Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Well, we’re in week two of a series of messages we started last week titled “Cracked Pots: How the Glory of God Shines Through Our Brokenness.”  And we started last week in 2 Corinthians 4:7. I’d like for us to go back there for a moment and actually just read this verse together.  2 Corinthians 4:7.   Let’s read it together.  “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”  We’ve titled the series “Cracked Pots” because that’s really what we are.  We’re created in the image of God from the dust of the earth. We learnt that, again, from Genesis 1-2.  The psalmist said, “He knows our frame.  He knows we are but dust.”  God didn’t create us as broken and cracked and chipped.  But sin entered the world in Genesis 3 and, well, we live in a fallen world.  And we are fallen human beings.  Yes, we are cracked pots.  But Paul makes this incredible statement here.  He says, “We have this treasure in jars of clay.”  We say, what is this treasure?  We identified it last week in the context of his letter to the Corinthians as the glory of the knowledge of God and the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  How amazing it is.  We are all created in the image of God, but those of us who are believers in Jesus Christ, the Bible says that God has taken what He treasures most—the glory of the knowledge of God and the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ—and placed it inside of us.  Inside a jar of clay, a cracked pot like you and me.  Because it’s through our brokenness and through our cracks and through our chips and all of that that the power of God flows and the glory of God shines.  We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power is God’s and not ours.

0:02:28.1

And what we’re doing this week and for the remainder of this series is we’re highlighting how this plays itself out in the lives of various Bible characters.  Some of them well-known, some of them we would call heroes of the faith.  Others not so well-known but equally cracked pots whom God has used.  Just ordinary people like you and me that He used for His glory.

0:02:48.7

Today we want to meet a guy named Moses, somebody who is probably at least familiar by name to most of us.  Everybody knows Moses, right?  I mean, Moses is one of the just iconic heroes of the faith.  He’s this larger-than-life individual that rises up out of the pages of scripture.  I mean, he is Charlton Heston, right?  I mean, it doesn’t get any larger than that in Hollywood. Cecil B. DeMille’s classic film The Ten Commandments.  And what a role to play for any Hollywood actor.  And Charlton Heston…I don’t know what else he played in.  I don’t know what other character, but I know him as Moses.  Charlton Heston is Moses, right?  He’s just this larger-than-life individual.  When you’re trying to describe a larger-than-life person and a leader, you say, “Oh, that person is our Moses.”  And he is indeed considered a hero of the faith, Moses is.

0:03:51.6

In part we get that from Hebrews 11.  If you have your Bible turn with me there to Hebrews 11, a section of scripture known as kind of the Hebrews Hall of Faith.  We have summations and little snippets of the lives of great people of faith that are found in the Bible.  Again, names that are recognizable, some that may not be so recognizable, but you run into people like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Noah, Enoch and other people like that.  And then by verse 23, Moses.  Of course he is in the Hebrews Hall of Faith.  How could he not be?

0:04:25.2

Verse 23, “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.  By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.  He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.  By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.  By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.”  He goes on in verse 29, “By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned.”  I mean, these are the highlight reels of Moses’s life.  It’s the highlights, almost like skipping stones across the peaks of a mountain.  This is why we way Moses is such an iconic figure and a hero of the faith.  There are just some incredible things that God did through him.

0:05:38.9

He was the one who stood before Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go.”  I mean, he’s bold.  He’s courageous, right?  He’s the one who took his staff and laid it out over the Red Sea.  And the waters parted so that the Israelites could cross.  And then he laid out his staff again, and those waters came back and drowned the Egyptians.  This is the Moses who struck the rock with his staff and water came out.  This is Moses.  I mean, what an incredible guy.

0:06:10.7

The thing is, if we were trying to summarize his life as the writer of Hebrews does, we summarize it this way.  But don’t forget that Moses was also a cracked pot.  Moses had some issues.  And he had some struggles, mainly with the deep insecurities he had when God called him from a burning bush.  We don’t think about Moses the insecure man.  But we’re going to talk about that today and how God used this man and his insecurities.  Moses’s insecurities surfaced also as excuses for not doing what God called him to do. And Moses was full of excuses, full of, “No, Lord, not me, not me.”

