Let's go in our Bibles to Exodus
chapter 2. Exodus chapter 2 and our text
is found in verse 11. 11 through 15. 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
to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And
he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest
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. Now Hebrews 11 declares this
was all done in faith. Everything here was done by faith,
by God's grace, by God's power. And so Moses made a deliberate,
great, sacrificing choice here. It says, by faith, Moses, when
he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people
of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming
the reproach of Christ's greater riches than the treasures in
Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.
And so by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the
king, for he endured, he persevered, seeing Him who is invisible by
faith. Now as God describes Moses' faith
in the New Testament, He describes him under the new covenant of
grace in the perfection of Christ. There is no sin mentioned because
in Christ we have no sin. Christ purged the sins of all
His people so that in Christ, a believer, when we're sanctified
by Christ, we're given the good news that Christ is all our righteousness
and all our sanctification and we're complete in Him. The Scripture
says, God said, I'll be merciful to their unrighteousness and
their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. God won't remember the sins of
His people. In those days and that time,
saith the Lord, the ennui of Israel shall be sought for, and
there shall be none. That's why He don't remember
them. There are none. And for the sins of Judah, and
they shall not be found, for I'll pardon them whom I reserve. I pray God to make you that don't
believe, believe Christ today because if you believe Christ
today by God's grace, by His gift, by His work, by His grace,
you trust Christ and the righteousness of Christ will be imputed to
you. God will say to you in your heart, I don't remember your
sin. They are none. Romans 4.24 says, to whom the
righteousness of Christ shall be imputed if we believe on him
that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead who was delivered
for our offenses and raised again for our justification. I pray
that. I pray that God will give you
that. That is peace to know. God will never remember a sin
against me because Christ put them so away. I don't have any.
No record. past, present, or future of sin. They're gone. They're gone. Well,
the other thing we see in Exodus 2 though is we see sin in Moses. Sin was mixed with his faith.
In the Old Testament we see Moses sin because the Old Covenant
is the covenant of works. The Old Covenant is where men
are shown how they are in the flesh what the law reveals about
them, what we are in Adam, so that there's no way you could
come to God by the works of the law. It shows, the same passage
here shows Moses' sin in the Old Testament and in the New
it has no mention of sin. Because the New shows you in
Christ, the Old shows you in Moses' flesh. in Moses' flesh. Now, we're going to talk today
about Moses' unbelief. We saw last time from this passage
Moses' faith. This time we're going to see
Moses' unbelief. Now, do you think it's odd that
we're going to use the same passage to see Moses' unbelief where
we saw Moses' faith? It shouldn't be because everywhere
you see faith in the believer, there's going to be sin mixed
with it. Because there is an old man born of Adam's corrupt
seed that's still in every believer. And there's a new man created
of Christ of incorruptible seed in which dwells no sin, which
is righteousness and holiness. It's called Christ in you. There's
no sin in Christ. The life that's in you is Christ
in you. The Spirit of Christ in you. There's no life, there's
no sin in Christ. There's no sin in that new man.
He's holy and righteous. Because Christ is holy and righteous.
He's holy and righteous in Christ. But everywhere you see sin, or
everywhere you see a believer walking by faith, by God's grace,
you're going to see sin. Because we're I have sin mixed
with everything we do. That's why a believer, when you're
truly sanctified and made to know what you are, that's what
sanctification involves, giving a pure heart to be honest about
what you are. You're going to know that in
you dwells nothing good. And you can't look to anything
about you. You can't even look to your new
man because that wasn't of you. That's of God. You look outside
of you to Christ who is our righteousness and our holiness. That's what
we're taught because we can't save ourselves. Sin's mixed with
everything we do. We have to have Christ. Paul
said, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank
God. That's who's going to deliver
me through Jesus Christ our Lord. That we don't look to ourselves
because we know sin's mixed with everything we do. But what I
want to show you here today is As we look at Moses' unbelief,
we're reminded that before God is going to use his servant,
before God will use his servant, God is going to first prepare
his servant in the school of suffering. Now you and I, that
he's called, we're servants. You're either the servant of
sin or you're the servant of Christ. You who he's called are servants
of Christ. And he's going to use us all in some capacity,
so we're all going to suffer in some capacity. And if he uses
you in any special way, like as a pastor or something like
that, expect before he does it, and as he does it, you are going
to suffer greatly. I promise you. I promise you. So, at this time now, let me
begin by reminding you, Moses believes God. God has come, he's
given Moses faith to believe, and Moses believes God. And Moses
believes that God's going to use him to deliver his people
out of Egypt. He knows this at this point.
