Excuses...Excuses...Excuses, Part 5

If you have your Bible, turn with me to Exodus chapter 3, and we are going to finish chapter 3 today.

You laugh as if I'm lying to you. We will. I'm going to burn through this thing. We're going get all the way down to verse number 17 of chapter 4. Yeah, we're going go flying through the excuses that Moses gives to God. It's taken us. Four weeks to cover the first two excuses, and we're going to cover the last three today.

But we remember that God gave a requisition to Moses. God came to Moses in a bush that would burn, and He would speak through that bush. And he would call Moses, and Moses would respond, and he would begin. And he gave a requisition in verse number 10, as you recall. He said, Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt. Through the life of Moses, we learn to understand that the excuses he gave are the same ones we give. Who am I, Lord, to serve you?

And God says, Certainly, I will be with you. It's not about you, it's about me. Instead of responding with excitement, instead of responding with enthusiasm, instead of saying, Oh Lord, I've been waiting 40 years for this to happen and I am ready to go, he began giving excuses to God. And so we went from the Requisition to the reluctance on behalf of Moses as to why he wasn't so excited about following the plan of God. Now, before we go any further, let me remind you.

It is so easy for us to be reluctant when God calls us. When God calls us, He calls us, first of all, to salvation and He calls us to serve Him, to glorify His wonderful name.

This afternoon, as we gather together for Della Grand's memorial service, I'm going to preach from her Bible. This is one of her many Bibles. And I've spent this past week, Tuesday through this morning, reading through this Bible and the different notes that she had and what she said. And in this Bible, in the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 12, verse number 13, it says, Now all has been heard. Here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

Need to follow what God says. In the side margin, Della wrote these words. She said, Obedience is the measure of our love for God. And then she quotes a man that said, For the Christian, life is simple, having but one single aim, to receive the Lord's approval, doing all in his name. Dear name. It's as simple as that. Yet we, like Moses, find ourselves reluctant to fulfill the call of God. Della, live that. Our purpose is to fulfill God's purpose for our lives. Not our purposes, but God's purposes.

And to be obedient to the Word of God. Through the life of Moses, we learn to understand that the excuses he gave are the same ones we give. Who am I, Lord, to serve you? And God says, Certainly I will be with you.

It's not about you, it's about me. You know, Moses learned that. And God would go on in Exodus chapter 3, and we going to pick up the narrative down in verse number 16 by telling Moses exactly what he was going to do. He says in verse number 16, Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, I am indeed concerned about you and what has been done to you in Egypt. So I said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Am, and the Perizzite, and the Hiv.

And the Jebus to a land flowing with milk and honey, and they will pay heed, listen, to what you say. If you got a pen or a pencil, you just circle that. Because I'm going to come back to that. And you, with the elders of all Israel, will come to the king of Egypt, and you will say to him, The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. So now please let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. But I know that the king of Egypt will not permit you to go except under compulsion.

So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my miracles. Which I shall do in the midst of it, and after that he will let you go, and I will grant this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and it shall be That when you go, you will not go empty-handed. But every woman shall ask of her neighbor and the woman who lives in her house articles of silver and articles of gold and clothing, and you will put them on your sons and daughters. Thus you will plunder. The Egyptians. And Exodus, of course, is that picture of redemption.

And is it not true that in our redemption, when we are saved, it's by the mighty power of God Himself, that if He doesn't stretch out His hand, if He doesn't do His mighty work, there is no Salvation. Chapter 4. See how fast he went through chapter 3? We're flying, man. Look at this.

This is so good. He says, Then Moses answered and said, What if they will not believe me or listen to what I say? Now remember when I told you to circle down there in verse number 18? What did God say? They're going to listen to you. What did Moses say? But what have they done? Folks, that's just like you and me. God says, This is what I want you to do.

Yeah, but Lord, but what if they don't respond? What if they don't listen? You see, we put so much credit in us. We put so much value in this earthen vessel. We really believe that it's up to us to do the work of God. And even though God gives a promise, they will listen.

But what if they don't listen, Lord? As if God doesn't know what's going to happen. We find ourselves. In the exact same boat, we want to throw out excuses to God. We doubt the word of the Lord. That's what Moses did: He doubted what God had already said. Now, listen to this. Latter part of verse number one for they may say the Lord has not appeared to you.

