Faith Over Our Physical Limitations
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Faith Over Fear
Faith Over Fear
Faith over our Physical Limitations
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.’ ” The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” 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. 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— “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.” 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. 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. “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. 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.”
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.” 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? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” 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. 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. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.”
Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Please let me go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still alive.” And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.” And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead.” So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand.
And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’ ”
At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.
The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he went and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him. And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him to speak, and all the signs that he had commanded him to do. Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel. Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.
Introduction
Over the next couple of weeks are going to be looking at this series called faith over fear.
I want to start tonight talking about fear.
Points:
What is fear?
“Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.”
The one thing about fear is that we all know what it is, we all have been fearful of something.
Fear has prevented us from things in this life already, we know what fear is.
Fear is being on the edge of the cliff getting ready to jump into the water below, its the thoughts and the brain saying no! don’t do this, only pain is going to happen to you.
You pass on an opportunity to go somewhere or do something exciting that may end up changing your life, you decide that you would rather pass on that because something bad could happen and then what are you left with, nothing.
In order to make a difference you may need to give up control change but instead you stick to your guns and you find yourself unwilling to change because the future is scary and as long as I am in charge then i have no need to fear change.
Or even when we have a group of friends with us and they are an amazing group, we are checking out social media and phones every 1.2 seconds to make sure that we are not missing out with someone else, somewhere else, we fear missing out and by doing so we miss out on the present.
Fear is that feeling you feel when are going to ask someone out but decide against it at in the end because you don’t want to be rejected.
Fear is that feeling that you sit silently while others around you gossip and you say nothing to stop it because you would rather be in the group than be a loner.
Fear keeps us from saying anything that will stir the pot, even if we are uncomfortable, or wronged, it goes against what we believe— We fear others, their thoughts, their feeling, but no one takes into account your feelings or your thoughts.
You want to share the good news of Christ with a friend, but as the word begin to come out of your mouth, you hold the rest because of the fear of being judged.
THAT IS FEAR:
I experienced a lot of fear this week.
With recent news about the high school this week, I was shocked, grieved, and uncertain.
I was shocked because I was off in my calculations that transgenderism was 5 years away from being in the schools and would cause changes.
I was grieved by all people involved.
The student who just wants to get changed in peace, to the girls who also just want to be comfortable when they get changed.
I was brokenhearted over post from all sides that just spurred on hatred, bitterness, and poisonous venom that was spat.
And I was uncertain about what do with my children who are part of the public school system, who is allowing something that I cannot be for.
Fear was a major player this week.
I thought about speaking on the topic of transgenderism again, but to be honest with you, my thoughts have not changed from last year, and neither have my convictions.
If you want to have more in-depth conversation about transgenderism, I will be here all night, and I would love to chat with you.
Fear making people do silly, dumb, and childish things.
It makes us say things we regret.
It makes us act a way that we wish we could take back.
Fear is not our ally.
As the great philosopher Yoda says:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
In Max Lucado’s book Fearless he talks about what is on the other end of fear, what is the opposite of fear?
Its faith.
Listen to this quote:
What if faith, not fear, was your defeat reaction to threats? if you could hover a fear magnet over your heart and extract every last shaving of dread, insecurity, and doubt, what would remain? Envision a day, just one day, absent the dread of failure, rejection, and calamity. Can you imagine a life with no fear?”
This is the possibility behind Jesus’ question that he posed to his disciples.
And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.
Matthew
You may know the story that Jesus is asleep as this monster storm hits and the disciples are preparing to die!
And they were scared out of their minds!
They are shouting for Jesus to wake up and help!
They actually said in Mark:
But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
When we fear, we become self-motivated instead of gospel-motivated.
Jesus takes very seriously our fear.
Where he actually speaks against it often.
The Gospels have this fear not genre command mentioned 125 times!
The second most is common command is love God, and people genre mentioned only 8 times.
Fear is not our friend but our enemy.
We combat fear with faith.
This is what we are going to be looking at for the next three weeks.
Tonight we are looking at the story of Moses and how the fear of Moses almost cost him a chance to see God’s glory.
