Ruslan Buzhduga
Sermon Transcription:
Thank you, Sofie. What an honor! I couldn't help but notice some friends in the back there. Would you guys give a hand to some of the pastors in the area? Some of the wonderful friends that have been dear to our hearts—thank you guys for joining us. It's a privilege, it's a blessing. First of all, I'm really grateful and privileged to be here with you guys and to have this opportunity. I want to say thank you to our pastors who have given me this opportunity to share from God's Word with you, and I hope this word comes as an encouragement to so many of you, as it has been to me.
I just want to pray: Father, would you help me, Lord, just to deliver what you have in your heart, Lord God. I pray that, Lord, whatever it is that is left of me, Lord God, would not be in vain, would not be translated. God, I just pray that it would fall to the floor, Lord God, and that only what your Spirit seeks to give us today would be heard and understood. In Jesus' name, Amen. I am so glad, like I said, to be sharing the Word. Now, I want to ask a question: Who likes to wait? Anybody like to wait? I don't think anybody likes to wait. Waiting—if I may say it—waiting sucks.
And here are some statistics that I looked into. According to a Timex survey, Americans wait an average of 20 minutes a day for the bus or train, 32 minutes whenever they visit a doctor, and 28 minutes waiting in security lines whenever they travel. Americans wait 21 minutes for a significant other (that could have been today) to get ready to go out. Most Americans spend 13 hours annually waiting on hold for customer service, reports Time Magazine. The average American commuter spends 38 hours each year waiting in traffic—50 hours if it's a big city. And those are some staggering numbers. We spend a lot of time waiting.
But those are some practical things; those are some basic everyday ways that we wait. But we also do some other kinds of waiting, don't we? We wait for seasons and times in our life.
I just want to ask: Have you ever been in that situation? Have you been in a season where what you hoped for didn't happen? Where what you expected should come about by now, and it should take place—but it hasn't? You know, there are missed expectations. Have you been discouraged by life's twists and turns? Do you find yourself waiting for things to change that should have turned around by now? And have you ever wondered, "If I'm doing everything right, shouldn't my life just turn out... I follow Jesus, shouldn't everything just kind of happen? Am I the only one today?"
You know, if I follow Jesus, shouldn't my life be blessed? Shouldn't things just happen naturally, and I just always go from glory to glory without any resistance? But the truth is that there are seasons and times where we wait, where we go through trials and difficulties. And I want to talk about some of that today. I want to talk about those seasons and times of waiting—what they're for and what God would like to say to us through His Word. I want to take us to a story in the Bible where God's people were faced with a time of waiting. There was a time when Moses was sent as the deliverer to lead the people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt, and they were delivered.
God led them out of that place. They plundered the enemy; while they were leaving, the Egyptians were taking off their golden stuff and giving it to them. They were going in victory. They went out there, and God delivered them. He made a way for them when there was no way. When they came to the Red Sea, there was the army behind them and the sea in front of them. They called on God, and God made a way for them in that place. And here they are. This is where our story picks up. Here they are; they came to this mountain and are camping around it. Now, they had come there to worship, right? Moses told Pharaoh, "We will go out into the wilderness, and we're going to worship. We're going to go—everyone, the livestock—not a hoof will be left behind. We're all going." And so, here they are, going to worship God in the wilderness. But this is what happens.
We're going to pick up in Exodus 32:1: "Now when the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron and said to him, 'Come, make us gods that shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.'" Now, if you ask me, that's a pretty quick turnaround. You think, "Wow, God just led you out! God led you through the Red Sea, and here you are, and such a shift of heart." But this is what happened. In all reality, Moses had been gone for over a month. He came, and they were expecting a place of worship. They were expecting something different than what was happening at this point.
