I See You - Tim Timberlake

In this powerful message, we explore Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 and the moment God encounters Moses at the burning bush. The message reveals a profound truth: before God sends someone into assignment, He first meets them in reverence. Through Moses’ story, we are reminded that God sees our suffering, hears our cries, and is actively working—even when the results aren’t visible yet. This teaching calls believers back to reverence for the presence of God and encourages anyone feeling unseen or forgotten to trust that God is aware, present, and preparing them for purpose.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, I'm Tim Timberlake, and I want to thank you so much for listening to the Celebration Church podcast. I hope this message encouraged you, strengthened your faith, and gave you something you can carry into your week. If you'd like to stay connected, I encourage you to join us live every Sunday at 9 a.m. or 11 a.m. on YouTube. We would love to have you there. And if you're ever in the Jacksonville, Florida area, come see us in person. We have a seat saved for you. Thanks again for being with us. We're so grateful for you. And see you next time. Grab your words, stand with me. Acts chapter 7. Lord is good. So the Lord is good. I'm gonna talk to you till you wake up. The Lord is good. He's good. Bump your neighbor. Tell your neighbor, wake up. Time to go to work. Time to go to work. Bump your other neighbor. Tell them, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. If you're here for the very first time, would you raise your hand so that we can acknowledge you? How you doing? I see you all the way up top. How you doing? How you doing? What an honor and a privilege. How you doing? It's good to see you. To lift up the name of Jesus with new family. We don't take it for granted that you're here today. And I understand some of you are traveling in to be a part of what God is doing here at Celebration Church, and we're honored that you would do so. Acts chapter 7, beginning at verse number 33. The NASB translation reads, But the Lord said to him, Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. I've certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt, and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they disowned, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge? is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the thorn bush. This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and the Red Sea and in the wilderness for 40 years. This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. I want to utilize these passages for our subject matter today, entitled, I See You. I see you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We ask that you would bring this passage to life. We ask God that each and every one of us would hear your voice intimately while we're in this corporate setting. God, not only will our lives be changed, but they will be transformed by the renewing of our mind through the word of God. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Everyone that's glad that Jesus is still alive and will one time to shout, Amen. You can take your seats. He's reminding them that the same person that they say that he is blaspheming is the very same person that they crucified, and they are repeating this cycle over and over again. And in Acts chapter 7, verse 33, the scripture says, But the Lord said to him, Remove the sandals from your feet, for this place on which you are standing is holy ground. Stephan is quoting Exodus chapter 3, verse 5. And this place where he is standing is an incredible place, not because he's standing there, but because God desired to meet him there. And right here at the very beginning, I want you to know that the place you're standing and the building that you're in is not holy because we are here, it's holy because the presence of the Lord is here. And scripture teaches us that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And so whenever we step into a moment where we encounter the spirit of the living God, we can always expect to leave differently than how we entered it because God does something supernatural when we acknowledge our weakness and we lift up his strength. That's why praise and worship is so important. Amen. That's why silence doesn't move the needle of heaven. Praise and worship does. And when we begin to lift God up, when we begin to magnify his name, when we begin to exalt him, when we begin to make much of the name of Jesus, then our lives are changed and bettered because of it. And so, Stefan, he's teaching the Sanhedrin Council how God reveals himself and how God is not limited to a building, how God is not limited to a box, how God is not limited to a particular place. God is always everywhere at the same time. And Stefan is teaching the Sanhedrin Council, although you put much emphasis on the temple, you don't put much emphasis on the presence of God. And God's presence can move anywhere he desires to move, he can speak through anything and anyone he desires to speak through. And you cannot limit what God does, but you can limit how you see what God does. And what we have to look at as it pertains to this passage is this point number one. Many people want God's assignment, but refuse God's reverence. It changed because God did. The presence of God, it turns ordinary places into sacred moments. And something I believe we are missing as the body of Christ, as the church, specifically here in the West, it is