Lets pray and then dive in:
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.” 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? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”
Exodus 4:10—14
We see our Physical Limitations as a Weakness
We see our Physical Limitations as a Weakness
We are jumping right into a story here, so lets back up a bit and allow me to remind you what is happening here.
Moses is talking to bush, but not just any bush a bush that is on fire but yet it is not burning up!
THIS IS CRAZY!
It turns out this bush is actually God.
God has a plan for Moses!
Moses sees enters into the presence of God and God is like, WHOA Moses, take off your sandals this is holy ground!
Moses does it, and there he is in the presence of God.
God tells Moses his plan!
Moses is like yeah but God the people are not going to believe me!
God is like don’t worry you just need to tell them I am, me God has sent you!
And I, God will be with you!
All sounds like everything is going well, until Moses raises his hand and is like excuse me God, what if they don’t believe me?
And God is like easy:
Take your staff throw it on the ground!
Boom Snake!
I would be out and gone but Moses stays in and God is like grab it by the tail and it will turn back and he does what God said.
Then God is like take your hand and put it in your cloak, and pull it back out:
Boom Leprous!
SCREAM— I know i would have maybe Moses did, we dont know.
But then God says put your hand back in your coat, boom clean hand!
Then God tell him, if they don’t listen then I will show them!
This brings us to verse 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.”
God just explained all of this amazing stuff and shows Moses some crazy miracles.
And Moses was still on the fence.
He was like are you sure you want to use me?
Don’t you know my past, its not good, it is not one that is worth sending me.
And I do not speak well, you see my tongue is slow and words come out very slowly.
God I think you got the wrong guy.
This is what fear does to us...
Fear tells us the lie.
You are not good enough
You think God can use your past, you are crazy
Think of all the people who will be looking at you.
You are weak
You are not someone worth following
Your words are that of a 1st grader
You think you can speak to hundreds or thousands, you can barely get a word out to your sheep
FEAR if we allow it a place at the dinner table will slowly feed us lie after lie until the only thing we can believe is what fear has told us.
I know may of us have heard that Moses had speech impediment.
The New American Commentary: Exodus 5. Moses’ Ritual and Actual Protests and Divine Reassurance (4:10–18)
Moses’ statement in this verse has generated much misunderstanding on the part of those who have not recognized it as a ritual protest, and it has thus often been taken literally, as if Moses actually either had a speech defect or was incompetent as a public speaker or had forgotten his Egyptian. In fact, Moses did a huge amount of speaking in the remainder of the Pentateuchal narrative and law, yet nowhere did he reveal the slightest speech hesitancy or inability to make himself understood. Why, then, did he make the claim to be “slow of speech and tongue”? The answer lies not in physiology but in culture—in the style of ancient Near Eastern “exaggerated humility,” often employed in situations where one is appealing for help or mercy from someone else or showing one’s mannerly self-deprecation at being given a great assignment.
Check out these examples:
And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Abraham answered and said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.
Genesis 18:
Saul answered, “Am I not a Benjaminite, from the least of the tribes of Israel? And is not my clan the humblest of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why then have you spoken to me in this way?”
The New American Commentary: Exodus 5. Moses’ Ritual and Actual Protests and Divine Reassurance (4:10–18)
Gen 18:26: I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes. (Abraham)
Exod 4:10: I have never been eloquent … I am slow of speech and tongue. (Moses)
1 Sam 9:21: Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?”
1 Sam 18:23: David said, “Do you think it is a small matter to become the king’s son-in-law? I’m only a poor man and little known.”
1 Sam 24:14: “Against whom has the king of Israel come out? Whom are you pursuing? A dead dog? A flea?
1 Sam 26:20: Now do not let my blood fall to the ground far from the presence of the LORD. The king of Israel has come out to look for a flea—as one hunts a partridge in the mountains.”
2 Sam 9:8: Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”
2 Kgs 8:13: Hazael said, “How could your servant, a mere dog, accomplish such a feat?”
1 Kgs 3:7: You have made your servant king … I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. (Solomon)
Isa 6:5: Woe is me!… For I am a man of unclean lips. (Isaiah)
Isa 56:3: And let not any [official] complain, “I am only a dry tree.”
