Moses
Heroes of the Faith • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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I have a huge rubber band and we discuss the flexibility and stretch that the rubber band has.
1. The rubber band has a potential to stretch beyond where it is.
2. At some point the stretch has limitations. The rubber band will not stretch any more, it will break.
3. If the rubber band had feelings ---? What might it say as it is stretched?
4. The rubber band has a comfort zone?
5. If the rubber band is not used and stretched from time to time it will dry rot and loose it’s elasticity.
Today we will be talking about a faith that is stretched. We will do this by looking a couple aspects of one of the most famous figures in the Old Testament, Moses. Most of us remember sitting by the TV during Easter time and watch Cicil B Demills The Ten Commandments. For a kid that was a long movie. I remember mom getting it on VHS. There were two of them in there. It was the first time I watched a movie with an intermission in it. Still to this day, some of you know the story of Moses by that movie. Charlton Heston standing there like a young Gandalf with the staff in his hand.
But his story runs so much deeper than that. It is a story of a faith that was stretched beyond what most humans can endure. Let’s first look at what Hebrews 11 says about moses
By faith Moses, after he was born, was hidden by his parents for three months, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they didn’t fear the king’s edict. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and chose to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin. For he considered reproach for the sake of Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, since he was looking ahead to the reward.
By faith he left Egypt behind, not being afraid of the king’s anger, for Moses persevered as one who sees him who is invisible. By faith he instituted the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch the Israelites. By faith they crossed the Red Sea as though they were on dry land. When the Egyptians attempted to do this, they were drowned.
Many people do not understand the fullness of faith. Many are scared to have their faith stretched cause it is so uncomfortable.
God tells us that faith is a crucial part of our relationship with Him and stretching that faith increases that relationship.
It is this faith that is stretched that becomes the hinge that holds the Christian to a personal relationship with God.
Let’s stretch our faith as we look at how God stretched Moses
MOSES’ FAITH WAS STRETCHED BY BEING ASKED TO GO BACK TO EGYPT TO FACE HIS PAST
Facing The Past
It is so hard to face your past. People you have hurt or were hurt by, situations you did not handle well, worst of all, unresolved forgiveness.
Let’s see what Moses had to do
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. So because the Israelites’ cry for help has come to me, and I have also seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them, therefore, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh so that you may lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
In order to do what God requested of him, Moses would have to go back to the place that he had fled from, a place where he was raised to rule over the Israelites and then he later found out that he actually was an Israelite, the place where he then killed an Egyptian, and the place where he chose to give up his royal status.
We see here that God is asking Moses to do something uncomfortable something that is very cross grain to Moses. Just as God asked Moses to do something uncomfortable, the Lord will ask and direct us to do things that we are not comfortable with.
Now let’s look at Moses’ response to God’s direction. And try and put yourself in Moses’ shoes and ask yourself if this would be your response too.
But Moses asked God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?”
But Moses replied to the Lord, “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent—either in the past or recently or since you have been speaking to your servant—because my mouth and my tongue are sluggish.”
Moses said, “Please, Lord, send someone else.”
Moses is a great representation of all us.
We hear God speak and then we get busy telling God why we can’t do what He’s asked us to do. In all of Moses’ responses to the Lord Moses is talking about “I”, I’m not good enough, they won’t listen to me, when I go….. Moses was showing a lack of faith in the Lord.
Instead of knowing that if the Lord God was sending him, then God would equip Him and God would be the one to deliver His people. Finally it comes to the point that Moses must make a decision, either to continue in his lack of faith in the Lord or choose to step out in faith in response to the Lords directions. His faith would be stretched!
We too are given direction from the Lord and have a choice whether to hear only or to hear it and in stretching our faith, act on it. Moses chose to stretch his faith by acting on God’s direction. Facing the past is not easy. It will stretch your faith
MOSES’ FAITH WAS STRETCHED WHEN HE WAS FACED WITH OPPOSITION
Facing Opposition
Opposition will come at you from all directions, from the expected and from the unexpected.
Later, Moses and Aaron went in and said to Pharaoh, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival for me in the wilderness.”