0:07:09.2

Before we get to that and before we get to Exodus 3-4, I want us to just think a little bit about some of the common sources of insecurities, because as cracked pots, you know, we’re all kind of broken.  And we all have our insecurities.  Now, we’re pretty good at camouflaging those insecurities.  I don’t want you to know my insecurities, and you don’t want me to know your insecurities, in part because we might take advantage of each other if we knew our weaknesses and our brokenness and our insecurities.  But we’re good at camouflaging them.  We’re good at putting the mask on.

0:07:46.4

And the reality is, though, that we all have insecurities, different kinds.   And they come from different sources.  I made a list this week.  Let’s just throw them up on the screen here.  Maybe you can identify with some of this, starting with failure and rejection.  You got any failures in your life?  Is there anything in the rearview mirror of your life that you glance at way too often?  And you’re letting those failures, even those moments, when somebody rejected you, define who you are too much.  Even maybe be an excuse for what God has called you to do.  Maybe it’s a failed marriage.  Or maybe it’s a failed business.  You set out trying to start and business, and it just failed.  No two ways to look at it.  Maybe you were interviewing for a job this past week, and you were immensely qualified for the job, but you didn’t get the job.  And you feel the rejection.  You feel a sense of failure there.

0:08:51.6

I don’t know what it is.  I don’t know what the experience is, but we all have failures in life, don’t we? We’ve got to learn, though, how to fail forward.  Because you just take the world fail, F-A-I-L, all it means is first attempt in learning.  That’s what a failure is.  We just sang a little bit earlier, “God never fails us.”  Why?  Because He never has to learn anything.  But we have to learn, don’t we?  And sometimes we best learn through our first attempts in learning, which is a failure.  But some of you have got that failure locked in the rearview mirror of your life, and it’s defined you.  And you just can’t even get past it.  Or you got some rejection.  Maybe you still are acting like a scorned lover.  Maybe it was that broken marriage and that sense of rejection.  And that’s just defining who you are just under the surface that nobody can see.  Nobody can really identify.  But that feeling of rejection is there.

0:09:50.9

Maybe it goes all the way back to high school.  And you would have liked to have been part of the cool crowd, but they have you the stiff arm.  They gave you the Heisman.  And you still feel rejected today.  That can lead to feelings of insecurity.  How about criticism.  Did you grow up in a home where all you ever heard was a critical word?  You can’t do this; you can’t do that.  You brought home a report card that had four A’s and a B-, and all you heard was, “You could’ve done better in that class.  Bring that B- up.”  Just criticism after criticism after criticism.  Maybe you’re married to somebody who is your number one critic.  What a lousy experience to have.  Rather than that person being your number one cheerleader, they’re criticizing you all the time, even when others are saying, “Great job.  Good job.”

0:10:43.7

Sometimes anxiety and stress can give us feelings of insecurity.  Even trauma. You know, sometimes when you go through a major trauma, you come out just different and feeling like you’re not yourself.  I think of soldiers who go into battle, and they come back with post traumatic stress disorder.  And that trauma has changed their sense of confidence.  And there is an insecurity there.

0:11:12.7

I had one more on the list, and that was comparison.  I’d maybe throw that at the top of the list.  Nothing creates insecurity in us more than when we compare ourselves to others or let somebody else make a comparison of us and somebody else.  I mean, it’s just devastating.  When you’re doing the best that God has designed you to do, and somebody comes along and says, “Yeah, but you know so-and-so over here...”  Pastors are fabulous at it.  We love to compare.  “How many people did you have in worship last week?  How many people came to your Hallelujah Harvest?”  “Oh, well, we had this many.”  And you could easily feel “less than” when you start comparing yourselves to others.

0:11:59.1

The apostle Paul experienced this.  There were some people in the Corinthian church who were trying to compare him to other so-called super speakers out there on the circuit.  You know, they’d come with one of their three or four speeches that they’ve put together where they know when to make you laugh and when to make you cry.  They’ve given this speech 150 times.  They know how to do it so well.  “Paul, you’re not like them.  Actually, Paul, when you’re in our presence, you’re stern in your letters, but you’re kind of weak and mousy face to face.”  And they began comparing Paul.

0:12:32.2

2 Corinthians 10:12, Paul says, “We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.” Yeah, they’re not wise at all.  You want to know why?  It comes from deep insecurity.  Deep insecurity when you have to compare yourself to other people.  Even to put people down to make yourself feel good.

