June 20, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

GOD USES ORDINARY PEOPLE IN EXTRAORDINARY WAYS

Exodus 3:1-15; 4:1-17

Series: “What Do I Need to Know for Life?”

Lesson Three (Moses)

June 20, 2010

 

A dad, passing by his teenage son’s bedroom, was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up.  Then he saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to “Dad.”  With the worst premonition he opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter—

Dear Dad—

It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m writing you.  I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with you and Mom.  Stacy is so nice, but I knew that you would not approve of her because of all her body piercings and tattoos, and the fact that she is much older than I am.  There’s also the matter that she’s pregnant.

 

Stacy says that we’ll be very happy together.  She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood—enough for the whole winter.  We share a dream of having many more children.

 

Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone.  We’ll be growing it for ourselves and to make extra money for other things we need.  Meanwhile, we’ll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better.  She deserves it.

 

Don’t worry, Dad.  I’m 15 and I know how to take care of myself.  Someday I’m sure that we’ll be back to visit so that you can get to know your grandchildren.

 

Love,  Your son John

 

P.S. Dad, none of the above is true.  I’m over at Tommy’s house.  I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than a report card.  That’s in my center desk drawer.  I love you.  Call me when it’s safe to come home.

 

Well, on this Father’s Day, I wanted to remind you all again that parenting isn’t for sissies!  Every time I dedicate a precious little baby and look at a young couple who have entered the world of parenting, I think to myself, “You have no idea what you’ve just signed up for!”  And there’s no way they could know!  And dads, I want to thank you for all you do for your families and I want to encourage you to hang in!  I know it’s not always easy!  I know what it’s like to feel like you’re not adequate for the task!  But what I want to remind you of this morning in our lesson from one of the great heroes of the Bible is that God uses ordinary people—people just like you and me!—in extraordinary ways.  He can take ordinary guys and make them into great dads! 

 

Of course, the same is true for us all.  God uses ordinary people in extraordinary ways.  He always has—and always will!  How else could people like you or me hope to make a difference in anyone else’s life?!  It’s through the Lord that we can make a difference in the life of a teenager or a child.  It’s only as this extraordinary God works in and through our lives that we can ever hope to make a difference in the life of a friend or a stranger.

 

We’re in week three of our summer sermon series centering around the lessons we can learn from the heroes of the Bible.  It strives to answer the question, “What do I need to know for life?”  In Abraham’s life, we’ve already been reminded of the life lesson, “God can be trusted.”  Last week we learned through Joseph’s life that “We win when we forgive.”  Today we turn to the life of Moses.

 

While Joseph and his family had generations before been welcomed in the land of Egypt, now their descendants, called Israelites, had become slaves to the Egyptians.  Moses was born into an Israelite family, and early on God spared Moses’ life from an otherwise certain death in the holocaust of Israelite babies in the land of Egypt.  As a result, Moses was raised as the adopted son of a princess in Egypt.  Though raised in affluence, he fled Egypt in fear after killing a man whom he had seen beating an Israelite.  Fleeing to the country of Midian, Moses settled down and had a family, making his living by tending the flocks of his father-in-law.

 

That’s where our scripture passage picks up today.  Look with me at the Old Testament book of Exodus, and let’s begin at chapter 3—

[Read Exodus 3:1-15; 4:1-17, NIV]

 

Chapter three opens with God Almighty appearing among the ordinary—to an ordinary shepherd on an ordinary mountainside by an ordinary bush.  And in the midst of the ordinary, God did that which was extraordinary!  And so our lesson today is simply, “God uses ordinary people in extraordinary ways.”

 

Honestly, most all of the biblical heroes we’re looking at this summer were, by the standards of their own world, fairly ordinary types: a nomad, a couple of shepherds, a couple of fishermen, a poor widow, a young girl.  And that helps me, because when I look in my mirror I see someone who is incredibly ordinary—and if it took someone who is extraordinary to accomplish anything of value for God’s Kingdom, then my life could never count for much at all!

 

But you know, the truth is that even those who may be seen as the most extraordinary people in the world today are fairly ordinary at the end of the day—people like politicians, entertainers, wealthy business people, the incredibly successful.  I remember being told, “They put their pants on one leg at a time just like we do!”  They started out as babies—crying and messing their diapers just like the rest of us!  And if they live long enough, famous people will get old—just like we will!  And they’ll get wrinkly and slow down like we will, and, in the end, they’ll die, just like the rest of us will.