When Moses went up, he was at that time receiving what would be the orderly way of worship, right? God was giving the Ten Commandments, God was giving the law, God was giving the people a copy of the Tabernacle in heaven as a dim example of what His true intentions were. And so, during all of this time, there was a whole different narrative happening down at the base of the mountain. What happened is the people just got tired of waiting. They were waiting around; their expectations were not met, their hopes and dreams were dying, and they had had enough. So they called for Aaron. They said, "Aaron, make us gods. We came here to worship, and worship we will, so let's make something happen. Let's make something happen in our own strength." They got impatient in their hearts, and their lips began to speak of it.
Nobody talks about it too much, but there are times and seasons of waiting in our lives. Every single believer, every person that follows God, goes through a time of waiting. Did you know that waiting is a part of God's plan for your life? Did you know that God may have it for you to be in a season like this as well? You may already find yourself in one; you may have walked through a few. But if we look all over the Bible, it is full of examples of people that God called, who experienced an extended time of waiting. Look at Moses. Moses spent 40 years waiting to be ready to lead the people, to be used as a vessel to lead them out of Egypt. Remember the story when he took matters into his own hands? He kills an Egyptian. He knew he was going to be the deliverer, so he tries to do it, and it doesn't work. Forty years went by, and he was waiting. He was just a shepherd, waiting until God would use him.
David waited 15 years after the point where he was anointed king to actually become king. Imagine that—15 years knowing you are the king, you're the one God intends, you're the one God has in His heart to be king, but you're not the king right now. You're running away and hiding in caves. Joseph waited for his God-given dreams to come true most of his life. Two full years of his life were spent being forgotten in a prison. It seemed all hope was lost. Anna and Simeon eagerly waited for the Messiah. We read about them in the New Testament. They had a promise—God gave them a word that they would see the Messiah, and here they were in their old age, waiting most of their life for something to happen.
Now, why is that? Why does God lead us into a season of difficulty? Why does God lead us into a place where we have to wait, where we have to be in this uncomfortable position? It may seem like, "God, what's the point? Why can't we just have miracles and signs and wonders, just like the way you led us out of Egypt? The way you delivered us out of bondage to sin? The way you delivered us from everything that held us down?" Can't our whole life be that full of joy? Can't everything be that good? But the truth is, here's what God said to the people of Israel, here's why. Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 2: "And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord."
See, waiting is part of God's plan. That wilderness place that God led the people of Israel to—that was part of God's plan for them. But here they were, at the base of the mountain, and they were having trouble recognizing that this could be God's plan for their life. Maybe you're just starting to follow Jesus. Maybe you're even just thinking about following Him today, or maybe you've been following Him all your life, or most of your life. The Lord wants you to know that waiting on Him is part of the journey. You're not forgotten.
So let's go back to our story as we continue reading. I'm going to read Exodus 32:2:
"And Aaron said to them, 'Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.' So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool and made a molded calf. Then they said, 'This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.'"
You know, it's heartbreaking reading these words and realizing that's the same people. But how often do we find ourselves in the same place? We get tired of waiting, and we just turn to something else. They’re taking the gold—remember, this is the gold that they plundered from the enemy's camp. This is that same gold. These are the gifts God had given them. They are taking God's gifts, the gifts that God provided as they left Egypt, and they're turning them into this idol.
Now, they made a golden calf. Why the golden calf? Some say it might have something to do with pagan worship back in Egypt, but may I suggest a simple thought today for us? If you could imagine for a moment, when all of the Israelites left Egypt, there were millions of people. The text documents the men, but when you add the women and children, there were two to three million people estimated to be traversing through the wilderness. That’s like a small city traveling through the desert, leaving Egypt, taking everything with them—their livestock, their whole farm, the whole homestead was going with them.
So, you could imagine there were thousands and thousands of carts and stuff, right? But what’s pulling those carts? It’s the bulls and the oxen. See, there was a vehicle that was used to get them out, right? They were the bulls and the oxen. They were actually pulling them out; they were the physical things God had used. That was the thing in their day that had physically moved them from point A to point B. And so, so quickly, we see that the people of Israel turned from God to the vehicle God used to deliver them.