0:12:59.8

I remember when I was a little boy growing up in Indiana and playing baseball, I had a friend on the team named Greg.  And he was always comparing our batting averages.  “So what’s your average today?”  You know, we’d play a double header.  At the end of the doubleheader, “What’s your average now?”  Sometimes in between innings, if you can believe it, he would calculate..."Hey, I got a hit last…What’s your batting average?”  And I look back at that over the years, and I think it just came from a deep insecurity.  Maybe competitiveness, but an insecurity that he needed to kind of one-up everybody else on the team.

0:13:33.0

I don’t know what the source of your insecurity is.  To say that you don’t have any insecurities would not be entirely truthful.  We all have insecurities, don’t we?  But when those insecurities get in the way of us fulfilling the plan that God has for us, when we use those insecurities and they become excuses to say, “No, Lord, not me,” well, that’s kind of where Moses was.

0:13:56.7

And now we’re in Exodus 3-4.  The amount of editorial space in the Old Testament given to Moses’s life and ministry, it’s really hard to summarize it in just a message.  But let me catch us up to at least Exodus 3.  Moses’s life can be broken up into three segments of 40 years.  He died at the age of 120.  And the first 40 years of his life, remember, he grew up in Egypt. He was born to his mother, a Hebrew woman.  And because of what was going on then, she hid her son in that basket and floated him in the Nile.  And one of Pharaoh’s daughters came and found him.  And Moses was adopted into the family there and became a son of Pharaoh.  And he grew up in all the privilege and all the pleasure and all that came with being in Pharaoh’s household.  Forty years he was there.  He went to the best of schools, had the best of training, sat at the best of dinner places.  And some would even suggest that he was being groomed for greatness and was going to one day be the next Pharaoh.  That’s the first 40 years of his life.

0:15:20.2

The second 40 years of his life, Moses is on the back side of the Midian Desert herding sheep.  Now, for a guy who had the equivalent of a Harvard or a Cambridge education, all the privilege, all of the resources and all that, what’s he doing on the back side of the desert herding sheep for his father-in-law?  That’s the best job he could get.  Well, it’s because at age 40 Moses made a mistake.  You see, at that time in his life he had an exaggerated self-confidence.  And one day he was identifying with his Hebrew people.  He was coming back around to that part of his life.  And he saw one of the Egyptians making it hard on one of the Hebrews, and he struck the Egyptian dead.  And he tried to cover up the murder by burying him in the sand.  He underestimated the winds of the sand, and one day the sand shifted by the winds.  And that dead Egyptian’s fingers and toes began sticking up out of the sand there, and Moses was exposed.  He thought he could go to his Hebrew kinsmen and find some sympathy, but they turned on him too.  And Moses was suddenly a man without a home, and he fled to the Midian Desert.  And he was there for 40 years.

0:16:36.1

Think about that.  Forty years.  One-third of his life.  At a time when he should have been stepping into the greatness for which he was groomed, Moses is over here pumping gas, herding sheep.  Not for four years, not for four months, for 40 years.  What were you doing 40 years ago?  Is there anything you’ve done for 40 years?  That’s a long time.

0:17:08.7

And at the age of 80, the Lord reaches out to Moses through a burning bush.  Now we’re in Exodus 3.  It says, “Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.”  I can only guess that monotony had gotten the best of Moses, and he just takes the sheep over here to west side just to change things up a little bit.  Verse 2, “And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.  He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.  And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.’  When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’”  I love that He called his name.  He didn’t say, “You dirty, rotten, no-good murderer, you.  You good-for-nothing sheepherder.”  No, He said, “Moses!”

0:18:22.2

God knows us by name, doesn’t He?  And He knows exactly where we are.  God didn’t go searching for Moses somewhere in Egypt.  He wasn’t ringing the doorbell of Pharaoh’s palace.  “Hey, is Moses home?”  No, He knew exactly where he was all these years.  He knew where to find him.

