Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to
Exodus chapter 3, our 8th message on our
desert survival series.
I guess sometimes I get to thinking that
I should rush.
We need to be patient enough, I believe,
to get all that God has for us
out of the experience that we're going through,
out of the trial, or maybe even out
of a sermon.
To me, it's a real treat to get
to listen to a sermon, because somebody told
me something back when I was in college
that I've never forgot.
Because many times when you're in Bible colleges,
missionaries come, and sometimes they're not real great
speakers or whatever.
And the one that told me this was
A.
Pinner.
He said, whenever somebody gets before you and
has a message, you learn to get what
God has for you out of that.
Maybe it's not a great dynamic message.
Maybe the guy can't speak real well or
whatever.
But if God has allowed him to speak
to you or before you, then get what
God has for you.
There may be just one thing there.
And I appreciate that advice so much.
You can gain a lot of wisdom by
listening to others, especially listening as God maybe
wants to speak to you.
I'm changing the title of this series from
Moses, the man of God, to Moses, the
servant of God, because we switch gears today
in Exodus chapter 3 to where Moses will
now become the servant of God.
Last week we saw his burning bush experience
in chapter 3, how he met God at
the burning bush and all of the lessons
there about the cross.
We won't go back on that because of
the time we need to keep going forward.
But we have some new things to learn
today.
And we're going to see how Moses moves
out now into the area of being a
servant.
And Moses is called the servant of God
many times in Scripture, many times.
As a matter of fact, when God was
breaking in Joshua, you look in the book
of Joshua, he kept referring to Moses, my
servant, Moses, my servant, Moses, my servant.
So I'm changing the title of this message.
It's our desert survival series, and the title
was Moses, the man of God, to the
servant of God.
Let's bow for prayer now.
Father, would you meet us now?
We've asked you to.
And would you let your Holy Spirit teach
us from your word?
You've told us to preach the word.
You've given pastors, pastor teachers, as a gift
to the church to spend time in prayer
and studying, to dig into the word, that
we might spend this time, so we pray
that we would take that which you have
for us this morning.
The many hours that you've invested in my
life, Father, this week, I pray that the
Spirit of God would take this and multiply
it many times into these lives.
In Jesus' name, amen.
You know, Moses spent 40 years in the
court of Pharaoh, and then 40 years out
in the desert with God, and then 40
years serving God, leading the children of Israel
out of the land.
And I think sometimes we might tend to
miss out on what is the most important
thing.
You know, John Musser, John's been communicating with
me.
He's down in Newton, Kansas now, concluding some
meetings down there.
But he said he went to the Billy
Graham Center in Minneapolis, the headquarters there, and
he's trying to learn all he can in
these crusades.
And he said that they shared with him
that only 10% of the program was
presentation.
In other words, that the whole thing, the
Billy Graham crusades, only 10% is what
you see on TV.
90%, 90% is out of sight.
They said they spent 45% of their
time getting ready for a crusade, and then
45% of their time after a crusade
with a follow-up.
Moses spent one-third of his life out
of sight.
And I am just about inclined to believe
that maybe the most important period of his
life was that 40 years in the desert
alone with God.
We don't know very much about that time.
But that was probably the most important time
of his life, for without that time, he
would have never had the last 40 years
of service.
And you know what?
As he was out there, I just wonder,
as he took off and left to Trelades,
leaving Egypt, and he spent that time, here's
what the crowds would say today, I don't
know what they said then, but they would
say, what a waste.
Too bad.
All that time out there in no man's
land.
Maybe somebody might like to say that about
me.
All that time up there in Nebraska.
Where's Nebraska anyway, you know?
And for sure, where's Gordon, Nebraska?
And what's the Gordon Baptist Church?
Just a little old church up there, insignificant,
you know?
They say that about Moses, or maybe about
somebody.
But you never know what God's doing.
The Bible talks about how people despise the
day of small things.
Ah, God works in those small things.
So what a waste, what a tragedy.
And maybe about your situation.
Maybe you've gone through a tragedy or something,
and maybe they say, well, it's all over
for you.
You've had such a bitter experience.
Such, you know, you're all over.
Or many times in a death experience.
We think it's all over, you know?
But not if we have Christ.
Nothing's ever over with Christ.
Life just continues.
And it's not a tragedy situation.
Well, Moses learned, if I can give you
a real quick little review, on about five
things he learned.
