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Pastor George’s Message... Sunday, January 31, 2010 |
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November 22nd THANKSGIVING: “Sacrifice of Thanksgiving” –Psalm 116:12-19 November 29th 1st Sunday of Advent: A JOURNEY OF THE HEART: “The Journey of Gabriel” December 6th: 2nd Sunday of Advent: A JOURNEY OF THE HEART: “The Journey of Mary & Joseph” December 13th: 3rd Sunday of Advent: A JOURNEY OF THE HEART: “The Journey of the Shepherds December 22nd Advent Sunday: A JOURNEY OF THE HEART: “The Journey of Christ” December 27th Post Advent: A JOURNEY OF THE HEART: “The Journey of the Wisemen” January 3rd New Year: “A sense of the Eternal” –Hebrews 1:10-12; 1 Timothy 6:6-12 January 10th Moses: Birth & Call –Exodus 2-4 January 17th Moses: Deliever –Exodus 5-12 January 24th Guest Speaker: —Tim Kumfer January 31st Moses: Law Giver –Exodus 15:1-18 February 7th FACING DOWN OUR FEARS: “In the Face of Fears” February 14th FACING DOWN OUR FEARS: “Through Faith in God” February 21st FACING DOWN OUR FEARS: “Finding Peace When the World Goes to Pieces” February 28th FACING DOWN OUR FEARS of Living An Insignificant Life” March 7th FACING DOWN OUR FEARS of Rejections March 14th FACING DOWN OUR FEARS of Failure March 21st FACING DOWN THE Unhealthy Fear of God March 28th FACING DOWN OUR FEARS The Valleys of Sickness, Aging, & Death” April 4th FACING DOWN OUR FEARS: Victory Out of Chaos & Evil April 11th April 18th April 25th
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Moses: Lawgiver Scripture Lesson: --Exodus 15:1-18 Introduction: Pharaoh's last words to Moses and Aaron shortly after midnight the night the death angel had touched the first born of every Egyptian family was: (Ex. 12:31) "Rise up, go forth from among my people.... go, serve the Lord,... be gone; and bless me also." The Children of Israel's Egyptian neighbors had urged the people to hurry and leave, "Before", they said, "we all become dead men." (Ex. 12:29 par) About 600,000 men, not counting the women and children, left that night from Ramses and headed south-east to Succoth toward the Red Sea. They took with them all their herds and flocks. (Ex. 12:38) The people of Israel had been in Egypt some 430 years by now. (Ex. 12:40) And if you think Moses has had trouble up to this point getting the people out of Egypt, you haven't heard the rest of the story. Can you imagine taking a 100 Lucas Oil Stadiums full of men, not counting their wives and children and herds, and trying to direct them and organize them for an extended camping trip? And by “extended”, I'm talking about a 40+ years camping trip. Moses' fun is just beginning. Taking your own family or even a couple of families on a 3 or 4 day camping trip is hard enough at times, and we've got campers and RV's… and all kinds of campgrounds and rest-stops along the way. And we don't have to bring the cows along… I can’t imagine what it was like being in Moses' shoes. As I said before, His fun is just beginning. Today, I want us to look at pretty much the rest of Moses' life. We'll look at the crossing of the Red Sea. We'll look at the happenings at Mt. Sinai, when God gives Moses' the Ten Commandments. Then we'll look at the People's wonderings in the wilderness and finally Moses' last mountain climb. Flight Out of Egypt: (Ex. 12:37-18:27) As the people started to leave Egypt an interesting phenomenon occurred. All during the day there was this great cloud that moved slowly before the people, leading the way. Then at night the cloud became a pillar of fire. This was God's way of leading the people. After the people left Goshen, not Goshen, Indiana, but Goshen, the area of Egypt where Joseph and his father and bothers had settled, this cloud led them to the Red Sea and here the cloud stopped. So the people camped to rest. But suddenly someone started running through the camp shouting: "Pharaoh's army is coming! Pharaoh's and his army is coming." Pharaoh had once again changed his mind; --he just couldn't let his slaves go! With this the people became very distraught and for good reason. Here before them was the Red Sea, and coming toward them, forcing them into this wedged shaped area, was Pharaoh and his army. They were trapped! The people turned to Moses and began screaming: (Ex. 14:10-12) "Why did you bring us out here in the wilderness?... Is it because there were no graves in Egypt?... Why have you done this to us?... We'd rather be slaves in Egypt than to die here in the wilderness!" Not very patriotic on their part… This becomes the chorus and refrain that Moses will hear over and over again for the next forty years before he's finished leading this grumbling people. This was the theme song every time the Israelites got in a tight and stopped trusting God. It was the theme song they sang everything they got together for a pity-party which was quiet often. We all know what happened next. In Exodus 14:15-31 God told Moses to stretch-out his rod over the Red Sea, and the sea divided. The people walked across on dry land, and as Pharaoh and his army rushed after them, the waters came back together again and Pharaoh and his army was bogged down in the mud and they were all drowned in the Sea. The people were miraculously saved! And there was no doubt who had saved them, --God had! The people began to sing and rejoice. Probably one of the oldest songs ever recorded in human history is this Song of Victory sang by Moses and the people of Israel found in Exodus 15:1-18. This was certainly an emotional high for Moses and all the