Sovereign Purpose of God — E.A. Johnston

In Exodus chapter 3 and in verses 1 and 2 we read,. Now 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.

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. We see here, friends, how God sometimes arrests our attention, like the apostle Paul being thrown from his horse by a blinding light by an earthquake in a hillside jail in Philippi.

Whatever the means or instruments that God chooses to use to get our attention, to awaken us to our lost condition, to bring an attention to our life as it is at that time, to bring us to feel our need of a saver from sin, although God may employ different means, one thing is certain, He will appear to us at the right time.

We are saved when we receive a revealed Christ. And here in our text in Exodus, the angel of the Lord appears to Moses. Now, notice Moses was not out looking for God that day. He was about his normal routine of tending his father-in-law's sheep.

The sheep didn't even belong to Moses. He's just a hired hand. But here, God invades the normal course of his day to arrest his attention by appearing to him in a bush that burned, but it was not consumed.

And Moses says to himself, I will have a closer look at this spectacle. Verse 3 says about the same thing. And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight while the bush is not burnt. So God has done something amazing here.

God has done something special to get Moses' attention. So we see, friends, that Moses was not out looking for God that particular day, but God was looking for Moses. Is that now how it was with us in our salvation?

God Seeks and Saves Those Who Are Not Seeking Him

We weren't out looking for God primarily, but God was looking for us. Herein is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins. When I was just a boy of 13 years old, God intervened in my life by placing me upon the heart of a neighbor of mine.

He was a pastor, and he saw that I was this awkward teenager growing up in a godless home. And this man got a burden for my soul. He began to pray for me. This man gave me my first job in his Christian bookstore.

This man gave me my first Bible. He was the first person I ever heard pray for me by name. And it was at his little church that, during a revival meeting by an itinerant evangelist, that God arrested my attention and showed me my need of a Savior.

I made a public profession to Jesus that night, all because this pastor was determined that he wouldn't let me go to hell. God used this human instrument to step in the normal course of my life. And like a burning flame in a bush, I was overwhelmed by the love of Jesus that shone brightly through that dear man.

I wasn't looking for God, but God was looking for me. How about you, friend? Think of the care that God the Father has shown you by intervening in your own life, by the methods and means and individuals that God sovereignly placed in your path to bring you, savingly, to Christ Jesus.

Where would you be now, friend, if God had not gone out looking for you? What would your life be like without Him? I can't imagine living without God in this sin-cursed world that's so full of heartache and pain and trial and human suffering.

How hopeless everything would be without Jesus. No, friend, Moses wasn't out looking for God that day. If anything, he was still on the run from God for killing the Egyptian. He's on the back side of the desert.

But God, in His great mercy, looks for Moses, and He finds him. He arrests his attention by a supernatural event. In this case, a burning bush. In here, Moses has an encounter with God. Listen, friend, if you're truly saved, it's because God has given you saving faith.

Salvation Is the Supernatural Work of God

I know we live in a day of great spiritual declension in the church and apostasy within our religious denominations. The situation's pretty bleak, pretty bad. And the majority of pastors out there believe that salvation is in the hands of men, that we make ourselves Christians.

That's why there's such an over-weighted church today, over-weighted with unconverted church members. It's because the modern gospel took salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of men.

But my Bible is clear on this matter. My Bible declares salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is a supernatural act whereby God's Spirit works grace of regeneration upon the heart turning the stony heart into a heart of flesh by implanting a new disposition.

Whitefield and Wesley: Religious Effort Replaced by Saving Faith

George Whitefield was a lost religious young man who tried to reach heaven by good works. He fasted, he prayed, he gave alms to the poor, he visited widows and prisoners. He was a member of John Wesley's Holy Club, a group of young college students who met weekly for nights of prayer and Bible reading.

