In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of seeking God's purpose, believing in God's promises, and relying on God's power to overcome trials and challenges. The speaker encourages listeners to trust in God's plan even when they don't understand it fully. The story of Moses is used as an example of someone who had to learn to rely on God's power rather than his own abilities. The sermon concludes with a reminder to surrender our own desires and allow Christ to live through us.

Jethro, the father-in-law of the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the backside of the desert and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. I will now turn aside and see this very sight, why the bush is not burned. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, draw not, and he said, draw not nigh hither, put off thy feet, put off thy feet, for the plague from on thy sins is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. I will send thee into Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go into Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee. Let's bow for prayer. Father, as you have taught us things in the past, we again pray that this morning you would teach us things from your word, that the Spirit of God would open up our minds to understand the word of God, that we might know God. Lord, as we enter into these last few moments of this morning, I pray that our hearts would see Jesus and him crucified, and see Jesus and him buried and risen again, and see him as our Lord, as our Savior. If there is one here that doesn't know Jesus, that they would see that Christ died for them, and that unless they have him, they don't have eternal life. Spirit of God, I ask that you would be the one that controls me at this time, as well as controlling our minds and ears to hear. For it is in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. This burning bush experience of Moses was his cross experience. Have you ever had an experience in your life where your whole life turned around and maybe went 180 degrees? That is exactly what should happen when you meet Christ. When we meet Christ, we're going one direction, we're headed to hell, really. And when we find that Christ is the one that died for our sins and we need him, it should turn us around and we head completely in the opposite direction. As the Bible says, we're a new creature in Christ. I've had, I guess, two experiences that have been deeply affecting in my life. And since this is on tape, some of my family has never heard my testimony. I've never given it in public down in the South. But in 1966, right when the Vietnam War was very hot, very heavy, I had a burning bush experience where my life was completely turned around. And I've shared with you several times this experience, but that summer was when I came to the end of myself, when my life was completely given to Christ. And I told him, I'll never forget it, in the prayer that I made in my mind on the back row of First Baptist Church in Natchitoches, Louisiana, I said, Lord, I am yours. You take me and you do what you want to with me. I will go anywhere you want to go. I will say anything you want me to say. I am just totally yours. I didn't know what I was saying at the time. But when we do something like that, God takes us for what we say. And he took me and I have been his and he has taught me things. And then I had another experience. And that was this last year in our revival movement. When I came to understand what I really did back almost 20 years ago, the cross, this burning bush was Moses' cross experience. And I just want to share with you some things this morning that God has been opening up to me. You see, when Moses came to the bush, that was his cross. When we come to Christ, then we come to the cross. Well, for him it was death and also burial and resurrection. He had been out in that desert. And he wasn't amounting to much out into the desert in the eyes of man. But when he came to the cross and he came to that burning bush and he met God, he couldn't go away from there the same man. And he didn't. And we're going to see that as we make this study. But the burning bush then was to Moses what the cross is to us. Remember that. And from here on, we're going to see how it affected his life. And this morning, we're just going to look at the bush. Now, at some point in your Christian life, at some point in your Christian life, you should have had this experience. And it's supposed to happen at conversion. Well, what happens is most of the time we get saved, then we go off and we flop around for several years and we don't get to grow the way we're supposed to grow. We're not discipled. And the process that Christ has ordained is discipleship. This is why I've been so heavy on teaching the Word. And when we're consistent to the teaching of the Word, the program that God has given us, we will grow. But if we don't get that, we can flop around for years like a fish out on the bank. We just don't get anywhere. Unless somebody comes along. Lord, send somebody along to help us. Well, at some point in your Christian life, we