I'll show you in a minute. But look at verse 11. It came
to pass in those days when Moses was grown, he went out unto his
brethren and looked on their burdens. By faith, God gave Moses
a heart for God to have all the glory and a heart for His people. That's what God does when He
gives you a new heart. You love God and you love your
brethren. You want to see God get all the
glory for salvation and you want to see your brethren that you
know are called out, you want to see them saved. And those
brethren you don't know are called out, that you don't know, that
are not yet called out, you want to see them saved. And so you
have a burden for them. And He teaches you, and you know
this, you learned this from the very beginning. He says, let
this mind be in you. You have this mind. This is your
mindset right here. This is the heart set in you
right here. Let this mind be in you which
was also in Christ Jesus. Who thought it not robbery to
be equal with God. Meaning He was equal with God.
One with God. Equal with God. He is God. And
yet He made Himself of no reputation. He made Himself of no reputation. He took upon Him the form of
a servant. And being made in likeness of
men, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and
He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Now Christ willingly did all these things for two reasons.
He willingly did these things because he desired to see God
receive all the glory for the salvation of his people. A to
Z. Christ longed to see God receive
all the glory for the salvation of his people. That's the mind
he's going to put in his servant. To make you want to see God receive
all the glory for the salvation of his people. And that glory
is manifest in Christ, in His person and His work. And the
second thing that Christ had in His heart was He wanted to
see all those that the Father gave to Him before the world
was made saved from our sins. So He wanted God to have all
the glory and He wanted to see His people saved. That's what
He's going to put in the heart of His servant. He's going to
give you a heart to see God glorified, all the glory, and a heart burdened
for your brethren to be saved. And before we can ever be used
of God, especially a preacher, God has got to give us this heart
toward God and toward His people. We've got to have this heart
toward God that we want Him to have all the glory And we want to see His people
saved. And they're connected. They're vitally connected. The
only way God's going to save His people is through the message
that gives Him all the glory. And the only way you're going
to give Him all the glory is preaching that message. No other
way. No other way. Can't turn to any
other means. That's it. That's it. That's
how God's going to bring glory to Himself. He's chosen the wisest,
best means there is. If God did it, you can be sure
it's the best way to do it. And He did. And we're going to
give Him the glory through this means, and that's how He's going
to save His people. Now, we've got to have that heart,
a burdened heart. And when you have it, let me
tell you something, I know that the man that just stands up and
preaches and finds it easy to prepare a message and come and
fill in and preach or whatever, will think, well, I don't see
what's so hard about it. I tell you what you don't see
is the burden. That's what you don't see. But
you're going to stand one day and God's going to say, did you
preach the gospel to this man? And you're going to be held accountable
for that man. And you know the people, you don't know who's
coming in every day. You don't know who's going to
be at that meeting. You don't know who's going to be there. But
you do know this, you are the one that has to preach Christ
to them. This may be the only time they hear the gospel preached.
You've got to preach Christ to them. You've got to start preaching
Christ to them from the beginning. They may get up and walk out
ten minutes in. Start preaching Christ to them. And don't stop preaching Christ.
And you got your flesh to contend with. And you got your household
to provide for. You got everything that every other man's got to
deal with in life. You've got to deal with it. But
above all is that people that you're responsible to preach
that gospel to. Giving God all the glory in every word that's
spoken. And you walk around with that constantly. And you never
are without it. When you have that nice leisurely
vacation time, you're guilty because you think this ain't
what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm supposed to be preaching
his gospel. When you're providing for this
other one over here, you're not providing for his house. It's
constant. You've got to have it. You've
got to have it. So, in what Moses did now, we're
going to see he made some mistakes. Now let me say this. And I will
say this because you are going to make these mistakes. I am
going to make these mistakes. This is what we are in our flesh.
