Turn in your Bibles, if you would, this
morning to Exodus chapter 2.
This is our Desert Survival series, fourth message.
Moses, the man of God.
Before we read this passage of scripture, let
me back up a little bit from last
time.
We looked last week at the training of
Moses at home.
Today, we're going to spend our time mostly
with the training of Moses in the world.
And the reason we're going to do that
is we want to see why Moses did
what he did.
It's very important as to what is the
primary source of information for our mind.
We know that the scripture teaches, Jesus taught
us, that whatever goes into our mind, this
is what we act like, this is what
we become.
All life must be fed.
Did you know that?
All life must be fed.
And Jesus, in this realm of our spiritual
life, said that man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God.
Every word is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
and so forth.
And then something else I want to share
with you on the life system that we
have.
And it says, I got to thinking about
this area, because Jesus shared in Matthew 22,
37, He said, Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind.
And we as Christians had better pay attention
to this, because I believe we can commit
spiritual adultery very easily by getting entangled with
things of the world.
If I was to have one statement for
today, a propositional statement, it would probably be
this.
A worldly mind will produce a worldly life,
and a spiritual mind, or a heavenly mind,
will produce a heavenly life, or a spiritual
life.
It's just as simple as that.
And as we're looking at Moses through this
series, we're looking at Moses, how God raised
him up, how God put him into the
desert to make him the man that He
wanted him to be.
We're also seeing how God is allowing us
to go through deserts so we can be
what God wants us to be.
The Bible says set your affection, your mind,
your thoughts on things above, and not on
things on the earth.
And we saw last week how the parents
of Moses gave him, I believe, the best
possible training that they could have given to
him at that time.
But today we want to see how Moses
thought, what he thought in relation to the
world of God and God.
We're going to see an interesting thing in
his life, in his training.
But let's read now Exodus chapter 2, verses
11 and down through 15, and then we'll
pray.
Starting with verse 11.
And it came to pass in those days
when Moses was grown, that he went out
unto his brethren and looked on their burdens.
And he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew,
one of his brethren.
And he looked this way and that way,
and when he saw that there was no
man, he slew the Egyptian and hid him
in the sand.
And when he went out the second day,
behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together,
and he said unto him that did the
wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?
And he said, Who made thee a prince
and a judge over us?
Intentest thou to kill me as thou killest
the Egyptian?
And Moses feared and said, Surely this thing
is known.
Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought
to slay Moses.
But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh
and dwelt in the land of Midian.
And he sat down by a well.
Let's bow for prayer.
Father, would you add your blessing to the
reading of your word, and would you open
up our minds to the teaching of the
word.
Holy Spirit, do the work that you want
to do this morning.
I offer myself as available to you, and
I pray that each of us would offer
our minds, our bodies, our souls to you
this morning, and say, God, would you do
a work in my life?
Would you tell me something?
Speak to me this morning.
Would you show me if there's something wrong
in my life?
Be glorified in my life, where I ask
it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
We want to get right into it this
morning in the training of Moses.
The training of Moses was basically in the
world.
In the world's educational system.
And the worldly education is okay.
I've had a fair chunk of it myself.
I've had three universities where I've picked up
a little bit at each one.
But I've found out something about that.
Unless God is able to use it, he
doesn't get the glory.
And if I'm not careful, secular education, or
even biblical education, can just be used for
self, to do what I want to do.
It's just, can God get the glory in
my life, through what comes into my life,
and all that goes out of my life?
I want to read you a passage of
scripture in Acts chapter 7, 21, 22, which
gives us a little bit about his education.
And then I'm going to share a little
bit more about it as we go on.
But in 21 of that verse in Acts
7, it says, When he was cast out,
Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him
for her own son.
Nourished is a word for feeding.
He was fed, I believe, physically.
And they tried to feed him spiritually in
the pagan religions, but I don't believe he
would take it.
He wouldn't buy it.
He wouldn't soak it in.
He wouldn't absorb it.
But he did absorb the educational training that
was given to him.
For it says, And Moses was learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was
mighty in words and deeds.
Now, that education was okay.
It's okay for Moses, it's okay for you,
as long as it's not the supreme influence
in your life.
The supreme influence in the life of Moses
was God.
He never forgot his early training.
There in the home with his mom and
dad and his family.
How they pumped into him scripture.
