been humbled. Humility is the first step. Peter said, repent ye therefore and be converted that the times of refreshing will come. They don't get those times of refreshing either. They say there's something missing. And most of the time they need Christ. Being baptized. We've got our baptistry up here. It's getting dry. We haven't used it for a little bit. But the first step of obedience and following Jesus Christ is to follow the Lord in believer's baptism. That is a humbling experience because pride would say, I don't think I'll do that. That's the very first step in following Jesus as your Savior. So if you haven't followed Him, let me challenge you to be baptized. Let me know. When we get one or two more, we'll have a baptism service. But it's a humbling experience because you've got to die to your pride. But if you won't do it, then you're showing the Lord you're not really serious about following Him. You're going to have a tough Christian life. Our pride keeps us down. Well, it's a humbling experience. You know, I was looking at Paul. Paul, when he first got saved, he was going down the Damascus Road and God appeared in a bright light and it blinded him. He was literally blinded. And Paul, when he said, he said, why are you doing this? You know, it's hard for you to kick against the pricks. And he said, you know, who art thou, Lord? And he said, I'm Jesus. Then Paul comes out and he says, what will you have me to do? And in Acts 9, he says, what wilt thou have me to do? Paul was humbled in that very moment of his conversion. He met Christ. He realized that he had really been sinning. And so he said, Lord, what will you have me to do? He turned from serving himself, which is actually what he'd been doing. That's what the religion of the world is. You serve yourself and in the doing of it, you'll get to heaven. God will be tickled with what you're doing. That's from the pit of hell because God is not tickled with what we do. All of the things that we do of ourselves to try to get saved is filthiness. We've got to trust Christ and Christ alone. You have to humble yourself before Him. Well, Paul said, what do you want me to do? And Paul took off a humble man. But you know what? Before he really got to working for the Lord, you know what God did with Paul? He stuck him in a desert for 10 years. All of his degrees. And I believe Paul had so many degrees he'd look like a thermometer. He had really been trained. He'd been trained under the finest minds of the day. And God took him like Moses and stuck him out in the desert. Humbling. Humbling. And when he'd come out, he'd come out a humble man. And Paul was a powerful man because he was humble. I like what is said in Acts 20. Paul said in Acts 20, in verse 19, he said, listen, this is how I've lived among you. Serving the Lord with all humility of mind and with many tears and temptations which befell me by the lying weight of the Jews and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you. He was a humble man. But showed you and taught you publicly and from house to house. He said, I serve the Lord with humility of mind. Isn't that what the Scripture says? Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. He humbled himself and he became as a man. As a servant. As a servant of man. Christ came. He said, if you want to follow me, Jesus says, if you want to follow me, then humble yourself. And this is where we're going with Moses. He's going into his humbling experience. Now, the first step to being saved is a humbling experience. But also the first step to serving God is to take your shoes off. And that's where we come to Moses today. Serving God. Serving God. Take your shoes off. The shoes represent self-effort. I jotted down something here. Doing what I want. Humility is doing what God wants. Take your shoes off. Take your shoes off. Jesus said, no man can serve two masters. He'll either hate the one and love the other or he'll love the one and hate the other. You cannot serve me and at the same time serve the ways of this world. The ways of trying to make money. The ways of riches. Following the ways of this world. He said, you just can't do it. Now, I don't know whether to take you off on this. It's a bunny trail, actually, in humility. Do you want to go that way? I've got probably enough for two sermons here. But I got to studying something on this area of loving God and serving God. And I found something over in John. Remember when Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. In John 14, 21, He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And then verse 23, He said, if a man love me, he will keep my words. You know what's at the heart of being a servant of God? Love. One of the reasons that maybe we won't do what God wants us to do is because we're just not in love with Him. And now there's another thing that develops out of loving God. We want to be a servant of God. Then we're going to love God. That's probably the heart of it, is love. We just love God. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might. But there's a little thing that develops sort of as a fringe benefit out of that. And it's this. If you turn the page, Jesus says, greater loveth no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. You are my friends if you do, and that is the service. If you serve me, you are my friends. And then he goes into this beautiful thing about a friendship. He says, henceforth I call you not servants even. He says, I'm going to go deeper, because the servant really doesn't know what his Lord's doing. But I am going to call you my friend because I am going to show you what I'm doing. You share with your friend, don't you, what you're doing, where you're going, what your heart's thoughts is. And this is what Jesus says. If you will serve me, you'll really be my friend. And what does the Scripture say about Moses? Moses is called the servant of God, but when you push on through the Scriptures, what do you find? That God says, Moses, my friend. Isn't that beautiful? You look at it. It's Exodus 33, 18. Moses, the friend of God. You know, there's a lot of things that we can get into in this area. We don't have time. But very simply, if he is my master and I am the servant, then no matter what he tells me to do, I am to do it. Many times he tells us to do something that maybe is not popular, that maybe other people don't understand, and you have to just step out by faith and do what God tells you to do. There may be times I don't understand what you're doing, and I may not even agree with you, but God's told you to do that. And this is why God's told us to be very careful about judging one another, because we will stand before our own master. Read Romans 14. We'll stand before our own master, and I'm not your master, and you're not my master. There's only one Lord, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, Moses. Moses, the servant of God, stands on holy ground in humility. And then in verse 6, it says, after God revealed himself, he says, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And what did Moses do? Moses hid his face. Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look on God. You know why he hid his face? You know why he hid his face? He felt so unworthy to look on God. Because one of the things that the cross will do to you, when you get on the cross, when you identify with the death of Christ, the burial of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, and you just die to yourself and let God do what He wants to do to you, one of the things it's going to do, you're going to get close to God. And the closer you get to God, the more unworthy you will feel. Brian and I have been going out and doing visiting. It's really something. When you meet somebody and you're trying to share the Lord with them so they can get saved, but they feel so good. They don't need what God's done. They're so good in themselves. That's the very opposite thing. We are so unworthy. And as we come to Christ and receive Him as our Savior, we really don't even know what's going on. But as we grow in Christ, we realize He is a holy God that died for me on that cross. I wasn't even worthy enough to receive Him as my Savior. But He loved me so much. He does something to us. So when you get close to God, the more aware of your own simpleness you will become. Humility is knowing our worth in comparison to God. And there's no worth in us. The only thing that makes us worth anything is the fact that Christ died on the cross for us, gave His very life, and bought us with His blood. Then we become valuable. We were marred back in the Garden of Eden to be not worth anything. We were made in the image of God, but the sin that was brought into this world destroyed the worth. And God had to remake us to make us valuable again. And so when Christ comes into our life, we are of a value of God. And that's why He can let us into heaven. But as far as of ourself, there's nothing within us of ourself that's of any worth itself. The only value is that which God produces. Remember when Peter had this experience with Jesus? Jesus was preaching on the edge of the sea and He got into one of the boats so that the crowds wouldn't push Him back into the sea. They'd have some room. And He got out a little ways and spoke to them. When they were done, He said, Let's go out here and go fishing. Peter said, Lord, we've been fishing all night and haven't caught a thing. Remember that? We've been fishing all night and haven't caught a thing. Nevertheless, it's Your Word. We'll do it. I'm not going to argue with you. They go out there and two ships are out there and they throw it on the net and they can't even get them in the ship. They call over the other ship. Hey, help us. And they have so many fish that both ships begin to sink. And what does Peter do? The Bible says that Peter fell on his face before Jesus and said, Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man. He recognized God. He recognized God in that situation. That's Luke 5.8. He was unworthy. But he took his shoes off and fell at the feet of Jesus. He fell at the feet of Jesus. Well, that's why God could use Peter. And the reason God could use Moses was because he was willing to take his shoes off. And I just wonder if there isn't something in your life that God's maybe been dealing with you about and He said, Take your shoes off. Why don't you just humble yourself and admit you can't do anything? Why don't you just humble yourself and admit that that's a waste of your time, a waste of your money, a waste of your effort, and let me just have your life or your area in that area. Let me have it. Take your shoes off. The Bible says in 1 Peter 5, verse 5 and 6, it says, Be clothed, be subject one to another, be clothed with humility. Let it be your attitude. Let it be your being. For God resists at the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God and He will exalt you. The Bible always tells us to humble ourselves. Humbleness and being humble has to do with brokenness, confession of sin. If you've got a sin in your life that you've not confessed to God, whoever will not confess that sin will not prosper, Proverbs says. Your whole life may be crippled because you're too proud to admit that sin. And you'll hurt yourself and maybe hurt your church, hurt your family or whatever. Well, Moses saw God and he was unworthy. He fell before Him. He hid his face. And it says that God revealed Himself to Moses there as a covenant keeping God by the resurrection. I want to go on to verse 7. Then the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt and have seen their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. I've come down to deliver them out of the bondage, out of Egypt. And he goes in and he shows Moses what he's going to do. You see, if you're going to serve God, God's going to show you exactly what He wants done. There's no wishy-washiness. We always know what God wants us to do. The will of God will always be revealed to you from the Word of God by the Spirit of God. He'll lead you the way He wants you to go. It's a very rewarding life because you're not wasting time. You're not marching in place. So many Christians are just ten soldiers marching in place but not going anywhere and marking time and truly going somewhere. You know? But God will lead you. And He says, okay, here's what I'm going to do. Here's my plans, Moses. And He goes into it. And as He reveals His plans, He says, I've got compassion in my heart. He reveals His heart of love and compassion for Israel. And you know why He did it to Moses? Because Moses never lost his burden for Israel in the desert. And this is why God revealed it to him. And the closer you get to God, the closer you will feel the burden of God for things, too. And He knew that Moses was right with Him on that. By the way, if He gives you a burden for something or someone, then do it. Or go see Him. So many times we think, well, the preacher's got to go do this. There's somebody sick. Better call a preacher. You better