reverence. Everyone say that word with me. We don't reverence the presence of God anymore. It's okay. You don't have to talk back to me. I'll talk to myself. Because we like to think these moments are catered for us. We have become consumers of Christianity and consumers of Christ instead of followers and disciples of Jesus Christ. And so we don't utilize words like reverence. We put words like that building is sacred instead of saying the Spirit of God is sacred. And where the Spirit of God is, that is where holy ground is. And this particular place is not holy because something happened there. It is holy because the Spirit of God is there. A generation that treats the presence of God like background music will never experience him like a consuming fire. And that's why most of the churches here in America are not experiencing the move of God the way God desires to move. It's because we have boxed God in. We have limited the power of the Holy Spirit. We talk about him in passing and we talk about what he used to do, but we don't talk about how he's moving right here today, right now. And we treat the presence of God just as it's some casual person and has this casual personality when the presence of God is not something you treat casually, it's something you revere. Without the trembling that once came with it. So we come into his presence any kind of way. We come in anytime we want to, we leave when we want to. There's no reverence in the house of God anymore. And if this makes you uncomfortable, maybe you need to revisit the last time you revered his presence. Maybe you need to go back to the last place you honored his presence and had a holy fear in the presence of God. I'm not talking about being scared, and I'm not talking about an unhealthy fear. I'm talking about a reverence that makes your sin tremble. I'm talking about a reverence that brings out the impurities on the inside of you and lays it on the altar so that it can be consumed by an all-consuming fire when reverence leaves. God doesn't stop being holy. People just start recognizing who they're standing in front of. And when he doesn't do what we want him to do, then we no longer reverence him the way we should reverence him when we should be looking at the presence of God and the person of Jesus Christ with awe and wonder, not for what he will do, but for what he's already done. The fact that you're still here is a testament of the faithfulness of God. The fact that you're still clothed in your right mind is consistent with the scripture that says he will keep your mind in perfect peace when it's dies on him. And if he doesn't do anything else with you, praise him for the rest of your life because he is holy, he is righteous, and he is wiszy. Most of us have a transactional relationship with Jesus Christ. You do this for me, and I'll do this for you. And I'm studying when I got to talk about scripture to somebody else. And I'm I'm praying when I need something, but I'm not gonna seek you, I'm not gonna be disciplined, I'm not gonna be consistent, I'm not gonna be faithful if I don't get the things that I've been praying for and I want and I've been believing you for, I'm not gonna do these things because surely my relationship with you is all about me. And the reality is your relationship with Jesus is all about Jesus, and if you don't die every single day, you'll never live in eternity with him. The church has mastered inspiration and has forgotten the holy intimidation. If you're not intimidated by the presence of God, maybe you truly never experienced it. If when you get in the presence of God, you don't feel small, if you don't feel like a grain of sand, then maybe you have not been in the presence of God, maybe you have been in the presence of your different personalities and your pride and your ego and your arrogance. Maybe you have not been in the presence of God. If you don't enter into the presence of God and immediately feel dirty and unworthy, then you have not entered into the presence of God. Because the presence of God will always remind you of your dire need of his presence and not your ability to perform. I'm talking about the type of intimidation that Isaiah felt when he cried, Woe is me. Because when God is truly seeing, applause dies and repentance begins. Some of you, instead of clapping, you need to ask for forgiveness. Instead of crying, you need to repent. Instead of jumping up and down, you need to search your heart and ask the Holy Spirit to extract and remove anything out of you that is not like Him so that you can understand what true reverence is in the presence of the one who is holy. We have built stages for fake pastors and false prophets that that that once stood in a place where God used to use them, but they are no longer being used because they have lost the reverence. And the tragedy of our time is not that God has stopped speaking, but that we have grown so comfortable in hearing ourselves that we no longer need to hear from Him. And so we don't know the difference between a motivational speech and a sermon. Because they both sound the same. We don't know the difference between a TED talk in church, because they both feel the same. We don't know the difference between the presence of people and the presence of the one who is holy, because in our mind they both feel the same because we have lost the reverence. And so God He has to remind Moses remove your sandals from your feet because the ground on which you are standing is holy. Not because you are here, but because I am here. And