I keep learning all these things.
But he learned these five things at least.
Out there in that desert, he learned to
know God.
And if you don't learn to know God
in your desert, in your trial, in your
problem areas, with your burden or whatever, you
just won't make it.
He learned to know God.
And you know, the Bible says that knowing
God equals eternal life.
John 17.3 says, This is eternal life,
that we would know you and your Son
Jesus Christ.
Here's something else he learned.
He learned to wait on God.
And boy, if we're going to be a
servant of God, we've got to learn to
wait.
Because the Master tells His servant when to
move.
And one of the things we sometimes do
is we get ahead of God.
We get ahead of our Master.
And we get into trouble.
So he learned to wait on God.
And what do you do when you wait?
The Bible says in Isaiah 40 and verse
31, Those that wait upon the Lord shall
renew their strength.
The world says waiting is a waste of
time.
And I guess this is one of my
areas.
I hate to wait.
I went into the Air Force, and man,
you had to hurry up and get somewhere,
and then you wait.
I don't like to wait, because waiting is
associated with wasted time.
But if we have to wait, God maybe
hangs you up on a shelf somewhere, sticks
you in the backside of the desert, while
you're waiting to get to know God.
Maybe if you have a situation, memorize scripture,
meditate on things, use that time profitably.
And then here's another thing.
He learned to have faith.
Knowing God equals eternal life.
Waiting on God equals strength.
While having faith equals endurance.
You know what it said about Moses?
You know why Moses could hang in there
and do what he did for 40 years,
leaving the children of Israel out of bondage
to the Promised Land?
The Bible says he could endure.
In Hebrews chapter 11, 27, it says he
endured as seeing Him who is invisible.
One of the reasons we have so many
Christian crack-ups is because there's no endurance.
There's no faith.
Their eye is not on God.
Their eye is off on their situation, and
not on God.
So, the Bible says he endured because he
kept his eyes on God.
So, if you'll know God, then you'll learn
to know Him by faith.
The Bible says without faith, it is impossible
to please Him.
For he that comes to God must believe
that He is, that God exists, and that
God is also a rewarder of your faith.
So, you've got to believe that God's going
to do what you come to Him for.
Without faith, He just won't work.
That's the one principle essential.
It's a principle here you need to learn.
Faith.
Then a fourth thing you learn.
If faith produces endurance, then he learned also,
and we saw this last week, to be
emptied of self.
To be emptied of self, because that equals
being Christ-like.
If you're going to be full of yourself,
then there's not going to be any evidence
of Christ living in your life.
And one of the things that the desert
experiences that we go through does, is it
empties us of self.
It brings us to the end of our
self.
It brings us to the end of our
effort, of our sufficiency.
You get out in the desert and there's
no way to survive, what are you going
to do?
You're going to say, God, help me.
I believe God allows us to have these
things so that we would learn to depend
on Him and not ourselves.
So, He learned to be emptied of self.
I've got a little poem here written by
Theodore Munroe.
It goes like this.
It's a good poem.
Oh, the bitter pain and sorrow that a
time could ever be when I proudly said
to Jesus all of self and none of
thee.
Yet He found me and I beheld Him
bleeding on the accursed tree and my wishful
heart said faintly some of self and some
of thee.
Day by day His tender mercies helping, healing,
full and free brought me lower while I
whispered less of self and more of thee.
Higher than the highest heaven, deeper than the
deepest sea, Lord, Thy love at last has
conquered me, none of self and all of
thee.
There is the victorious Christian life.
None of self and all of the Lord
Jesus Christ in my life.
That's what John said.
He must increase and I must decrease.
Well, Moses learned to be emptied of self.
Moses learned that God can do more with
you if you're nothing than if you're something.
He started out to deliver Israel because he
was something.
He was a pharaoh candidate.
He had all this training.
He could lead Israel out.
He was something.
And God says, I can't use you if
you're something, but I can use you if
you're nothing.
And so he emptied Moses of self for
40 years.
And next week it's going to be good
because we're going to see how we live.
God came along to Moses and said, You
ready to go?
He says, Who am I?
And he gave God five excuses.
Next week we're going to look at the
five excuses that he gives God and how
that fits in with our life.
But he was emptied of self, really.
Matter of fact, God did a real good
job on him.
He had to get him pushing him, trying
to get him going.
But it was self also holding back.
