Matt Chandler - Sojourner

Well, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We’re going to be back in Exodus chapter 2, looking at verses 11 through 22 in our time together today. Next week is Family Worship weekend, so we’ll be flying around, and we’ll really just look at two small verses next weekend: God sees, God hears. That will be our topic. After that, we’re moving on—week after that is chapter 3, and the week after that is chapter 4. Then we’ll still have 11 months in Exodus, but the pace will quicken. If you’ve been a little anxious, thinking, «Wait, we’re in week five and still in chapter 2, » I understand the concern. Is this the Gospel of Luke all over again? But I just want you to breathe out and rest assured that the pace will quicken shortly.

Last night, I came into the sanctuary before the 5:00 service, greeting some people I know. I spoke with one of our long-time members, and I asked, «Hey man, how are you?» He said, «I had heart surgery yesterday.» I was taken aback. I asked, «What was wrong with your heart?» He replied, «I just had some blockage in an artery.» This marvels me at human ingenuity. This man underwent heart surgery! Here’s what humankind has figured out: you can take a wire, run it up his artery to the exact spot where there’s blockage, inflate a little balloon, and remove that blockage. They even had the wrong-size balloon, so they had to pull it out and put the correct one in, which took just 17 minutes. Then he was here, worshiping, and he’s an active worshiper, you know—if you have a Baptist background, you might not quite understand what I mean. If raising your hands during worship makes you uncomfortable, this guy is not like that; he sweats a little. Yet, there he was, getting after the Lord, bouncing up and down in worship. That’s unbelievable!

Mankind has figured out how to build machines that fly. Think about it—some planes fly faster than the speed of sound, and a couple even go into outer space. We could talk at length about what certain technologies have accomplished. Right now, you can pick up your phone, press a button, and your face and voice can reach the other side of the world in perfect sync, having a conversation with someone who is a 30-hour plane ride away. That’s incredible! You know who did that? Mankind did that!

There’s a scene in the Tom Hanks movie «Apollo 13"—I might be dating myself here. Some of you have seen it, others have not. In the movie, he is in the backyard, looking up at the Moon after a party at his house. Everyone has left, and his wife sits beside him. He’s using his thumb to block out the Moon and says, «You know the secret to us landing on the Moon?» She asks, «What is it?» She expects a complex answer, but he simply says, «We just decided to go.» That’s how we got to the Moon; we just decided to go.

This is a marvelous, beautiful thing that humankind has accomplished. Think about skyscrapers, or the diseases we’ve cured. Consider the advances we’ve made in all areas of life, particularly in the Western world, as many of these advancements are not present in other parts of the globe. The life you and I enjoy in our context is air-conditioned, fast, and relatively easy. By the world’s standards, we all live in luxury—even if not by our context’s standards. It’s stunning what human ingenuity and creativity have accomplished. However, underneath all of that lies a bit of a dark secret.

What I mean is that, because of the pace of ingenuity, we become numb to the reality that our souls remain restless. There’s a kind of humming in the deeper parts of our existence that all this ingenuity has done nothing to solve. I think the easiest way to see this is at different points in human history—certain events reveal the depth and scope of what’s going on in the human soul, or the human condition…