But Pharaoh responded, “Who is the Lord that I should obey him by letting Israel go? I don’t know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go.”
Pharaoh also said, “Look, the people of the land are so numerous, and you would stop them from their labor.”
That day Pharaoh commanded the overseers of the people as well as their foremen, “Don’t continue to supply the people with straw for making bricks, as before. They must go and gather straw for themselves. But require the same quota of bricks from them as they were making before; do not reduce it. For they are slackers—that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’
Moses probably expected this type of resistance from Pharaoh, but what he did not expect was this
When they left Pharaoh, they confronted Moses and Aaron, who stood waiting to meet them.
“May the Lord take note of you and judge,” they said to them, “because you have made us reek to Pharaoh and his officials—putting a sword in their hand to kill us!”
So we see here that Moses’ is facing his own people and they are complaining against him.
Here you have Moses who is following what God asked him to do. And pharaoh kind of laughs at Moses and say’s “I’ll show you, I’ll increase the load on your people.”
So now Moses’ people are coming against him with the attitude of “I don’t want you here, we don’t want this.” So I ask myself, “did Moses have a little doubt, a little insecurity at that time?” Maybe, but what we see here is that no matter what the cost was, Moses didn’t give up but continued to push forward. Moses leaned on his faith knowing that God would come through.
How many of us when we’re faced with opposition with our family, or friends, situations, or just people, throw up our hands in retreat or do we persevere in our faith, trusting God.
Even Christ faced opposition from his friends and family
He also said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
Jesus went home and was shunned by friends he grew up with, even his own brothers did not accept him. Yet he still tried to spread the Gospel to them cause that is what God called him to do.
In his gripping memoir, Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri recounts the gripping story about why his mother became a Christian.
She grew up in a devout and prestigious Muslim family. She was a doctor and had wealth and esteem. But eventually she would forsake all of that to follow Jesus. She was forced to flee for her life from Iran, eventually settling in the U.S. as a refugee. When people ask her why, she looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her, and she says, “Because it’s true.”
Why else would she believe it? It’s true and it’s more valuable than $7 million in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and 10 years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home. And maybe even your life. My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise.
If you believe it’s true, that there is a God, and he wants you to believe in him, and he sent his Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side. That or my mother is insane. There’s no middle. You can’t say it’s a quirky thing she thinks, because she went all the way with it. If it’s not true, she made a giant mistake. But she doesn’t think so.
She had all that wealth, the love of all those people she helped in her clinic. They treated her like a queen. She was a devout Muslim. And she’s poor now. People spit on her on buses. She’s a refugee in places where people hate refugees. And she’ll tell you––it’s worth it. Jesus is better. It’s true … Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. The whole story hinges on it.
A faith that is stretched will face the past and the opposition
MOSES’ FAITH WAS STRETCHED WHEN THE PEOPLE HE WAS SENT TO, AREN’T TRUSTING GOD
Facing an Unbelieving World
We see Moses faith being stretched yet again through the opposition of the children of Israel when Moses went up and received the ten commandments and came back and the children of Israel had decided to build an idol of a gold calf and declare it their god and offer sacrifice to it.
When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!”
Aaron replied to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings that were on their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it into an image of a calf.
Then they said, “Israel, these are your gods, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”
If I was Moses I probably would have said “forget this, these people are ridiculous, hard headed and are never going to change, Lord I don’t know why you wanted to deliver these people when all they do is complain against You.”
But Moses had to continue to put his faith in the Lord and trust that the Lord knew best.
It can be so frustrating to live a life of faith, do what God has directed you to do and then come up against people that don’t or won’t listen to what you’re saying or won’t trust or put their faith in the Lord.
It can make you want to stop following God’s direction for your life.
But we need to stretch our faith like Moses did and press on.
You see faith is an important part of who we are as Christians, without it there would never be any growth with ourselves or with God.
You see ever time Moses was faced with something that he needed to lean on the Lord for, it stretched his faith.
But it didn’t just stretch his faith, it also brought maturity and growth into his life.
Faith is the thing that helps us grow and gives us a deeper understanding of God.
Do we trust the Lord enough and are we willing to obey what He’s asked us to do, to step out in faith?