I guess the thing about it is when
we become a Christian, we are never completely
emptied of self as long as we have
this whole sin nature within us.
Self is not eradicated and removed when we
become a Christian.
We do not grow in our Christian life
to a point to where we are completely
sinless.
No.
The Christian life is a day-by-day
experience where we gain victory by denying self,
dying to self, dying to sin, saying no
to it.
Lord, you just live.
You give me victory in this area.
It's a day-by-day experience.
And we do that from the day we're
born spiritually to the day we die or
the day the Lord comes back in the
air and gets us.
Well, Moses learned that God can do more
with you if you're nothing than if you're
something.
And here's the key statement.
I'm going to say it several times.
It's this.
I'll say it very simply this first time.
Moses learned that being was more important than
doing.
Being what God wants you to be is
more important than doing because if you will
be what God wants you to be, the
doing will come out of it naturally.
Well, he took off on the doing.
God set him aside in the desert to
make him into what he wanted him to
be.
So the being has to come forth.
So he went into that desert something.
And you know what?
He came out nothing.
And when we come out nothing, we say,
God, I can't solve my problems.
I've got this desert.
When we come to the point to where
we just do nothing and say, Lord, I
can't do it.
I'm nothing.
I haven't got the strength.
I haven't got the power.
Would you do it?
God says, I've been waiting.
You've been kicking up dust and complaining and
hollering and everything.
It's about time you turn to me.
When we learn to just do that naturally
all the time to be our first response,
then we really can go.
Now that brings us to our passage in
Exodus chapter 3 and verse 5 where we'll
pick up verse 2.
Remember God revealed himself as self-existent and
Moses said, I'm going to turn aside and
see this burning bush.
How come it wasn't consumed?
And we saw many valuable lessons in that
last week.
And then verse 4, God saw that he
turned aside and the Lord said to him,
Moses, Moses.
And Moses said, here I am.
You know what Moses is saying?
I'm available.
What do you want, Lord?
I'm available.
No strings attached.
I'm not tied down to nothing.
Got these few little old sheep.
Got a little family back here.
But really Moses was available to God.
I wonder if many times we can't do
what God wants us to do because we
get so tied down to other things that
we're not free.
And we're not sensitive enough to maybe that
he wants us to do something.
We get involved maybe with things or something.
And it ties us down.
I know for myself this has been a
case.
Well, God revealed himself to Moses and here's
how he revealed himself in verse 5.
And he said, draw not nigh hither.
Don't come any closer.
Take off your shoes from off your feet
for the place that you're standing is holy
ground.
Now what are you going to do?
You're going to do what God says to
do.
And that's exactly what Moses did.
He removed his shoes.
Now God revealed himself to Moses as holy.
As a holy God.
And I'm not going to take off on
the holiness of God.
We could.
But I'm going to take off on a
different tangent today on how the holiness of
God affects a man when he comes into
the presence of a holy God.
A while back I was going to do
a study and do a series on the
holiness of God.
And I got started in it and I
had to stop.
I couldn't handle it.
The holiness of God, how holy our God
is, is a subject I don't feel worthy
to touch.
Maybe someday I might try to touch it
at a distance.
But the holiness of God is a vast
realm of the depths of God.
Well, how does it affect us though?
We can handle that.
Because if we're going to know Christ and
we're going to know Him in a way
that's going to affect our life, then we
can get some things out of it for
ourselves.
What is man's response supposed to be to
a holy God?
Here it is.
It's all bound up in this one little
statement.
Take off your shoes.
If you're going to know God, if you're
going to stand in His presence, if you're
going to serve Him and love Him and
be what He wants you to be and
do what He wants you to do, you're
going to first have to take off your
shoes.
And that's what He says.
Moses, take off your shoes.
Now, why the shoes?
The shoes would be the symbol of humility.
Very humbling.
Yeah, take your shoes off.
It was a symbol of humility.
You know, the first step to being saved
is a step of humility.
When we come to know Christ as our
Savior, if we won't take this step to
humble ourselves before God and admit that we
are sinners, repent of our sins, we'll never
be saved.
And a lot of people think they're saved,
but they've never humbled themselves before God.
They've never been broken over their sinfulness.
And this is where we have so many
people that are professing Christians.
They say they're a Christian, yet they can
go out and live in sin.
They can live in adultery.
They can commit fornication.