0:18:41.0

A little bit later the Lord says to Moses, “Take off those sandals.  You’re standing on holy ground.”  And Moses took off those sandals.  And the Lord began to tell the story about the Hebrew people who had been in slavery for 430 years, (0:19:00.2) 430 years in slavery to the Egyptians, crying out to God, “Deliver us.  Save us.”  And all the while God had a marked man named Moses who would be His deliverer.  But he was in school.  Not the rich hoity toity schools of Egypt.  He was in school on the back side of the desert.  And when he was 80 years old and that exaggerated self-confidence was now in a pile of brokenness and low esteem and low confidence and insecurity, God said, “All right, Moses.  I’ve got a job for you.  Now you’re ready.”  And the Lord reached out to Moses, and, well, Moses just gave the Lord one excuse after another.

0:19:57.5

I had a football coach years ago say, (0:20:00.0) “Excuses are like armpits.  Everybody has two of them, and they both stink.”  Moses had five; five excuses as to why, “No, Lord, I’m not Your guy here.  I’m not Your guy.”  And these excuses rose out of his insecurity and his brokenness and his 40 years in the desert.  Let’s take a look at these excuses.

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Number one…and I’m just going to state them as Moses does. “Who am I?  Who am I, Lord, to be your guy?”  Verse 11 of chapter 3, “But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?’” And the Lord said, ‘But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.’”  “Who am I?” Moses asks.

0:21:03.2

Now, probably at the age of 40 he wasn’t asking the question, “Who am I?”  He was saying, “Look at me.  Look at me.  Moses.  All the privilege, all the grooming for greatness.  I’m your guy.  I can do this for you, Hebrew people.”  All of that.  Taking matters into his own hands backfired on Moses.  And now, 40 years later, he’s saying, “I don’t even know who I am.” It’s one of the great questions of every generation and every person in every generation.  “Lord, who am I, and why am I here?”  Moses asked the right question.  And the Lord came back to him.  And in every one of these five excuses, the Lord is going to respond to Moses with some expression of His power to compensate for Moses’s weakness.  And in this case, “It’s the power of My presence.”  The Lord says, “I will be with you.  Moses, you aren’t alone.  What I’m about to call you to do, to be the Hebrew deliverer, the Israeli deliverer, the great leader of the exodus, you’re not alone in this.  But I will be with you.”

0:22:15.0

I think of the time at the end of Moses’s life when he was 120 years old, and he died on this side of the Promised Land.  And his understudy for all those years in the wilderness was a guy named Joshua.  And now is Joshua’s time to succeed Moses.  And here is Joshua just shaking in his sandals, you know.  “Moses my servant is dead,” Joshua 1 begins.  “Now Joshua…”  Here is Joshua saying, “Who?  Me?”  And over and over again the Lord had to reassure Joshua, “I’ll never leave you.  I’ll never forsake you.  I’m with you.  I’m going with you.  You’re not out there alone.”  And every insecure person needs that reassurance, the power of God’s presence.

0:22:57.6

But that wasn’t enough to convince Moses.  He comes up with another excuse.  He goes from, “Who am I?” to “Lord, who are You?”  Look in verse 13.  “Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’”  In other words, “Lord, who are You?  Do I even know how You are, and do the people even know who You are?”  And I love the Lord’s answer here in verse 14.  “God said to Moses, ‘I Am who I Am.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “I Am has sent me to you.”’”  Not Sam I am and green eggs and ham.  No, I Am.  It’s the Lord’s name.  He’s known by a lot of names in scripture that give insight as to who the God of the Bible really is.  It all starts with I Am who I Am.  In Hebrew it means Jehovah or Yahweh.  In Greek it’s ego eimi, I Am.  And it speaks of the absolute and self-existent One and the all-sufficient One who works on our behalf.  What reassurance for Moses.  “Lord, who are You?”  “Well, I’m the all-sufficient One.  Whatever is lacking in you, it ain’t lacking in Me.  And I’m going with you.  So you haven’t got any excuse, Moses.”  Well, he still does.  He has three more.  But he shouldn’t after this.