need to come to the end of ourself. And at conversion is the best place to do that. When we come to the end of ourself and we find that in so doing that Christ becomes our very life. As Paul said, for me to live is Christ. And if we don't do that, we can miss out on the whole reason for life. Even as a Christian, we can have little meaning in our day-by-day existence without the cross experience. Now, the bush. There's a lot in that bush. And God showed me some things in this bush. I haven't got them out of books. It doesn't mean that somebody hasn't written them somewhere. I just haven't read some things that the Lord's taught me about this burning bush this morning. But the bush meant at least three things to Moses. And I've shared these three things with you. But it meant that he had a new direction in his life. When Moses left that burning bush, he was going another direction. He was going back to deliver the children of Israel. His old life out in that desert was over. He's going to have a new life in the desert. He's going to have some more experiences. But his plans were over. Whatever plans Moses had come up with after he had made a failure of his life back 40 years earlier, whatever plans he had out there in that desert, Tim and Sheik, those were over too. God's got a new direction, a new life, and new plans. And that's exactly what it means when we come to the cross. Our direction is God's direction. Our plans are God's plans. Our life is God's life. And if we try to go any other direction, it's going to be bad news. And I imagine many of us could get up and say, after many years of bad news, that is right. Without Christ, it's bad news. Now, I want to get right into the passage and start off with this new direction of God's sovereign leading. Now, notice in verse 1, it said that Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the backside of the desert and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. Now, I'm not going to go into a lot of background this day, but when Moses came to the backside of the desert, I just wondered if this wasn't as far as he could go from home. You know, there's only one thing probably worse than being in a desert, and that's being in a desert so far in that there's no way out. You know, you go, like when Lindbergh had to make some decisions when he took off to fly across the Atlantic, the first key decision when he was halfway down the runway. You know, and you decide, well, are we going to cancel this thing or are we going to go for it and see if this thing will fly? And then he went past that point, and then when he got out halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, the halfway point on his fuel, and he decided, well, am I going to go on the rest of the way? There's no turning back. Or am I going to turn back? Well, Moses, this is sort of his no turning back. He's out here, and God has brought him out into the desert. And maybe you've had an experience or will have an experience to where you get into it and you're so deep that there seems to be no way out. And remember what the name Exodus means? It's the way out. The only way through the desert of life is at the cross. Well, Moses is there. Now, here's a principle, one that you can write down if you want it. When God takes you into a desert, when God allows you to go into a trying period, when God allows you to go through that experience which is especially tough, especially trying, especially draining, maybe very humbling, humiliating, degrading, discouraging maybe even. Whenever God allows you to go through a desert or a trial and take something maybe of value from you, you maybe lose something that you thought you couldn't live without. It is always so that He can make room in your life for something that is better. Whenever we go through this experience of self and the crucifying of self and something is taken from us, it's always, if God allows it, and I believe in a sovereign God over a sovereign leading of a Christian's life, I believe nothing touches my life that God doesn't allow. There's a lot of things I don't like, but I'm learning, I've spent a lot of time kicking up dust, kicking and spitting and crying and growling and grumbling and complaining and all of that stuff, when God just wanted me to relax and learn something from that. And we go around throwing our temper tantrums all the time, and He said, listen, I want to get something out of your life so I can replace it with something better. And there's nothing better than more of Christ and less of me. As John the Baptist said, I like it when he said, He must increase and I must decrease. And if that's not your personal desire in your Christian life, then you're going to have nothing but misery. Because the more of Christ is there, the more blessing there is, the more self is, the more misery there is. So God took away from Moses the pleasures of Egypt. God took away from Moses the power that he had in Egypt. God took away from Moses the position. And you know what? Moses, because he was willing to let God do that, and we've already seen his mistake, but because he was willing to let God do