July 17, 2016 - 11:00 a.m.
PastorJonathan Falwell
Overcoming Insecurity
Jonathan Falwell
Scripture: Exodus 4
Summary: In this sermon, the fourth in a series entitled Overcomer, which focuses on the life of Moses, Pastor Jonathan focuses on Exodus 4, and characteristics that were present in Moses’ life that we need to have present in our lives in order to overcome insecurity.
We’ve been walking through this series entitled Overcomer over the last few weeks, on how to truly push through in life, to overcome the challenges and the heartaches, to overcome those moments of brokenness, those moments of tears that flow down our cheeks because we don’t know what to do. And we’ve been looking at the life of Moses. We’ve been learning from moments in his life, experiences thus far in his life that transformed him and prayerfully, hopefully, that would also serve to help transform each and every one of us. That would help us to see exactly what it is that God wants us to do as we, too, need to be overcomers—to come through and to celebrate.
We talked last week about how to overcome our past. We looked at those moments in Exodus 3 when Moses, as he was walking through the wilderness and he came upon that burning bush and he saw that bush that was being burned—we read it last week—you remember what he said. He said, “I can’t believe it. This is amazing. This is a bush that is burning. It’s not being consumed. I’ve got to go check this out and see what’s going on.”
And we know that as he approached that bush he began to hear the call of God on his life. When he approached that bush and he began to hear God’s call, you know what happened. When he recognized what was taking place here, recognized that he was in the presence of God and he heard the voice of God saying, “Take off your sandals. The ground that you are standing on, it is holy ground,” Moses’ response is he covered his face, he covered his eyes, because he did not want to look at God. He was fearful because he knew he was in a place he’d never been before. Eighty years of life that he had lived up until that point, and never before had he been in the presence of God like that, and it was fearful. It was scary. He didn’t know what to do.
And what took place in the moments past that is God began to lay out for him a plan. God began to lay out for him a path that he was to travel, a road that he was to take, and as we began to read through that last week, we saw that Moses had some issues with what God had to say. Moses was a little bit concerned. Moses was worried about what was going to take place. And you remember that familiar phrase when Moses cried out to God, “Who am I to do this? Who am I to do this?”
Of course, we also read last week how God began to assure him and to explain to him how he had everything perfectly planned out, that God was going to use him to do some amazing things. If you continued reading through Exodus 3, you saw as we moved through that passage, when Moses said, “Who shall I tell them that sent me? They are going to ask me your name. What do I say?” And God said, “Tell them that I Am has sent you.” And so he heard this perfectly crafted plan to deliver the children of Israel.
Now what we didn’t read last week, if you continued reading in Exodus 3, you saw that God planned out the whole situation. He let him know exactly what was going to take place. He let him know that he was going to go before Pharaoh, and he knew that Pharaoh was going to harden his heart, and he knew that God was going to send plagues, and he knew that God was going to deliver.
And so throughout that entire passage that we read last week and then beyond, through the end of Exodus 3, we saw that God had a plan for Moses to overcome. And so today what we’re going to do is we are going to move into Exodus 4, and we are going to continue talking about what it means to overcome. We are going to talk about how we can be like Moses.
How many of you here today would like to be like Moses? Let me just remind you who Moses is, right? Moses, when you look at the Bible and probably if you ask 99 percent out of 100 of all the people in the world, if you ask them, “Tell me who were the ten major figures of the Bible,” Christ would go first. But on that list there would be Abraham and there would be Noah and Paul and maybe Peter. I’m telling you, Moses would be on the list, right?
Jonah would still be on there because of the whale. I still think he’s on the list because of the whale, not because of Jonah. But still, Moses would be on the list, right? Moses was a guy who walked before Pharaoh and threw down the stick, and what happened? It became a snake. But then what’s really cool is he picked the snake back up again and it became a rod again.
This is the same guy who delivered Israel from captivity in Egypt. This Moses is the guy who walked up to the Red Sea when the army was chasing right behind them. When there seemed to be no hope, what did Moses do? He walked up to the water and he held up his hands and the sea parted, and they crossed the sea on dry ground. That’s pretty amazing. That’s a big deal. Moses is one of the big guys, the top ten of the Bible.
