Jethro, the father-in-law of the priest
of Midian, and he led the flock to
the backside of the desert and came to
the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto
him in a flame of fire out of
the midst of a bush.
And he looked, and, behold, the bush burned
with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
I will now turn aside and see this
very sight, why the bush is not burned.
And when the Lord saw that he turned
aside to see, God called unto him out
of the midst of the bush, and said,
Moses, Moses.
And he said, draw not, and he said,
draw not nigh hither, put off thy feet,
put off thy feet, for the plague from
on thy sins is holy ground.
Moreover he said, I am the God of
thy 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 upon God.
I will send thee into Pharaoh, that thou
mayest bring forth my people, the children of
Israel, out of Egypt.
And Moses said unto God, Who am I,
that I should go into Pharaoh, and that
I should bring forth the children of Israel
out of Egypt?
And he said, Certainly I will be with
thee.
Let's bow for prayer.
Father, as you have taught us things in
the past, we again pray that this morning
you would teach us things from your word,
that the Spirit of God would open up
our minds to understand the word of God,
that we might know God.
Lord, as we enter into these last few
moments of this morning, I pray that our
hearts would see Jesus and him crucified, and
see Jesus and him buried and risen again,
and see him as our Lord, as our
Savior.
If there is one here that doesn't know
Jesus, that they would see that Christ died
for them, and that unless they have him,
they don't have eternal life.
Spirit of God, I ask that you would
be the one that controls me at this
time, as well as controlling our minds and
ears to hear.
For it is in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
This burning bush experience of Moses was his
cross experience.
Have you ever had an experience in your
life where your whole life turned around and
maybe went 180 degrees?
That is exactly what should happen when you
meet Christ.
When we meet Christ, we're going one direction,
we're headed to hell, really.
And when we find that Christ is the
one that died for our sins and we
need him, it should turn us around and
we head completely in the opposite direction.
As the Bible says, we're a new creature
in Christ.
I've had, I guess, two experiences that have
been deeply affecting in my life.
And since this is on tape, some of
my family has never heard my testimony.
I've never given it in public down in
the South.
But in 1966, right when the Vietnam War
was very hot, very heavy, I had a
burning bush experience where my life was completely
turned around.
And I've shared with you several times this
experience, but that summer was when I came
to the end of myself, when my life
was completely given to Christ.
And I told him, I'll never forget it,
in the prayer that I made in my
mind on the back row of First Baptist
Church in Natchitoches, Louisiana, I said, Lord, I
am yours.
You take me and you do what you
want to with me.
I will go anywhere you want to go.
I will say anything you want me to
say.
I am just totally yours.
I didn't know what I was saying at
the time.
But when we do something like that, God
takes us for what we say.
And he took me and I have been
his and he has taught me things.
And then I had another experience.
And that was this last year in our
revival movement.
When I came to understand what I really
did back almost 20 years ago, the cross,
this burning bush was Moses' cross experience.
And I just want to share with you
some things this morning that God has been
opening up to me.
You see, when Moses came to the bush,
that was his cross.
When we come to Christ, then we come
to the cross.
Well, for him it was death and also
burial and resurrection.
He had been out in that desert.
And he wasn't amounting to much out into
the desert in the eyes of man.
But when he came to the cross and
he came to that burning bush and he
met God, he couldn't go away from there
the same man.
And he didn't.
And we're going to see that as we
make this study.
But the burning bush then was to Moses
what the cross is to us.
Remember that.
And from here on, we're going to see
how it affected his life.
And this morning, we're just going to look
at the bush.
Now, at some point in your Christian life,
at some point in your Christian life, you
should have had this experience.
And it's supposed to happen at conversion.
Well, what happens is most of the time
we get saved, then we go off and
we flop around for several years and we
don't get to grow the way we're supposed
to grow.
We're not discipled.
And the process that Christ has ordained is
discipleship.
This is why I've been so heavy on
teaching the Word.