that, and he did love God, he did want to serve God, he in turn learned the pleasure of knowing God face to face. And the pleasure of having God work through him, the power and the position were all shifted over to instead of power, position, and pleasure in the world, what? Power, position, and pleasure with God. The other never did satisfy. And if it didn't satisfy Moses and it's never satisfied a believer, why do we still want to try to get that? It's Christ. He's the one that satisfies. Now Moses was led to the mountain of God. You see, if you go into your desert, it's not going to do you any good unless you come to the mountain of God. It's not going to do you any good unless you come to know God in your desert. Otherwise, you'd just dry up and be an old dill pickle, you know, an old sourpuss, or something, an old crabby person. And Christ won't be radiating through your life. God wants to produce his life through us. He wants the fruit of the Spirit to be in our life. And many times he's got to take us through a desert. And like I said, I've spent a lot of time kicking up sand and hollering because the Lord put me in a desert. Well, God brought him to that mountain. And Moses, I imagine through those 40 years or while he was waiting for this experience, he learned some things. And we don't know what all he learned. He learned, I've shared a few things that I think maybe he learned, but I think that he learned this to let his trials become a bridge over which he would get closer to God. To let them become a tool. He'd get this trial. He mellowed down a whole lot out there in that desert. Maybe a little bit of that youthful zeal was mellowed down to a maturity and a stability in his life. And so he learned that these things, these deserts, were nothing more than stepping stones to get closer to God. And so finally the day came when God says, this is it. And he let Moses go to the backside of the desert. Many times it's when we get to the bottom of the barrel, the backside of the desert, the end of the rope, you know, that we really do come and say, okay God, you can have it. And that's exactly what happened to me in 1966. I struggled for three weeks. Nobody knows it but me. But I would go out and I would cry. I would come home to my room. I was in college and I would cry. I was so empty. Life was so meaningless. And that's because Christ was not in my life. And God just let me come to the end of myself. Best thing that ever happened to me. And the cross experience is the most beautiful experience. I'm going to share some truths with you on this cross, but I've got to keep going. There's one other thing, though, I want to throw this out. If Moses had not made a clean break from Egypt, he would have never come to the mountain of God. And I say that to tell you that some of you are trying to pussyfoot around with God. You're trying to be wishy-washy, a Christian on Sunday, and you live like the devil on Monday. Well, you know which one you really are. You can't do that with God. You've got to be all for Him. You love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your might, with all your strength. You go for God with everything you've got. And then He meets you and He says, that's the person that's after my heart. I will pour out my heart to Him. I will bless Him. But the hypocrite is the one that sits here on Sunday morning, or out there, whatever, and grins like a fool all through our songs, and then he goes out and he has nothing but a selfish life. He lives nothing but for self. That person doesn't meet God in the desert. He finds that the deserts are very dry. There's no mountain out there of God. So, Moses made a clean break from Egypt, and if he hadn't, if he had never come to that burning bush, he was willing to turn his back on the pleasures of Egypt, the Scripture says. But we know he made a mistake. His motives were good, but his timing was off about 40 years. You know, I was wondering, what would he have learned if he just played it cool and stayed there those other 40 years until God was ready to go? Something else would have developed, I'm sure. But God takes our lives, and He will take our mistakes and our trials. He will take all these things. If we'll come back and confess to Him, Lord, I really blew it. I really blew it. But it's our pride that keeps us from coming back and saying, we really blew it. But if we'll do that, then God will take that and turn it into something meaningful. And that's what God did with Moses. He took that mistake he made. He got his 40 years in the desert. I don't know if that was 40 years for killing a man or what. But he got it. But he made a clean break with Egypt anyway. He was not going to stay in the world. He was fed up with Egypt. And I think some of you maybe need to get right with God. And maybe I got something in my life I need to get right with God. There's something of Egypt still in my heart. And it'll keep you from coming to that burning desert, that burning bush. Well, there are three things to do to survive in the desert. If you're going to get to the backside of the desert, if God is going to maybe have to break