The Great Adventure: "Step Up To The Plate!" Series

Last month my son’s ball team went to a Star’s baseball game for “Bat Night.” I tell you, there’s nothing quite like twelve six year-olds running around a ball park swinging their brand new wooden bats! Life can be exciting sometimes…

• But that’s okay… the Christian life is supposed to be exciting… an adventure!

• We’re continuing the series “the Great Adventure” this morning… taking a look at some of the great ‘adventurers’ encountered in Scripture…

• Last week we looked at Noah… how he was able to stand against the wicked, corrupt and decadent culture of his day… by his relationship with God.

• Before that, Abraham was called to a life of great adventure when God told him to pack up everything and go (he didn’t tell him where)… and then when he was almost 100, he found out he and his wife would be parents! Adventure!

• If you are bored in your Christian walk… its not God’s fault! I very much believe that he still calls us to a life of great adventure!

• We are called to FOLLOW JESUS… and that should be anything but boring!

Before we get into the text (Ex. 3) let’s remember Moses… he wasn’t exactly born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he had one placed there pretty quickly.

• Exodus 1 & 2 tells us Moses’ story… the Israelites had been in bondage in Egypt for about 400 years and their numbers had become so great when the Pharaoh became paranoid that things might get out of hand with them. Their numbers threatened his power & possibly his claim to the throne… so he decrees that all Hebrew males be aborted at birth.

• Moses is born but the midwives let him live… so Pharaoh begins a national campaign to eradicate all the boys. Doing the only thing she knew to do, Moses’ Mother hides him. When she could hide him no longer, she places him in a basket made of reeds (a tevah or ark) and places him along the Nile where she knows he’ll be found.

• He is found… by the daughter of the Pharaoh—who takes him in and raises him as her own son.

• And so this young Hebrew grows up in the household of the Pharaoh along with every privilege that affords… the best foods, wine, clothes, jewels and education! A life of privilege & prestige… a Prince of Egypt!

• What potential he had! Think about all that Moses could’ve accomplished with what he had been given? (I even wonder if he might have been in line for the throne at some point… could he have wound up ruling Egypt?)

• Any of you grow up like that? Did you happen to catch the news last week about Warren Buffet, investment billionaire, who WOWED the world by giving nearly $37 billion to Bill Gates charity foundation? I saw an interview with his children who were asked if they were jealous that their father had given so much away and not to them. They all seemed remarkably ‘normal’! Buffet said that he would give each of his children enough money to do something with… but not enough to do nothing. Pretty wise, I thought.

• Like Buffet’s children, Moses would have grown up with plenty… wanting nothing… and with so much potential to do mighty things!

But his life would take a dramatic turn… one day he witnesses an Egyptian slave master mercilessly beating one of the Hebrew slaves.

• As you read the text it emphasizes several times for Moses, this was “one of his own people.” (vs. 11) Despite Moses’ wealth & privilege he realizes that he isn’t really one of them (an Egyptian)… there is still a connection with his own people (Hebrews).

• I imagine that it must have been the anger & frustration building up inside of him that drove him to kill the slave master… and then to try & conceal the body.

• But when he discovers that his crime is found out… and that the Pharaoh himself is coming after him… Moses is forced to flee! To run away from everything that he had… his home, his privilege, his family… for the life of a desert nomad.

For the next 40 years he would quietly go about rebuilding his life. He takes a wife and busies himself tending his father-in-law’s sheep… starting over (as it were.)

• How exciting… working for your father-in-law day after day… year after year… for 40 years. This was his life… tending somebody else’s sheep.

• At 80, he probably thought that he was done… that this was it for him! He probably expected to live out the rest of his days out in the desert… watching sheep… a far cry from where his life could’ve taken him.