Today we start a new sermon series,
“Holy Moses”, looking at the life of Moses.
I want to make clear that we’re not doing this to try to tip the
Bible Bracketology contest in Moses’ favor. You’re free to vote for
whoever you want. We’re doing this because, as some of you know, there’s
a movie that came out recently called Exodus, purporting to tell the story of
Moses and the Exodus from Egypt.
Now, I’ve not seen the movie, and I have no opinion on whether
it’s any good or not. You’ll have to make up your own mind about that if
you go see it. But the real story of Moses is interesting enough without
any Hollywood hype added to it. In fact, we could easily have made this
sermon series at least twice as long as we are. There’s just that much
good stuff about Moses in the Bible.
In fact, right off the bat we’re going to skip over two of the
interesting stories about Moses: his rescue from the Nile River as a
baby, and his killing of an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave.
Those are good stories, and I’d encourage you to go to the second chapter
of Exodus and read them. But we’re going to start this sermon series with
Moses being called by God.
Moses is living with his wife’s family at this point. He’s
working for his father-in-law, taking care of the sheep. Just another
day. No reason to think it’s going to be anything special. Then he
looks over, and he sees this bush that’s on fire. He watches it for a
little while, and the bush does not seem to be burning up. He goes over
to check things out, and all of a sudden God is calling to him from a bush.
God has a mission for him. Moses. The shepherd.
And it’s not just an ordinary mission, either. A long time
before, the people of Israel had gone to Egypt for rescue from a famine.
That’s in the story of Joseph, which some of you may remember. But
now, Joseph has been dead for a long time, and the people of Israel are living
as slaves. And so Moses is supposed to go to the Pharaoh, the ruler of
Egypt, and get the people of Israel out of Egypt and take them to the promised
land.
Moses, of course, reacts the way you or I might react. He
says, “Who, me? I cannot do that. You must’ve made a mistake here,
God.” In fact, in the part we skipped over, Moses raises all kinds of
objections to God’s plan. He comes up with all kinds of excuses for why
he should not have to do this. But God keeps answering all his objections
and sweeping away all his excuses. God says, “Don’t worry about it.
You can do it. I’ll be with you. It’ll be okay.” And
Moses is left with only the choices of saying yes or saying no.
And what does Moses do? He says no. He tries to,
anyway. When we pick up the story again, we hear Moses saying, “Lord,
please send someone else.”
As I was thinking about this story this week, it struck me how so
many of the stories in the Bible of people being called by God follow this same
sort of pattern. You have an ordinary person going about his or her
business on an ordinary day. Nothing to distinguish today from yesterday
or the day before. No reason to think anything special or important is
going to happen today. And then, all of a sudden, they get a message from
God. Sometimes the message comes from an angel, sometimes it comes from
God directly. But either way, they get this message. And God is
asking this ordinary person to do something extraordinary. God is asking
this common person, someone nobody really thought too much about, to do something
that will make them be remembered forever.
And they all react the way Moses reacted, the way you or I would
probably react. They all say, “Who me? I cannot do that. You
must’ve made a mistake here, God.” And they raise all kinds of objections
to God’s plan. They come up with all kinds of excuses for why they should
not have to do it. And God keeps answering all their objections and
sweeping away all their excuses. God keeps saying, “Don’t worry.
You can do it. I’ll be with you. It’ll be okay.” And
the person being called is left with only the choices of saying yes or saying
no. And sometimes they try to say no. They say, as Moses said,
“Lord, please send someone else.”
Why do they say that? Why does Moses say it? Because
he’s afraid. And you can understand why. Pharaoh is great and
powerful and has an army at his command. Moses is a nobody. Who
wouldn’t be scared?
But what’s interesting about that to me is that it’s only at this
point in the story that God gets angry with Moses. While Moses is objecting
and making excuses, God is very patient. God keeps working with Moses to
convince him. But when Moses just says no, that’s when God gets angry.
God does not take no for an answer.
But God does not give up on Moses, either. Instead, God
understands Moses’ fear, and God gives him some help. God says, okay, I’ll
send your brother Aaron with you. I’ll tell you what to say, you tell
Aaron what to say, Aaron will say it to the Pharaoh, and it’ll all work out.
Most of us, at some point in our lives, feel God calling us to do
something. We may or may not realize that’s who it is. Sometimes we
may know it’s God who’s calling us, but other times we don’t. In fact,
sometimes, we don’t really know what’s going on. We just have this feeling
that there’s something we’re supposed to do, or somewhere we’re supposed to go,
or someone we’re supposed to see. We may not even know why we feel that
way. In fact, it may not be something we even want to do. But the
feeling won’t go away.
And we react the way everyone else does. We say “Who, me?
I cannot do that. You must’ve made a mistake here, God.” And
we raise all kinds of objections. We make all kinds of excuses. And
yet, the feeling does not go away. Deep down, we feel God answering our
objections and sweeping away our excuses. And finally, we’re left with
only the choices of saying yes or saying no.
Have you ever said no? I have. I’ve tried to, anyway.
Why? Because I was afraid. But when I’ve done that, God would
not take no for an answer. I won’t say God got angry with me, because I
never felt that, but these are the times I’ve told you about before.
These are the times when I could not feel the presence of God with me,
when it felt like my prayers were just hitting the ceiling and coming back to
me. I was trying to get God to do things my way, rather than agreeing to
do things God’s way. But God never gave up on me. God said, I’ll
give you some help, and it’ll all work out.
Are you trying to say no to God right now? I’ll bet some of
us are. I think the chances are very good that there are some of us right
now who are trying to say no to God about something. We may know it’s God
or we may not, but we have that feeling. We have that feeling that
there’s something we’re supposed to do, or somewhere we’re supposed to go, or
someone we’re supposed to see.
And there are some of us who are saying, “Who, me?” And
we’re trying to raise objections. And we’re trying to make excuses.
But the feeling does not go away. God keeps answering our objections
and sweeping away our excuses. And deep down, we know we’re left with
only the choices of saying yes or saying no.
When Moses finally said yes, it led to him leading the people of
Israel out of Egypt. It was not always easy. But God stayed with Moses, and it all worked
out. It led to Moses being remembered thousands of years later. It
led to him still being considered one of the greatest leaders in history.
All because, in the end, he said yes to what God was calling him to do.
Each one of us is called by God, just as much as Moses was.
We may not have seen a burning bush and we may not have heard a voice.
But each one of us is still called by God. Some of us may have
already said yes and are already doing what God has called us to do. But
some of us are still raising objections and making excuses. And some of
us are trying to tell God no. Why? Because we’re afraid.
But it won’t work. God does not take no for an answer.
But God does not give up on us either. God will give us some help,
and it’ll all work out.
Think about what God wants you to do. Pray about it.
Then, conquer your fear. Say yes. God will help you.
It won’t always be easy. But God will say with you, and it will all work out. God was with Moses. And God will be with us.
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