And when we're consistent to the teaching of
the Word, the program that God has given
us, we will grow.
But if we don't get that, we can
flop around for years like a fish out
on the bank.
We just don't get anywhere.
Unless somebody comes along.
Lord, send somebody along to help us.
Well, at some point in your Christian life,
we need to come to the end of
ourself.
And at conversion is the best place to
do that.
When we come to the end of ourself
and we find that in so doing that
Christ becomes our very life.
As Paul said, for me to live is
Christ.
And if we don't do that, we can
miss out on the whole reason for life.
Even as a Christian, we can have little
meaning in our day-by-day existence without
the cross experience.
Now, the bush.
There's a lot in that bush.
And God showed me some things in this
bush.
I haven't got them out of books.
It doesn't mean that somebody hasn't written them
somewhere.
I just haven't read some things that the
Lord's taught me about this burning bush this
morning.
But the bush meant at least three things
to Moses.
And I've shared these three things with you.
But it meant that he had a new
direction in his life.
When Moses left that burning bush, he was
going another direction.
He was going back to deliver the children
of Israel.
His old life out in that desert was
over.
He's going to have a new life in
the desert.
He's going to have some more experiences.
But his plans were over.
Whatever plans Moses had come up with after
he had made a failure of his life
back 40 years earlier, whatever plans he had
out there in that desert, Tim and Sheik,
those were over too.
God's got a new direction, a new life,
and new plans.
And that's exactly what it means when we
come to the cross.
Our direction is God's direction.
Our plans are God's plans.
Our life is God's life.
And if we try to go any other
direction, it's going to be bad news.
And I imagine many of us could get
up and say, after many years of bad
news, that is right.
Without Christ, it's bad news.
Now, I want to get right into the
passage and start off with this new direction
of God's sovereign leading.
Now, notice in verse 1, it said that
Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father
-in-law, the priest of Midian.
And he led the flock to the backside
of the desert and came to the mountain
of God, even to Horeb.
Now, I'm not going to go into a
lot of background this day, but when Moses
came to the backside of the desert, I
just wondered if this wasn't as far as
he could go from home.
You know, there's only one thing probably worse
than being in a desert, and that's being
in a desert so far in that there's
no way out.
You know, you go, like when Lindbergh had
to make some decisions when he took off
to fly across the Atlantic, the first key
decision when he was halfway down the runway.
You know, and you decide, well, are we
going to cancel this thing or are we
going to go for it and see if
this thing will fly?
And then he went past that point, and
then when he got out halfway across the
Atlantic Ocean, the halfway point on his fuel,
and he decided, well, am I going to
go on the rest of the way?
There's no turning back.
Or am I going to turn back?
Well, Moses, this is sort of his no
turning back.
He's out here, and God has brought him
out into the desert.
And maybe you've had an experience or will
have an experience to where you get into
it and you're so deep that there seems
to be no way out.
And remember what the name Exodus means?
It's the way out.
The only way through the desert of life
is at the cross.
Well, Moses is there.
Now, here's a principle, one that you can
write down if you want it.
When God takes you into a desert, when
God allows you to go into a trying
period, when God allows you to go through
that experience which is especially tough, especially trying,
especially draining, maybe very humbling, humiliating, degrading, discouraging
maybe even.
Whenever God allows you to go through a
desert or a trial and take something maybe
of value from you, you maybe lose something
that you thought you couldn't live without.
It is always so that He can make
room in your life for something that is
better.
Whenever we go through this experience of self
and the crucifying of self and something is
taken from us, it's always, if God allows
it, and I believe in a sovereign God
over a sovereign leading of a Christian's life,
I believe nothing touches my life that God
doesn't allow.
There's a lot of things I don't like,
but I'm learning, I've spent a lot of
time kicking up dust, kicking and spitting and
crying and growling and grumbling and complaining and
all of that stuff, when God just wanted
me to relax and learn something from that.
