Faith Acts Even When You Feel Inferior Series

He is a successful and intelligent person; he has been blessed with a wonderful wife and children, he has quite a few friends and they do love him. But deep inside there was something that was telling him, “You are different, you are not as worthy as other people.” Whenever he goes to a public place and whenever he meets new people an inner voice keeps whispering “Hey, you know you are different, you know that you lack something, even if you are successful you are still not like them.” Every time someone laughed it was interpreted by him as a sign of being made fun of. Whenever two people started to whisper to each other he just knew that they were talking about him. The man was feeling that he just did not measure up to other people or to put it in other words, he was feeling inferior. When those feelings of inferiority control our behavior to that extent it can then be termed as inferiority complex. The cause of this man’s inferiority complex was deeply rooted in his childhood. When he was a child his family put him up for adoption and he was adopted into a very powerful and wealthy family. He had everything he could have wanted and enjoyed the privilege of the best education his community had to offer. However deep inside he just felt like he didn’t belong, he was an outsider and his true family was out there somewhere living in poverty and being mistreated. He once stood up for his own people and they rejected him and treated him as an outsider. Now he is living far from his hometown and very successfully running his father-in-law’s business, but those feelings of not measuring up still linger beneath the surface. Soon they will surface again as he is offered a new job with more prestige. The voice once again says that you are inadequate, so he tries to respectfully decline the offer. Although he was handpicked for the job he feels he is not capable of doing it. Many of us struggle with the feelings as the person I just described. The person’s name is Moses. Today I would like us to take some time and look at Moses’ faith. A faith that acts even when we feel inferior.

I. Moses knew what it meant to feel inferior.

A. Moses’ early years were shaped by the faith of his parents.

1. Moses was born about 1525 BC to Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi.

2. The beauty of the child was taken as a sign that God had something special in store for him. By faith they hid the child for three months.

3. When Moses’ mother could hide him no longer, she fashioned a basketlike boat from papyrus reeds and caulked it with pitch to make it watertight and floated it on the Nile River.

4. God used the tears of the infant to touch the heart of Pharaoh’s daughter as she came down to the sacred Nile to take her ritual bath. The princess recognized the baby as a Hebrew not because of his circumcision (Egyptians also circumcised), but because he was an abandoned male.

5. Moses’ sister Miriam who was hiding nearby stepped forward and offered to secure a Hebrew nurse for the infant. Miriam brought Jochebed to the princess who contracted with her to nurse the baby.

6. Moses was the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter. During his stay in the palace Moses became learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

B. Moses would make a major faith decision that would begin to give birth to his feelings of inferiority.

1. Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

2. When he refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, he turned his back on the fabulous personal wealth of a Pharaoh, the national wealth of the mightiest nation on earth, and the tremendous treasures of its culture, influence and prestige.

3. At age forty Moses left the luxury of the palace to visit his countrymen. Seeing an Egyptian beating a fellow Hebrew, Moses was roused to anger and he killed the Egyptian and hid the body in the sand.

4. Moses thought that his own people would recognize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The very next day he tried to assert his leadership among his people by intervening on behalf of a Hebrew being victimized by a fellow Hebrew.

5. The aggressor responded to Moses’ efforts with two rhetorical questions: “Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you intend to slay me as you slew the Egyptian?” This Hebrew man saw in Moses only a meddler.