Today we’re going to talk through some characteristics that were present in Moses’ life that we need to have present in our lives. We are going to talk about the things that we’ve got to make sure are there if we are going to do what God has called us to do, if we are going to overcome just like Moses did.
I want to give you some quick thoughts from the life of Moses, from Exodus 4, that we better make sure are present in our lives if we are going to be just like Moses. Okay, you got this? I want you to write them down if you’ve got a pen, or you can follow along in our app on your phone or whatever it might be. These are things that have got to be in your life if you’re going to be just like Moses.
Okay, the first one is this: we better be able to say, just like Moses, “I am not good enough and I’m not smart enough.” You got that? You say, “Wait a minute now. you’re setting this thing up like Moses was incredible; he was an amazing leader; he changed the course of history. You’re setting us up like Moses had everything together and he accomplished so much for God, and yet you’re saying what I better make sure is in my life that was present in his life is this idea that I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough.”
Look what it says in Exodus 4:1, “But Moses protested again, ‘What if they won’t believe me or listen to me? What if they say, “The Lord never appeared to you?”’ Then the Lord asked him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ ‘A shepherd’s staff,’ Moses replied. ‘Throw it down on the ground,’ the Lord told him. So Moses threw down the staff and it turned into a snake and Moses jumped back.”
Now, if I have a stick in my hand and I throw it on the ground and it turns into a snake, I’m not going to jump back. I’m going to jump back, I’m going to run, I’m going to get a shotgun and blow that thing to smithereens. That’s the only mistake that Moses made here.
But what is interesting in this passage are four very simple words that Exodus 4:1 starts with. Look what it says here, “But Moses protested again.” Now you know last week we talked about the past. We talked about how to overcome our past. We talked about how Moses questioned God, “Who am I to do this? Who am I to be your spokesman? Who am I to lead the children of Israel out of captivity? God, you’ve messed up here. Who am I to do that? And then, God, when I go to them, they are going to ask who sent me. What do I say, because they are not going to believe me? What do I do?”
Moses firmly believed he was not good enough to accomplish what God had called him to do. It says here “Moses protested again.” If you go back in the verse just prior to this one, at the end of Exodus chapter 3, we see that God laid out an incredible plan. I mean He gave him the perfect situation, the scenario of everything that was going to take place, and victory was assured. But yet, Moses protested once again.
“What if they won’t believe me or listen to me? What if they say, ‘The Lord never appeared to you’?” Moses was crying out to God, “God, they are not going to listen to me. God, they are not going to hear what I have to say. God, they are not going to believe me. I am not good enough. I am not smart enough. I’m not a natural leader. I’m not the one that can do this, God.”
And all of us battle those kinds of moments. We all battle those kinds of things where we don’t feel like we have what it takes to do what we want to do.
I remember when I was getting ready to go to college at Liberty. I had just graduated from high school and I was getting ready to head off as a freshman in college at Liberty, and that summer we had a bunch of friends over at our house every single Saturday. Saturday morning we’d get together and we’d play football in the backyard. We’d get together and play football, and it wasn’t like tag football; it was all in. If you didn’t break something before the day was over, you were not playing. It was all in football.
And actually we were playing there and there were moments in there, there were moments of greatness. I was playing, “This is awesome, man,” and I was running and I was thinking, “In the fall, I’m going to go out for Morganhaut’s team. I’m going to go out for football.” And then one day I happened to see the size of the football team. I was like, “There is no way I can do that. There is no way.”
That’s not a good illustration, because I shouldn’t have gone out for football because I would have died a horrible death. The point is, all of us could point to a moment where we didn’t do what we wanted to do because we didn’t think we were good enough. Moses, one of the top ten, right, one of the big guys from the Bible, one of the great leaders from Scripture, one of the ones that we always talk about. Here he is, and the picture we get is this: Moses saying to the Almighty God of the universe, “I can’t do it.”
You see, Moses made it very clear, “I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough.” And he didn’t even stop there. He went on to say, “Oh Lord, I am not very good with words. I never have been, and I’m not now. Even though you have spoken to me, I get tongue-tied and my words get tangled.”
Then the Lord asked Moses, “Who makes a person’s mouth? Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see? Is it not I” the Lord said. “Now go, I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say.”