you and bring you to the bottom, there's three things you better remember. You better write them down. They're not in books. I didn't get these out of a book. I don't get hardly any of this stuff out of a book. These three things, very practical things. Number one, if you get into a desert, you get into a trial, you go into an experience. Number one, always seek God's purpose. Always seek God's purpose. Now that's going to test your faith because God does not always tell us His purpose. But Lord, I will just learn what you have for me through this. I will quit stomping and kicking and yelling and crying and bellyaching and criticizing and growling and grumbling and all those other things that people do. Of course, we would say we don't do it, but the truth of the matter is we do it. And instead, we'll just say, I will see your purpose in this. I will seek to know you. Look at David. All of his years of running in that desert. As Paul chased him around, he never did take it upon himself to retaliate and be the one that would attack his attacker because he knew that God was allowing it. Think of Joseph. This is beautiful. Joseph, thrown into the pit, and I think the pit was his cross. It wasn't the pit. That was his cross. He was dead to his own life. He was buried, and he'd come out of that thing to go on a new path with God. Isn't that beautiful? The cross is seen all the way from the beginning of this Bible all the way to the end. And wherever we see the cross, there is the death to self, the burial of our own life, the rising to walk a new life with Christ. So, Joseph, when he came at the end of the road there in Genesis and his brothers came up, they were scared because they thought he was going to get them. He said, listen, God had a purpose. And Joseph said, but as for me, you thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good to bring to pass as it is this day to save much people. Isn't that beautiful? So, when you go through your trial, look for God's purpose. And then number two, believe God's promises. Grab you some promises. Get you a handful of promises. Write them out on some verses. Memorize them. Meditate upon them. Some promises that meet you in your situation for your need, and hang on to them. Claim them. God, you said this, and I'm going to believe it. There's a promise for every trial that you have. If you don't have the promise, it's not because God hasn't given it to you. It's because you're too lazy to go look for it. You're just not willing to meet God in the desert. You see, when you go to the book and try to find your promise, you're going to the well that will satisfy and give you nourishment for life. But, we want to go running off here and complain on somebody's shoulder, shoulder, you know, over here and there. This is the way we tend to be. And God has shown me, you've got to cut that out. I'm going to keep giving it to you. Okay, Lord, I'm tired. I've learned if I flunk a test in a trial, it's just like when I was in school. You get to do it again, maybe. You know, you flunk it. The Lord's not going to let us get out of it, you know. He's not going to let us be satisfied with a failing grade. He wants us to pass, so He'll keep working on us. Another thing, you seek God's purpose, you believe God's promise, and you claim God's power to get you through the trial, where you can't go through on your own strength. Claim God's power. Romans 8, 28 is a promise that all things work together for good. But take like, oh, say 2 Timothy 1, 7. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of sound mind. Maybe somebody in your life is really bugging you, and you can't stand that person, they're a real pain in the neck. Well, claim that verse, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love. Lord, would you love me through that person? That's God's power, working through you. God's love. So, the purpose, the promise, and the power. Now, the point is, Moses made it to God in his desert. If we don't make it to God, we're not going to make it. We'll fail. You know what, there may be a Judas in this crowd today. You know what the difference was between Judas and the other disciples? Many differences, but this one. Judas came to the end of himself, and when he came to the end of himself, he would not repent and turn to Christ. He just sort of got frustrated that things were not going the way he thought. He thought Christ was going to set up a kingdom, and he was going to be the money bearer. He was going to be the treasurer. That's what he did when he was through the disciples, and it frustrated him when he found out that that wasn't going to be. Christ was setting up a spiritual kingdom. Well, the disciples didn't understand either. They came, and there was this cross, and their Messiah was hung on the cross. He was crucified. It looked like it was all over, but they didn't give up. Judas came up. He came to the end of himself, and he went and hanged himself, because he would not repent. When you come into your desert, when you come to the end of yourself, and you look at yourself, you better repent, because that's why you're there. It's