They can live as a drunkard.
They can live as a homosexual.
They can live however they want to and
say, it's fine, I'm a Christian because I
received Jesus.
But they never did because He hasn't changed
their life.
When Jesus comes in, He changes your life.
They've never been humbled.
Humility is the first step.
Peter said, repent ye therefore and be converted
that the times of refreshing will come.
They don't get those times of refreshing either.
They say there's something missing.
And most of the time they need Christ.
Being baptized.
We've got our baptistry up here.
It's getting dry.
We haven't used it for a little bit.
But the first step of obedience and following
Jesus Christ is to follow the Lord in
believer's baptism.
That is a humbling experience because pride would
say, I don't think I'll do that.
That's the very first step in following Jesus
as your Savior.
So if you haven't followed Him, let me
challenge you to be baptized.
Let me know.
When we get one or two more, we'll
have a baptism service.
But it's a humbling experience because you've got
to die to your pride.
But if you won't do it, then you're
showing the Lord you're not really serious about
following Him.
You're going to have a tough Christian life.
Our pride keeps us down.
Well, it's a humbling experience.
You know, I was looking at Paul.
Paul, when he first got saved, he was
going down the Damascus Road and God appeared
in a bright light and it blinded him.
He was literally blinded.
And Paul, when he said, he said, why
are you doing this?
You know, it's hard for you to kick
against the pricks.
And he said, you know, who art thou,
Lord?
And he said, I'm Jesus.
Then Paul comes out and he says, what
will you have me to do?
And in Acts 9, he says, what wilt
thou have me to do?
Paul was humbled in that very moment of
his conversion.
He met Christ.
He realized that he had really been sinning.
And so he said, Lord, what will you
have me to do?
He turned from serving himself, which is actually
what he'd been doing.
That's what the religion of the world is.
You serve yourself and in the doing of
it, you'll get to heaven.
God will be tickled with what you're doing.
That's from the pit of hell because God
is not tickled with what we do.
All of the things that we do of
ourselves to try to get saved is filthiness.
We've got to trust Christ and Christ alone.
You have to humble yourself before Him.
Well, Paul said, what do you want me
to do?
And Paul took off a humble man.
But you know what?
Before he really got to working for the
Lord, you know what God did with Paul?
He stuck him in a desert for 10
years.
All of his degrees.
And I believe Paul had so many degrees
he'd look like a thermometer.
He had really been trained.
He'd been trained under the finest minds of
the day.
And God took him like Moses and stuck
him out in the desert.
Humbling.
And when he'd come out, he'd come out
a humble man.
And Paul was a powerful man because he
was humble.
I like what is said in Acts 20.
Paul said in Acts 20, in verse 19,
he said, listen, this is how I've lived
among you.
Serving the Lord with all humility of mind
and with many tears and temptations which befell
me by the lying weight of the Jews
and how I kept back nothing that was
profitable unto you.
He was a humble man.
But showed you and taught you publicly and
from house to house.
He said, I serve the Lord with humility
of mind.
Isn't that what the Scripture says?
Let this mind be in you which was
also in Christ Jesus.
He humbled himself and he became as a
man.
As a servant.
As a servant of man.
Christ came.
He said, if you want to follow me,
Jesus says, if you want to follow me,
then humble yourself.
And this is where we're going with Moses.
He's going into his humbling experience.
Now, the first step to being saved is
a humbling experience.
But also the first step to serving God
is to take your shoes off.
And that's where we come to Moses today.
Serving God.
Take your shoes off.
The shoes represent self-effort.
I jotted down something here.
Doing what I want.
Humility is doing what God wants.
Take your shoes off.
Jesus said, no man can serve two masters.
He'll either hate the one and love the
other or he'll love the one and hate
the other.
You cannot serve me and at the same
time serve the ways of this world.
The ways of trying to make money.
The ways of riches.
Following the ways of this world.
He said, you just can't do it.
Now, I don't know whether to take you
off on this.
It's a bunny trail, actually, in humility.
Do you want to go that way?
I've got probably enough for two sermons here.
But I got to studying something on this
area of loving God and serving God.
And I found something over in John.
Remember when Jesus said, if you love me,
you'll keep my commandments.
In John 14, 21, He that hath my
commandments and keepeth them, he it is that
loveth me.
And then verse 23, He said, if a
man love me, he will keep my words.