Both Wesley and Whitefield were unconverted men at this time. But it was Charles Wesley who loaned Whitefield a book that changed his life and it brought him to faith in Christ. It was a little book by the Scotsman Henry Schugel and it was entitled, The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

And George Whitefield found out that salvation was indeed the life of God in the soul of man. And Whitefield went on to preach on two continents the message of the new birth. When John Wesley sailed to the colony of Georgia as a missionary to the Indians and on his return journey he wrote in his journal, I traveled to Georgia to save the heathen, but who will save me?

Wesley was a religious lost man. Eventually John Wesley had his encounter with God at a Bible reading in London on Aldersgate Street. I've actually been there to that very site. Perhaps you have too. There's a blue historical marker which stands there today relating that this was near the spot of John Wesley's conversion.

It was there. Wesley had recorded in his journal. It was on May 24, 1738. As one read Luther's preface to the epistle to the Romans at about 845 in Wesley's words, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.

I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation. And an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. Notice, friends, the experience with God that Wesley had.

Moses has an experience of God that changes him. It's an encounter with God that alters the rest of the course of his entire life. As the figurehead of a nation brought out of bondage, his whole purpose in life was changed dramatically.

From Christian Businessman to Preacher

This happened to me. I was a Christian, but mainly I was a Christian businessman. Business was my main business. I had previously taught a Sunday school class, and I had a discipleship group of men in my home during the week, but I had no desire for full-time Christian service.

I was quite happy making a lot of money, and I enjoyed spending it on the finer things in life. At the time, I was driving a new Mercedes. I wore a Rolex watch. I stayed at only the very best hotels. And when I flew, I flew first class.

Then one day, oddly, I felt strongly led to sign up for a preaching institute taught by Dr. Stephen F. Oldford. It was for pastors to strengthen their expository preaching, and it was for three days in the middle of the week.

Well, I wasn't a pastor, and I wasn't preaching. I needed to be at my office conducting business during that time, but this urge to attend this preaching institute wouldn't go away. I felt captivated by it, and I felt I needed to be there.

So I took off from work that week, and I went and I sat in a room with a bunch of pastors and all I can say, friends, is that during that time, I had an experience of God under the anointed preaching of Stephen Oldford, and it turned my life upside down.

It literally flipped me upside down. When I left that preaching institute, I was a changed man. I no longer wanted to be a businessman. I just wanted to be a preacher. Now, how does God do such a thing?

God's Call Includes Training and Equipping

He finds us. He arrests our attention. He invites us to join Him in His work. Then He trains us. He equips us. He enables us to carry out the tasks He has appointed us to do. Listen, friends, I believe in a sovereign God.

I believe God has a specific purpose for each of our lives. I believe He has work for us to do, that He equips us to do that work. He calls us to that work. God had gifted me early in life with a writing talent, but I never used it to make a living.

It was a gift He would use in due time. After God met me during that preaching institute of Dr. Oldford, I was called very clearly by God to write a number of Christian biographies. My first book was published by Baker Book House on the life of J. Sidlow Baxter.

I went on to write biographies of George Whitefield, Asa Hill Nettleton, and Rolf Barnard. God eventually placed me in a large preaching ministry and gave me a burden for revival. I wouldn't be here before you today, friends, preaching to you right now, if it weren't for God invading my life through His burning bush, Stephen Oldford.

That man was on fire for God, and I caught the flame. The point I'm trying to make, friend, is this. You can't outrun God. Maybe God's been putting it in your heart to step away from business, to go on all out for Him in full-time service.

Perhaps He's called you to the mission field, but you've been coming up with excuses on not to go. But listen, friend, you can't outrun God. Jonah tried to do it, and God found Jonah in the belly of a whale, and He'll find you.

Embracing God's Sovereign Purpose

He will alter your life to use you. But you have to stop, pause long enough, to see the strange side or the thing He's doing in your life and make yourself available. Like Moses turned to have a closer look at the flames.

When he did that, a fire caught hold of him, and it changed his life from following a herd of smelly sheep to leading nearly half a million people out of Egyptian bondage. A sovereign God has a sovereign purpose for you, friend.

You can't outrun Him. You can go hide on the backside of a desert, and He will still find you. He will catch up to you like He caught up to me. Let us pray.