And we are so slow to learn. God teaches us this from the
beginning. I don't care who you are serving Him in what capacity.
He teaches you. He is going to have all the glory.
And what you are here for is to serve His people. And He gives
you that to some degree. He gives it to everybody. But
we are slow to learn that. And we are fast to make mistakes.
Slow to learn it and fast to make mistakes. And so, really
the way we learn everything, this is so naturally, but this
is especially so spiritually, the way you learn something is
by doing it wrong. Falling on your face and mostly
when you hurt from it. The worse, more you hurt from
it, the more you are out not to do it again. If you burn your
hand, you know, on a coffee cup, Well, you might pick up a burnt
coffee cup again. If you burn your hand on the
actual flame on the stove, you won't stick your hand back in
that flame if you've got any sins. The more it hurts, the
better you learn it, and the quicker you learn it. So God's
going to put His child through some suffering to make us learn,
to teach us. So in what Moses does next, we're
going to see a few of the things that shows us Moses' unbelief,
and we're going to see why he needed to be taught. And we're
going to see why we need to continually be taught. Now look at verse
11. Moses looked on their burdens. He goes out to his brethren.
He's got this heart. He knows he's going to deliver
them. He wants God to have the glory. He knows that they're
going to be delivered, and he sees their burdens, their afflictions,
and he identifies with them. And he goes out there, and he
spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew. one of his brethren. Here's an
Egyptian smiting one of his brethren and it says he looked, he looked
this way and that way and he saw no man. He looked and he
saw, he didn't see a man and he slew the Egyptian. He looked,
he saw, he slew and then he hit him. in the sand. He looked,
he saw, he slew, and he hid. Why did he do that? Go to Acts
7.25. Acts 7.25. God, speaking through Stephen,
as Stephen is being stoned to death, preaching the gospel,
God gives him a heart to speak and tell us why Moses did what
he did. Isn't God good to give us a commentary
on Scripture? He did it with a man dying. under
the cruel hand of persecutors, teaching us why Moses must be
taught that he's going to have to bear persecution and suffer. He taught us why Moses did what
he did. Acts 7.25, For he supposed his brethren would have understood
how that God by his hand would deliver them, but they understood
not. In the beginning Let me ask you
a question. In the beginning, how did Moses
come to have faith? How did you come to have faith?
How did Moses come to hear the message that God would send forth
a seed in whom all his elect and all the nations of the earth
would be blessed, saved from our sins? How did he come to
believe that and hear that and trust that message of Christ
and Him crucified? How did he hear that he was going
to be the one that was going to be delivered? And how did
he have faith to believe he was going to be delivered? And how
did he even have the strength to go out there and leave Egypt
and identify with his brethren? How did he have all that? Well,
number one, it was by God-given faith. A gift. God gave him faith
to believe God. And yet, here's Moses, looking left and right with these
eyes, spying him an Egyptian with these eyes, not looking to God. That's not faith looking with
these eyes. He looked this way and that way and didn't see a
man. But by faith who do we see? Him who's invisible. But he's
looking with these eyes right there. And then Moses was given
faith that he had by God sending somebody to Moses. Faith comes
by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, probably his mama
and daddy. But Moses sent somebody to Moses
declaring to him the message that he had preached to Abraham,
and that he had preached to Isaac, and that he had preached to Jacob,
and that he had preached to Joseph, and that he had preached to to
his mother and daddy, all the way to him, he preached this
message to Moses. He sent somebody to Moses to
speak his word. That's what he did. He sent somebody
to Moses to speak the truth of this word. And yet, Moses did
this using his own hand. He slew the Egyptian with his
own strength. with his own fleshly hand. He
slew this Egyptian. And he hid him in the sand. He found a place to hide him.
That took some effort, some strength, some wisdom in Moses' fleshly
strength and fleshly wisdom. That's not how he was given faith.
He was given faith by somebody speaking the gospel to him. And
then Moses believed God only by the power of God's divine
revelation, blessing that word to his heart through faith. That's
the only way he had any life or faith or any blessing to believe
anything, was by divine revelation, divine power given it to him.
And yet, here's Moses, supposing that his brethren would have
understood how that God by his hand would deliver them. Supposition
is not faith. Supposition is not revelation.