You know you you have to love how Moses responds to God. This is what they might say. We live in the same realm if we lived in the what is if we had a nickel for every time we said but What if this? We could retire and sit on the beach every day and do nothing. And so Moses asks, But what if they say the Lord's not appeared to you? He's asking for some kind of authority here, some kind of credibility to back up what he's going to say. And the Lord said to him, What is that in your hand? They said a staff.

Then he said, Throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground that it became a serpent, and Moses fled from it. The LORD said to Moses, Stretch out your hand and grasp it by its tail. So he stretched out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand. Now, stop right there for a second.

God said, You go to them and they're going to listen to you. And Moses said, But what if they don't listen? And God says, You have a staff?

Yes. Throw it down. Okay. He throws it down. It turns into a serpent. And God says, Moses, pick it up.

What's Moses do? He picks it up. He just picks it up. He does what God says. You see, so many times there are things that we want to be obedient to and there are things that we don't want to be obedient to. And Moses reaches down and does something that's dangerous, but God said, do it. So he did it. And the snake became a rod. Again, he says, verse number five: that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.

And the Lord furthermore said to him, Now put your hand into your bosom. So he put his hand into his bosom. And when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then he said, Put your hand into your bosom again. So he put his hand into his bosom again. And when he took it out of his bosom, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. That it shall come about that if they will not believe you or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe the witness of the last sign.

but it shall be that if they will not believe even these two signs, or heed what you say, then you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water which you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry gr. Now these three miracles are very significant because it reinforces that God is going to do the convincing. That the power of God will be displayed in your obedience to Him. You see, we want the power of God displayed in our lives without being obedient to Him.

But power comes to obedience. The ability to accomplish the will of God comes when I step out to do what God has said and believe ex what His Word says. But understand this: that the Conditions of my obedience to God should never be weighed by man's resp to God. What if they won't believe me? So what? So what? Why is that so important? Think of Jeremiah. God told Jeremiah, Jeremiah, you go and you preach the gospel. Jeremiah said, okay, I'll do it. And God says, by the way, nobody's going to listen to you.

Oh, wow. That changes things. And yet Jeremiah said, Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and they were the joy and the rejoicing of my heart. Do you ever read through the Bible and look at man's response to preaching?

There never was a lot of people responding. There just wasn't. And here was Moses. You're great. You're powerful. But what if they don't listen to me? He remembers what took place 40 years ago when he went in there with his mighty prowess and tried to convince them that he was their leader, and they rejected his leadership. So, all he can think of is what happened 40 years ago and say, you know, Lord, I know these people are stubborn. I know they're stiff-nicked. I know they're hard people to reach.

And you want me to go in there. What if they don't listen to me? What if they don't believe me? And God already said they're going to listen to you. We are a lot like that. We come back and say, you know, I want to be reconciled to my husband or to my wife, but what if they don't listen? So, so. I mean, are you doing what God asked you to do? Are you being obedient to His Word? Are you following through on what God said? But what if they don't respond? What if they don't love me in return? God says, so I'm asking you to love me enough to be obedient to me and to follow what I say.

That's it. No excuses. Just do what God has said. That's all. Let's move on. He gives three miracles. Three miracles, right? The rod, turned into a snake, and back to a rod again. The hand put inside the bosom, comes out, it's leprous, back in again, comes out, it's clean, and then the water turning to blood. Now, I want you to notice something.

Those three miracles represent: number one, redemption, number two, restoration, and number three, retribution.

The first miracle. Was this rod? It's called the staff of God throughout the Bible. You can read about it in chapter 4 of the book of Exodus. It was a staff of God, it was a rod of God. See, God again was doing something very significant in the life of Moses. This rod was just a stick, a three to six foot long stick. That's all it was. But God says if that stick's given to me by a man committed to me, I'll do a great and mighty work in a mighty way.

And he did. And that rod became the rod of redemption. It would be the method by which God would use to demonstrate his mighty power. To redeem his people, he would redeem them from the country of Egypt, and then he would redeem them from the corruption of Egypt. You will note that the rod was turned back to the rod after it was turned into a snake. And the hand, once turned leprous, was turned white and clean again. Why? Because it's a symbol of restoration. Not only is God going to redeem you, He's going to restore you.