as long as He is there, wherever He is, it is holy. A church that has lost the fear of the Lord will eventually lose the voice of the Lord. Because God does not reveal his glory to people who only want his presence as long as it doesn't disrupt their comfort. And so he intentionally and purposefully tells Moses to remove your sandals because you are traveling into a place that your past cannot take you. And some of you are standing in this moment, and you still have the sand from your old season on your sandals. And God is simply asking you to remove the things that are restricting you from becoming who He's made you to become. Scripture continues. And if we're not careful, we'll put more emphasis on a building than we do the presence of God that desires to consume wherever we are, whenever we meet, how many times we meet. And I'm tired, y'all, of coming to dead buildings. I'm tired of going to dead conferences. I'm tired of listening to dead podcasts. And these things lose the power and the potency and the presence of God when we prioritize personality over the power of the Holy Spirit. The temple leaders were overly attached to sacred space, absent from the Spirit of God. And Stefan is showing them by taking them through the lives of the patriarchs that holiness is not first about architecture. Holiness has always and will always be about the presence of God. Now, this presents in the text a historical tension. Because first century Jews believed that the temple was a holy place, not for the sake of it being holy because the presence of God was there. It was holy because they had a part in building it. And I want you to understand and know this that God will not compete with anyone or anything. He is God, and beside him there is no other. And so if there is something in you that desires to compete with him, then you already know who you follow. God's glory was active long before the temple ever existed. And so something we see in this passage that I want you to take note of. Before God sends Moses, God sees Moses. And I want you to understand this today. Before God ever sends you into another season, he wants you to know he sees you in the season you're in right now. Before God sends you into a new day, he sees you in the day you're in right now. Before God sends you into a relationship, he sees the way you steward the relationship you're in right now. And before you go anywhere for God, God will always make sure you stand faithful before Him first. Before assignment comes, ah must come. Before commission comes, consecration must come. Before public deliverance comes, private reverence must come. The reality about this passage is that Moses cannot help to free others until he has first learned how to stand before God rightly. In Acts chapter 7, verse 34, the next verse it says, I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. Point number two is this the rescue of God often begins long before the results of God appear. And some of you are waiting for the results, and God is busy rescuing you. Some of you are waiting for the benefits without the breaking. And the reality is, is God will not position you in a season of results without first rescuing you. Because God will not position you where you are a bad reflection of his presence and his glory. He will allow you to stay in the wilderness long enough for you to no longer look like you. And so the rescue of God often begins long before the results of God appear. And the reality of this passage is this: although you are in a season of suffering, God is not absent from your suffering. And what Stephan is quoting here is Exodus chapter 3, verses 7 through 10, which says, And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. Look at what he says. God is aware of your sufferings, he sees your sufferings, he feels your sufferings, he's involved in your sufferings because the word of God says that he'll never leave you, nor will he forsake you. And so if you find yourself in a season of suffering right now, I need you to understand that God sees you while you're going through. Some powerful statements in this passage that I want you to take note of. The first one is this I have seen. I want you to think about that for a moment. The God who created everything, he sees you. Scripture says he knows the number of hairs on your head, he knows you in. Such detail that he can tell what you're about to do before you even think about doing it. He created you, he finished you before he started you. He put a period before he began to write the sentence. God sees you, not the you you think everyone else sees. God sees the you you pray no one else discovers. He sees you. I'm not talking about the public version of you, I'm talking about the private version of you, the one that you pray no one ever sees. God sees you. I'm not talking about the Facebook, Instagram, TikTok version of you. I'm talking about the Snapchat version of you. God sees you and He calls you, He chooses you, He anoints you, He affirms you. God sees you in your suffering. He says in Exodus chapter 3, verse 7 through 10, I have seen, and I have heard. And visit you. And dwell with you. And sit with you. And walk through seasons of suffering with you. And guide you to the valley of the shadow of death. And remind you that there is nothing to fear because he is with you. And as long as the Good Shepherd is with you, and as long as he is guiding you and giving you a light for your path, there is no reason to fear. I did not say you will not have pain. I did not say you