Supposition is us supposing something ought to be how we think it ought
to be. Everywhere you find someone supposing in the scripture, you
know what you find? An error. Look it up. Take your Strong's Concordance.
Look up the word suppose, supposed, supposition. Look it up. And
everywhere you find the word, you'll find somebody making a
mistake. They supposed. That's not faith. That's not revelation. Let me
give you an example. Moses supposed, God's going to
use me to deliver Israel, so I'm going to go out here right
now and I'm fixing to start. It's time to start. I'm going
to go out here and I'm going to deliver them. And he probably
meant well. But God hadn't prepared Moses to deliver him yet. And
He hadn't prepared Israel to be delivered yet. You see, that's
got to be revealed to Moses by God, by divine revelation, through
the Word, through Christ, through the power of God, through faith.
That's got to be revealed to Israel the same way. Not by supposing,
but by supposing it was time He did it 40 years too early.
40 years too early. Have you ever done something,
tried to do something for the cause of Christ and God just
seemed to just tear the whole thing to pieces? Caused you to
cry and suffer and just tore it to pieces. And then years
later, it's just like you couldn't stop it from falling into place
and it was happening. You could do it just like you
wanted to do it way back yonder. Why didn't it happen back there?
It wasn't time. God had to prepare you for it
and He had to prepare it for whoever it was done for. And
that's what was happening here. Now let's learn from Moses here
in the light of Christ. Let's look to Christ. Christ
Jesus came into this world and He not only looked on the things
of others. Moses did that. Moses went out
there and he looked on the things of his brethren. He looked on
the affliction of his brethren. He wanted to help his brethren.
But Christ came down and He not only looked on the things of
others, He not only esteemed others better than Himself, He made Himself of no reputation. He did nothing through strife
or vainglory. You know, when you first... God
teaches you He's going to use you in some capacity and you
start beginning to think, you know, I think God might use me. And so you start looking for
some way that God's going to use you. And you're always going
to mess up when you do that. You're going to run before you're
sent. Almost every time. If not every time. But you start
thinking about it. When you start thinking about
it, here's what you do. You start setting up this pretty
little fairy tale in your mind. And you have this visualization
of how Your people are going to see you as their deliverer. And they're going to see how
strong you are. And they're going to see you
as mighty. And they're going to see you this way or that way.
And boy, they're just going to want to fall in line. And they're
going to praise you and follow you. And everything's going to
be so sweet and wonderful. You suppose how this is going to
work out. It don't ever work out that way. Just don't. Christ Jesus had
every right to be viewed by His people as a mighty deliverer.
He had every right to be viewed that way. He's equal with God.
He had every right to come forth and make Himself a reputation.
He had every right to do it. He's God. He's God. And yet He
didn't come forth smiting His enemies and doing some mighty
work to make you and I see Him as this great grand political
deliverer and doing all these civil works for people and doing
all this great deliverance for us so that we all want to fall
in line and say, yes, that's our deliverer right there. That's
what Israel was looking for when He came. That's why they rejected
Him. He didn't come that way. How
did He come? He made himself of no reputation.
He was born of a poor virgin. And he was born like everybody
else was born, except he was born of a virgin, without sin.
But to the man's eye, natural reason, he was born like everybody
else. They said, this is the carpenter's son. This ain't even
a doctor's son. This is an old carpenter's son. We know his daddy. We were raised
up with his daddy. We know him. How are we supposed
to follow this man? He went around speaking the gospel
and he didn't speak what they wanted him to speak. And he went
around and he was a tender root out of a dry ground. And he was
despised by men and he was rejected by men. They didn't want to have
anything to do with him. You think Moses was rejected
for what he did. Christ, they didn't want anything
to do with Christ. And he rode into Jerusalem at
last when he's going to do the great work he came to do. Surely
by this time now, surely he'll ride in on a big white stallion.