It's so easy sometimes. It's the thing that's right in front of us—it’s the ministry, it might be the preacher, it might be the worship. It doesn’t matter, but so often, we get distracted. We lose sight of God and start to look at just what’s right in front—the vehicle God is using. God uses all these things, but they're a vehicle. They're a tool in His hand. And I want to remind us to see that as it is: Look beyond the situation, look beyond the struggle, the difficulty, the time of waiting, and see what God is doing because God is overall.
So what happens? They turn to idolatry and began to worship the vehicle God used rather than God Himself. They just got tired of waiting. Many of us have been set free from sin, from shame. God delivered us; God set us free. He put our feet on solid ground, and we're walking with the Lord. But now you may be wondering, "I'm in a season—it seems like something is wrong, it seems like God is really quiet, it seems like there's difficulty. Why does God seem to be allowing this difficulty in my life? Why is God so quiet? Why is the pain not leaving? Why is the trial continuing?"
You see, worship flows out pretty easily when things are going great. God just blessed you; God just did something for you; God just broke through. It just seems like that’s our natural reaction—we just worship God, we just say, "Lord, I’m so happy." But what happens when God gets quiet? What happens when life begins to twist and turn? What happens when those things that we hope for delay, and we are faced with waiting, like the people of Israel?
The truth is, I’m right there. We fail; we get tired of waiting. We start to complain, we start to turn to other things, we start to look for a fix for our situation. You see, we’re never called to be superstars; we’re never called to be strong. God calls us to be His followers. Amen? Amen.
Here are some really important promises from the Bible I want to give to you—some really, really important promises from the Word of God on waiting. Because you may be in this place, you may be in a place where you’re faced with a difficult season, a trial, something’s not turning out the way you had hoped, and so you’re waiting. I want you to know, this is really—there are way, way more passages that I could name, but just to name a few: Psalm 46:2: "Be still and know that I am God." Isaiah 40:31: "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." God is always at work (John 5:17). God never sleeps nor slumbers (Psalm 121:3). He has good plans for you (Jeremiah 29:11). And finally, Philippians 1:6: "He will finish what He began in you."
I want you to know today that God hasn’t forgotten you. God hasn’t forgotten your situation. God has a plan. God has good plans, like we just mentioned in Jeremiah 29:11. He has good thoughts towards you; He has good intentions toward you. Would you trust that this season might be a part of God’s plan for your life? You know, I recently just began to think this way, and it’s really helped me: "I must need this." I say to myself, "God must think I need this right now." I think I borrowed that from pastor, but it really has helped me to realize, like, hold on a minute—who am I? I follow Jesus. So if this is happening, then that must mean God wants it to. God wants me to go through this. There are things that God calls us to stand in. But today, if we are facing difficulties, if we’re facing those trials in our lives, I want you to know that God will use those difficulties. He will use the difficult situation in your life to discipline you, to teach you as His child.
Let's go there. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 7. This is what it says: "If you endure chastening"—which is, in other translations, discipline—"God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now, no chastening seems joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed."
Church, your difficulty, your season of waiting, is actually proof that God is treating you as a son or as a daughter—that He's raising you, seeking to raise you as His child. That's why He allows you to go through these seasons. That's why He allows you to face those things.
I want to tell you about a really interesting thing that I'm still going through. Some of you guys here know about my situation with my boat. I did some things, I made some mistakes, and I remember when that thing blew up like a volcano. That was our summer plan with the kids—that was what we wanted to do. We did nothing else; we booked nothing else; we didn’t plan to go anywhere. When that happened, like, I'm telling you, my world was crumbling. I was devastated. I was really upset, and I remember driving to work, just in tears, like, "God, this really sucks." It was overwhelming.