And we go around throwing our temper tantrums
all the time, and He said, listen, I
want to get something out of your life
so I can replace it with something better.
And there's nothing better than more of Christ
and less of me.
As John the Baptist said, I like it
when he said, He must increase and I
must decrease.
And if that's not your personal desire in
your Christian life, then you're going to have
nothing but misery.
Because the more of Christ is there, the
more blessing there is, the more self is,
the more misery there is.
So God took away from Moses the pleasures
of Egypt.
God took away from Moses the power that
he had in Egypt.
God took away from Moses the position.
And you know what?
Moses, because he was willing to let God
do that, and we've already seen his mistake,
but because he was willing to let God
do that, and he did love God, he
did want to serve God, he in turn
learned the pleasure of knowing God face to
face.
And the pleasure of having God work through
him, the power and the position were all
shifted over to instead of power, position, and
pleasure in the world, what?
Power, position, and pleasure with God.
The other never did satisfy.
And if it didn't satisfy Moses and it's
never satisfied a believer, why do we still
want to try to get that?
It's Christ.
He's the one that satisfies.
Now Moses was led to the mountain of
God.
You see, if you go into your desert,
it's not going to do you any good
unless you come to the mountain of God.
It's not going to do you any good
unless you come to know God in your
desert.
Otherwise, you'd just dry up and be an
old dill pickle, you know, an old sourpuss,
or something, an old crabby person.
And Christ won't be radiating through your life.
God wants to produce his life through us.
He wants the fruit of the Spirit to
be in our life.
And many times he's got to take us
through a desert.
And like I said, I've spent a lot
of time kicking up sand and hollering because
the Lord put me in a desert.
Well, God brought him to that mountain.
And Moses, I imagine through those 40 years
or while he was waiting for this experience,
he learned some things.
And we don't know what all he learned.
He learned, I've shared a few things that
I think maybe he learned, but I think
that he learned this to let his trials
become a bridge over which he would get
closer to God.
To let them become a tool.
He'd get this trial.
He mellowed down a whole lot out there
in that desert.
Maybe a little bit of that youthful zeal
was mellowed down to a maturity and a
stability in his life.
And so he learned that these things, these
deserts, were nothing more than stepping stones to
get closer to God.
And so finally the day came when God
says, this is it.
And he let Moses go to the backside
of the desert.
Many times it's when we get to the
bottom of the barrel, the backside of the
desert, the end of the rope, you know,
that we really do come and say, okay
God, you can have it.
And that's exactly what happened to me in
1966.
I struggled for three weeks.
Nobody knows it but me.
But I would go out and I would
cry.
I would come home to my room.
I was in college and I would cry.
I was so empty.
Life was so meaningless.
And that's because Christ was not in my
life.
And God just let me come to the
end of myself.
Best thing that ever happened to me.
And the cross experience is the most beautiful
experience.
I'm going to share some truths with you
on this cross, but I've got to keep
going.
There's one other thing, though, I want to
throw this out.
If Moses had not made a clean break
from Egypt, he would have never come to
the mountain of God.
And I say that to tell you that
some of you are trying to pussyfoot around
with God.
You're trying to be wishy-washy, a Christian
on Sunday, and you live like the devil
on Monday.
Well, you know which one you really are.
You can't do that with God.
You've got to be all for Him.
You love the Lord with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind,
with all your might, with all your strength.
You go for God with everything you've got.
And then He meets you and He says,
that's the person that's after my heart.
I will pour out my heart to Him.
I will bless Him.
But the hypocrite is the one that sits
here on Sunday morning, or out there, whatever,
and grins like a fool all through our
songs, and then he goes out and he
has nothing but a selfish life.
He lives nothing but for self.
That person doesn't meet God in the desert.
He finds that the deserts are very dry.
There's no mountain out there of God.