self. That's our problem. Self and sin. Judas wouldn't repent. The other disciples, they were willing to deal with themselves and their sin and their situations. Peter made a lot of mistakes, but he was always willing to admit it and turn back, and so that's the difference between a Judas and a disciple. When you get to that hard trial, are you going to turn from yourself? Now, in verse 2, we actually get to the burning bush, and the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. Who's the angel of the Lord? I wished I had time, but I'm not going to take it, to show you who the angel of the Lord is in Scripture. It's none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. You can go back to Genesis 16 and Genesis 21 and other places, and it shows us that the angel of the Lord is Christ. But I want to get to this flame, this flaming bush. There's some beautiful things here. You know, Moses was really interested in this thing too, because in verse 3, Moses said, I'm going to turn aside. I want to see this great sight. How come this bush is not burnt? Wouldn't it interest you? You're out in the middle of nowhere, and you saw this glow up on the mountain. How come that thing's not burnt up? You know? Ah, there's some beautiful things here. You know what? I got to thinking, and my mind's just a-wheeling and turning around. I was thinking of Jesus back in Revelation 1. When John met Jesus in the vision, you know what one of the descriptions of him was? His eyes. It says his head and his hairs were as white as wool and white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire. Now, I did some reading. There's many things that people say about this bush. The eyes of Jesus we're all seeing, all penetrating, purifying eyes of God, and we can say things about the bush too. The bush symbolizes many things. But I don't want to tell you what I think it means. You can take it, or you can leave it. But to me, this bush means one thing. Self-existence of God. God is self-existent. Last week, I had somebody, I was talking to a guy, and he got to talking about perpetual motion. How, in theory, it is impossible for perpetual motion to work. You know what that is? That's where something, say you take a vehicle, and you design an engine that will produce energy to drive this vehicle, and at the same time produce energy to replace the energy that was burnt. To where once you get this thing going, it perpetuates itself. It'll just drive forever. You get a zillion miles to a gallon of gas. All you got to have is just a little bit to get you going. Well, God is like that. God is perpetual. He is self-existent. He is not consumed. This bush was not consumed because God was self-existent. Now, I want to show you some things on this. What does fire do normally? It consumes that which it gets a hold of, right? Normally, fire would have burnt this bush up. But God is saying, listen, I am a self-existent God. I don't need anybody or anything to exist. Now, there's some beautiful lessons here. Christ is saying to us, if we will look at this bush, He's saying, listen, I am non-consumable. I am non-consumable. Don't miss this point. And whatever I possess becomes the same. Do you get it? I am non-consumable. And if I possess a bush, it's going to be non-consumable too. Now, what if He were to possess a man? Huh? What do we say? We say, you better not give your life to God. What a waste! No, the very opposite of that is true. If you give your life to God, it's not a waste. It is non-consumable. It is profitable. But what you don't give to God, you lose. We've already looked at that lesson. Now, God is saying, Moses, I believe God used that bush for Moses. That would have really gotten Moses. God might use something for you too. He might use something for me. He said, listen, Moses, as this bush is not consumed, as I am in the bush, so as I come into you, you will not be consumed. And as I am used in this bush, I'm going to use you. And as Christ dwells within me and you, He will use us and we will not be consumed. You know what consumes us? Not Christ. What will eat us up and destroy us is when we are involved in self and in the world. And Christ is not the consuming thing in our life. Now, let me share this with you about Moses. Moses allowed God to use him. Sure, He gave him some flack. We're going to look at that. He argued with him a little bit. But Moses went down from that mountain. He went out there to Egypt. He led the children of Israel out across the sea and through that desert for 40 years. He was an 80-year-old man when he started. He was a 120-year-old man when he stopped. And what does the Scripture say about Moses? Listen, when God led him up on the mountain and he died and God buried him, it says that Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was not dim. He did not need glasses. And his natural force was not abated. He still didn't need a cane to go up the mountain because God had possessed him. And Moses was not consumed. I believe Moses was just as he was when he was 80. When he was 120, he was the same. Because that bush was not consumed. Moses was not consumed. And we