You know what's at the heart of being
a servant of God?
Love.
One of the reasons that maybe we won't
do what God wants us to do is
because we're just not in love with Him.
And now there's another thing that develops out
of loving God.
We want to be a servant of God.
Then we're going to love God.
That's probably the heart of it, is love.
We just love God.
Love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, with all thy soul, with all thy
might.
But there's a little thing that develops sort
of as a fringe benefit out of that.
And it's this.
If you turn the page, Jesus says, greater
loveth no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends.
You are my friends if you do whatever
I command you.
You are my friends if you do, and
that is the service.
If you serve me, you are my friends.
And then he goes into this beautiful thing
about a friendship.
He says, henceforth I call you not servants
even.
He says, I'm going to go deeper, because
the servant really doesn't know what his Lord's
doing.
But I am going to call you my
friend because I am going to show you
what I'm doing.
You share with your friend, don't you, what
you're doing, where you're going, what your heart's
thoughts is.
And this is what Jesus says.
If you will serve me, you'll really be
my friend.
And what does the Scripture say about Moses?
Moses is called the servant of God, but
when you push on through the Scriptures, what
do you find?
That God says, Moses, my friend.
Isn't that beautiful?
You look at it.
It's Exodus 33, 18.
Moses, the friend of God.
You know, there's a lot of things that
we can get into in this area.
We don't have time.
But very simply, if he is my master
and I am the servant, then no matter
what he tells me to do, I am
to do it.
Many times he tells us to do something
that maybe is not popular, that maybe other
people don't understand, and you have to just
step out by faith and do what God
tells you to do.
There may be times I don't understand what
you're doing, and I may not even agree
with you, but God's told you to do
that.
And this is why God's told us to
be very careful about judging one another, because
we will stand before our own master.
Read Romans 14.
We'll stand before our own master, and I'm
not your master, and you're not my master.
There's only one Lord, and that's the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Well, Moses.
Moses, the servant of God, stands on holy
ground in humility.
And then in verse 6, it says, after
God revealed himself, he says, I am the
God of thy father, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.
And what did Moses do?
Moses hid his face.
Moses hid his face for he was afraid
to look on God.
You know why he hid his face?
He felt so unworthy to look on God.
Because one of the things that the cross
will do to you, when you get on
the cross, when you identify with the death
of Christ, the burial of Christ, the resurrection
of Christ, and you just die to yourself
and let God do what He wants to
do to you, one of the things it's
going to do, you're going to get close
to God.
And the closer you get to God, the
more unworthy you will feel.
Brian and I have been going out and
doing visiting.
It's really something.
When you meet somebody and you're trying to
share the Lord with them so they can
get saved, but they feel so good.
They don't need what God's done.
They're so good in themselves.
That's the very opposite thing.
We are so unworthy.
And as we come to Christ and receive
Him as our Savior, we really don't even
know what's going on.
But as we grow in Christ, we realize
He is a holy God that died for
me on that cross.
I wasn't even worthy enough to receive Him
as my Savior.
But He loved me so much.
He does something to us.
So when you get close to God, the
more aware of your own simpleness you will
become.
Humility is knowing our worth in comparison to
God.
And there's no worth in us.
The only thing that makes us worth anything
is the fact that Christ died on the
cross for us, gave His very life, and
bought us with His blood.
Then we become valuable.
We were marred back in the Garden of
Eden to be not worth anything.
We were made in the image of God,
but the sin that was brought into this
world destroyed the worth.
And God had to remake us to make
us valuable again.
And so when Christ comes into our life,
we are of a value of God.
And that's why He can let us into
heaven.
But as far as of ourself, there's nothing
within us of ourself that's of any worth
itself.
The only value is that which God produces.
Remember when Peter had this experience with Jesus?
Jesus was preaching on the edge of the
sea and He got into one of the
boats so that the crowds wouldn't push Him
back into the sea.
They'd have some room.
And He got out a little ways and
spoke to them.
When they were done, He said, Let's go
out here and go fishing.
Peter said, Lord, we've been fishing all night
and haven't caught a thing.
Remember that?
We've been fishing all night and haven't caught
a thing.
Nevertheless, it's Your Word.
We'll do it.
I'm not going to argue with you.
They go out there and two ships are
out there and they throw it on the
net and they can't even get them in
the ship.
They call over the other ship.
Hey, help us.