So, Moses made a clean break from Egypt,
and if he hadn't, if he had never
come to that burning bush, he was willing
to turn his back on the pleasures of
Egypt, the Scripture says.
But we know he made a mistake.
His motives were good, but his timing was
off about 40 years.
You know, I was wondering, what would he
have learned if he just played it cool
and stayed there those other 40 years until
God was ready to go?
Something else would have developed, I'm sure.
But God takes our lives, and He will
take our mistakes and our trials.
He will take all these things.
If we'll come back and confess to Him,
Lord, I really blew it.
I really blew it.
But it's our pride that keeps us from
coming back and saying, we really blew it.
But if we'll do that, then God will
take that and turn it into something meaningful.
And that's what God did with Moses.
He took that mistake he made.
He got his 40 years in the desert.
I don't know if that was 40 years
for killing a man or what.
But he got it.
But he made a clean break with Egypt
anyway.
He was not going to stay in the
world.
He was fed up with Egypt.
And I think some of you maybe need
to get right with God.
And maybe I got something in my life
I need to get right with God.
There's something of Egypt still in my heart.
And it'll keep you from coming to that
burning desert, that burning bush.
Well, there are three things to do to
survive in the desert.
If you're going to get to the backside
of the desert, if God is going to
maybe have to break you and bring you
to the bottom, there's three things you better
remember.
You better write them down.
They're not in books.
I didn't get these out of a book.
I don't get hardly any of this stuff
out of a book.
These three things, very practical things.
Number one, if you get into a desert,
you get into a trial, you go into
an experience.
Number one, always seek God's purpose.
Always seek God's purpose.
Now that's going to test your faith because
God does not always tell us His purpose.
But Lord, I will just learn what you
have for me through this.
I will quit stomping and kicking and yelling
and crying and bellyaching and criticizing and growling
and grumbling and all those other things that
people do.
Of course, we would say we don't do
it, but the truth of the matter is
we do it.
And instead, we'll just say, I will see
your purpose in this.
I will seek to know you.
Look at David.
All of his years of running in that
desert.
As Paul chased him around, he never did
take it upon himself to retaliate and be
the one that would attack his attacker because
he knew that God was allowing it.
Think of Joseph.
This is beautiful.
Joseph, thrown into the pit, and I think
the pit was his cross.
It wasn't the pit.
That was his cross.
He was dead to his own life.
He was buried, and he'd come out of
that thing to go on a new path
with God.
Isn't that beautiful?
The cross is seen all the way from
the beginning of this Bible all the way
to the end.
And wherever we see the cross, there is
the death to self, the burial of our
own life, the rising to walk a new
life with Christ.
So, Joseph, when he came at the end
of the road there in Genesis and his
brothers came up, they were scared because they
thought he was going to get them.
He said, listen, God had a purpose.
And Joseph said, but as for me, you
thought evil against me, but God meant it
unto good to bring to pass as it
is this day to save much people.
Isn't that beautiful?
So, when you go through your trial, look
for God's purpose.
And then number two, believe God's promises.
Grab you some promises.
Get you a handful of promises.
Write them out on some verses.
Memorize them.
Meditate upon them.
Some promises that meet you in your situation
for your need, and hang on to them.
Claim them.
God, you said this, and I'm going to
believe it.
There's a promise for every trial that you
have.
If you don't have the promise, it's not
because God hasn't given it to you.
It's because you're too lazy to go look
for it.
You're just not willing to meet God in
the desert.
You see, when you go to the book
and try to find your promise, you're going
to the well that will satisfy and give
you nourishment for life.
But, we want to go running off here
and complain on somebody's shoulder, shoulder, you know,
over here and there.
This is the way we tend to be.
And God has shown me, you've got to
cut that out.
I'm going to keep giving it to you.
Okay, Lord, I'm tired.
I've learned if I flunk a test in
a trial, it's just like when I was
in school.
You get to do it again, maybe.
You know, you flunk it.
The Lord's not going to let us get
out of it, you know.