How they told him history.
Israel's history and how God was going to
send a Messiah.
And all of that.
And I believe that his mother probably believed
that he might have been the Messiah.
But it didn't turn out like that.
But the supreme influence in his life was
not that education.
It was his training that he got at
home.
God was the supreme influence.
And he never forgot it.
He never moved away from it.
Your soul life, the level where your life
progresses and arises from the very innermost being
of you, your soul life, is on the
level of thought.
It's on that level of the ideas that
come into our mind.
So it is very essential that this level
is the supreme level in relation to God.
And we saturate ourselves in that level.
That's why Jesus said, You won't live on
bread alone.
Man shall not live.
In other words, the biblical man, the believer,
will not live and shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God.
And Moses was raised in that way.
By the way, Jesus, just before he went
back to heaven, he told his disciples in
the Lord's Prayer in John 17, he says,
I pray not that thou shouldest take them
out of the world.
Jesus knows that we have to live in
the world, that his disciples had to live
in the world.
But he did pray this, but that thou
shouldest keep them from the evil.
The root of that goes back to the
pornos.
So much of this world is pornography for
our spiritual life.
Spiritual pornography along with the regular pornography.
Now the Bible tells us that Moses, he
grew up, he was mighty in what?
In words and deeds.
In words, I believe that Moses was a
statesman.
And when we get over there to when
he doesn't want to go out and be
a statesman for God, we're going to learn
some things about that.
But he was a statesman.
He could get up and give a political
speech to the whole nation.
He was a man of character.
They looked up to him.
He was mighty in words and also in
deeds.
That means as a leader.
Probably a military leader.
He could lead the nation.
He was raised up in their system to
be that type of a man.
Actually I believe his education covers seven areas.
Now if you'll pay attention to these seven
areas when I get done, you should pick
it up right away.
He was trained highly in organization.
He was trained highly in discipline.
He was trained highly in the area of
patience.
He was trained highly in the area of
administration.
And he was trained highly in the area
of communication and also authority, those seven areas.
And as we follow the life of Moses,
we'll see that all seven areas God uses
in his life to lead the children of
Israel.
And even in the apostle Paul, if you
go look at him, with all of his
training, God uses that.
God just does not throw it out the
window and say, that's no good.
No, he will use that which has come
into our life if he can get the
glory for it.
So, Moses was a man mighty in words
and deeds.
And then verse 23 goes on to say,
and when he was a full 40 years
old, it came into his heart to visit
his brethren, the children of Israel.
Now if I can throw in a little
inflection here, maybe what you might want to
call it, if it's an exegesis passage, where
we call it eisegesis, where you read into
the passage.
I just wonder if Moses, as he was
raised up, was waiting for his 40th birthday.
Now why would he wait for his 40th
birthday?
Most of us, when we begin to get
up to that age, we begin to say,
hey, these things are clicking by pretty fast.
And I don't want that 40th one because
that seems to be a major one to
some people.
And I've got one coming up this year.
We'll see if I have a crisis on
that.
But, I wonder if Moses didn't think that
all of these years, God is raising me
up to lead the children of Israel.
And when I get to be 40, that's
going to be the year.
Because when a man reached 40 in the
Hebrew nation, that was the age that he
really stepped into the limelight of being the
leader.
And if you remember, Jesus waited until he
was 30 before he went into his public
ministry.
Young men, they had to be quiet.
They just had to listen and learn.
And then when they got older, they could
go into more public things.
From age 30, and then at 40, was
a major break into leadership.
But I just wonder if Moses, all those
years, when he was 20, Moses, do you
want to be the Pharaoh?
You're the next one in line.
You can be the Pharaoh.
At 20 years of age, history tells us,
he said no.
He turned it down.
And then history also records again, at age
25, do you want to be the Pharaoh?
You're Pharaoh's daughter.
You can be the Pharaoh.
He turned it down again.
And then the years rolled by.
30, 35, and now 40.
At age 40, Moses said no, the last
time to be in the Pharaoh.
He was raised up to be a Pharaoh.
All seven areas were training him to be
the Pharaoh of the greatest nation on earth
at that time.
But he said no.
And I believe the reason he said no
was because he knew that God wanted to
use him to lead him out of Israel.
He wanted to use him to lead Israel
out of Egypt.
He knew that in his heart.