This is an all-too-common response in every single one of our lives. When God says, “I want you to go do something,” when God says, “I want you to go tell people, I want you to go and serve, I want you to go and to do this,” and we just sit back and say, “Yes, we’re not good enough, and yes, we’re not smart enough,” but then we say, “I don’t know what to say.”
That’s what Moses was saying here, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know the words. What if they laugh at me? What if they make fun of me? What if I get in there and I totally blow it and the words that I use don’t even make sense and I jumble them all up and people just think that I’m an idiot and I’m not making sense. What if that happens? God, I don’t know what to say.”
I believe one of the greatest failures in the church today is that the church has bought into the lie that we don’t know what to say in doing what God has called us to do. I believe the greatest hurdle to evangelism in our world today is because the church has believed they don’t know what to say.
You say, “Wait a minute, now, no one’s told me to go out and to tell. God’s never called me to be a preacher.” I get that—maybe—but here’s the deal. God has called you to go and tell. Look what Jesus said when He was ascending back into heaven. What did He say, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel. Make disciples of all the nations. Go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” The Great Commission was not for pastors. The Great Commission was for all of us.
God has called us to tell. And yet you know what we so often do? We don’t tell because we don’t know what to say. We don’t know the right words. We are afraid of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. We are afraid of being laughed at. We are afraid of being made fun of. We are afraid of people looking at us and thinking that we have absolutely no sense about us, no truth in our mouths. And so what do we do? We remain silent.
Moses believed that he wasn’t good enough, that he wasn’t smart enough. He believed that he didn’t know what to say. But it didn’t even stop there. It also said that Moses said, “I am too scared. I’m too scared, so let someone else do it.” Anybody ever experience that in life? “I’m scared. I know what God wants me to do. I know what I’m supposed to be doing. I know that God’s placed this on my life, but…” We give into fear. We give into fear to the place where we don’t actually act when God calls us. We sit back and we wait. We sit back and we don’t do what God has called us to do.
Look in this passage here in Exodus 4. As we read here in verse 13, it says, “But Moses again pleaded,” there it is one more time, “‘Lord, please, send anyone else.’ Then the Lord became angry with Moses. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘What about your brother Aaron, the Levite. I know he speaks well. And look! He is on his way to meet you now. He will be delighted to see you.Talk to him, and put the words in his mouth. I will be with both of you as you speak, and I will instruct you both in what to do.Aaron will be your spokesman to the people. He will be your mouthpiece, and you will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say.’”
Now go back to the beginning of this in verse 13, when Moses, once again, complained to God. Moses pleaded to God, “God send anyone else. Don’t send me. Please send someone else.” Then it says this, “God became angry with Moses.” And let’s be honest—rightfully so. I mean God had laid out for Moses all the plan; God had told Moses exactly what he is going to do. An example of His power had already been on display with the burning bush, right? His power had already been on display when that rod, when he threw it and it became a snake and he was able to pick it back up again. We saw all that, right?
We see God’s power and we see here that when Moses complained, “Send anyone else,” the Lord became angry. If you miss everything else that I say today, don’t miss this. When Moses once again protested to God and said, “God, I don’t want to do it. Send somebody else,” and God became angry with Moses, the one thing that God did not do is He did not give up on Moses.
That’s exciting, because I can guarantee every single one of us has been in a place in our lives where we have frustrated God, made God angry with maybe what we’ve said or maybe what we haven’t said, with what we have done or maybe what we have not done, with the way that we’ve treated other people, with the way that we have served or not served, with the sin that is present in our lives. We have angered God. We have made God mad at what we’ve done and how we’ve acted and what we’ve said.
And the greatest lesson that we can learn here is that even when God became angry with Moses, He did not give up. And let me just tell you something: God will never give up on you. I don’t care what it is that you’ve done; I don’t care how many mistakes you’ve made; I don’t care how many times you’ve protested to God, how many times you’ve walked away from God’s call.
It does not matter how many times we do that; God will not give up on you. He didn’t give up on Moses. He didn’t give up on Moses, and what a great encouragement to all of us. What a great statement here is that God gave us this incredible picture of His grace, of His mercy, of His faithfulness in the midst of what God had every reason to turn His back and say, “Okay, I’m done with him. Next?” He didn’t.