will put our life into God. It will be the same principle. We will not deteriorate. But if we try to hold back, we will. Well, you know what that tells me? The only safe place in the whole world is on the cross. Because that's what God is telling us. Listen, you come to Christ, you come to the cross. He says you stay there. But what happens? We come to the cross, we receive Christ as our Savior, then we move away from the cross. We try to go live our Christian life ourselves. The crucified life is the life of freedom and joy and peace. The self-life is pain and misery and all the other fruits of the self-life. The only safe place in the whole world is in Christ. I'd like to take you through Romans 6, but I'm going to skip over it right now. How all of this applies. So as the bush was not consumed, because Christ was in the bush, even so we will not be consumed. We are consumed when we get off the cross, when we move away from Christ. And I may be sharing some things that are a little bit deep for some of you. Maybe over your head a little bit, but I'm sharing with you the heart of the victorious Christian life. It's just stay there with Christ. Whatever comes, just die to it. A temptation comes, I'm dead to it. That's staying on the cross. A trial comes, don't let it crush you. I'm just going to trust in you. We're supposed to pray, so we won't cave in as the scripture says. But if we don't, we will be consumed when we get off the cross. The Bible says the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, all these things will destroy you when we move away from the cross. So that burning bush was Moses' cross. You know what, I'm closing up. God told Moses after he, and next week we'll pick up and get into verse 3. But God told Moses, you get down to verse 7, down through there. He says, listen, I've seen the affliction of my children in Israel. I have seen all the suffering. I've seen this, my ear has heard. And I am going to deliver them. I am going to deliver them. The time has come. And you know what, if I can just throw a little bit of my own idea in there. I think Moses said, great, praise the Lord. Man, Lord, I've been praying for this. You know how I had a burden for my people. You know how I went out and tried to do something and failed. Oh, Lord, I'm excited. Praise the Lord. And God says, come now, therefore, I will send thee unto Pharaoh. I could just see silence. Me, Lord. And we go into all these things. The Lord says, come, I'm going to send you unto Pharaoh. That thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. And Moses said to the God, who am I? Lord, who am I? He began to sweat. It wasn't from the heat of the bush either. He said, man, I'm the number one on the number ten top most wanted men back there in Egypt. Who am I? Who am I? This is beautiful. You see, this bush was the death, burial, and resurrection. Really, the death of Christ, of Moses, was back when he tried to do it himself. The burial was in the desert for 40 years, but his resurrection is really right here at this bush. God is resurrecting him to walk a new life. And God says, Moses, that's the very reason I'm going to use you. Because you ask who you are, you ain't nothing. That's why I'm going to use you. They don't even know about you anymore back there. Those Egyptians aren't concerned about you back there anymore. You're a dead man. Nobody knows about you except these few little old sheep and your little family back there. You're a dead man. Your reputation is gone. All your dreams and goals, it's all been gone. You've died. Practically speaking, Moses had died in the desert. He says, that's why, Moses, I can use you. I can use a dead man. A man that's dead to his own plans, his own directions, his own dreams, and he's just willing for God to do what he wants to do. Now, Moses is going to kick a little bit because he's going to try to come off the cross. But this is why God could use him. You know, it's beautiful just to be dead to ourself, dead to my desires and alive to whatever he wants. But I have problems when I want to do what I want to do. And God says, I want you to do this. And I say, no, Lord, I want to do that. He says, okay, we'll see. We'll have a tug of war. You get on that end of the rope and I'll get on this end. And this is about what we try to do with God. He says, okay, now, we're going to see who wins. Boy, he jerks us all over the place. And when we're all done, okay, Lord, I'll do it. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if the Lord says, I want you to go and lead my people out of Egypt? If you just say, yes, sir, Lord. When do we start? But we want to kick, and Moses is going to kick a little bit. But God can use him because he's really crucified Moses. He can use a dead man. And this is why he can use a dead man. Because you can't hurt a dead man. You can't hurt him. This is why we're to be dead to sin. We're to be dead. A dead man won't take credit for what God does. And God's got Moses to the point where he won't take credit. Do you know 40 years before, Moses would have took the credit? He would have. Because logically speaking, he had been raised up in the court of Pharaoh. He had all of the training, all the intellect, all of the skill. And he would say to himself, who else can lead Israel out? And he knew that God wanted to do it. He says, I've got all this training, and now I've got the position and the power. Logically speaking, I can do it. And that's just what God doesn't want. He wants to use us and be the one that does it. And so he got Moses to the point where Moses wouldn't take the credit. Now he's going to have to push Moses to get him to go. 40 years before, Moses was really zealous. But logically speaking, Moses could have done it. The pride was killed. There's other things there. But he won't take the credit. Well, that's the bush. It's a cross. Where are you at in your life? As we close up, where are you at right now? Just look at last week. Was there a lot of time spent defeated? Has something been eating on you? You're off of the cross. You're out trying to face life and fight life yourself. I'm going to give him a spiritual karate chop. Those guys, they can't do that to me. You're really defeated in your Christian life right there. You're trying to do it in the energy of the flesh. Instead of coming back to God, would you take care of this situation? What about, have you been discouraged? That's nothing more than looking to yourself to live your Christian life. Are you disappointed? All of these things, you're looking to yourself. Defeat, discouragement, disappointment, anger, criticizing. Have you criticized somebody this week? You know the Bible says, Galatians 5.15 But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed of one another. That means destroy one another. Whoever you complain against, you try to destroy them. They'll just come back and try to get you. You're just like two little, you know, whatever they are. They'll come along and eat each other up. Two fish, one eating from, just eating in, eating each other up. It doesn't work that way. We're consumed of our own lust, the Bible says. Why don't you just come back to the cross and die? And let Christ live. Lord, I'm just going to die to my disappointment. I'm going to die to my defeat, my discouragement. And as you die, guess who's going to live? This is what this desert survival series is all about. Have you turned aside to the cross or have you turned away from the cross? You'll make that decision today. Before the day is over, you and I will meet something and we will either turn away from the cross or turn to the cross. And Christ is always there at the cross. We turn to him or turn from him. This is why Jesus said, Come unto me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Your disappointments, your trials, your discouragements, or whatever. Let's bow for prayer. Lord, thank you for these things. And Lord, I pray that we would grasp these things. Our whole Christian life, from the beginning to the end, revolves around the cross. And that bush was nothing more than a beautiful picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ at the cross. And what the bush was to Moses, the cross is to us. And the thing about that bush was, Lord, you were in there. You were in the bush, you were in the Holy of Holies, and you were on the cross until they took you down and put you in the grave and you rose again. Whatever it is in our life that right now has been eating us, Lord, I pray that the Spirit of God would point it out to us and we would just take it and we would nail it to the cross. We would just die to it. And we would say, Lord, would you take this thing that's eating me alive and I will just let you do what you want to do. Father, maybe there's someone here that has never come to the cross. Their whole life has been lived in self-energy. They have even tried to talk themselves into thinking that they're saved, but there's no peace in their life. They don't have the assurance that if they died, they'd go to heaven. If that's the case, Lord, they need to come to the cross for the release of their sins. They need to come to Jesus, and I pray that the Spirit of God would just draw them to Jesus right now as we have this closing time. They could even pray right now and ask Jesus to forgive them and to come into their life. And you can do that. While your head's bowed and your eyes are closed, you can just say, Dear Jesus, my whole life has been in the desert. And I realize that you haven't been the Lord in my life. I've been the Lord. I need a Savior, and I ask you to come into my life to forgive me of my sin and to save my soul. And if you prayed that prayer, you need to make a decision whether or not you're going to follow Christ publicly. All of Christ's followers, He's called them to follow Him publicly, and that's why we have baptism. Christ said to go and to baptize those that trust Him. Lord, maybe there's a believer here, a Christian that's been struggling. They've been away from the cross. They've been trying to live their life, make their decisions, all in the energy of self. And I just pray that this has been a message that would help them. Thank you for this time we've had now today. In Jesus' name, Amen.