He's not going to let us be satisfied
with a failing grade.
He wants us to pass, so He'll keep
working on us.
Another thing, you seek God's purpose, you believe
God's promise, and you claim God's power to
get you through the trial, where you can't
go through on your own strength.
Claim God's power.
Romans 8, 28 is a promise that all
things work together for good.
But take like, oh, say 2 Timothy 1,
7.
For God has not given us a spirit
of fear, but of power, and of love,
and of sound mind.
Maybe somebody in your life is really bugging
you, and you can't stand that person, they're
a real pain in the neck.
Well, claim that verse, God has not given
us a spirit of fear, but of power,
and of love.
Lord, would you love me through that person?
That's God's power, working through you.
God's love.
So, the purpose, the promise, and the power.
Now, the point is, Moses made it to
God in his desert.
If we don't make it to God, we're
not going to make it.
We'll fail.
You know what, there may be a Judas
in this crowd today.
You know what the difference was between Judas
and the other disciples?
Many differences, but this one.
Judas came to the end of himself, and
when he came to the end of himself,
he would not repent and turn to Christ.
He just sort of got frustrated that things
were not going the way he thought.
He thought Christ was going to set up
a kingdom, and he was going to be
the money bearer.
He was going to be the treasurer.
That's what he did when he was through
the disciples, and it frustrated him when he
found out that that wasn't going to be.
Christ was setting up a spiritual kingdom.
Well, the disciples didn't understand either.
They came, and there was this cross, and
their Messiah was hung on the cross.
He was crucified.
It looked like it was all over, but
they didn't give up.
Judas came up.
He came to the end of himself, and
he went and hanged himself, because he would
not repent.
When you come into your desert, when you
come to the end of yourself, and you
look at yourself, you better repent, because that's
why you're there.
It's self.
That's our problem.
Self and sin.
Judas wouldn't repent.
The other disciples, they were willing to deal
with themselves and their sin and their situations.
Peter made a lot of mistakes, but he
was always willing to admit it and turn
back, and so that's the difference between a
Judas and a disciple.
When you get to that hard trial, are
you going to turn from yourself?
Now, in verse 2, we actually get to
the burning bush, and the angel of the
Lord appeared unto him in a flame of
fire out of the midst of the bush.
Who's the angel of the Lord?
I wished I had time, but I'm not
going to take it, to show you who
the angel of the Lord is in Scripture.
It's none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
You can go back to Genesis 16 and
Genesis 21 and other places, and it shows
us that the angel of the Lord is
Christ.
But I want to get to this flame,
this flaming bush.
There's some beautiful things here.
You know, Moses was really interested in this
thing too, because in verse 3, Moses said,
I'm going to turn aside.
I want to see this great sight.
How come this bush is not burnt?
Wouldn't it interest you?
You're out in the middle of nowhere, and
you saw this glow up on the mountain.
How come that thing's not burnt up?
You know?
Ah, there's some beautiful things here.
You know what?
I got to thinking, and my mind's just
a-wheeling and turning around.
I was thinking of Jesus back in Revelation
1.
When John met Jesus in the vision, you
know what one of the descriptions of him
was?
His eyes.
It says his head and his hairs were
as white as wool and white as snow,
and his eyes were as a flame of
fire.
Now, I did some reading.
There's many things that people say about this
bush.
The eyes of Jesus we're all seeing, all
penetrating, purifying eyes of God, and we can
say things about the bush too.
The bush symbolizes many things.
But I don't want to tell you what
I think it means.
You can take it, or you can leave
it.
But to me, this bush means one thing.
Self-existence of God.
God is self-existent.
Last week, I had somebody, I was talking
to a guy, and he got to talking
about perpetual motion.
How, in theory, it is impossible for perpetual
motion to work.
You know what that is?
That's where something, say you take a vehicle,
and you design an engine that will produce
energy to drive this vehicle, and at the
same time produce energy to replace the energy
that was burnt.