And they have so many fish that both
ships begin to sink.
And what does Peter do?
The Bible says that Peter fell on his
face before Jesus and said, Depart from me,
O Lord, for I am a sinful man.
He recognized God.
He recognized God in that situation.
That's Luke 5.8. He was unworthy.
But he took his shoes off and fell
at the feet of Jesus.
He fell at the feet of Jesus.
Well, that's why God could use Peter.
And the reason God could use Moses was
because he was willing to take his shoes
off.
And I just wonder if there isn't something
in your life that God's maybe been dealing
with you about and He said, Take your
shoes off.
Why don't you just humble yourself and admit
you can't do anything?
Why don't you just humble yourself and admit
that that's a waste of your time, a
waste of your money, a waste of your
effort, and let me just have your life
or your area in that area.
Let me have it.
Take your shoes off.
The Bible says in 1 Peter 5, verse
5 and 6, it says, Be clothed, be
subject one to another, be clothed with humility.
Let it be your attitude.
Let it be your being.
For God resists at the proud and giveth
grace to the humble.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of
God and He will exalt you.
The Bible always tells us to humble ourselves.
Humbleness and being humble has to do with
brokenness, confession of sin.
If you've got a sin in your life
that you've not confessed to God, whoever will
not confess that sin will not prosper, Proverbs
says.
Your whole life may be crippled because you're
too proud to admit that sin.
And you'll hurt yourself and maybe hurt your
church, hurt your family or whatever.
Well, Moses saw God and he was unworthy.
He fell before Him.
He hid his face.
And it says that God revealed Himself to
Moses there as a covenant keeping God by
the resurrection.
I want to go on to verse 7.
Then the Lord said, I have surely seen
the affliction of my people which are in
Egypt and have seen their cry by reason
of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.
I've come down to deliver them out of
the bondage, out of Egypt.
And he goes in and he shows Moses
what he's going to do.
You see, if you're going to serve God,
God's going to show you exactly what He
wants done.
There's no wishy-washiness.
We always know what God wants us to
do.
The will of God will always be revealed
to you from the Word of God by
the Spirit of God.
He'll lead you the way He wants you
to go.
It's a very rewarding life because you're not
wasting time.
You're not marching in place.
So many Christians are just ten soldiers marching
in place but not going anywhere and marking
time and truly going somewhere.
You know?
But God will lead you.
And He says, okay, here's what I'm going
to do.
Here's my plans, Moses.
And He goes into it.
And as He reveals His plans, He says,
I've got compassion in my heart.
He reveals His heart of love and compassion
for Israel.
And you know why He did it to
Moses?
Because Moses never lost his burden for Israel
in the desert.
And this is why God revealed it to
him.
And the closer you get to God, the
closer you will feel the burden of God
for things, too.
And He knew that Moses was right with
Him on that.
By the way, if He gives you a
burden for something or someone, then do it.
Or go see Him.
So many times we think, well, the preacher's
got to go do this.
There's somebody sick.
Better call a preacher.
You better go see him.
If God gives you a burden, go do
it.
Unless you want to wear your preacher out
here or wherever if you move somewhere else.
I know I could tell you probably a
dozen preachers right now because I've been working
with preachers for this last year that are
wore out.
Wore out.
The people are wearing them out and they're
letting them.
We work together.
This is why this poem is so good.
You take it.
The person that did this up, I think
it was Monica, I don't know if it
was Monica or Vince, didn't know that this
would fit in so good with this message
today.
And it's even typed up so you can
take it.
It's not a poem.
It's a little story.
This is about somebody that's lonely.
If you know somebody that's lonely, go see
them.
It is true.
People lonely, all over, waiting for somebody to
come see them.
There are people out here waiting for somebody
to come tell them about Jesus Christ.
And Jesus Christ went back to heaven so
he could send the Holy Spirit back down
so that he could be many places at
one time.
And he wants you to be there in
your situation to reach out.
And me in mine.
But if we think that the preacher can
go do all of our stuff for us,
then we'll wear him out.
And if he's smart, he won't let you
wear him out.
Sometimes we're not too smart.
Because the Bible told the preachers what they're
to be doing.
Their primary work is to spend a lot
of time in prayer and the Word so
that you'd be fed and strong to do
the work of the ministry.
And these things.
Well, Moses knew the heart of God.