And I remember Him just whispering into my ear and into my heart. He said, "I'm not going to protect you from the things that bring you closer to Me. I'm never going to keep you from something that draws you in." And it did. In this time when this happened, I remember thinking, "Lord, You’re so much better than all this stuff. You don’t disappoint like this life. You don’t turn Your back; You don’t forget about me." I remember Him whispering that to me. I want to encourage you today with a difficult kind of encouragement to receive, but God won’t keep you from the difficulty that will draw you closer to Himself. He won’t do it. He didn’t do it for the people who followed Him in the Word. He didn’t do it for me, and He won’t do it for you. He wants to raise you as a child. He wants to see you grow up. He wants to teach you stuff, and we’ll look into that still.
See, in God's opinion, it’s better for you. I don’t know if you caught it in this passage we read. It says that "for they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them"—our fathers, they disciplined us in the way they thought would be best for them, right? In their own ideas. But it says here that God does it "for our profit." It’s not so much about what benefits God—it’s for you. He does this for you. He lets us go through it. It’s not like He’s getting something out of the deal—it’s for you. It’s for your good.
God will allow you to go through these things, and I want you to know today that God has not forgotten you. If you find yourself in a situation where things just simply are not happening the way you thought, the season's not turning the way you expected, or according to the timetable—maybe double what you thought would happen—you know, maybe the sickness is not leaving, the job’s not changing, the situation's not turning around, whatever it may be, I want you to know—could you accept the thought that this might be God's plan for your life? God has not forgotten you. I want to show you a passage of Scripture. God has not forgotten you. Isaiah 49:15 says this: "Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb?" We’ve got lots of those, right? Lots of moms. And the Word is saying, "Even if this happens—surely they may forget—yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands."
There are times that, I don’t know if you’ve been in that situation, I don’t have a notebook or anything around, so I grab my pen and I just write something on my hand, right here. I’ll write a little something just to remind myself, "This is—I need to have this on my mind. I don’t want to forget." Have you been there? Just like that, like, "I can’t forget this. I want to remember. It’s so important. If I forget this, I’m willing to have a little tattoo for a day." That’s what God did. He didn’t want to forget you. He wanted to be reminded about you and your situation. He wanted to remember you, so He inscribed you on the palms of His hands, in His eternal scars. He has you.
Listen, Church. He was thinking about you when He was on the cross. We just read Hebrews 12, verse 2, which says this: "For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." See, God—He sent Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ came to this earth, and He had a goal. He had a purpose. And the joy that was set before Him, that caused Him to just continue through that difficulty, to continue through that trial—that was you. It was you. You were the joy. You and I, His children, those who would be redeemed by His blood, those who would be washed clean, those who would be set free from all of the things that sin and hell have put on our lives—we were the joy set before Him. He endured, looking at the goal, seeing the final result.
You see, when Jesus was here, before He began His ministry, Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the enemy, by Satan. And actually, He used that scripture that we read earlier against the devil. He said, "No, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." You see, that was a calling to mind. He was reminding us, all those people who would be reading this story later on. He was calling to mind that situation back in the desert, the people of Israel grumbling in the desert—they failed. That’s you and me today. We, on our own, with the law, we cannot do it. We were not able to stay long enough, to wait long enough, to do everything the way it should be. But He was. He was the perfect one. He was tempted in all areas, yet He was without sin. And Jesus Christ, He had a goal, and that goal was you and me today. That goal was children, a family of Christ, the body of Christ who would begin to form, those who would follow Him.
You see, He went through that suffering. He waited. You know, sometimes we get impatient. We start to slip into idolatry. We start to look to the vehicle that God uses. We start to fall back. But today, I want to encourage you: if you are in a season of waiting, know that God did not forget you. He thought you were worth His wait. He waited. He went through the struggles. He went through all of the difficulties, and He was in the season of waiting as well. But He had a joy set before Him. He had a goal—to know you, to have you.
God did not promise to take away all of our difficulties, but He did promise that He will be with you in every difficulty. I can attest to that. I felt such nearness of God in my situation. It didn’t matter—it’s not even done yet. It doesn’t matter because God made Himself known to me in a way that I didn’t know Him before. And it doesn’t matter what it cost me. Are you willing to wait for God to teach you who He is, to show you what kind of a Father He is? Church, wait on Him. Look to Him. See, at the other side of waiting, there’s always a testimony. Often, all we see is the testimony—all we see is the victory story—but we never really see what happens behind it. And you may be seeing 99% of your life as that difficulty. That’s okay. That’s where we are many times. God intends for us to go through those so that we might find out who He is.