will not encounter seasons of difficulty and discomfort. You in fact will. But the good news is that he'll be with you when you're going through those seasons. I have seen, I have heard, I have come down. And he says, I will send. This is the language of divine involvement. Israel may have felt forgotten in Egypt, but God was neither blind nor passive, and he was reminding them, just as he's reminding you, I have seen, I have heard, I have come down. I have seen, I have heard, I have come down. Let me put it to you this way: God sees you, God hears you, and God is with you. And if God be for you, there's not a demon strong enough to stand against God. There's not a disease powerful enough to go against the creator of the universe. There's not a person, an enemy, an adversary that can stand in front of you and defeat you, and the God of all gods, the king of our kings, the Lord of our lords, has your back. If God be for you, who or what can stand against you? So rest assured God sees you. And he wants you to know that you are his. Moses' suffering had stages. He was rejected by Egypt. He was rejected by Israel. He was hidden in Midian for 40 years. But those silent decades weren't wasted. Those silent decades were preparation. And some of you feel unseen today. You feel like time is wasting. You feel like everyone around you is advancing, and maybe it seems like they're advancing because they're still stuck in Egypt. And by the outside perspective, Egypt looked like advancement because Egypt had the money, Egypt had the resources, Egypt had the people. And so by culture and society standards, Egypt was the gold standard. But culture and society's gold standard does not align with the kingdom standard. And so it does not matter how it is perceived, what other people are doing and how quickly they're doing it. Just because something is done fast does not mean that that something will last. And God will often hide you in pain so that pride doesn't destroy you when promotion arrives. And God will leave you in the wilderness long enough to strip you of the clothes you put on in Egypt. So that you can better reflect his nature, his glory, his grace, his love, his mercy, his steadfast kindness towards you. And scripture reminds us this Moses, whom David disowned, saying who made you a ruler and a judge is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the thorn bush. Who this angel is. In Exodus chapter 3, verse 2, it says, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of the bush. But in Exodus chapter 3, verse 4, it says, When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush. And sometimes when we read this word angel, we think that the name of the person that we're reading is angel. This word angel, when we read it in scripture, specifically in the Old Testament, simply means messenger on behalf of God. And in certain passages, God appears as an angel to communicate a message that he desires for his people to receive. And so scripture does not uh uh uh uh uh go against itself, scripture it completes itself. So if there's something that looks confusing in the text, it's not that scripture is confusing, it's that we have not done the research to identify what exactly scripture is teaching us. In Exodus chapter 3, verse 6, a couple of verses down, it says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. So this passage it moves from angel of the Lord to Lord to God. That's not accidental. This word, angel in Hebrew, is the word Malakah, which means messenger. It can also refer to a message given to human beings, it can mean God Himself appearing as his own messenger. And in several Old Testament passages, the angel of the Lord speaks as God, receives worship, and forgives sin, which normal angels never do. That's what we see happening in this passage. The angel of the Lord is often God appearing in the flesh. The only time in scripture God appears in the flesh is through Jesus. So notice what happens in Exodus chapter 3. The angel appears, God speaks, the voice speaking identifies himself as Yahweh. This pattern appears many times in scripture. Hagar, Genesis chapter 16, the angel of the Lord speaks to Hagar, and she responds, You are the God who sees me. Are you listening to me? God never shows up in a situation or circumstance without first acknowledging that he sees you, that he hears you, and he comes down to be with you. We see it again in Genesis chapter 22. Abraham, the angel of the Lord, stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac and says, You have not withheld your son from me. The angel speaks as God, not for God. Judges chapter 6, Gideon. The angel of the Lord appears to Gideon, and a few verses later the text says, The Lord said to him, again, angel interchangeable with God. Many historians and many theologians see this as the pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. The reason this is important is because the angel of the Lord in this context speaks as God, it receives worship from Moses, it forgives Moses of his sins, it possesses divine authority, yet, this presence that is speaking is distinctively different from the Father. Because Scripture teaches us no one will be able to see the Father. But many people saw Jesus. So this fits perfectly with the New Testament understanding of Christ as the visible revelation of God. John chapter 1, verse 18 says, No one has seen God at any time, the only begotten God has explained him. In other words, when people encountered God visibly in the Old Testament, it was likely the Son of