And your desert experience may be the thing
that God just got designed to make you
more serviceable for him.
Your desert experience will bring you in touch
with God and as you get in touch
with God, it'll just bring a lot of
moisture into your life like all this moisture's
coming in and bringing some moisture onto the
ground.
It will just invigorate you.
And then when you go out from knowing
God and you touch people's lives, they are
affected.
But one of the things that happens is
instead of letting it deepen our life with
God, it dries us up.
We make the decision.
Well, verses 8 and 9 going on down.
God says, listen, here's my purpose.
I'm going to deliver Israel.
And God says, this is my purpose and
here is my plan.
I'm going to send the man and you're
the man.
And God says, I'm going to send you
and you and me.
You're my plan.
Men is God's plan.
Moses, you're my plan for this particular thing
to go deliver Israel.
And next week we're going to get into
an interesting thing how God tried, how Moses
tried to argue his way out of God's
plan.
The worst thing that I could ever do
was argue my way out of God's will
for my life or disobey God's command.
But I think God and Moses had a
good relationship there.
Moses maybe pushed it a little bit right
to the last excuse.
God got mad at him.
He understands us.
He knows that we're human.
He knows that we, you know, we might
not like to do this and he's going
to deal with us in tenderness and love.
But it's going to come to a point
to where if he really wants us to
do something, he can get very firm.
And God did, does that with Moses.
But because Moses had been prepared in the
desert, God could use him.
And God reveals himself and he says, you're
my plan.
So the lesson is if we learn to
be what God wants us to be, then
we can do what God wants us to
do.
That's where we started out.
Just learn in our lesson, in our deserts,
whatever God wants us to learn.
It may be a desert, a trial or
something that comes up this day.
So if I will be what God wants
me to be, then I can do what
God wants me to do.
Are you in a desert right now?
It's not the fact that you're in, it's
how are you going to come out.
Withered or full of life because you found
that there were streams in the desert.
There's a source to strengthen you.
You know, I was thinking about this one
little story that I'd read in closing.
I'm going to close and then we'll have
a word of prayer.
About back in the war when France was
being liberated, there was an SS man that
was captured.
He was captured and he was wounded and
he was bleeding.
He was bleeding to death.
And they brought him in and he had
to have an immediate blood transfusion.
And the guy said, will that be English
blood that you're going to put in me?
And they said, yes.
It's going to be English blood.
He said, I'd rather die.
And he did.
You need a blood transfusion if you haven't
trusted Christ.
The blood that you need is the blood
of Jesus Christ that was shed on the
cross for your sins.
If you don't have a spiritual blood transfusion,
you will die in your sin as this
SS man.
When Christ died on the cross, that was
the only way that you could go to
heaven.
Any other way, man goes to hell.
This is why Jesus says, I am the
way.
I am the truth.
I am the life.
And he says, if you'll come to me,
I won't cast you out.
This is why we sing this song, just
as I am.
That's the only way you can come to
God, just as you are.
Let's bow our heads and close our eyes.
Before we have a closing hymn, I just
wonder if there's someone here that would like
to receive Jesus as your Savior.
With your heads bowed and your eyes closed,
don't you realize that Christ died for you
on the cross?
And all you have to simply do is
be willing to turn from your sin.
After you trust Christ, he'll give you the
power to stay turned.
You don't have that power to stay turned
until Christ comes in.
But where you sit, why don't you just
admit to God right now that you're a
sinner?
Say, dear God, I'm a sinner.
Admit to Him that you can't save yourself.
Say, I can't save myself.
And why don't you just ask Him to
come into your life, to cleanse your life
up, to give you a new life?
Say, dear Lord, would you just come into
my life?
Give me a new life.
Cleanse me.
Forgive me of my sin.
Jesus, come in.
Take over.
If you'll just simply invite Christ to come
in, He will.
And then all He asks is for you.
You receive Him and He in turn receives
you.
You become a new person.
And you identify with Him.
You make a public confession of your faith.
All the invitations are public in the Bible.
You just come to Jesus and say, Lord,
I take You as my Savior now and
I will follow You in baptism.
I will be what You want me to
be.
I'll do what You want me to do.
I thank You for saving me.
Maybe you're a Christian here and God spoke
to your heart.
Maybe you need to go to the prayer
room or head to the altar or get
something right.
I don't know what it is.
You take care of it.
Let's stand and sing a closing hymn.