He said, God has allowed me to be
saved.
I wasn't drowned in the river.
The crocodiles didn't eat me.
And all those years of training his mother
gave him and then the witness of the
Spirit of God in his heart, he knew
that God was going to use him.
And so when he got to be 40,
as we read in our passage, he said,
I believe he's got to think, and it's
now or never.
I've waited all these years, 40 years.
And so when we come to that passage,
when he came out one day and he
saw two of the Hebrews driving together, he
just had such a burden for Israel, for
his nation.
He couldn't stand to see them fighting.
That really tore him.
So he went in there and got in
between them and said, why are you doing
this?
Let's break it up.
We're brethren.
And then the next day when he saw
an Egyptian doing that to a Hebrew, he
killed the Egyptian.
We're going to get into that in just
a second.
But I believe that he's thinking, I'm going
to lead them.
And this is the time, I believe he
was making his move.
He rejected the pharaoh ship, and now he's
making his move.
And I don't know what his plans were,
how he planned on doing it, but we're
going to see what God does in all
of this.
But maybe he thought it's now or never.
We're going to make our move.
I'm going to identify myself, and I'm going
to lead my nation.
Maybe he thought there'd be a rebellion or
whatever, but they were going to make their
break.
I don't know what his thoughts was, but
I knew that he did know and think
that he was going to be the deliverer.
Now, let's learn some principles from this Exodus
passage.
Remember, as we go through this desert survival
series, the principles that you gain from this
will be the most valuable thing that you
can use in your life.
We're not going through this just for fun
and games.
We're going through this because we need to
know these things to survive in life.
And I believe this is why Satan will
try to keep you away from these messages.
This is why he'll try to keep me
from giving these messages.
These are vital, all right?
The first principle.
I'm going to just state it, and I'll
give you the specific principle in a second.
But verse 11, notice.
It came to pass in those days when
Moses was grown that he went out unto
his brethren and looked on their burdens.
He spied on the Egyptians, spied on the
Hebrews, one of his brethren.
I mean, oh, he killed that Egyptian.
He didn't like that.
But here's a principle here, the principle of
carrying a burden.
Who gave Moses the burden?
God did.
Moses loved his people even though he was
raised up.
If Moses would have walked down the street,
you would have thought he was Egyptian because
later on in the passage here when he
ended up out there in Midian and one
of the daughters came out to get water,
who helped you out?
This Egyptian did.
He's dressed like an Egyptian.
He looked like an Egyptian.
He walked like an Egyptian.
He talked like an Egyptian.
But he didn't have an Egyptian heart.
And we may be like that in the
world.
We may dress and talk.
Our talk will be godly though.
But you know, in our communication in the
world, if we're in the business, you know,
if we're in the computers, we talk computer
talk.
If we're in mechanics, we talk mechanic talk.
We just talk like anybody else in the
world.
But we don't have a worldly heart.
He didn't have an Egyptian heart.
A lot of people talk like Christians, dress
like Christians, act like Christians, go to church
like Christians, but they don't have a Christian
heart.
The heart is the important thing.
Now he had a heart that had a
burden for his people.
God gave him that burden.
But somebody else had the burden first.
And that was God.
And he needed to keep his eyes on
God.
And for a second here, we're going to
see what Moses does.
He lets his burden get carried away.
He lets his emotions maybe get carried away
when he sees this Egyptian killing somebody that
he has a love for, a burden, and
he gets carried away and he kills the
Egyptian in turn.
Now, here's the principle on burdens.
We mentioned burdens as this.
If you want to know Christ, do you
want to know the Lord?
If you want to know the Lord Jesus
Christ and really know Him, then you will
know Him by knowing what hurts Him.
If you want to know Christ, you will
know Him by knowing what hurts Him.
It will hurt you also.
Now, is that biblical?
You bet your boots.
Philippians 3.10. And you know you're not
supposed to bet either.
But anyway, Philippians 3.10. Paul said what?
That I might know Him.
Have you ever wanted to know Him?
Okay.
Philippians 3.10 is the verse.
That I might know Him in what?
The power of His resurrection.
What was the power of His resurrection?
Well, that's the power of the crucified life.
If we will die to self and just
let Him live His life through us, that's
the resurrection life.
It's a powerful life.
But Paul said that I might know Him
in the power of His resurrection and the
fellowship of His sufferings being made conformable unto
His death.