To where once you get this thing going,
it perpetuates itself.
It'll just drive forever.
You get a zillion miles to a gallon
of gas.
All you got to have is just a
little bit to get you going.
Well, God is like that.
God is perpetual.
He is self-existent.
He is not consumed.
This bush was not consumed because God was
self-existent.
Now, I want to show you some things
on this.
What does fire do normally?
It consumes that which it gets a hold
of, right?
Normally, fire would have burnt this bush up.
But God is saying, listen, I am a
self-existent God.
I don't need anybody or anything to exist.
Now, there's some beautiful lessons here.
Christ is saying to us, if we will
look at this bush, He's saying, listen, I
am non-consumable.
I am non-consumable.
Don't miss this point.
And whatever I possess becomes the same.
Do you get it?
I am non-consumable.
And if I possess a bush, it's going
to be non-consumable too.
Now, what if He were to possess a
man?
Huh?
What do we say?
We say, you better not give your life
to God.
What a waste!
No, the very opposite of that is true.
If you give your life to God, it's
not a waste.
It is non-consumable.
It is profitable.
But what you don't give to God, you
lose.
We've already looked at that lesson.
Now, God is saying, Moses, I believe God
used that bush for Moses.
That would have really gotten Moses.
God might use something for you too.
He might use something for me.
He said, listen, Moses, as this bush is
not consumed, as I am in the bush,
so as I come into you, you will
not be consumed.
And as I am used in this bush,
I'm going to use you.
And as Christ dwells within me and you,
He will use us and we will not
be consumed.
You know what consumes us?
Not Christ.
What will eat us up and destroy us
is when we are involved in self and
in the world.
And Christ is not the consuming thing in
our life.
Now, let me share this with you about
Moses.
Moses allowed God to use him.
Sure, He gave him some flack.
We're going to look at that.
He argued with him a little bit.
But Moses went down from that mountain.
He went out there to Egypt.
He led the children of Israel out across
the sea and through that desert for 40
years.
He was an 80-year-old man when
he started.
He was a 120-year-old man when
he stopped.
And what does the Scripture say about Moses?
Listen, when God led him up on the
mountain and he died and God buried him,
it says that Moses was 120 years old
when he died.
His eye was not dim.
He did not need glasses.
And his natural force was not abated.
He still didn't need a cane to go
up the mountain because God had possessed him.
And Moses was not consumed.
I believe Moses was just as he was
when he was 80.
When he was 120, he was the same.
Because that bush was not consumed.
Moses was not consumed.
And we will put our life into God.
It will be the same principle.
We will not deteriorate.
But if we try to hold back, we
will.
Well, you know what that tells me?
The only safe place in the whole world
is on the cross.
Because that's what God is telling us.
Listen, you come to Christ, you come to
the cross.
He says you stay there.
But what happens?
We come to the cross, we receive Christ
as our Savior, then we move away from
the cross.
We try to go live our Christian life
ourselves.
The crucified life is the life of freedom
and joy and peace.
The self-life is pain and misery and
all the other fruits of the self-life.
The only safe place in the whole world
is in Christ.
I'd like to take you through Romans 6,
but I'm going to skip over it right
now.
How all of this applies.
So as the bush was not consumed, because
Christ was in the bush, even so we
will not be consumed.
We are consumed when we get off the
cross, when we move away from Christ.
And I may be sharing some things that
are a little bit deep for some of
you.
Maybe over your head a little bit, but
I'm sharing with you the heart of the
victorious Christian life.
It's just stay there with Christ.
Whatever comes, just die to it.
A temptation comes, I'm dead to it.
That's staying on the cross.
A trial comes, don't let it crush you.
I'm just going to trust in you.
We're supposed to pray, so we won't cave
in as the scripture says.
But if we don't, we will be consumed
when we get off the cross.