No, he rides in on a little ass's coat. Can you picture that? Can
you picture men bowing down and saying, Hosanna to the King in
the highest, and he's riding a little donkey? I bet you wise
and prudent men were looking at that picture going, what are
these people thinking? This is beneath us. We're not
bowing down to a man on a baby donkey. And then he goes to a
cross rejected by the majority. The popular vote didn't go to
him. He went to the cross and he was nailed to a cross and
he was beat and men looked upon him and said, we don't want to
have anything to do with him. He made Himself of absolutely
no reputation. You know what He did? He did
what you, your sinful flesh and my sinful flesh hates with everything
we are in the flesh. He made Himself of no reputation.
You hate that in your flesh and I hate that in my flesh. We want
to be proud We want to be recognized. We don't want to have our rights
offended. We don't want to have our way
pushed against. We want to be recognized. We want to smite with a fist
of wickedness if we're not. He made himself of no reputation. He did nothing through strife.
He did nothing through vainglory. He suffered in silence as a lamb
before his shearers is dumb. He opened not his mouth. Why
did he do that? Because when He took the form
of a servant, serving His Father and serving His people, remember
what we said from the beginning? His heart was for God to have
all the glory and for His people to be saved. And the only way
for God to have all the glory is for the Lord Jesus Christ
to come forth and trust His Father to give Him the words to speak.
And then speak those words. trust His Father and wait on
His Father to draw all that the Father had given unto Him. And
that's what He did. He had to go to that cross and
He had to trust His Father to judge Him righteously. To judge
Him as that sin-bearing lamb to judge him
guilty, and yet that holy son who believes in God and trusts
in God and never wavers from God, to judge him righteous and
holy. And he had to trust Him to raise
him from the dead and make good on his promise and sit him down
at God's right hand. Everything he did, he did it
perfectly glorifying the Father, and in the process, saved his
people from our sin. Now by faith, that's what He
did. He purged our sin. He made us
righteous. And if we're going to serve Him, remember what we
saw this morning in Hebrews, He learned obedience by the things
which He suffered. And so when He suffered those
things, He was made our perfect Redeemer, our perfect Savior,
and now He's the author of eternal salvation. Who? To who? To all
who obey Him. How are we going to learn to
obey Him? We're going to learn by the things which we suffer.
We're going to learn by the things which we suffer. Now I know vain
religion speaks much about suffering for Christ. They speak much about
self-denial. They speak much about denying
yourself, taking up your cross and following Him. But they speak
of it as making yourself a reputation. You want everybody to see Christ
in you. Now somebody said they didn't
see Christ in Christ when He walked this earth. They're not
going to see Christ in you. That's not our goal. God might
use you to cause somebody to see some example or something
like that, like we look at Moses and these men as types of Christ,
but not likely. We got these men to look to,
rather than you and me. The point of you walking in this
world so that you're not, is so that you don't make yourself
a reputation before man. The way you're a light shining
on a hill, and a candle that's shining instead of under a bushel
is, is by pointing men to Christ the light, rather than to you.
When you walk in a room and there's a candle that's lighting up the
room, you walk in and you see the light, and you enjoy the
light, and you gaze about because you see the light. You don't
walk in and just fasten your eye on the candle. Well, you
and me are the candle in God's hand. And all we're to do is
to shine forth the light of Christ. So they see Christ and they walk
in Christ. Not us. We don't want men looking
to us. We're not trying to make a reputation
of us. We want Him to have all the glory and we want to see
His people saved through the hearing of Him. But we're going
to have to suffer and learn obedience by these things we suffer to
depend entirely on Christ. We're going to have to learn
to speak what Christ gives us to speak. like He spoke what
God the Father gave Him to speak. We're going to have to learn
to commit it all to Him and wait on Him like He waited on the
Father when He walked this earth. We're going to have to be taught
that it's by God's power alone that He's going to work in His
people and wait on God to work in His people. So that we're
going to have to have the heart, what I'm saying is, to give God
all the glory and His people to be saved. So lastly, what
happened? What happened to Moses? Well,
Christ is the only one that can do this in His people. God's
now given it into His hands, the reign is His, and He's working
this in His people right now. What we see, He worked in Moses
here. So what did God do with Moses?