So now we come to another excuse. Then Moses said to the Lord, Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent. Neither recently nor in time past, nor since thou hast spoken to thy servant, for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. You know, I just can't say it, Lord. I can't speak like my Sunday school. Teacher speaks. I just can't articulate it the way they do it. I can't say it that way. Now, you've got to remember what Acts chapter 7 Verse number 22 says that Moses was a man who was mighty in words and deeds.

That phrase, mighty in words, is the exact same phrase used of Apollos in Acts chapter 18, where it says that Apollos was mighty. In the scriptures. That is, that Apollos was a man who would be able to use the scriptures and use his words to explain to people the truth of Jesus Christ. Moses was a man who was mighty in words. He was a man who was persuasive, who could speak, who knew. How to address people. That's why, when he went in to convince the people that he was their deliverer, he thought that he could do it not only with.

Or through his deeds, but through his words as well, because he was a persuasive speaker. And now he says, Oh Lord, you know what? I'm slow of tongue. I'm not that good. And maybe, maybe he's come to the point through the 40 years I'm being on the backside of the desert that really, what he used to be able to do, he can't do anymore. And even if he could do it, it's not enough. I'll give Moses credit for that. Maybe that's the case. Listen to what God says: who has made man's mouth?

Or who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seen, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Folks, let me tell you something.

That wipes out every excuse you think you might have. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good-looking enough. I'm not thin enough. I'm not eloquent enough. I'm just not enough. And God, Wait a minute, who made you the way you are? Who did this? Who made your mouth? Who made your body? Are we fearfully and wonderfully made? Yes or no? Yes, we are. God designs us, God makes us. We are without excuse. Because God says, I made you the way you are.

And I've got you right where I want you, and I want to use you just right where you are today. You've got to focus on me. You've got to look to me because I'm the one that's going to do everything. And so he says in verse number 12, now then go. Third time, God says go.

How many times has God got to say go before you go? Go! And I, even I, will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to say. Isn't that good? I'm going to be with your mouth. Every one of you can present the gospel. Every one of you can stand firm for God. I don care if you're an elementary age student, or I don care if you're a high school student. I don care if you're a college student. I don How old you are or how young you are, if the Spirit of God ind your life, you can speak for God because God will speak in and through your life.

God will do it, He'll give you the words to say, He'll give you the wisdom you need. God said to Moses. It's going to be me who's speaking. Jesus said to his men, It's going to be my spirit who speaks through you. No excuses. And yet we have one more. See, I told you we'd finish today. And you didn't believe me. Oh, you of little faith. Here it is. Verse 13. But he said, Please, Lord, now send the message by whomever thou wilt. Or as the NIV says, Oh Lord, please send someone else to do it. Folks, this is the bottom line.

He didn't want to go to Egypt. Didn't want to do it. All the excuses were peripher. They were all surface issues. Because God stripped away every excuse that Moses had. And when you get right down to where the rubber meets the road, what is the problem? I don't want to go to Egypt. Send someone else. You know what happens in a lot of marriage counseling? They don't want their marriage to work. They don't. I've talked to people for weeks and for months on end about their marriage and what they need to do and be obedient to God and come to find out they're just not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

They give all kinds of excuses. The bottom line is they just don't want their marriage to work. They want the other one to leave so they can be free. They just don't want to do what God says.

They don't. Now, that's not every situation, but that's a lot of them. And when you examine your life, and when I examine my life, is it not true that God says this is what you need to do?

We just don't want to do that. We don't want to do it. Oh, we'll give excuses. Boy, if you were in my marriage, man, oh boy, it's so hard. Man, to be married to the guy I'm married to, oh man, he is so abusive. Oh, the things he says, it's just, oh, I just can't do it. And God says, yes, you can.

Sure, you can. You just need to do what I've asked you to do. And the Bible says, even if your spouse is your enemy, you've got to love your enemies, right?

Sure. The Bible says, pray for those that persecute you, love your enemies. You know, it comes right down to it. We just don't want to go across the street and share our faith. We don want to do that. We don't want to go on a mission trip. We just don't want to go. We'll give all kinds of excuses. Can't get time off from work. Got a big family. I got this going on. I that going on. Give all kinds of excuses. Bottom line is: you always do what you want to do. No, that's true. I do. If I want to do something, guess what?

I find time to get it done because I want to do it. And if you really want to be obedient, if you really want to do what God says, guess what?

You're going to do it because you really want to do it. Stop giving God excuses because God's going to strip all of those excuses away. And Moses finally said, Lord, just send somebody el.