God. That is a very important distinction for us to look at whenever we see the angel of the Lord speaking from the burning bush. This progression is intentional. The angel of the Lord appears, God speaks from the bush. The voice identifies himself as Yahweh. The messenger in the fire is not separate from God. He is God revealing himself. And God often speaks to us through fire. Because fire gets our attention. Exodus chapter three, the burning bush. Exodus chapter thirteen, the pillar of fire, Exodus chapter 19 on Mount Sinai, Acts chapter 2, tongues of fire. God speaks through fire. Why does God speak through fire? Because fire represents holiness, presence, purification, and revelation. God's holy presence dwelling with the fragility of humanity without destroying it can only be attributed to the actual power of an almighty God. And just as God allowed the bush to be burned by fire but not consumed by it, God will in fact leave you in the wilderness on fire long enough to be refined and purified to reflect his glory and grace. And although you may feel forgotten today, God sees you. And although you may be in a foreign place, you are not in a forgotten place. He sees your suffering. He hears your suffering. And God comes down to dwell with you while you're walking through seasons of suffering, pain, and hardship. I want you to bow your head right now. You're here. Whether you're in this room or whether you're watching online. You feel that void in your life. You feel empty, unfulfilled, dissatisfied. It's not because good things aren't happening, it's because there is no long-lasting satisfaction without the presence of God. There is no eternal fulfillment without the presence of God. I urge you today. Stop playing around. Get committed in your relationship with Jesus Christ. If you haven't paid attention to what's happening around us, let me remind you. We are in the end. The only one coming to save you is Jesus. Not your good deeds, not your works, not your efforts. His grace. His mercy. His salvation. And if you're here today and you feel unseen, you feel unheard, I want you to know God sees you. He hears you. He's closer to you than you are close to you. And his greatest desire is to be trusted by you. And so maybe in the last season you've been rude by fear and you've been rude by stress and worry. Maybe you've been rude by pride and arrogance and ego. And you can acknowledge because he's removed the scales from your eyes that you need him now more than ever before. Lift both hands to heaven. And although you're in this big room, he sees you. What kind of God do we serve? That can be everywhere all at once. But yet instill desires to be with you. I want you to think about that for a moment. In your human frailty, the God of all gods, the king of all kings, the Lord of all lords desires to be with you. What a mighty God we serve. What a mighty God we serve. Right now in this moment. Instead of coming to the altar, some of you need to make your chair an altar. You've made idols in your life, you've prioritized relationships, you've prioritized things over your relationship with God. And I'll pray for you in a moment, but right now you need to get that right with God. I want you to get out of your seat. I want you to turn around. I want you to get down on your knees, and I want you to plant your face in the cushion of that seat right now. Well, Pastor, people are going to see me. That's the point. And if you think you're too good to do it, you're the very person that needs to. Get it right. Ask him to remove that arrogance. Ask him to strip you of your pride. Ask him to strip you of your sin and your habits and your addictions. Ask him to remove it, take it away from you. Ask him to strip you of that bad attitude. Ask him to remove those words out of your heart. Ask him to reestablish who he desires for you to be right now.

unknown 41:41

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

This is holy ground. Not because we are here, but because he is here. And he is holy. We bow in your presence. We ask that you would cleanse us and wash us white as snow. We're sorry for making much of things that don't matter. We ask that you would purge us. Take the sin out of our lives and cast it as far as the east is from the west. I know, God, that in this moment there are many bound with sin, many bound with Addiction, many bound with habits that they don't desire to live their lives with. I ask right now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that you would clean us of those things. Change our minds. We repent right now in the name of Jesus. And we confess that we are in dire need of only what you can give, and that is salvation. And so we confess. We confess that we're sinners. We confess that we're nothing without you. We confess that we're lost and in dire need of a savior. We confess that you are our Lord. And so we believe with the fullness of our heart that you and only you have the power to heal, save, and deliver. And so we thank you for grace. We thank you for not allowing us to die in sin. We thank you for grace. We thank you for cutting us off and redirecting us. We thank you for grace. We give you all the glory, all the honor, and all the praise. In Jesus' name.

unknown 45:48

Amen. And amen.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Can we just take this moment to thank him for his grace? Come on, really thank him. More than an applause, more than a hand clap. Thank him for his grace. Take them for his mercy. Take them for his love. It's good.