It sometimes scares me when I get to
looking at this verse, but I want to
know Him.
And I want to know the power of
His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.
And we don't have time to get into
it this morning.
But this principle, if you want to know
Christ, then you get to know Him by
becoming acquainted with the power of His resurrection,
living the crucified life, just dying to self
and sin.
Whatever you would want, just make sure that's
what God would want, that it would be
okay with Him.
And get on into it and then you'll
identify and you'll learn Him.
But this principle of the burden, if you
want to know Christ, then you get to
know what hurts Him.
And you get to know Him by getting
into the Word.
Study His life.
Follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
Learn the Word of God.
This is why many things in my life
I've had to stop.
And there's maybe some things yet that I
need to cut out.
Because I found out that they hurt Him.
And whatever hurts Him, I want it to
hurt me too.
I don't want to hurt Him.
I want to be like Him.
I want to love Him and know Him.
Now, Jesus, let's throw it over for a
second.
Jesus is the greatest burden bearer the world
has ever known because the Bible says in
Isaiah 53 that He had borne our griefs
and He had carried our sorrows.
When He went to the cross, He carried
all our grief.
He bore all our sorrows.
He bore all of our sin.
And I was studying on this passage this
week and something really gripped me like it
never gripped me before.
But the thing about the cross was not
the cross itself, the piece of wood or
that tree.
And not just the fact that He died.
The thing about it was that when He
died, He made His soul an offering for
our sin.
And for three hours, all of the demons
of hell and all of those demonic atrocities
converged on Him and attacked Him.
God the Father had to turn His back
on Him.
For those three hours, He experienced all of
our sin, all of the evil of the
world.
He bore our griefs, He carried our sorrows,
He became sin for us.
He is the greatest burden bearer.
So when you, as you go through day
by day, week by week, moment by moment
even, whatever is a burden to you, whatever
begins to break you down and bury you
down and burden you down, come back to
Him and let Him have it.
He can handle it.
He is already borne all of the grief
and all of the sorrow.
And we go through some pretty deep things.
But He is the great burden bearer, the
great sin bearer.
And there is another principle in this.
I don't want to stay all this time
on the burden, but it's this.
This principle here, you are not able to
bear your burden alone.
I think this is where Moses got out
of bounds a little bit.
He began to carry that burden alone too
much.
And then he felt like he had to
do it all himself.
Well, he was going to do it all
right, but it wasn't going to be all
himself.
And the reason, I think that Moses maybe
tended to have a problem in this area,
because later on when he is leading the
children of Israel through the desert, and they
are going through all their trials and the
experiences that we are going to see and
we are going to experience too by way
of identifying with them, at one point the
people were complaining and they displeased the Lord
and Moses was not happy with them and
they wanted manna and they weren't happy with
the manna when they got it.
You know, they wanted some food and they
weren't happy with that.
Complaining, you know, all of that.
The scripture says in Numbers 11, 11, it
says, And Moses said unto the Lord, Wherefore
hast thou afflicted thy servant?
And wherefore have I not found favor in
thy sight, that thou layest the burden of
all this people upon me?
He began to relapse again a little bit,
thinking that all of this, it was all
his responsibility.
And it wasn't.
And we get the feeling like that sometimes.
If life is a burden to you, then
you are carrying a load that Jesus never
did intend you to carry.
We are going to have some trials and
things that weigh us down and everything.
But the burden that we are talking about
is the type of thing that will just
destroy you and will make you do things
that you shouldn't do, as Moses did.
You are not able to bear your burden
alone.
I can't bear it.
And sometimes I try to and it begins
to bend me over.
And I'll begin to complain and mumble and
rumble and maybe feel sorry.
And you will too.
And maybe get discouraged or get depressed or
whatever you go through.
I used to go through the depression, the
discouragement especially.
Don't do it anymore.
There are certain other things that I have
to watch out for.
But years, I'd get discouraged.
And that's just because I had my eyes
on myself.
Moses, keep your eyes on me!
And he's telling us that too.
The greatest burden that we'll bear though is
the burden of sin.
We need to watch out for that.
We watched a show last week on TV
and after we got done, we questioned whether
or not we should watch it or not.
It wasn't that bad of a show.
It was the one on vital signs.
Maybe you watched it.
