Moses
Summer in the sand • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Moses: The NT mentions Moses more time than any other OT figure.
Moses was all we know we are and all we know we want to be. He was a failure, but he was also faithful.
If you have failed, do not give up. God used Moses, and He wants to use you.
Born to Levite parents who were slaves in Egypt during a time when Pharaoh decreed the death of all newborn Hebrew boys, Moses was saved when Pharaoh's daughter found him in a basket floating in the Nile.
20 “At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for by his family. 21 When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.
God was supernaturally working behind the scenes to prepare the deliverer of his people.
“Sometimes, to accomplish his purposes through you, God has to take you low before he will take you high.” -Dr. Tony Evans (Slide)
Moses life went from almost being killed, to growing up in Pharaoh’s palace, to on the run fugitive, to working as a desert herdsman, to God’s chosen deliverer.
Then a life altering event happened.
23 “When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.
In his zeal and passion he reacts. Did God ask Moses to avenge and kill?
26 The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’ 27 “But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?
Great question. When we were younger we would say to our siblings you are not the boss of me.
28 Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29 When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.
Moses you are a murderer. Not a God sent leader.
Running from his sin, running for his life, He runs into God in the desert (Summer in the Sand)
Like Jacob last week, God wants to meet with Moses one on one.
1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
God will use unusual things to get our attention.
The burning bush was a picture of what God had planned for Moses: he was the weak bush but God was the empowering fire.
4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” 5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
Jacob last week asked what is your name, but the Lord did not answer. This time God wants Moses to know right up front who he is talking to him.
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
How many times over the years in the desert did Moses think about and pray over his own people, the Israelites. Praying for God to do something.
9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”
Moses was making the mistake of looking at himself instead of looking to God.
Who am I? Moses now is the desert has a different self-image of himself than he did while in Egypt.
Is there something from your past that keeps you from your God promising future?
This is why many of us still hold back from doing what God has called us to do.
13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
1 Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”
When God calls us to something we start asking the negative what if questions.
10 Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” 11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
Was he lying? Or was that how he saw himself after his murderous demise in Egypt?
22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.
Okay you are having some self doubts and forgot who you are.
12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” 13 But Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”
Moses calls Him “Lord” and yet refuses to obey His orders. Forty years before, he felt perfectly adequate to face the enemy and act on behalf of his people, but now he’s backing off and professing himself to be a worthless failure.
Please send someone else: God I think you made a mistake.
If God called you to it, He will help you through it.
What is the hang up Moses? Oh that is right. You ran to the desert to hide from your sin.
God will answer: Let me take away your fear.
19 Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead.”
I want you to go back to the scene of the crime. I want you to go back to where you messed up.
This time you're not going back as a fugitive you're going back as my leader.
God is the only one that can take something that was bad and turn it around and make it good.
He is the only one that can make you go back into your problem with passion, then give you and someone else a breakthrough.