He caused everything that Moses tried to do to fail. And He chastened
Moses. He's chasing Moses. The next
day Moses went out there and he sees his two brethren. He's
thinking to himself, they're going to receive me today from
what happened yesterday. You realize if Moses had been
left where he was the day before, if God left him in there, you
know what kind of preacher he'd have been? A Pharisee. He went out
there and saw a man unlawfully treating another man wrongly
and he took it into his own hand and he smoked that man. That's
pharisee preaching right there. God ain't going to have his preacher
be a pharisee. He's going to have him preach the gospel. He's
going to have him preach the gospel. So Christ, Christ here
made him to fail. He went out that next day thinking
he's going to be received and he tells this one Hebrew brother,
why are you smiting your other brother? And that brother said,
who made you the prince and the commander over us? You're going
to smite us like you did that Egyptian yesterday? Christ can use His people to
chasten His people. Now that's my job is not to go
around looking to see somebody breaking the law like Moses was
doing and smite them. That's not my job. My job is
to preach Christ. To do that would be like you're
at your house and there's your children and you're the head
of your house. You men, and I come over to your
house one day, and let's take the Kellers. I walk into Keller's
house one day, and I say, Will, why are you doing that the way
you're doing that? You need to stop that today and come over
here and let me, I'm fixing to give you a whipping, boy. Scott
Keller would say, he ain't your child. What are you doing? Well,
you know what? If I was to do that, I'd be wrong.
And you know what Scott, God would be using Scott Keller to
do? To tell me, you're flat wrong. God will use his people to tell
us we're wrong, but it's going to be not to whip and smite,
to be the first one to whip and smite. It's going to be the one
to correct, to bring you back to realize, wait a minute, this
is not how God saves. You see, this is his house. He's the head of this house.
I'm not to walk into this house and smite his people unnecessarily. I'm to stand up, preach his word.
He'll do the disciplining. He'll do the correcting. He'll
do the chastening. He may use the words coming out
of my mouth like he used that Hebrew brother to do it. He may
use the words coming out of somebody else's mouth. They may not even
know it. But he's going to smite and he's going to chasten his
child, but here's why he's doing it. It's to teach us what, it's
to humble Moses and to teach Moses what true meekness is.
You see, true meekness is not to be a pushover before men.
Moses is the meekest man on the earth. It's not to be a pushover
before men. It's not to be a compromiser.
You ask Janice and Jambres if Moses was meek. Those fellows
would say, no, he wasn't meek. He was uncompromising and arrogant
and proud. Because that's how the flesh
sees true meekness. True meekness is to bow to God,
trust God's Word, not be moved from God's Word, and to say,
we're doing it this way. Wait on God to teach you. This
is how we're going. This is what God says. That's
going great against a man's flair. He won't call that meek at all.
He'll call that uncompromising and dogmatic. That's meek, to
trust God over men. That's meekness. Moses has got
to be taught that. He's working in the flesh right
now. He's got to be taught that supposing is not faith. He comes there. And he supposed
that he was going to understand that he was going to deliver
them. And he went out by faith, chastened, and sat down by a
well in the wilderness. He came there proud, and haughty,
and arrogant, supposing they're going to see I'm their deliverer.
They're going to understand I'm their deliverer. When God gets
through with him, he goes out by faith, humbled, chastened,
to a desert, and sits down by a well. When Christ chastens,
when God chastens, Hebrews 12, go home and read it. When God
chastens, He chastens His child that we might be a partaker of
His holiness. He takes us from our vain way
and He turns us back and sets us down at Christ the well. He makes this world a desert
to us. So we can't find anything in it pleasant. And He sets you
down by Christ the well. And He says, now, learn. Here's
where you're going to learn. Learn right here. Moses is going,
we're going to have to be taught what Moses was taught. And that's
what Christ will do with it. He'll teach us from His heavenly
Zion. See that you refuse not Him that speaks from Zion. Next
time, if you hear a word come from the pulpit instead of getting
angry, say, God's talking to me. And refuse not Him that speaks. Moses supposed now was the time
to deliver Israel. God sent him to dwell 40 more
years out there in that desert, tending sheep. Physical sheep. He goes out there
for 40 years and tends physical sheep. You know why? His life
is divided into three 40-year periods. 40 years in Pharaoh's
house, 40 years in the desert, tending physical sheep, so he
could learn how to tend those spiritual sheep for 40 years
out there in the wilderness. God's going to teach you how
to tend spiritual sheep using other kinds of sheep. And then, when God's time came,
did God affect it? Did He accomplish what He was
doing? Prepare Moses? Forty years later,
the time came. Go over to Exodus 4. When the
time came, and the Lord came and told Moses the time had come,
It looks like we're dealing with an entirely different man. Moses
was mighty in words and deeds in Egypt. He went to that Egyptian.