And some of these shows, I don't know
how they are going to end up.
But that one there ended up, there was
a father who was an alcoholic.
He was a doctor.
And the son, he was a doctor too.
But he was a drug addict.
And both of them were being defeated by
their problem.
And so the father ends up killing himself.
That's his solution.
Kill himself.
While the son, he ends up, he tries
to break his own drug habit himself.
He goes off, they get a room, a
place and his wife and he tries to
do it himself.
And you know, he can't do it.
And the whole thing was, he comes back,
the whole point of the whole message, you
need help.
And so he goes into the treatment program
they have, voluntarily gives up his license.
But that's the way the world is.
They do everything to help you and do
everything they can to try to get you
through.
But they never do come to God.
They always leave him out.
And you can't get through life without God.
And the greatest burden of sin, you'll never
make it without the Lord.
But I just thought about that story.
The burden of trials of life.
Think about Matthew 11, 28.
We're really getting hung up on burdens here.
Maybe we need to be here this morning.
But Jesus said, come unto me, listen, come
unto me all you that are heavy laden
and I will give you rest.
As your sin is bearing you down, he
says, come to me and just let me
take this sin off your shoulders.
Let me cleanse you.
Let me give you this rest.
Salvation is a great rest.
It's a great relief of all your sins.
And then what happens as a Christian?
We get enticed and we get back off
into sin again and we get this burden
of sin on us again that Christ has
already paid for.
But then he said, take my yoke upon
me and learn of me for I am
meek and lowly in heart and you shall
find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden
is light.
If you're a Christian and you're being burdened
down with something, then you're not carrying the
same burden that Christ wants you to carry.
You're under another yoke.
And this is no yoke, you know.
There's no joke.
This is no joke that Christ gives us
that bears you down.
His yoke, whatever he gives you to do,
you're going to be able to take it.
And there's going to be joy in your
heart because he's on the other end of
that yoke.
Well, Moses had to learn this and I
think he relapsed as we go back into
Numbers and when we get there we'll see
that he had this little relapse of this
thing.
But he got carried away and thought he
had to carry the burden alone.
You know what that caused him to do?
It caused him to presume.
And he made a presumption.
He made two wrong presumptions, I believe.
And maybe when we get to heaven he
might get me straightened out on some of
this stuff.
But I believe he presumed, number one, that
the Hebrew was on his side.
Do you notice?
First of all, he turned against the Egyptian.
He saw this Egyptian smiting this Hebrew and
he went and he killed him and buried
him in the sand.
He looked this way and he looked that
way and nobody's looking.
But he forgot to look up.
And what I mean by that, he forgot
to say, can I do this to the
glory of God?
No, you can't do that because you're not
supposed to kill.
And I believe maybe, maybe part of the
thing of him being out there was God
had to put him in jail for a
little while.
Get him out there.
You've killed a man, Moses.
That wasn't in my will.
I don't believe it was God's will for
a man to be killed, to be murdered
like that because that's a basic guideline in
scripture.
But Moses presumed that the Hebrew was on
his side when he went to break up
the Hebrews.
And the Hebrews, you're an Egyptian.
Moses said, I'm going to identify with you.
No, you're not.
You're an Egyptian.
You're going to kill us like you killed
that other Egyptian.
He assumed that they were on his side
and I believe then also he presumed that
God was on his side.
Well, God, the Bible tells us, is no
respecter of persons.
He's no respecter of persons.
And Moses killed.
Killing is sin.
And it was an effort in the flesh.
Galatians 5, 13 through 17 tells us all
of the things that come from flesh.
Killing is one of them.
Murder.
Murdering others with our tongue.
And then the result of this action.
What's the result?
He says, uh-oh.
I made a mistake.
I have stepped out.
I broke from Egypt by killing this Egyptian.
I've identified with the Hebrews.
I've cut myself off behind.
And now these guys don't want me.
I am hung.
And I'm just adding into that.
But the result, he learned, he did not
rule over them.
He thought, I'm going to step forward.
I'm going to be their leader.
They say, no, you're not our leader.
He cut it off behind and they cut
off in front.
Here he is hung.
Do you ever get hung?
You know?
You ever get out on a tree branch
or something?
You get hung there and somebody has to
help you out?
That's the way he is.
He's hung there.
Now, what's he going to do?
