Feet for Going - Moses
Notes
Transcript
Introduction: We’re continuing our series on Authentic Character by looking at a person who epitomizes feet for going: Moses. What I love about the story of Moses, is that he didn’t start out with feet for going. But it shows that God is patient but firm with those he calls.
Before we dive into God’s Word, lets go to Him in prayer.
Pray.
Today is Pentecost Sunday. In Baptist churches we don’t often talk about the church calendar beyond Christmas and Easter as we have determined to not hold any day above any other.
But Pentecost Sunday is an important reminder that we are never alone because not only is God with us, but He dwells within us.
We so emphasize the importance of the great commission and "feet for going,” that we can often forget that there was a time when Jesus called His disciples to wait. After Jesus rose from the dead, but before He ascended into heaven, he gave them the great commission that we know:
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
But the first thing he told them to do was wait:
49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
That promise was filled at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came and from then on the call has been to go.
And go they went. The Gospel spread all over the world. But over time, we all have a way of becoming complacent. We have a way of making excuses about why we can’t go.
And even with that we’re in some good company. Even the most faithful examples in Scripture had trouble going. So it is appropriate to be reminded of our need to follow Jesus and Go!
Transition to the Text: Turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus 4:1-17. There is perhaps no person in the Bible, other than Jesus, who is revered as much as Moses. Moses was larger than life. At the end of Moses’ life it was said of him,
10 And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,
With this in mind, it might be difficult to comprehend that Moses’ ministry didn’t exactly start out strong. In fact, perhaps, no one other than Jonah had more of a rough start to the call of God.
But Moses’ story highlights 2 very important things that we can all find comfort in. 1) When God says, Go, just go and 2) God is patient and merciful even in our resistance.
From we learn to:
Introduce:
Authentic Principle: Trust God and Go where He calls you to go.
Authentic Principle: Trust God and Go where He calls you to go.
Read:
Exodus 4:1–17 (ESV)
1 Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’ ” 2 The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” 3 And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. 4 But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— 5 “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6 Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. 7 Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. 8 “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. 9 If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” 10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” 11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” 13 But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” 14 Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. 15 You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. 16 He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. 17 And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.”
Authentic Principle: Trust God and Go where He calls you to go.
Authentic Principle: Trust God and Go where He calls you to go.
Some of us make excuses about why we can’t go. We worry about what other’s think. We worry about what we will say. And we worry that we’ll be all alone. But trusting God means not worrying. So...
1. Don’t worry about what other people think. (Exodus 4:1-9)
1. Don’t worry about what other people think. (Exodus 4:1-9)
Explanation: The first thing that comes to mind for Moses is to worry about what others will think about what He has to say. Specifically Moses is worried that no one will believe Him. And I think we can sympathise with this worry of Moses. Because that’s a legitimate concern.
Imagine someone were to show up and say, “God sent me.” You are likely going to be skeptical. If you are open to the idea that God might send someone, you are at a minimum going to want proof.
And God says that He will provide proof. God gives Moses three examples of the signs and wonders that He will do through Moses in Egypt. His staff will become a snake. He will have the ability to afflict and heal people. And he’ll be able to turn water into blood.
There has been a lot of confusion over what the purpose of miracles have been in the Bible and even so called miracles today. Miracles are never for the sake of the miracle itself, but rather they occur to authenticate a message that God wants confirm as true.
Throughout the Bible, there are only a few times where miracles are prevalent. Moses, Elijah and Elisha, Daniel, Jesus and the Apostles and the end-times. Always the miracles were meant to authenticate the message of the messenger as being from God.
So don’t worry about what others think as God will provide the means to authenticate His message to the people that are going to respond. While we don’t see miracles on the same level as the time of the apostles, the greatest miracle of all is the Holy Spirit who transforms a person through the hearing of the Gospel.
Illustration: Our schooling has tended to make us think of our success in terms of grades. For my schooling 95% is an A. Anything less might as well be a failure. And we bring that into evangelism. We think that God grades on the same scale as the a school. If we share our faith with 10 people, anything less than 7 people accepting Jesus is failure. We can probably even see the disappointment of our 6th grade english teacher.
We need to think of evangelism more like being a really bad baseball player, if 1 in 10 accept Jesus that’s success because a life has been changed. And the truth is, like Moses, it doesn’t depend on what others think. God will confirm His message in the hearts of those whom He calls. Our responsibility is simply to go.
Application: When we think about going and telling people about Jesus, so often we also worry about what people will think. We worry that they’ll reject us. We worry they’ll ridicule us. We worry that they might even persecute us. Sometimes the ridicule comes from other Christians who don’t think we should go to that place or to that people.