Jer 1:6: Ah, Sovereign LORD, … I do not know how to speak; I am only a child. (Jeremiah)
1 Cor 2:3: I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. (Paul)
Eph 3:8: Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me. (Paul)
1 Tim 1:15: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. (Paul)
Heb 13:22: Brothers, I urge you to bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written you only a short letter.
Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
And Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David. And David said, “Does it seem to you a little thing to become the king’s son-in-law, since I am a poor man and have no reputation?”
And Hazael said, “What is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?” Elisha answered, “The Lord has shown me that you are to be king over Syria.”
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”
Genesis 18:
Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.”
Jer
To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
This is just to name a few.
The New American Commentary: Exodus 5. Moses’ Ritual and Actual Protests and Divine Reassurance (4:10–18)
All of these parallels point to the simple fact that Moses was not speaking literally here but figuratively, responding to a great assignment with the proper sort of exaggerated humility and self-effacement expected and valued in his culture. There is no evidence anywhere in the Bible that he had any lack of skill in speech, public or private—and overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This does not change the fact that Moses was trying to keep coming up with excuses.
Moses has many fear that are causing him to question if God has the right person!
Don’t we do this too?
When fear raises up we come up with excuses, we ask many follow up questions.
Fear was crippling Moses and it for sure can cripple us as well.
So how does God want us to respond?
God just wants our Faith
God just wants our Faith
Let’s look at the next part of the passage.
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? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
Exodus 4:11
God is understandably angry at Moses.
God ask a few questions to Moses, but in a rhetorical way meaning, Moses better not answer.
Its like when you mess up/ got into trouble at school for lets just say trying to give a kid a swirly? or maybe something else, and I know for some of you this will be easy to think of, but for others let me give you a scenario.
You just got home from school or practice.
Mom and dad are waiting for you in the kitchen.
Your siblings you see out of the corner of your eye making a beeline to their rooms.
And then they ask the question; what were you thinking!?!
A little piece of advise they are not looking for an answer here!
God was not looking for an answer here either.
God was saying too Moses, I AM is capable of overcoming any excuse you have.
NOW GO!!!
This is true in our lives as well.
Stand and argue with God why we are not a good fit, why we can’t do something.
Look if God is calling you, he is not asking for your qualifications, he just wants your obedience.
He wants you to trust him.
God knows the challenges that you may face, he knows it, he knows that there may be hard times coming from you.
But that does not change what he wants from you.
He just wants you to trust and to act.
This is what God wants— But here is our default:
Fear says send someone else: Faith says send me!
Fear says send someone else: Faith says send me!
But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”
Exodus
Moses even at the end of all that:
Says God please, just send someone else.
This happens enough times in our lives.
GOD I GET IT, I KNOW I AM SUPPOSE TO BE THIS LIGHT, BUT GOD I JUST CANT DO IT, SEND SOMEONE ELSE.
GOD WHO , AM NOBODY, JUST SEND SOMEONE THEY WILL LISTEN TOO BECAUSE ITS NOT ME.
GOD YOU KNOW I WISH I WAS THE PERSON AND I KNOW YOU THINK I AM THE PERSON FOR THIS TASK BUT GOD, YOU KNOW I AM GOING TO BLOW THIS UP, JUST SEND SOMEONE ELSE.
Fear is something that is going to be part of us, but it does not have too.
Fear can be stood up too.
Fear can be taken down.
Fear can leave.
When we fear, it is because we are not giving the situation to God.
Conclusion
This week i felt fear.
This should have drove me to my knees in pray
I should have been at the foot of the cross laying all of my concerns before him, instead:
I was being fearful, being sucked into this trap of trying to figure everything out for myself instead of just handing it over to God.
I to want to run away and tell God to find someone else, but we all know that is not the answer.
God doesn’t want your prefaces or recommendations, God just wants you.
God wants to use you be a light to those around you.
God just want your trust.
When we fear because of our own physical limitations God says, I am here with you— just trust me.
Isaiah
Moses
From fear to fatih
From cave to splitting the red sea
That is faith over fear
Let’s Pray