I believe he learned he made a mistake.
So what do you do when you make
a mistake?
Do you ever make a bad mistake?
Do you ever get afraid after you made
it?
That's what Moses did.
He got afraid.
Look at the passage.
You know?
Moses, they said, who made you a prince
over us?
Are you going to kill us like the
Egyptians?
And he says, Moses feared.
And said, surely this thing is known.
Moses feared.
Where there is no faith, there will be
fear.
And where there is fear, there won't be
any faith.
So there was fear instead of faith.
The Bible says, for whatsoever is not of
faith is sin.
I believe Moses stepped out of the will
of God at this point.
I believe he's done pretty good up to
this point.
But the principle is, if you can't ask
God's blessing on it, then don't do it.
And I don't believe Moses could have asked
his blessing on it at this point.
Now, verse 14.
What do you do when things get tough?
You want to run.
Right?
What did Moses do?
He said, surely, you know, I'm in trouble,
15.
Pharaoh says, he's in trouble.
Pharaoh heard this saying.
He sought to slay Moses.
Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and
dwelt in the land of Midian.
And he sat down by a well.
He headed for the, down where I come
from, we say he headed for the woods.
Down there, he headed for the desert.
You know?
What's going to happen now that he gets
down in this desert?
We run.
He fled.
There are three concluding things I want to
say on this passage, and we're going to
close up on it.
Number one.
His training prepared him for a lot of
things, but it did not prepare him to
deliver Israel.
It did not prepare him for that.
He was not ready to lead a nation
of 2 or 3 million people out into
a desert to follow God.
It's just like he needed some heart training.
He needed some deeper experience.
He needed the desert survival course.
And we need it too.
And we're going to get it.
It reminds me of a shoe salesman when
I was in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska.
I was in there getting some shoes, and
this guy over here cussing around.
Thought he was a sailor.
Ex-sailor.
Almost felt like asking him, are you an
ex-sailor?
You know?
No, come to find out, he was an
ex-missionary.
Oh, okay.
Figures the ex part I can see.
You know?
And, you know, he didn't have the training
in the heart to be a missionary.
That's why he's a shoe salesman.
Not a very good shoe salesman either.
We didn't buy shoes.
But Moses needed some deeper training.
And just the fact that he exploded forth
in this energy of the flesh, slew the
Egyptians, was proof of it.
God allowed these things, and God uses these
things.
Now, he needed spiritual training.
Another thing, number two, he didn't understand that
before he could lead Israel, he had to
learn to follow God.
To the T.
You know?
Right to the point.
And he'd been following God except to this
point he wasn't following God.
Because God does not cause us to do
things in the energy of the flesh.
Thou shalt not kill.
Later on, he gives in this commandment.
Thou shalt not kill.
But in his heart, he knew that he
shouldn't kill.
You go all the way back to the
beginning.
When Cain slew Abel, he knew that he
was wrong.
The heart will bear witness when you're wrong.
And this is why he was afraid.
If he'd done it in faith, if it
was with God, he'd have had no fear.
And he would have withstood.
And then a third thing.
Moses knew what God wanted.
Do you know that?
Moses knew it.
Moses knew that God wanted Israel out of
there.
He knew the scriptures.
But what Moses didn't know, and what you
and I don't always know, is this.
He didn't know when, and he didn't know
how.
This is why when we pray, we say,
if it's your will, Lord, I want this.
And it's not a cop-out by faith
either.
We don't bully God around.
But Moses knew what God wanted, but he
just didn't know when, and he didn't know
how.
The when was 40 years later.
I just wonder what would have happened if
he'd stayed there for those 40, you know,
just to see what God would do.
Let God make the move.
And he didn't know that God was going
to lead them down into that desert like
that.
They wanted to go home, back over to
Israel.
A straight course would have been the way.
But he didn't know how God was going
to do it.
And here's the last principle I'm going to
share with you.
It's this.
God's timing is as important as God's training.
God's timing is as important as His training.
So as we go through the lessons that
He's going to let us have, let's don't
get ahead of Him and let's don't get
behind Him.
Let's just stay with Him and let Him
do what He wants to do.
We sometimes want to get excited.
You know, when Christ came, they didn't understand
God's timing.
They didn't understand God's ways.
They didn't understand God's reason.
You see, Christ came and He came to
die on the cross.