But when God calls us to go, just like Moses, we need not worry about what people think. We ought only to worry about what God thinks.
I love what Peter says to the Jewish leaders after their message about Jesus was rejected and they were commanded to stop speaking about Jesus.
19 But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, 20 for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
When we are called to go, we must only care what God thinks.
2. Don’t what about what you’ll say. (Exodus 4:10-13)
2. Don’t what about what you’ll say. (Exodus 4:10-13)
Explanation: The second thing that Moses worries about is the words that he will speak and how he will even speak them.
Some have argued that Moses has a stutter, but I don’t see that as likely if we just look at the text itself. Moses use 21 Hebrew words in a fairly complex structure to essentially say he can’t speak well. It would be like Shakespeare using Hamlet as evidence that’s a mediocre playwright.
The NT seems to confirm this when Stephen says of Moses:
22 And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds.
The truth is Moses was educated by the best schools in Egypt by the best scholars. If anyone was able to speak eloquently to persuade people that he was speaking for God, it was Moses. In fact, you might even say that God having Moses raised and educated in the household of pharoah was preparing him for the role that God would later have for him.
But that’s not how God reassures Moses. Because the truth is none of that matters.
God asks the rhetorical questions:
Why has made man’s mouth?
Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind?
The answer to both questions are of course God. You might balk at the second question saying why would God cause someone to be mute, deaf or blind? But the truth is God is sovereign even over those things that we see as disabilities. And he can use them for His glory. All that to say, God isn’t hindered by any weakness in a person.
Illustration: Year after year researchers pole people as to what their biggest fears are. And year after year near the top of the list, ahead of heights, bugs, snakes, blood, needles and sometimes even death the fear of public speaking.
People are terrified of getting up in front of a group of people to speak. Because we’re not only afraid what we’re going to say but how we’re going to say it.
This is especially true when we are speaking about God. What if we say something dumb. What if someone asks a question we don’t know the answer to? How do we refute atheists who make good points?
Application: God has also called us to go and share the gospel with those who need to hear it. And we are called to use words. But we need not worry about being eloquent. We need not worry about having all the answers.
All we are expected to do is share God’s Word and point people to Jesus.
Jesus even promised his disciples that in the midst of their persecution, they would be given the words to speak.
19 When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour.
Just trust that God is with you.
But in the midst of God’s assurance for Moses, he still wants God to send someone else.
Now there is one final assurance. Moses won’t be alone.
3. You won’t have to go alone. (Exodus 4:14-17)
3. You won’t have to go alone. (Exodus 4:14-17)
Explanation: Now up until this point, God has been patient with Moses. And now, we are told that the anger of God was kindled against Moses.
How can you blame God at this point? Moses has been given every encouragement that God will be with Him and will authenticate his message with signs and wonders. Even in God’s power, Moses still doubts. he simply doesn’t want to go.
Some of us might feel like God is violating Moses’ freewill. But the truth is, when God commands you to go, you have to go. Just look at the story of Jonah. And the fact that God had promised to be with him should have been enough. But even though God should have been enough, God in His mercy sends us in community with others.
The mercy of God is that Moses won’t have to go alone.
God says that Aaron is already on the way. And of course that was always the plan. In order for Aaron to almost be to Moses by the time God had this conversation with Moses, Aaron had to have left Egypt a while ago.
Aaron will speak for Moses. Does Aaron know what he’s getting himself into? We don’t know for sure, but one things we know, he doesn’t seem to put up the fight that Moses does.
Moses will have his own brother there by his side when they confront the Hebrews in Egypt with God’s deliverance. When they confront Pharoah and when they stand against the Egyptian magicians.
Now even if Moses would have gone alone, he would still have gone with God. But God encourages Moses with the presence of Aaron.
Illustration: Have you ever been invited to a party or an event. What’s typically the first question we want to ask? “Who’s going to be there?” It’s kind of a disrespectful question, because at a minimum the person asking you is going to be there and to ask the question is to make it pretty explicit that that person isn’t enough. But imagine saying that to God. That’s kind of what Moses did.
“Go, I will be with you.” Yeah but who else? But it’s ok. God gives us community for this very reason. We experience His love and mercy in community with others.
Application: Not only do we not have to go alone, we shouldn’t even try.
It starts all the way back in the garden of eden when it was “not good for man to be alone.” Even then Adam had the full presence and relationship with God. Still God made woman.
Even in the NT, when Jesus send out His disciples, he sends them in pairs (Luke 10:1).
We were created for community even in going. Wherever God calls us to go, in his mercy he calls others to go as well. Whether or not it’s a spouse or a team, we can’t do it alone.