0:24:40.3

I think of the times that Jesus picked up on this name and attributed it to Himself.  Do you remember in the Gospel of John there are seven what we call “I Am” statement of Jesus. “I am the bread of life.  I am the light of the world.  I am the good shepherd.  I am the door of the sheep.  Ego eimi the true vine.  Ego eimi the way, the truth, and the life.  Ego eimithe resurrection and the life.  I Am who I Am.”  And every one of these is an expression of Jesus and who He is and His claim to deity.  In fact, in John 8:56, Jesus says to a group of people listening, “‘Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.  He saw it and was glad.’  So the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet 50 years old, and you have seen Abraham?’  And Jesus said to them, ‘Before Abraham was, ego eimi.’”  He was not only claiming to be God, the absolute and all-sufficient One, but He was claiming eternal nature.  “Before Abraham was, I existed long before that.”  They knew exactly what He was saying.

0:25:57.0

Anybody who says to you, “Oh, Jesus never claimed to be God.  That’s something that later the apostle and the disciples put on Him to kind of bolster Christianity,” they haven’t read the Gospels.  It says, “So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.”  They knew exactly what He was claiming, and they considered ti blasphemous.

0:26:17.8

The other time He attributed to Himself the power of I Am was in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before He was crucified.  And the Roman soldiers come, a big battalion of them.  And they walk up to Him and say, “We’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth.  Are you Him?”  And Jesus said to them, “Ego eimi.  I Am.”  The Bible says they—that is the whole battalion of soldiers—drew back and fell to the ground.  I would have loved to have been there when that happened.

0:26:53.6

The power of God’s name and the power of His presence.  The Lord says to Moses, “You’re not alone.  And, Moses, nobody is going to know who you are, because all those people who remember that you killed the Hebrew, guess what, they’re dead now.  A whole generation has passed.  So you don’t have to worry about if anybody knows Moses.  Your job is for them to know Me and to be my spokesperson.”

0:27:28.1

Which brings me to the third excuse of Moses.  He says, “They won’t listen to me.”  Chapter 4 and verse 1, “And then Moses answered, ‘But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, “The Lord did not appear to you.”’  The Lord said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’”  You know, Moses is going negative here, to be all honest about it.  And there isn’t a deliverer or, I’ll say, a leader worth his salt that goes negative like this.  Who says, “You know, it isn’t going to work anyway because they’re not going to listen to me.”  I’ve learned over the years a leader’s first thought is always positive.  It doesn’t mean you bury your head in the sand and you don’t listen to other opinions.  But you’ll never be a leader.  You’ll never be the deliverer God wants you to be if your first thought is negative.  “They won’t listen to me.  It won’t work.  Done that before.  Isn’t going to work.”  Frustrates me.

0:28:36.9

So the Lord says to Moses, “All right.  What do you got in your hand?”  He says, “Well, a staff.”  “All right.  Throw it on the ground.”  He throws it on the ground.  It turns into a snake.  And he reaches down and says, “You know, pick it up by the tail.”  He picks it up by the tail, and it turns into a staff again.  The Lord is demonstrating His power. And I’m glad it was Moses and not me, because I hate snakes.  Snakes and creepy crawly things and all those things that go bump in the night, I don’t like those.  But the Lord did this.  And then He says, “Hey, Moses, let Me see your hand.”  And he sticks out his hand.  He says, “Put it inside your cloak and pull I tout again.”  His hand was leprous, just all the flesh eaten up and just hanging there on his hand.  He says, “Put your hand back into your cloak.  Now pull it out again.”  It’s clean.

0:29:26.3

“See what I can do, Moses.  You say they won’t listen, but nothing is too difficult for Me.  Come on.  And just in case they still won’t listen, I’ll tell you what you do when you won’t believe you and when they won’t listen.  Take a bucket and go down to the Nile River and scoop up some water, and then pour it out in front.  That water will become blood.  See, nothing is too difficult for Me, Moses.  Absolutely nothing.  So what’s with the excuse.”

0:29:54.3

You would think that that would convince him.  But he goes on one more.  He has another excuse, number four.  He says, “I’m not a good speaker.”  Verse 10, “But Moses said to the Lord, ‘Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.’”  I really have to throw the yellow flag on Moses here.  You’ve never been eloquent?  Think about the Moses in the first 40 years of his life.  He’s in the best of schools, the best of training.  He’s being groomed for greatness right there in Pharaoh’s household.  Absolutely they were teaching him how to speak.  He was probably on the debate team.  He had at least taken an advanced public speaking course.  To say Moses… “I’m not eloquent either in the past or since You came to talk to me, Lord.”  Now his insecurities are beginning to tell him lies.  That wasn’t true in the past.  But Moses at age 40 was bold.  He was confident.  He had an exaggerated self-confidence, but this was a guy who could stand up in front of people and use his words.  But it’s taken 40 years to zap all of that out of him.

