Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
Acts 7:17-29 and Exodus 2:1-15
Has the fear of failure ever taken hold of you? It has me. I often wonder where I would be if I had not failed at some of my previous endeavors. I often wondered what people would think of me. Would I be seen as less of a man? I rarely if ever wondered about how God saw me. But the wonderful thing about God is that he loves me in spite of my failures.
He only sees me in Christ Jesus. He never sees me in a devalued sense, though in my own account I have related my failures to my own sense of worth.
It is a liberating experience to fail, and yet not feel discouraged, or worthless. There is a freedom in Christ that allows the believer to look for the open window when a door is closed. You see, God is in the door closing business as well as the door opening business.
The more readily I see God moving in my life and in control of my life the more readily I am willing to accept the changes that he brings into my life.
Moses was a man who came to understand this. In his life he saw lots of doors opened and closed. He was born in 1526 B.C. to a Hebrew slave at a time when the Hebrews were multiplying too quickly for the Pharaoh’s liking. Fearing there would be an uprising of the Hebrews, Pharaoh decreed all Hebrew boys, ages two years and younger should be slain.
As we know Moses was rescued from the Nile River by one of Pharaoh’s daughters. She took him home with her, and unbeknownst to her, she had Moses’ own mother to raise him in the palace.
He was living the high life in Pharaoh’s temple, and for forty years he had the best of the best--the best food, the best clothes, the best education, and choicest of friends and power to go with it.
When he was just a young man he had learned he too was one of the Hebrews.
In Ex.2:11-14 Moses was angered over how an Egyptian was beating one of his fellow Hebrew countrymen. Moses killed the Egyptian and thought his deed was unknown to all, but the next day he found out that two Hebrew men saw his deed, and they had obviously told Pharaoh about the murder; perhaps to gain some favor from Pharaoh.
In fear Moses fled to the wilderness because Pharaoh had found out, and sought to slay him. Moses was forty years old at this time. He was in the prime of his life. Everything he could have wanted lay at his feet. But, now things were different.
Moses fled to Midian in 1486 B.C. He was a broken man. All of the parties were over. All of the special treatment was over. The pampering and fine foods, and clean environment laid hundreds of miles west of his new found home. He took up with a band of sisters who were watering their father’s flock of sheep.
Once again he was in the delivering business. This time he delivered them from a group of shepherds who sought to drive them away from the well. They took him home to daddy. Their father’s name was Reuel, better known as Jethro. Jethro granted one of his daughters to Moses as a wife.
A door of opportunity to a life of prominence and power and possessions was opened for one third of Moses’ life. But, now another door was opened. This opened door brought more than prominence, power and possessions. This door opened up to Moses a life of marriage, family, and relative peace.
For forty years Moses raised his family and kept his father-in-law’s sheep.
He lived out these years in obscurity. He raised a family and tended sheep. At one time he could sleep on the softest of beds, and stay safe from the howling winds, and desert sands. But now, in the Midian Desert, a lonely, rugged place Moses lived.
God was deprogramming him from all he once deemed necessary. Comfort and having the nicest of things was no longer necessary, parties were no longer necessary. Prominence was no longer necessary. Power was no longer necessary. All of the things he must have once thought he could not live without were gone, but God forced him to find out that he could live without them. Could you live without some of the comforts and positions and possessions you have today? If God took them away, could you survive?
Brethren, if you think you cannot enjoy life unless you have the things you think make life complete such as a good paying job, a nice home, a nice car, a good education, a wonderful social life, good health and so on, then you have not broken the faith barrier into that secret place with God.
God will take you out of your comfort zone, and put you in his conforming zone, but when he does this you will need to make the adjustments. You will need to reevaluate your priorities, and more than that you will need to let God retool many of your previous ideas about self-worth. Too often we tend to evaluate our worth based on what people think of us, and this is very unsettling. It is what we understand God to think of us that is important. And this understanding cannot be attained when we are gliding along in our self-made comfort zone.
God will take us from the den to the desert, and when he does it will do us no good to keep day dreaming about how good it used to be. To God it is not about your comfort, it is about your conformity to Christ. To God it is not about how good it used to be, but how good it can be.
Moses had a lot to learn. Back in Egypt he felt he was important, and most likely he took himself very seriously, so seriously that he murdered a man just to get his point across. He was very opinionated and self-possessed. He felt he was above the law. He had forgotten his roots. He needed to find his way back, and God was there to show him the way.
He also found out that he could live with himself. He came to find out that he could only do so much. He found out that the whole world did not revolve around him. The only thing that revolved around Moses was a flock of smelly sheep. In this new found home, this new place in Moses’ life he found himself. He had been caught up in a life style that was selfish and unfulfilling. God was about to change Moses’ way of thinking.
I am bringing out these lessons to help you and me see how God is in charge of our well being, not others. That it is more important to God that you first understand his place in your life rather than your place in this world. That God is more concerned with who you are in his plans, than who you think you are in your plans. That God has a purpose for your life, and it is greater than any of your plans. We are his people and we are his responsibility. He will lead us to fulfill his purposes, even when we do not understand what he is doing. The key is to stay faithful to the teaching of his word so you will hear his instructions. Be where you can hear the word above everything else.