They didn't understand that.
The ways of God are often foolish to
the ways of the world.
But they didn't understand God's timing because they
wouldn't read God's Word.
God's Word told them the time that He'd
come.
Daniel, when we get through with Daniel, we're
going to see that Daniel prophesied to the
day when the Messiah would come.
They could have known it.
They didn't want it.
But they didn't understand God's way.
If they'd understood Scripture and followed Scripture, they
would have understood that God's way had to
be a sacrifice of His Son because He
had told them.
Isaac was a type of Christ when Abraham
took Him to the altar.
And they didn't understand God's reason.
God's reason was that they need to be
saved by faith and trust the blood of
Christ alone for their salvation.
But they thought, God's way is we'll do
our works.
We'll do all this and that.
It doesn't work out that way.
I was just thinking of some verses.
Let me share them with you quickly and
then we'll close up.
David said in Psalms 27 and 11, Teach
me thy way, O Lord.
Teach me thy way, O Lord.
And then Isaiah 53, verse 6 says, All
we like sheep have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way.
The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all.
So we need the Lord to teach us
His way for salvation.
His way is you just trust Christ as
your Savior.
And then David said, Teach me thy way,
O Lord.
In Psalms 86 and 11, I will walk
in thy truth.
The way of the Lord is always directly
in proportion to His word.
He'll never lead you contrary to His word.
So he says, Teach me thy way, O
Lord.
I will walk in thy truth.
And then he says, Unite my heart to
fear thy name.
We walk in the fear of the Lord.
Then also he said this in Psalms 103,
7, And this will be the difference between
the Moses and just the crowd.
You see, God wants you to be a
Moses.
He wants you to be an eagle.
He wants you to be an overcomer.
He wants you to be able to stand
above the crowd.
He doesn't want you to be washed here
and there by different doctrines and emotions and
things.
He wants you to be solid amidst all
the storms.
The difference between the Moses and just the
multitudes was this.
In Psalms 103 and verse 7, it says,
He made His ways known unto Moses, His
acts unto the children of Israel.
His ways were made known unto Moses, but
His acts unto the children of Israel.
And what that's saying is, because God drew
Moses to Him and Moses went through the
experiences, he went through the desert survival training
series.
He went through the trials and he let
God teach him things and sure, he made
some mistakes.
But he didn't make near as many as
I've already made.
We're going to learn from his mistakes and
things.
But he knew the way of God.
He understood the heart of God.
And it says in that scripture that the
multitudes just knew the actions of God.
They could just see the actions.
They could see the thunder.
They could see the manna come down.
They could see the pillar of cloud.
They could see the enemies being overthrown.
They could see the sea part.
They could see these things.
But they didn't know what God was doing.
But Moses did.
This is why it says, He made His
ways known unto Moses and His acts unto
the children of Israel.
Don't you want to know the ways of
God?
I do.
There's a lot of blessing there.
Let's bow for prayer.
Father, thank You for this time this morning.
And as we're getting these introductory sessions underway,
we're learning principles already that we'll see as
we go on applied in the life of
Moses.
And then we'll see that we need these
things in our lives.
Holy Spirit, You take these things now and
You use these things in our life.
These principles are so vital.
We may forget the message.
We may forget the messenger.
But we better not forget these principles that
the Spirit of God teaches us.
Because these principles, we can apply into all
kinds of different situations.
Thank You for giving them to us, Lord.
We know that we can apply them.
We know that we should.
Holy Spirit, You help us to do it.
And if there's one here today that needs
Christ as their Savior, Lord, You draw them
to You.
You help them to make the decision that
they need to make to follow Christ.
To surrender all to the Lord Jesus.
For we know, and we're finding out, if
we don't surrender all, then whatever we try
to keep, we lose.
We've learned that principle.
But whatever we give to You, we get
to keep.
Even to the point of our very innermost
life, our time, our thoughts.
If we'll just give that to You, our
time, and even give our thought life to
You, we'll keep it.
And we'll find that it, in turn, is
the thing that makes us stable and makes
us usable to You.
But if we try to be selfish, Lord,
as many times we learn, if we try
to do what we want to do, just
study what we want to study, go where
we want to go, memorize just what we
want to memorize, then all of that produces
death to the Christ life.
Thank You, Lord, for this time now.
In Jesus' name, Amen.