And so it says in verse number 14, the anger of the Lord burned against Moses. Why? Because he was unavailable, he didn't want to be used. Why does God get angry about that? Because God says, I gave my life for you.

I sent my only son into the world. To be condemned and to hang on a tree and to die for your sins, and you can't get out of bed to be at church on Sunday morning? How? Why? I gave my son to die for you so that you would not have to face the wrath of Almighty God, that you might live forever with me, and you can't serve me in the work. But even in that, God had already provided for Moses because he had already sent Aaron To meet Moses, which emphasizes once again that God lives in the past, present, and future, all at the same time.

Listen to what he says. Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he speaks fluently. Now You need to understand that. He can speak. He's got a mouth. He can say something for me. You can't, but he can. Sort of a rebuke by our Lord to Moses. And then he says, And moreover, behold, he is coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. And you are to speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And I, even I, will be with your mouth and his mouth, and I will teach you what you are to do.

Moreover, he shall speak. For you to the people, and it shall come about that he shall be as a mouth for you, and you shall be as God to him, and you shall take in your hand this staff with which you shall perform the signs. God had provided already for Moses another man, another helper that would be there for him. He was without excuse. What do we learn from this? What do we gather together from this? I want to share with you just a couple of principles in the few moments that we have left to help you understand what should be our response.

When Moses gave the first excuse, who am I? God promised his presence. When he gave the second excuse, What is his name or who are you?

God promised his person. When he came back with the third excuse, but what if they don't believe me? Then God would promise to Moses His power. And then he came back with the other excuse, number four. Well, I don't speak so good. I'm not sure that I can say anything. And God promised Moses His pre. I will give you the words to say, I will tell you what to say. Say. And when he came back and said, I just don't want to go, God promised Moses his provision. I'll provide for you, Moses. Whatever you need, I'll take care of it.

God is just so good. So good. So, what's our response to this? Let me give you just a couple of things.

One, we should obtain courage from his presence. I don't care how many people are against you. If God is for you, who can be against you? And you and God are the majority. Number two, to be captivated by his person.

This afternoon, when I go back and use. Della's Bible to preach from this afternoon. Psalm 145 was her favorite psalm. And as you go through that psalm, you understand about the person and nature of our God. She was captivated by the person of God. In Psalm 145, verse number 3, it describes him as great. Verse number 4 is mighty. Verse number 6 is powerful. Verse number 7, his goodness, his righteousness. Verse number 8, His graciousness and His mercy. Verse number 9, His goodness. Verse number 11, His power.

Verse number 12, His mighty acts, H His glory and majesty. Verse number 13 is everlasting character. Verse number 14, how he sustains all those who fall. Verse number 17, he is righteous. Verse number 18, he is near to all those who call upon him. Verse number 20, he keeps all those who love him. Verse number 21, he is holy. She was captivated by the person and work of God Himself. And that's the way we should be. And number three: confidence in His power.

We should have confidence in his power. It's God who does it. Listen, in my ministry, in your ministry, in our call to serve the Almighty God of the universe. All we are required to do is be faithful. That's it. And God's going to take care of everything else because this is a supernatural life. This is not a natural life. There is the natural man that's characterized in the believer in the Bible as the unbeliever. The natural man is the. Unbeliever. The spiritual man is the believer. The spiritual man is the supernatural man because the God of the universe dwells in him.

You see? And so, the things that we do for the name of God in the realm of Christianity is all centered around the supernatural acts of God in and through people who are earthen vessels. Who have nothing to glory in because of who they are, but because of who God is and what God does. And so we have confidence in His power. Fourth, there needs to be a certainty of his precepts. Listen, what is going to help you fulfill the call of God is your belief that what God said is true is. What's going to help you to fulfill the call of God in your life is that when God says something in His Word and I do it, He promises blessing to those who obey.

He does. And therefore, my job is to keep his word. And I, with certainty, live out his precepts. I, with iron assurance, believe that what God has said is true, and nothing will deter me from that. Moses learned to believe in what God said. Do you? And lastly, there should be a comfort with God's plan and purpose. We should be comfortable with this plan. We might not agree with it, but we should be comfortable in it because God ordained it and designed it. Moses knew the ways of God, the children of Israel did not.

God wants to make known his ways to you as well. He does. But you can't be reluctant. You can't be given excuses. Instead of giving excuses, get excited about doing what God has said and watch. What he does. Let's pray.