 

But the thing I want us to grasp today is that God works through the ordinary to do that which is extraordinary.  It’s a God thing!  And we must dare to believe that He can do it!—and that He can do it through our lives!

 

But the problem is that we ordinary-types resist God’s word to us because we can’t always see ourselves beyond our ordinariness! (Isn’t that a great word!)  Just like Moses made excuses, we have our excuses—and those excuses can keep us from stepping up to the plate to become all God wants us to become.

 

Moses evidently saw that he was ordinary!—and he was full of excuses, wasn’t he, when God called Him out for an extraordinary task?  Let’s look at them. (Moses’ excuses:)

1. I can’t do what you’re asking!

The cocky young man of Moses’ younger days was long gone.  He’d endured some hard knocks in life that had knocked the snot out of him!—like most of us have experienced at some point.  And so Moses was overwhelmed with the tremendous responsibility God was calling him to.  His more eloquent words in verse 11 of chapter three—“Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”—was just another way of saying, “I can’t do what you’re asking!”

 

And God’s most wonderful response to Moses’ excuse was, “I will be with you.”  But it seemed to go right over Moses’ head.  He wasn’t ready to hear it.  So he kept making excuses. 

 

The second was—

1. I don’t know enough!

What Moses actually said was, “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?”  Moses just didn’t feel prepared.  Every deity in those ancient times had his own personal name.  People believed it was necessary to know a god’s name in order to approach him in prayer or to ask for his help.  Beyond that, the name revealed the deity’s character.

 

And this is where God revealed His name—His character—to Moses, responding, “I AM WHO I AM.  This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”  There’s a whole other message in this self-revelation of God, but suffice it to say that the Holy God was making it clear to Moses and to the Israelites that while all other being are derived from something or someone, are limited and changeable, He is none of those things.  God alone has always been and lives forever.  He is absolute and self-dependent, and cannot be changed.  And what God wanted Moses to catch is that He alone lives forever and thus His resources are inexhaustible.  He doesn’t get tired and need to rest.  He never runs out of supplies.  He simply IS and always has been!

 

But still Moses’ insecurities were not satisfied, and his excuses continued.  The third excuse was found at the beginning of chapter 4—

1. People won’t believe me!

Moses feared that people wouldn’t find him credible as a leader and as a spokesman for God—and, from a purely human perspective, I suppose most of us understand why Moses would feel that way.  He apparently hadn’t demonstrated star-studded success up to this point!

 

And this is where God provided Moses with the three miraculous signs we just read about.  Moses’ staff—the rod he carried with him—became a snake when he threw it down as God instructed him, and then became a rod again when Moses picked it up!  Then Moses’ hand instantly showed unmistakable signs of leprosy—a terrible skin disease—one moment, and was whole again a moment later.  The third sign was simply that Moses was to take water from the Nile River and pour it on the ground, and it would instantly turn to blood.

 

But still Moses wasn’t convinced.  He really was a stubborn guy, wasn’t he—maybe a lot like some of us!  All Moses had to say after God performed these miraculous signs before him was,

1. I don’t have the skills!

“O Lord, I’m not very good with words.  I never have been, and I’m not now, even though you have spoken to me.  I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled!” (NLT)  And it seems to me that God was starting now to get a little irritated with Moses, saying, “And who makes a person’s mouth?  Who decides whether people speak or do not speak…is it not I, the Lord?  Now go!  I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say” (NLT).

 

And still Moses was immobilized by his fears and his feelings of inadequacy.  So his last excuse was more of a statement than an excuse—

1. I really don’t want to do this!

What Moses said was, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it!”  And scripture says that’s when God got angry with Moses!  He still wasn’t going to let Moses off the hook, but God offered to provide Moses a spokesman in Moses’ brother Aaron.  Of course, if you know the rest of the account of Moses, you know that Aaron brought some major problems along with him—no doubt Moses would have been better off had he not pushed God to give him this assistance.

 

The truth is that God always gives us what we need in order to carry out what He asks us to do!  And when God makes it clear what He wants us to do, and we keep hesitating with all of our excuses, what it’s simply revealing is that we don’t trust God enough—we don’t trust God to help us carry out what He’s asking us to do.

