We also send our best wishes to the members and congregation of Scapegoat Hill.

Exodus 17; 2: Moses replied. “Why are you complaining against me? And why are you testing the Lord?”

Questions – Where has God been? How will it be?

1. Are you an Optimist or a Pessimist?

To what extent does your everyday experience of God and your Christian Faith inform your attitude? How does your experience of God’s love for you and His ‘watching over’ you give you confidence and hope?

2. What is your hope?

To what extent does a ‘fear of death’ (or failure, or even just simple ‘inconvenience’ give us cause for fear? How do we speak of our ‘hope’ for what is yet to come?

3. Seek first God’s Kingdom

Has your Christian journey ever passed ‘through a wilderness” experience when a natural inclination would have been to despair? What was the eventual outcome. Perhaps you could share that experience with someone else and say what you learned of God through it. Was it an opportunity for you to strengthen your faith. Looking back, can you see how God was present in the trial?

1. Go and serve God, take some time out but don’t leave Egypt
2. OK Go and serve God but don’t go too far away
3. OK Go out into the desert for a few days but leave your families and livestock here
4. OK you can all go – but leave all your livestock behind.

Moses refuses to negotiate:
“There shall not a hoof be left behind!”

Questions – Convenience, Concession and Compromise…

1. Take some time out

Is your Christian Faith a part time hobby – and if so, where does it stand in priority with all your other interests? Is our faith dymanic and central or dependent on convenience?

2. Don’t go too far

Are we afraid of being called “extremist!” ‘Moderation is much more our byword but at what point do we express our faith in a way that is more ‘mediocre’ than moderate?

3. Keep it private

What pressures are there upon us from society to keep matters of faith private and how do they affect our teaching of faith values and beliefs to our children?

4. What has a hold on us?

Would we compromise in the living out of a full commitment of our faith because of our wealth or possessions? What are our gods today?

1.    I’m a ‘nobody’
2.    I won’t know what to say.
3.    They won’t take any notice of me.
4.    I’m useless at speaking anyway.
5.    Actually I just don’t want to do it!

Questions – Dealing with self-image – from Exodus 3 and 4

1.    Significant people

What are the disadvantages of well known ‘celebrities’ coming into positions of prominence and leadership?

2.    Dunno what to say!

How ‘expert’ do we need to be? What is more convincing -  a complex sermon or a simple testimony?

3.    They won’t listen!

OK, so how do we earn respect? What are the most significant and important qualifications that encourage us to listen to somebody?

4.    Use what you’ve got …

What is on our own shopping list of personal qualities or attributes that we feel we are lacking to do God’s work?

5.    I don’t want to do it!

Make a list of the five top priorities in your life. Where does God’s Kingdom fit in? Does it make the list?

God brought Aaron to help Moses. Whom has he given to you -  and to whom has he sent you to help? How important it is always to speak blessings to each other? And how might our speaking be destructive in the church?

The story of Moses ‘finding his identity’ as an Israelite despite being brought up as an Egyptian Prince … and the sequel of how in his anger at seeing the ill-treatment of the hebrew Slaves, he murdered an Egyptian Taskmaster. From Exodus 2; 11-24

Sermon preached by Dave Barker – the following are the questions that Dave left us with…

1. Who are you? How do you identify yourself, by what you do, who your in relationship with, by what God says about you or by what other people say about you.

2. What do you do when you see injustice?

• Fight
• Flight (ignore it)
• Try and talk it through
• Take appropriate action

3. Are you aware of at least part of God’s purpose for your life, if not ask him to begin to reveal it to you.

4. How has God used the good times and the bad times to shape your life?

5. God used Moses mightily despite him being a murderer. Sometimes we allow guilt to bind us and stop us fulfilling God’s purposes.

• Bring those bad things to God
• Ask his forgiveness
• Receive his forgiveness
• Ask him to use us in our weakness

How easy it is to conveniently forget history – and how easilly people can be swayed by propoganda especially when it has ‘nationalist’ roots. Evil rises when good people say nothing. Could this ever happen in Britain?

2. When innocent blood is shed!

We can be tempted to gloss over the hard passages because ‘God always brings good out of evil.’ But what honest reflections can we bring on the slaughter of these innocent children? (cf the ‘slaughter of the innocents’ under Herod)

3. Moses’ Mother and Sister – Holy disobedience

Well – strictly speaking – they did ‘cast him into the river…’ But is it justifiable to disobey the civil law? And if so, when might this be so… under what circumstances? Have you ever broken the law or disobeyed an ‘Authority’ (parents / employers…) in a matter of Christian conscience? Where do you draw your lines of morality / integrity.

4. God protects us and has a plan for us

Can you give a testimony of a time when God moved in your life to protect you from harm or an evil outcome? Can you identify times in your life when God has intervened to change the course of your life or direction