0:31:19.2

And how does the Lord respond?  Verse 11, “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth?  Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind?  Is it not I, the Lord?  Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.’”  I love how the Lord is just kind of flexing His creative muscles here and reminding Moses of the power to create.

0:31:51.7

It kind of reminds me of how the Lord dealt with Job.  You remember Job in the Old Testament?  The first couple chapters of Job we get insight into the devil, who has proximity to the throne of God.  And he says, “I’m going to go after that guy Job.”  Lord says, “Fine.  You can go after him in any way you want, just spare his life.”  Job went through all kinds of pain and suffering.  Chapters 2 through about 38 are these conversations that Job is having with his friends.  What friends he had.  And they just basically came and said, “Job, let me tell you what a schlock you are, and this is why you’re suffering the way you are.”  And it just goes on and on and on, sort of ad nauseum for 36 chapter or so until the Lord breaks the silence in chapter 38.  “Who is this who darkens my council with words without knowledge?”  In other words, “Job, shut up, sit down, and let Me teach you a few things.  Number one, where were you when I created the stars?  Where were you when I created the ox and the lamb and made the ox lay down next to the manger?”  A little Christmas foreshadowing there.  “Where were you, Job, when I did this or that?  Job, do you know where the storehouses of hail are?  Do you know where I keep those?”  And the Lord spends about three or four chapters just flexing His cosmic and creative muscles and saying, “You know, you don’t know what you don’t know.”

0:33:21.2

“Moses, I created that tongue of yours.  Don’t tell Me you’re not eloquent.  Don’t tell Me you can’t do this.  I’m the Potter, and you’re the clay.  I made you for this.”  But he’s feeling insecure.  He doesn’t want to be a public speaker.

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And then we come to his fifth excuse.  And Moses, if you can believe it, after all this looks at the Lord and says, “Send somebody else.”  Verse 13, “But he said, ‘Oh, my Lord, please send somebody else.’”  I mean, three words that you never want to say to the Lord.  “Send somebody else.”  And he even puts a little sugar on top and says, “Please.”

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And look at the next verse.  “Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.”  Up to this point I think the Lord has been pretty patient with Moses.  He’s been coaching him.  He’s been rehabilitating.  He knows where Moses has been.  He knows he’s feeling insecure.  He’s 80-year-old Moses, doesn’t have as much skip in his get-along anymore.  And he is just lacking in confidence.  “But don’t ever say to Me, ‘Send somebody else.’”  That kindles the Lord’s anger. Because, “Moses, you’re My marked man.  You’ve been a marked man since the moment I began knitting you together in your mother’s womb.  I have a plan for you.  I’m the Potter; you’re the clay.  You’re my marked man.  Now, there was a time, Moses, you weren’t ready.  You had more schooling.  And you’ve been in the school hard knocks and the school of monotony and the school of all that on the back side of the desert.  Now you’re ready.  Now you’re ready to move from an exaggerated self-confidence to a God-confidence, to putting your security and your confidence in Me and Me alone.  But do not say to Me, ‘Send somebody else.’”

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And here what I suggest is Moses received a lesson in the power of restrained anger.  Because the Lord could have laid him pretty low here, but He really doesn’t.  It says, “Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, ‘Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite?  I know that he can speak well.  Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.  You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to say.  He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him.’”  Don’t you love that?  Restrained anger.  And the Lord says, “All right, Moses.  You can tell Me to send somebody else.  No, I’m going to send somebody with you as we continue to rehabilitate your confidence and your insecurity.  And we’re going to use your brother Aaron.”

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From this point forward in the book of Exodus and in the life and journeys of Moses, even before Pharaoh, initially you find Moses and Aaron in the presence of Pharaoh.  And Aaron is doing the talking.  But in time, Aaron fades away.  And the Moses that we remember, this great hero of the faith, is the one that we hear him say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go.”  But before that it was Aaron, some high-pitched people, I’m sure, saying, “Let my people go.”  No, I don’t know what it was.  But Aaron was the spokesperson.  And in time through some small steps, God rehabilitated Moses to where he could stand with a properly infused God confidence to get the job done.  His confidence was no longer in himself anymore.