 

Oh, Moses isn’t the only one who makes excuses, is he?  He isn’t the only one who makes excuses when God speaks directly into our lives and asks us—just ordinary people—to do that which from our perspective seems pretty extraordinary.  I think our excuses sound a lot like Moses’ excuses—

1. I can’t do what you’re asking.  It’s just not feasible in my life right now.  It’s just not possible. 
2. I don’t know enough.  I don’t know enough about Who you are to help others learn to follow you.  I can’t disciple someone else—I’ve still got so much to learn myself!
3. People won’t believe me.  They’re not going to find me credible.  Why would someone listen to me talk about Christ?  Why would they listen to me?
4. I don’t have the skills.  I don’t speak well enough to teach even a class of children.  I can’t sing good enough to be in the choir.  I can’t even pull weeds good enough to work in the church garden!
5. I really don’t want to do this!—please ask someone else!  It’s just too far out of my comfort zone, and I just really want to pass on this one, Lord!  Don’t you know I don’t like to do such and such?  And I’ve always said, “I’ll never go there” or “I’ll never do that!”  So why are you asking me to do it, Lord?  This just doesn’t fit my personal agenda!

And then there are the excuses that so reflect our times—

1. I don’t have the time.  You know, the truth is that we have time for what we want to make time for!  We make time for what we value.  And while I understand that we have to prioritize things in our lives, I’m guessing that God doesn’t take too kindly to our excuse that we don’t have enough time when He’s the One prompting us to do something!
2. My life’s been too messed up.  Just remember, Moses was a murderer—and God didn’t let him off the hook!  The longer I live the more amazed I am at how God redeems lives.  It’s really a beautiful thing!  God’s not nearly as stuck on your past as you are—and frankly, He wants to help you get over it!
3. I’m not smart enough.  People who know more than we do or are more educated than we are often intimidate us, and, granted, some seem to enjoy intimidating the rest of us!  But the old adage is true, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”  One of the great influences in my life was my grandfather who had only an 8^th grade education—but his heart for God was hard to miss, and he made a huge impact on a lot of people!
4. I have to take care of myself first.  Our culture has a way of making gods out of our selves.  And while I understand that we have to give conscientious attention to keeping ourselves healthy and whole as persons if we’re going to be useful to the Lord and to others over the long haul, our society’s focus on our selves easily steps across the threshold into that which is absolutely ungodly!  I still remember how appalled I was the first time I saw the magazine called “Self.”  And on our recent vacation, we passed a church called, “The Church of Self-Realization”—and it was as if the message is clear that we’re not worshipping God, we’re worshipping our selves!  I’m guessing they draw big crowds!

 

1. ________________________________________

 

I started to list a 10^th excuse, but I concluded that what I would suggest might reflect too much of a personal bias, so I’m going to let you fill in the 10^th one.  What excuse are you giving God today to put off something that He’s prompting you to do or be or share or give?  You fill in the blank.

 

In all of our excuses, it seems like we fail to perceive that the extraordinary God is the One who makes the difference in our lives.  Without Him, we’re limited in what we can do.  Only when we know we can’t do it, can we do it by the grace and power of God!

 

That’s how it was for Moses.  God actually had to get Moses to the point where Moses was thoroughly convinced of his own inadequacy before God could do in and through Moses’ life what only God can do! 

 

It happened to David, too.  David was able to kill a giant even when he was just a young man, but God had to put him through the experiencing of hiding for his life in dark caves, hunted like a wild animal, before David would see how weak he was on his own.  It was after that that God made David the king.

 

It was the same with Elijah.  While he was a prophet who was brave enough to confront the mighty king and queen of the land, he wasn’t quite as brave as he seemed.  God sent Elijah out into the desert for his training.  Like the brook he watched dry up, Elijah concluded that his life was no more than a dried-up brook.  He discovered through that experience and other dark days that without God he was nothing, but that with God he had everything he needed!

 

The Apostle Paul learned the lesson too.  You might say that he was slow learner!  But he came to the place where he could declare,

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’ power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9b-10)

 

I suppose it’s a paradox—a puzzling one, but it’s only when we know we can’t do it that we can indeed do it by the grace and power of God.  Over and over we find that it’s true: God use ordinary people in extraordinary ways.  And because that’s true, He can use you and me, and He will use us, if we’ll let Him.  Will you?