go see him. If God gives you a burden, go do it. Unless you want to wear your preacher out here or wherever if you move somewhere else. I know I could tell you probably a dozen preachers right now because I've been working with preachers for this last year that are wore out. Wore out. The people are wearing them out and they're letting them. We work together. This is why this poem is so good. You take it. The person that did this up, I think it was Monica, I don't know if it was Monica or Vince, didn't know that this would fit in so good with this message today. And it's even typed up so you can take it. It's not a poem. It's a little story. This is about somebody that's lonely. If you know somebody that's lonely, go see them. It is true. People lonely, all over, waiting for somebody to come see them. There are people out here waiting for somebody to come tell them about Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ went back to heaven so he could send the Holy Spirit back down so that he could be many places at one time. And he wants you to be there in your situation to reach out. And me in mine. But if we think that the preacher can go do all of our stuff for us, then we'll wear him out. And if he's smart, he won't let you wear him out. Sometimes we're not too smart. Because the Bible told the preachers what they're to be doing. Their primary work is to spend a lot of time in prayer and the Word so that you'd be fed and strong to do the work of the ministry. And these things. Well, Moses knew the heart of God. And your desert experience may be the thing that God just got designed to make you more serviceable for him. Your desert experience will bring you in touch with God and as you get in touch with God, it'll just bring a lot of moisture into your life like all this moisture's coming in and bringing some moisture onto the ground. It will just invigorate you. And then when you go out from knowing God and you touch people's lives, they are affected. But one of the things that happens is instead of letting it deepen our life with God, it dries us up. We make the decision. Well, verses 8 and 9 going on down. God says, listen, here's my purpose. I'm going to deliver Israel. And God says, this is my purpose and here is my plan. I'm going to send the man and you're the man. And God says, I'm going to send you and you and me. You're my plan. Men is God's plan. Moses, you're my plan for this particular thing to go deliver Israel. And next week we're going to get into an interesting thing how God tried, how Moses tried to argue his way out of God's plan. The worst thing that I could ever do was argue my way out of God's will for my life or disobey God's command. But I think God and Moses had a good relationship there. Moses maybe pushed it a little bit right to the last excuse. God got mad at him. He understands us. He knows that we're human. He knows that we, you know, we might not like to do this and he's going to deal with us in tenderness and love. But it's going to come to a point to where if he really wants us to do something, he can get very firm. And God did, does that with Moses. But because Moses had been prepared in the desert, God could use him. And God reveals himself and he says, you're my plan. So the lesson is if we learn to be what God wants us to be, then we can do what God wants us to do. That's where we started out. Just learn in our lesson, in our deserts, whatever God wants us to learn. It may be a desert, a trial or something that comes up this day. So if I will be what God wants me to be, then I can do what God wants me to do. Are you in a desert right now? It's not the fact that you're in, it's how are you going to come out. Withered or full of life because you found that there were streams in the desert. There's a source to strengthen you. You know, I was thinking about this one little story that I'd read in closing. I'm going to close and then we'll have a word of prayer. About back in the war when France was being liberated, there was an SS man that was captured. He was captured and he was wounded and he was bleeding. He was bleeding to death. And they brought him in and he had to have an immediate blood transfusion. And the guy said, will that be English blood that you're going to put in me? And they said, yes. It's going to be English blood. He said, I'd rather die. And he did. You need a blood transfusion if you haven't trusted Christ. The blood that you need is the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed on the cross for your sins. If you don't have a spiritual blood transfusion, you will die in your sin as this SS man. When Christ died on the cross, that was the only way that you could go to heaven. Any other way, man goes to hell. This is why Jesus says, I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. And he says, if you'll come to me, I won't cast you out. This is why we sing this song, just as I am. That's the only way you can come to God, just as you are. Let's bow our heads and close our eyes. Before we have a closing hymn, I just wonder if there's someone here that would like to receive Jesus as your Savior. With your heads bowed and your eyes closed, don't you realize that Christ died for you on the cross? And all you have to simply do is be willing to turn from your sin. After you trust Christ, he'll give you the power to stay turned. You don't have that power to stay turned until Christ comes in. But where you sit, why don't you just admit to God right now that you're a sinner? Say, dear God, I'm a sinner. Admit to Him that you can't save yourself. Say, I can't save myself. And why don't you just ask Him to come into your life, to cleanse your life up, to give you a new life? Say, dear Lord, would you just come into my life? Give me a new life. Cleanse me. Forgive me of my sin. Jesus, come in. Take over. If you'll just simply invite Christ to come in, He will. And then all He asks is for you. You receive Him and He in turn receives you. You become a new person. And you identify with Him. You make a public confession of your faith. All the invitations are public in the Bible. You just come to Jesus and say, Lord, I take You as my Savior now and I will follow You in baptism. I will be what You want me to be. I'll do what You want me to do. I thank You for saving me. Maybe you're a Christian here and God spoke to your heart. Maybe you need to go to the prayer room or head to the altar or get something right. I don't know what it is. You take care of it. Let's stand and sing a closing hymn.