The Bible says the cares of this world,
the deceitfulness of riches, all these things will
destroy you when we move away from the
cross.
So that burning bush was Moses' cross.
You know what, I'm closing up.
God told Moses after he, and next week
we'll pick up and get into verse 3.
But God told Moses, you get down to
verse 7, down through there.
He says, listen, I've seen the affliction of
my children in Israel.
I have seen all the suffering.
I've seen this, my ear has heard.
And I am going to deliver them.
I am going to deliver them.
The time has come.
And you know what, if I can just
throw a little bit of my own idea
in there.
I think Moses said, great, praise the Lord.
Man, Lord, I've been praying for this.
You know how I had a burden for
my people.
You know how I went out and tried
to do something and failed.
Oh, Lord, I'm excited.
Praise the Lord.
And God says, come now, therefore, I will
send thee unto Pharaoh.
I could just see silence.
Me, Lord.
And we go into all these things.
The Lord says, come, I'm going to send
you unto Pharaoh.
That thou mayest bring forth my people, the
children of Israel, out of Egypt.
And Moses said to the God, who am
I?
Lord, who am I?
He began to sweat.
It wasn't from the heat of the bush
either.
He said, man, I'm the number one on
the number ten top most wanted men back
there in Egypt.
Who am I?
This is beautiful.
You see, this bush was the death, burial,
and resurrection.
Really, the death of Christ, of Moses, was
back when he tried to do it himself.
The burial was in the desert for 40
years, but his resurrection is really right here
at this bush.
God is resurrecting him to walk a new
life.
And God says, Moses, that's the very reason
I'm going to use you.
Because you ask who you are, you ain't
nothing.
That's why I'm going to use you.
They don't even know about you anymore back
there.
Those Egyptians aren't concerned about you back there
anymore.
You're a dead man.
Nobody knows about you except these few little
old sheep and your little family back there.
You're a dead man.
Your reputation is gone.
All your dreams and goals, it's all been
gone.
You've died.
Practically speaking, Moses had died in the desert.
He says, that's why, Moses, I can use
you.
I can use a dead man.
A man that's dead to his own plans,
his own directions, his own dreams, and he's
just willing for God to do what he
wants to do.
Now, Moses is going to kick a little
bit because he's going to try to come
off the cross.
But this is why God could use him.
You know, it's beautiful just to be dead
to ourself, dead to my desires and alive
to whatever he wants.
But I have problems when I want to
do what I want to do.
And God says, I want you to do
this.
And I say, no, Lord, I want to
do that.
He says, okay, we'll see.
We'll have a tug of war.
You get on that end of the rope
and I'll get on this end.
And this is about what we try to
do with God.
He says, okay, now, we're going to see
who wins.
Boy, he jerks us all over the place.
And when we're all done, okay, Lord, I'll
do it.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier if the
Lord says, I want you to go and
lead my people out of Egypt?
If you just say, yes, sir, Lord.
When do we start?
But we want to kick, and Moses is
going to kick a little bit.
But God can use him because he's really
crucified Moses.
He can use a dead man.
And this is why he can use a
dead man.
Because you can't hurt a dead man.
You can't hurt him.
This is why we're to be dead to
sin.
We're to be dead.
A dead man won't take credit for what
God does.
And God's got Moses to the point where
he won't take credit.
Do you know 40 years before, Moses would
have took the credit?
He would have.
Because logically speaking, he had been raised up
in the court of Pharaoh.
He had all of the training, all the
intellect, all of the skill.
And he would say to himself, who else
can lead Israel out?
And he knew that God wanted to do
it.
He says, I've got all this training, and
now I've got the position and the power.
Logically speaking, I can do it.
And that's just what God doesn't want.
He wants to use us and be the
one that does it.
And so he got Moses to the point
where Moses wouldn't take the credit.
Now he's going to have to push Moses
to get him to go.
40 years before, Moses was really zealous.
But logically speaking, Moses could have done it.