As you wait on Him, every time you go through a difficult situation, a difficult season, you have an opportunity to discover who God is. You will come out knowing that God is faithful. You’ll come out knowing that God is a provider, that God is a deliverer, that He’s my defender, that He is the one who loves me. He’s faithful even if I’m faithless. Church, I want you to hold on. It’s worth the wait. It’s worth waiting on Him. Hold on to Him. God never called you to be strong. This is not about being strong. Waiting is not about being strong and forcing yourself into it, lifting yourself by the bootstraps. It’s not about being strong. It’s about waiting on Him. God asks us to simply be followers—that’s all He asks of us.
That scripture in Isaiah 40:31 says, "Those who wait upon the Lord, they will renew their strength." What are they doing? They're doing nothing. They're just waiting on God. They're waiting on God. Their eyes are fixed on Him. They're looking to God. They're saying, "God, I don't know what's happening right now. My situation seems to be really, really messed up, and I am almost at the point of giving up hope. But God, I look to You. I look to You, Lord."
You'll come out knowing who God is. You'll come out knowing what He's like and how He treats you. I want to encourage you to look at Him. Don't look at the situation. Don't get distracted by all the stuff that you can see and touch. Look at God who's behind all of it. Look at God who promised. Look at God who's faithful. Worship Him, Church. He's worthy of your worship in this season. He's worthy of your worship in this time when you don't see it yet when you don't see everything come about. I want to encourage you—wait on Him. He promises you will renew your strength. You will mount up on wings like eagles. You will run and not grow weary. You will walk and not faint. That's a promise from God's Word. You will have the strength. Wait on God.
I'm going to hand it over now to Sofie. There's one thing that the Holy Spirit showed me through this word that I have to share with you: it is only worth waiting if you are waiting on the Lord. I want to read one more time from Exodus 32:1: "So when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, 'Up, make us a god who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.'"
The whole time here, they were waiting on Moses, not on the Lord. They were waiting on the vehicle that God was using rather than God Himself. They were putting their trust and their hope in Moses and what he was going to bring down and when he was going to come. Like Brother Russ said, we can begin to pay more attention to the preacher, or the ministry, or the movement, rather than to God, who might just be using these vehicles. That's exactly what happened—they shifted their focus to Moses. You can easily grow weary waiting on people and things, just like they did.
That's why it's only worth it if you are waiting on the Lord Himself. When you put your trust in the Lord and you wait on the Lord, He won't disappoint like people do. He won't disappoint like churches do, or maybe your pastor, or your situation. If you do not wait on the Lord and the Lord Himself, that's when you don't see those promises that we just heard. You don't see that peace that surpasses understanding. You don't see the renewal of strength in your waiting. You don't see the stillness. You don't see the confidence in knowing that He is the author and the finisher of what He has started in you.
Church, it's only worth it if you wait on the Lord. So today, the Holy Spirit put on my heart that if you can't relate to these things in your waiting—because I know everybody's waiting on something—if you can't relate to having these promises in your waiting, I just want to urge you to reflect on whether you are waiting on the Lord Himself or if you are waiting on a person or a situation, if you are waiting on a vehicle that the Lord is trying to use. Because if you are waiting on the Lord, you will see these promises in your life to be true in your waiting. But if you are not, you will have a very difficult time, and you will grow weary, and you will grow disappointed. So, as we go into worship, we're not going to have an altar call today. The Holy Spirit just put on my heart for us to ponder our waiting season and see: who are we waiting for? Are we waiting for our spouse to change, or for our boss to change, or for our church or our pastor to give us an answer to a prayer? Or are we waiting on God Himself to move in our situation?