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God’s Glory in His Plans
God’s Glory in His Plans
It is very apparent that from the beginning of time God has had a plan. Things do not surprise God and they never will. The ability to see and understand all things is something that we cannot fully grasp. We grapple with questions of how do bad things happen to good people, why do innocent children die, or why does God let me suffer? Understanding these situations is not about fully understanding the particulars of the situation but understanding what God’s ultimate plan is. Jesus understood the ultimate goal of His fathers plans, as displayed in
saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
Jesus understood the ultimate reward comes in follwing the Fathers Will and plan.
Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.” ’ And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”
In Exodus 3 we find Moses face to face with the Lord and he is being given the Fathers plan. Because I am a Baptist minister we will explore the 3 P’s of Gods Plans and these 3 can be applied in our lives as we work through God’s plans for our lives today. You will be able to take these and view how God is working in your life today. The same principles that we see applied throughout Scripture. I challenge you today to view these principles in 2 ways this morning. First in your lives, and second in the life of the church and Christianity today. Theologically how do we handle oppression, and sin in our culture while serving our Father. We will leave with practical understanding of a very theological issue today, that I pray will make hard times easier to understand, and God’s plan clearer in your lives and the life of the church. The 3 P’s we will explore are:
The Preparatiin of the Plan
The Perfection of the Plan
The Power of the plan
First we will look at the Preparation of the Plan. Before Moses ever knew he would lead the Israelites out of Egypt by the power of God, there was a plan that God put in place. From the Birth of Moses we can see that God had special plans for him.
Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
We see that God was divinely in charge of the beginning of Moses life and orchestrated a life that would lead towards God’s Glory being on display. Our lives are not some simple happenstance. Maybe you were your parents Oops baby, but you were no mistake to God. No life is given without a purpose to bring the Father Glory. This theme is passed through scripture in verses such as
For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption,
We see all through Scripture that our lives are designed for a purpose and that purpose is to display the Glory of God. You life is no accident and at some point you will meet the intersection of seeing God’s will and plan for your life or ignoring it to chase your desires. It is a difficuly theological battle between predestination and free will. On one hand we want to believe that we are free to do as we will. On the other hand we believe in a God who knows all and sees all and keeps everything in balance. These two ideas conflict with each other and have gone so far as to divide the church theologically. I can tell you this there are many scriptures that talk about being the elect, being predestined. There are also many scriptures that point to our ability to willfully follow the will of God, and also scriptures that indicate the suffering we can cause in our lives for not following the will of God. Whatever camp you find yourself in the truth of the matter is that God has an ultimate plan for your life and will receive the glory for your life. God knows how many hairs are on your head, He knows the day you were concieved and knows the day you will leave this earth. Your life is no accident. God has a plan from the beginning even before you ever know the plan. Just like God did with Moses. Moses became a son of Pharoah and lived his life being trained as an Egyptian. Becasue his mother was his caretaker he was able to maintian his roots as an israelite while gaining the knowledge of the egyptian customs and culture. Moses then commited murder and exiled himself our of fear that he would be killed. Moses spent years as a shepherd and tending to sheep only to one day hear God’s voice in the desert. It was absolutely God’s design. I am deliberately not going to get into the calvanism conversation today because the point is that before we knew there was a plan God had a plan for our lives.
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Second lets look at the perfection of God’s Plan. In
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.” ’ And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’
In this Scripture Moses like many of us begin the journey of trying to dismantle God’s plan for our lives. Moses had the perception that he was not worthy to follow the plan and to execute on the plan that God had given him. Moses begins throwing excuses out at God as to why he cannot be the one to deliver the Israelites. First he says I am not good enough, who am I. God then says I will be with you, next argument? Then Moses says well what if they done believe me and what is His name? God responds tell them that “I AM WHO I AM” Moses then continues into chapter 4 saying again they will not believe me, God then responds and tells Moses to throw his staff down and God transformed it into a snake and then God told Moses to catch it by the tail and turned it back into his staff. Moses continues this back and forth with God and he gets to the point of saying, but Im not eloquent in speech. By this point Moses is missing the point and many times we are in the same boat. You see Moses was not understanding that this plan was not going to be carried out because of how great he was but because of how Great God was. The perfection of Gods plans is that He is the one working the plan to completion.
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.
The anger of the Lord burned agains Moses becasue he was stubborn and not fixing his eyes on the Lord. Many times we believe that we need to do something, we must get out and be heard or be seen and God is saying its not you but me in you that will complete my plans for you. The perfection in God’s plan is that he uses the humble to tumble the proud, uses the weak to capture the strong, uses the poor to feed the rich. God’s plans for our lives are not dependent on us doing anything.
He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
God will work his plan regardless of our weaknesses or inabilities. Take for instance Peter in
He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.
Peter had disqualified himself becasue of his rejection of Christ and Jesus came out to make a point to Peter that God’s plan for Glory simply required Peter to allow God to do the work through him.
Many times we disqualify ourselves becasue we believe that we cannot be the ones to follow through with God’s plans for our lives. It is time for us to realize that we must take the passenger seat. We do not need to be heard or seen as perfect people becasue we serve a perfect God who is helping us to work our salvation out until the day He returns. Gods plan for your life is perfect and arguning with God is to limit His power and as we see with Moses this is something that God just will not put up with. Set your perspective on the fact that God’s plan is perfection
Lastly we explore the Power of God’s Plan
Moses was able to finally get outside of his fears and realize that God had chosen him for something special and designed his life for this time. Now it was time for God to get to display His power. I want to pay specific attention to how God displayed His power here and the actions that it called from the Israelites and from Moses. In Chapter 3 we find this amazing word from God listen to it.
So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go.
And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty,
but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”
In This passage we find the greatest strength in God’s Plans and that is, He works it out. Notice that God told Moses to go and to speak to Pharoah, at no point did God command Moses to prepare the Israelites for war, to rise up agains Pharoah. Rather God told Moses to go and talk to Pharoah. God also knew that Pharoah would not listen and was prepared to show His glory in ways that Pharoah would never imagine. This plan took nothing more of Moses than to be faithful to the Lord and to speak to Pharoah. Many times we believe that we are the vessel for change and that we are the tool for change. In fact we are nothing more than the transport of the plan. God simply asked Moses to open the conversation with Pharoah then to step back and watch God work. The Power of Gods plan in our lives is God. We are not deserving of the plans that He has for us or the power that He gives us through our faith in Him. God is the reason that we have anything at all. If you woke up this morning it was becasue of God, if you are breathing at this moment it is becuase of God. Everything we have is becasue it is provided to us from God. How is your life reflective of your faith that God is working the plan. You see there were times in scripture like when King Saultook on the job of the priest and was punished because of his pride, or when Moses took it upon himself to hit the rock to get the water instead of following God’s plan, after these instances these men recieved punishment not becasue of their desiring for something to be done but because of their pride. They were not necisarilly trying to take the glory from God but they certainly got in the way of God displaying his glory and because of that they were punished. In our lives it takes a humble patient approach, not because we are weak but becasue in God we are stong and we understand that He will fight our battles for us. Sometimes standing up and fighting is not the hardest thing to do but to sit back and have Faith that God will fight our battles.