people. God had indeed "triumphed Gloriously!" over their enemy. But it wasn't long as they started out across the Wilderness of Shur that the rejoicing once again turned to complaints and murmurings. Bruce Wilkinson says: "When Israel left Egypt, there were two things the people could do well: make bricks and complain." (The Daily Walk, Jan. 14, 1984) The complaining part they had down to a fine art. As they started out across the wilderness their resources began to run out very quickly. It's estimated that there were maybe as many as 2 million people leaving Egypt, and no way could a semi-arid wilderness support that many people, just off the land. As the food and the water decreased, the complaints and murmurings increased. In Exodus 16:3 the people say to Moses: "Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt....." But.... again God miraculously provided them with the fresh water and with Manna, and quail. Here we see happening to the Children of Israel, what often happens to us as individuals in our Christian walk with God. It's only natural that we will have spiritual and emotional highs and lows. When the Israelites escaped the death angel and Pharaoh let them go, it was an emotional high. When they saw Pharaoh's army coming and they were trapped, it was naturally a low. When God miraculously delivered them across the Red Sea, it was an extreme emotional high. But as their supplies of food and water ran out, naturally it was a low. They were up and down. The question is: "How do we as individuals handle these “up's” and “down's” of life?" I think there's three things to remember that's helpful: One thing to remember is: When you're down and everything looks hopeless, remember it can't last forever. You may feel like it is going to, but it doesn't. (If it does last for more than a few weeks or a month or so, it's un-natural and you need to get some help, you may be suffering from clinical depression.) The second thing we need to remember is just the opposite of the first: When you're up on the mountain top and everything is going your way, don't get over confident; --it too can't last forever. So enjoy the high! --Don't feel guilty about it and start looking for something negative or bad to happen to bring you down. Savor the glory while you can!... Feast your soul while you can!... Save some of your resources while you can… because sooner or later you'll have to come down off the mountain. Some people make the mistake of trying to live on a Mountain top experience for ever. Just as it's un-natural to remain down forever, --it is also unnatural to remain on a high forever. The third thing and the most important thing to remember is: God is God both on the mountain and in the valley! Song: I love the song Lynda Randle has made famous: “God on the Mountain”. The words of the chorus written by Trace G. Dartt goes like this: For the God on the mountain is still God in the valley When things go wrong He’ll make them right And the God of the good times, is still God of the bad times And the God of the day is still God of the night
The point is: Keep trusting God whether you’re on the mountain or in the valley! We need the mountains and we need the valleys, but the most important thing we need is God and we need to keep trusting Him! In Exodus 18 we see that the news of what God had done for Moses and the Children of Israel had reached Moses' Father-in-law, Jethro, in Median, and so Jethro comes out to meet Moses and see how things are going. Jethro noticed that from morning to evening Moses was busy settling disputes and quarrels and listening to the complaints of the people. I don't know about you, but I know for me, I can only listen to People's complaints and disputes for so long, before I start getting crazy and cranky myself. And apparently this was starting to happen to Moses. Jethro tells Moses (Exodus 18:17-18) "What are you doing, Moses, is not good. --You're going to wear yourself out. --It’s too much for you to do alone." Moses probably says: "So.... what else is new!" But Jethro had a good solution as well. He says to Moses: (Ex. 18:20) "Why don't you choose some able men, --men who love God, --men who are trustworthy, --men who can't be bribed and make them judges over the various groups of people." Moses chose 70 such men. And Jethro said: (Exodus 18:19-20) "And you, Moses, you just concentrate on representing the people before God, --and teaching the people God's laws and His ways." That was probably the best advice anyone could have given Moses. It was good advice and a good principle of leadership and time management for any leader or person to follow. That why every pastor needs a group of strong lay leaders behind him… Deacons… Lay Leaders he can delegate responsibility to. It isn’t the responsibility of the pastor to do all the ministry of the church… If the only ministry that got done in this church was done by me, this church would be hurting big time… According to Ephesians 4:11-13 (NIV) my job as pastor is to: 12 to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. The best leaders are those who can say, "No!" to the unimportant things they are expected to do… to say “No!” to the tyranny of the urgent… so they can say "Yes!" to the one or two things they are called by God to do. The problem most of us as leaders face is saying "yes" to too many things, and getting overly involved, and the result is burn-out. If we're going to be in this thing for the long haul, we have got to say "No" to the unimportant things, --we have got to avoid getting caught up in the urgency