But even if we find ourselves alone, we can find comfort in the fact that sometimes it’s not until we realize that God is all we have that we understand that God is all we need.
Moses would always have God with Him. Today we’ll always have Jesus with us.
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
But let us invite others on the journey.
Response: Are you going where God has called you to go?
Response: Are you going where God has called you to go?
Summation:
Authentic Principle: TRUST God and GO where He calls you to go.
1. Don’t WORRY about what other people THINK. (Exodus 4:1-9)
2. Don’t WORRY what about what you’ll SAY. (Exodus 4:10-16)
3. You won’t have to go ALONE. (Exodus 4:14-17)
Conclusion:
One of the things that I have learned in life is that sometimes we have to go places we don’t want to go.
The doctor, the dentist, school, and even a job you hate.
The best way to get over our fear or apprehension is to see that we are doing it for others.
We go to the doctor because there are people who love us and want us to be healthy. Same with the dentist.
We go to school so that we can get an education and support ourselves.
We go to a job we hate because we have responsibility to those we love. It’s ok to seek a job you love, but sometimes you have to endure for the sake of others.
Moses may not have wanted to go back to Egypt, but for the sake of His people, he needed to go.
There was also a place that Jesus didn’t exactly want to go. The cross.
On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he spent hours in the Garden of Gethsemane praying. He was so distraught that his sweat was like drops of blood. And he prayed a prayer that I think all of us can relate to.
42 saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
Some might be uncomfortable with Jesus making this request as though it were a moment of weakness. But even on the eve of his greatest victory, over sin and death, it’s comforting to me that this prayer emphasizes His humanity. Because it was a man dying for His people.
This is not to say that Jesus didn’t go to the go to the cross willingly. He did. But even Jesus was willing to go to a place, the cross, from which everyone else would flee in terror.
God is calling each one of us to go. For some that might be across the world to far off places to share the love of Jesus and maybe even die a martyrs death.
Our International Mission Board has a project called "The Last Letter." It’s actually an old tradition of soldiers and missionaries who were getting read to leave their families, would write a letter that they think might be their final communication.
Karen Watson (no relation to me), from Bakersfield, CA was one of four IMB workers who were killed on March 15th of 2004. The vehicle they were riding in was ambushed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Karen was 38. She wrote her last letter to her pastor.
Dear Pastor,
You should only be opening this letter in the event of my death. When God calls there are no regrets. I tried to share my heart with you as much as possible, my heart for the nations. I wasn’t called to a place; I was called to Him. To obey was my objective, to suffer was expected, His glory my reward, His glory my reward...
The missionary heart:
Cares more than some think is wise
Risks more than some think is safe
Dreams more than some think is practical
Expects more than some think is possible
I was called not to comfort or to success but to obedience...
There is no Joy outside of knowing Jesus and serving Him. I love you and my church family.
In His care,
Salaam (Peace), Karen
May we be willing to go, no matter where God may call that the love of Jesus may be proclaimed, that sinners may repent, that lives may be transformed, and that God’s name be glorified.
Are you ready to go?
Let’s pray:
Week 41 of 2021-2022 Sermon Series: Authentic Character: Feet for Going - Moses
Authentic Principle: TRUST God and GO where He calls you to go.
1. Don’t WORRY about what other people THINK. (Exodus 4:1-9)
2. Don’t WORRY about what you’ll SAY. (Exodus 4:10-16)
3. Don’t go ALONE. (Exodus 4:14-17)
Response: Are you GOING where God has called you to GO?
Opening Discussion: Have you ever resisted going somewhere you knew you had to go? What was that like?
Sermon:
What excuses does Moses make for not wanting to go back to Egypt? How does God respond to each excuse?
How would you describe God’s interaction with Moses? What does God’s progression from patience to “anger” say about how God feels towards Moses’ resistance?
Why do you think that God gives Moses so much assurance that his task would be successful? Why do you think that Moses still doubts in the midst of this assurance?
Why do you think that God does not ultimately give Moses a choice about obeying the call to go?
Who does God call to go with Moses? Why is it significant that God must have called Aaron to go see Moses before commissioning Moses? What does this say about God and his plan?
Application:
Have you ever made excuses about why you couldn’t obey God?
How have you experienced God’s patience and firmness in your life? What was that like?
Is there is something God is calling you to do? Or a place God is calling you to go? Have you resisted? What will help you get over that resistance?
From where can you draw assurance that when God calls you to go, you will find success in what He’s called you to?
How can you develop feet for going in you life so that when God calls you to go, you are ready?