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I’m running out of time, so I’m going to just skip to this part right now.  We’ll finish up a little bit different.  I have quiz for you.  Sorry, I know it’s church.  You weren’t expecting a quiz this morning.  Take out your notes.  I call it the confidence quiz.  Take out a piece of paper.  It’s pop quiz time.  Don’t look at me like that.  Come on now.  Question one.  Real simple, just true/false here.  A person with an exaggerated self-confidence has difficulty walking by faith in God.  True or false?  Yeah, that’s true.  I think that was Moses at the age of 40.  Exaggerated self-confidence; too confident in himself and his experiences.

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Number two, a person with low self confidence has an easier time walking by faith in God.  True or false?  You wonder about that one.  I’d say false.  It’s not necessarily true that if you have a low self-confidence and insecurities it’s easy to walk…Moses proved that true at the age of 80, right?  Number three, humility is the antidote to an exaggerated self-confidence.  Yeah.  I think so.  Moses wasn’t ready at the age of 40.  It took 40 years of pretty humbling kind of work.  Work that he was underpaid for and overqualified for.  Forty years of it to humble this man until he was useful in the hands of God.

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Number four, the way to rebuild your confidence is by taking small steps of faith in God.  I think that’s true.  And this is what the Lord did.  Starting with, “Okay, we’ll put Aaron next to you.”  And there were some small steps, small steps until one day Aaron fades out, and the Moses we all know, this great hero of the faith, begins to emerge.  Now, he still had cracks.  He was still a cracked pot.  Later into the wilderness wandering years, Moses had a temper.  You know, there was one time where the Lord says, “Okay, you need some water.  Moses, take that staff.  Strike the rock.”  He struck the rock.  Wow, water flows.  And the people are like, “Oh, Moses.”  And then later, same thing.  They needed some Moses.  Now, “Moses, speak to the rock.”  And he was mad at the Israelites for something.  He took his staff and struck the rock.  Water didn’t flow.  And his short temper kept him from going into the Promised Land.  The Lord said, “You won’t take them in.  Joshua will.”  So he was a cracked pot in a lot of different ways.

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But now I want to go back to Hebrews 11 for a just a moment.  Remember the summation of Moses’s life?  Just that little snippet, that highlight real.  Not a single mention of any of the insecurities, not a single mention of the murder or the temper or any of the bantering back and forth with God about this.  No mention of, “Send somebody else.”  Why?  Because if you take a snapshot of your life or mine at any given point, that snapshot doesn’t necessarily define you.  God is looking at the larger arc of your life and mine.  And He looks at the larger arc of Moses, and he is described as a great hero of the faith despite being a cracked pot.  Despite his insecurities, despite his excuses, despite his temper, despite the murder in the past.  And Moses goes into the final third of his life.  Think about the span of his life.  It takes two-thirds of his life to prepare him for one-third of deliverance and what God had really marked him out to do.  That’s always the balance.  Think of Jesus- 30 years of life for 3 years of ministry.

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You may still be in God’s schoolhouse somewhere.  There is something He is working out in your life and shaping you and molding you.  There may be some dross He’s trying to carve off your life, maybe some exaggerated self-confidence.  Maybe He’s dealing with some insecurity in ways that the world never understands.  Your own family doesn’t even understand what you’re going through right now, but God does.  He’s marked you.  He’s called you.  He is sending you somewhere.  He has a plan for you.  The last thing you want to tell Him is, “Send somebody else.”  For the believer in Jesus Christ, it’s always, “Here am I, Lord; send me.  And do whatever it takes in me to take everything in me that is not rightly related to You, everything in me that would become a stumbling block for whatever You’ve called me to do to fulfill that, prepare me, Lord.  I’m willing to go to school for as long as it takes for whatever service that You have planned for me.  And here am I, Lord.  Send me.  School me.  Prepare me.”  Search me, O God, and know my heart,” the psalmist says, “Try me and know my wicked ways, and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”  There was a lot of trying.  There was a lot of testing.  There was a lot of schooling that had to go on in Moses’s life before God finally said, “Okay, now you’re ready.”  And for the next 40 years of his life, he led them around this wilderness right up to the edge of the Promised Land.

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