and tyranny of the immediate. At Mt. Sinai: (Exodus 19-40) When God called Moses, he promised to bring him back to the same area and mountain where he had first appeared to Moses. (Ex. 3:12) Exodus 3:1 identifies this mountain as Mt. Horeb; Exodus 19:2 identifies this mountain as Mt. Sinai. They probably are one and the same mountain, located in the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. (See map ) Here Moses and the Children of Israel make camp. While everyone else is making camp Moses goes up on the mountain and God makes himself known to everyone through thunder, fire, smoke, and lightening from the top of the mountain. Only Moses is allowed to approach God on the mountain. While they are there God renews his covenant with Israel by giving them the 10 commandments found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. The first 4 of the commandments deals with man's relationship to God. The people are to God a special people, and there are to be no other gods but Him! The remaining six commandments deal with man's relationships to one another. Jesus summarizes all 10 of the commandments in two sentences in Matthew 22:37-40; he said: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second is like it, You call love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." As long as the people were obedient to God's Law and kept His covenant, God promised they would remain to Him a special people, --God's "own possession among all peoples." (Ex. 19:5) They were to be to God "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (Ex. 19:5) But we also see here at Mt Sinai what happens when the people forsake God and turn to idols. While Moses was on the mountain talking with God getting the Ten Commandments and the instructions on how to build the Ark and the Tabernacle, the people became impatient again. Moses has been on the mountain for 40 days, there has been a lot of fire, smoke, thunder and lightening; they began to wonder if something bad had happened to Moses. "Maybe he's dead!" the people wondered. The people appealed to Aaron in Exodus 32:1: "Make us gods, who shall go before us." (Ex. 32:1) In just this short time they had already given-up on Moses and on God. Aaron was a weak man… he was a people pleaser… he really was not a leader… and so he gave in to them. He told them to bring their golden ear rings. He melted the gold and fashioned it into the form of a golden calf, much like the one the people had seen the Egyptians worshipping. The next day they all had a great feast and danced to this their new god. When God saw what was happening down in camp, He immediately sent Moses down from the mountain. As Moses came off the mountain carrying the two tablets of stone upon which God had written the 10 commandments, Moses was so distressed with what he saw, he threw the tablets on the ground and they were broken to pieces. Moses took the gold calf, ground it up into find dust, then he put the dust in the people's water and made them drink it… first record of heavy metal poisoning. God was so angry with the people that He would have consumed them with fire on the spot, except that Moses made intercession on behalf of the people before God. Exodus 32:31-32 records one of the most moving and beautiful prayers of intercession you'll find in the Bible. Moses prays to God: Exodus 32:31-32: "Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. [32] But now, please forgive their sin--but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written." I think we see the real character of the man Moses here in this prayer. With all the murmurings and trouble the people had caused Moses, he still loved them. He loved them so much that he was willing to have himself blotted out before God, so they could be saved. Humor: It’s a good thing it was Moses and not me: There have been times when I’ve listened to petty complaints and murmurings of people in the Church… and if God would have come along about that time and said: “I’m going to wipe them off the face of the earth with fire”, I’d probably had said: “Lord, your will be done!... do your thing!” Moses pleaded with God on the people’s behave. Jesus prayed a very similar pray for us as he hung dying on the cross; he prayed: (Luke 23:34) "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." What kind of persons do people see in you and me from our prayers of intercession? God didn't destroy the nation of Israel on behalf of Moses, --God forgave them; but sin always has its temporal consequence in spite of God's forgiveness. A plague came upon the people as a result of their rebellion and sin, and many died. (Ex. 32:35) We see here that playing with sin is not something God takes lightly, nor is it something we should take lightly. God may be able to forgive us of our sins, but there often are far reaching consequences which our sin set in motion, which we will never be able to fully overcome while we're still on this earth. For example: God can forgive and bring deliverance to a drug addict, but that doesn't take away the damage that has already been done, --that doesn't stop the AIDS that may have been contacted through the use of dirty syringes, --that doesn't take away the brain damage or the damage done to the rest of the body through prolonged use of drugs, --that doesn't but families back together that was destroy with the drug abuse. The same principle is true of all areas of sin; --sin isn't something to play with. You can't play with sin Saturday night and ask for cheap forgiveness Sunday morning. The whole point of