He smoked that Egyptian. Supposing his brothers were going
to see him as big and mighty. And then we see him go out with
his tail between his legs and sit down at the well. And he
dwelt at that well with the sheep for 40 years. God's going to
put you with His sheep, make you dwell there, at the well,
being fed by Christ, to teach you how to lead His sheep if
He is going to use you. And when the time came, won't
you look at this man, look at his attitude. Verse 10, Moses
said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore,
nor since Thou hast spoken to Thy servant. I am slow of speech,
and I am slow of tongue. Look down at verse 13. And he
said, Oh my Lord, send I pray Thee by the hand of him whom
Thou wilt send. When it's time to go now, Moses
says, Lord, send somebody else. I can't go. I can't even talk. That's a different man from that
man we saw before, isn't it? Moses supposed they would know
how God would deliver them by His hand. Now God taught Moses
what we must be taught. It's not by Moses' hand. It's
not by my hand. It's not by your hand. It's by
Moses' mouth that God delivered Israel. Look here, Exodus 3 and
look at verse 14. God said unto Moses, I am that
I am. And he said, thus shalt thou
say. Thus shalt thou say unto the
children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you. And God taught
him further there what he was to tell them. He taught him the
gospel that he was to tell them. Look down at verse 19. But God
said, And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you
go, no, not by a mighty hand. Moses was mighty in words and
deeds. God said, King of Egypt ain't
going to let you go by your mighty hand. It ain't going to happen.
Well, how's it going to happen then? I will stretch out my hand,
God said, and I'll smite Egypt with all my wonders, which I
will do in the midst thereof. And after that, He will let you
go. And I will give this people favor
in the sight of the Egyptians, and it shall come to pass that
when you go, you shall not go empty. Look at Exodus 4 and verse
12. Now therefore go, and I will
be with thy mouth. and I'll teach thee what thou
shalt say." God's going to deliver His people, but God's going to
get the glory. So He's going to take a vessel,
and He's going to teach that vessel, you're nothing. You're
filled with a treasure, but you're nothing. You're going to be brought
to say, Lord, I can't go. I'm not fit to be used. And God
will say, now, go. I'm going to be with your mouth.
I'm going to teach you what to say. It's going to be by my hand
that the work is going to be done. Do you remember Zerubbabel? Zerubbabel, Zachariah. Zachariah saw, God showed him
this. He showed him this big golden
bowl full of oil. And on either side was an olive
tree filling that bowl. And from it, it come down and
it had these things, these little pipes that came down from that
golden bowl. It went to seven candlesticks. And that just lit those candlesticks,
they were just lightened, just lit up. And God said, you know
what you're seeing? You know what the message is?
You know what I'm trying to teach you? God said, here's what I'm
teaching you. He said, he spake to me and he
said, now this is the word of the Lord for you to speak to
Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel was the governor. He was the one that
thought he was in charge and going to do things by his hand.
God said, you tell Zerubbabel this. He said, you tell him, this is the word of the Lord
to Zerubbabel. It's not by might, it's not by
power, but it's by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Who
art thou, O great mountain? Who are you, mighty Pharaoh?
Who are you, persecuting beasts? Who are you, stout-hearted, unregenerate,
chosen child of God? Who are you, O great mountain?
Before it's arrivable, thou shalt become a plain. I'm going to
chop you down and just make you smooth as you can be. And He's
going to bring forth the headstone thereof with shouting, crying,
grace, grace unto it. He's going to save every one
of His chosen living stones, make them living stones out of
that mountain. He's going to do it how? By sending the oil
of the Spirit into that candlestick, His church, Preaching that gospel
message, and through it, He's going to bless by His Spirit.
And it's not going to be by your might, or my might, or anybody
else's might. He's going to get all the glory,
and every one of His people are going to be saved. That's what
He has to teach us, over and over and over. I pray He'll do
that. Amen.