The pride was killed.
There's other things there.
But he won't take the credit.
Well, that's the bush.
It's a cross.
Where are you at in your life?
As we close up, where are you at
right now?
Just look at last week.
Was there a lot of time spent defeated?
Has something been eating on you?
You're off of the cross.
You're out trying to face life and fight
life yourself.
I'm going to give him a spiritual karate
chop.
Those guys, they can't do that to me.
You're really defeated in your Christian life right
there.
You're trying to do it in the energy
of the flesh.
Instead of coming back to God, would you
take care of this situation?
What about, have you been discouraged?
That's nothing more than looking to yourself to
live your Christian life.
Are you disappointed?
All of these things, you're looking to yourself.
Defeat, discouragement, disappointment, anger, criticizing.
Have you criticized somebody this week?
You know the Bible says, Galatians 5.15
But if you bite and devour one another,
take heed that you be not consumed of
one another.
That means destroy one another.
Whoever you complain against, you try to destroy
them.
They'll just come back and try to get
you.
You're just like two little, you know, whatever
they are.
They'll come along and eat each other up.
Two fish, one eating from, just eating in,
eating each other up.
It doesn't work that way.
We're consumed of our own lust, the Bible
says.
Why don't you just come back to the
cross and die?
And let Christ live.
Lord, I'm just going to die to my
disappointment.
I'm going to die to my defeat, my
discouragement.
And as you die, guess who's going to
live?
This is what this desert survival series is
all about.
Have you turned aside to the cross or
have you turned away from the cross?
You'll make that decision today.
Before the day is over, you and I
will meet something and we will either turn
away from the cross or turn to the
cross.
And Christ is always there at the cross.
We turn to him or turn from him.
This is why Jesus said, Come unto me,
all of you who are weary and heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.
Your disappointments, your trials, your discouragements, or whatever.
Let's bow for prayer.
Lord, thank you for these things.
And Lord, I pray that we would grasp
these things.
Our whole Christian life, from the beginning to
the end, revolves around the cross.
And that bush was nothing more than a
beautiful picture of the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ at the cross.
And what the bush was to Moses, the
cross is to us.
And the thing about that bush was, Lord,
you were in there.
You were in the bush, you were in
the Holy of Holies, and you were on
the cross until they took you down and
put you in the grave and you rose
again.
Whatever it is in our life that right
now has been eating us, Lord, I pray
that the Spirit of God would point it
out to us and we would just take
it and we would nail it to the
cross.
We would just die to it.
And we would say, Lord, would you take
this thing that's eating me alive and I
will just let you do what you want
to do.
Father, maybe there's someone here that has never
come to the cross.
Their whole life has been lived in self
-energy.
They have even tried to talk themselves into
thinking that they're saved, but there's no peace
in their life.
They don't have the assurance that if they
died, they'd go to heaven.
If that's the case, Lord, they need to
come to the cross for the release of
their sins.
They need to come to Jesus, and I
pray that the Spirit of God would just
draw them to Jesus right now as we
have this closing time.
They could even pray right now and ask
Jesus to forgive them and to come into
their life.
And you can do that.
While your head's bowed and your eyes are
closed, you can just say, Dear Jesus, my
whole life has been in the desert.
And I realize that you haven't been the
Lord in my life.
I've been the Lord.
I need a Savior, and I ask you
to come into my life to forgive me
of my sin and to save my soul.
And if you prayed that prayer, you need
to make a decision whether or not you're
going to follow Christ publicly.
All of Christ's followers, He's called them to
follow Him publicly, and that's why we have
baptism.
Christ said to go and to baptize those
that trust Him.
Lord, maybe there's a believer here, a Christian
that's been struggling.
They've been away from the cross.
They've been trying to live their life, make
their decisions, all in the energy of self.
And I just pray that this has been
a message that would help them.
Thank you for this time we've had now
today.
In Jesus' name, Amen.