Moses' anger as he cast down the two tablets of stone was to show how angry God is with our sin. Sin always breaks relationships. It breaks our relationship, first of all, with God, and secondly it breaks our relationships with each other. We may not bow down to any golden calf, but we all have our idols that come between us and God. It may be our work… it may be some addiction… it may be our lust for things… it may be an infatuation or lust for some person. Anything that comes between us and God is an idol and a sin and it must be cast out of our lives at all costs. God does not laugh at sin. Moses had to go back up the mountain for God to rewrite the Commandments on the two tablets. Instructions were given to Moses by God for the Ark and the Tabernacle and for all the different sacrifices, in order for the people to come back to God. A free-will offering was taken for the building of the ark and the tabernacle. When the tabernacle was built and dedicated to God, the Presence of God that had been symbolized by the cloud, that led them out of Egypt, now moved into the Tabernacle… the Shakinna Glory of God. God was in their very presence… represented by the ark of God in the Holy of Holies. Wonderings in the Wilderness: (Numbers & Deuteronomy) After the people had been camped there about a year at the foot of Mt. Sinai, the cloud began to move slowly again toward the north. This was a signal it was time to move on. When Moses and the people got to Kadesh on the east edge of Cananna, the Promised Land, just on the east side of the Jordan River, twelve spies were sent into Canaan to spy out the land. Numbers 13:27 says that when the spies returned, all reported that indeed the new land was a rich land, --"a land flowing with milk and money". (Num. 13:27) "But", they said, "the people that are there are strong, and it has fortified cities, and there are giants in the land that make us look like grasshoppers." (Nu. 13:28 & 33) With that report the people rebelled and were about to chose a new leader who would help take them back to Egypt. Only Joshua and Caleb of the 12 spies, believed that with God's help they could take the land. But the people refused to listen and even started to stone Joshua and Caleb. God in his anger against the people's rebellion and lack of faith, would again have destroyed the children of Israel if it hadn’t been that Moses once again interceded to God on their behalf. When the people saw God's anger against them, they were willing to change their minds and to enter Canaan; but because of their unbelief and rebellion, God refused to let them go in at that time. Only Caleb and Joshua and those 20 years of age and younger would be allowed to enter the Promised Land. For 40 years the Children of Israel wondered in the wilderness as a result of their unbelief. Again and again during those 40 years of wondering in the wilderness, there was more rebellion and murmuring. They wanted pickles and vegetables from Egypt… they wanted fresher water… they wanted more meat… and they wanted this and that. Over and over again God threatened to destroy the people, but again and again, Moses made intercession to God to spare them. Near the end of the 40 years of wondering in the wilderness, when Moses was now about 120 years old, God lets Moses know that his time on this earth was near an end. Joshua, one of the two faithful spies, who was full of the Spirit and believed the land could be taken, was chose by God to be Moses' successor. Then Moses called all the people together for a farewell address. (That farewell address is basically the book of Deuteronomy) Humor: (And you think I have long sermons some days.) After blessing the people, Moses climbs Mt. Nebo near the border of the Promised Land, and God shows him all the land He was going to give the people. Then Deuteronomy 34:5-6 says: "Moses the servant of the Lord died,... and (God) buried him..." There's a lot that could be said about the life of Moses, but this one line in Deut. 34:5 about says it all: "Moses, the servant of the Lord...." Obedience and trust in God ware the two key themes throughout these passages we've been considering as we've studied the life of Moses. As long as the people were obedient to God's Laws and commandments, things went well for them; but every time the people were disobedient and unbelieving, trouble came. After Moses surrendered to God's call upon his life that one day out on the backside of the wilderness, as he stood barefooted before God and the burning bush, Moses remained faithful and obedient to God. He was a faithful servant of God… he finished well. Although Moses, himself, never got to enter the Promised Land, God took him to a promised land far more wonderful than the one the Children of Israel was about to enter. Conclusion: What will be said about you or me, when we die? It's not so much how we start out, although that's important and Moses had a good beginning, but it's how we finish life that really counts. My life is in all probability is at least 2/3 over. A question I've been challenged by recently is: How well am I going to finish the last third?... Am I going to finish well?... Will I be faithful to the end?... Do I have the staying power? Moses was faithful to the end… Moses finished well! I can think of no better epithet than the one given to Moses: "Moses...., the servant of the Lord!" Will they be able to write of me: "George..., the servant of the Lord!"?? What will be your epithet?
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Tillman Road Church of God Fort Wayne, IN |