Crisis Series

“Crisis Management”

Exodus 5 & 6

When we look at the life of this man named Moses we find that the OT is filled with stories of his life. It would be easy I believe to preach a full year of sermons on his life but I feel sure it would be just me and Ross and my wife and I’m not completely sure about them. So we will settle for 8 weeks. We have already studied 4 of those topics and now there will be 4 more.

One of the things we see as we study the life of Moses is that his life seems to be divided into 3 segments. The first 40 years, the 2nd 40 years & the last 40 years. It has been said that Moses spent the first 40 years of his life thinking he was a somebody, the 2nd 40 years realizing he was a nobody and the last 40 years realizing that God can turn a nobody into a somebody.

Moses has now brought the Israelites out of Egypt. They had been slaves to Pharaoh and the work they were doing was very difficult. They were making bricks all day long. The foreman on the job would supply them with straw to place inside the bricks and it would basically bind them together to be used in their building projects.

Moses steps in and exercises his authority as a leader and says to Pharaoh that God commands him to let His people go. Pharaoh replies who is the Lord that I should obey him and let Israel go? I won’t do it. Pharaoh becomes angry and orders the foremen on the job to do two things (1) don’t supply them with straw any longer and make them go and gather it themselves and (2) they will still be required to make the same number of bricks as before. They couldn’t do it of course so they were punished. They were beaten.

Now the people come to Moses and they are all furious. They are afraid they will be killed. V. 21. So just when Moses thought things were bad, now it is a full blown crisis. Know this…as a leader we will face problems. As a leader we can be misunderstood. Ever been misunderstood? You did the right thing, you did it the right way but someone read something into your actions that you never intended. And now you feel like you’re walking around with a cloud over your head and it just won’t go away. It is a part of being a leader that there will be times when you are misunderstood. Could be by a close friend, a relative, your boss or even your spouse.

The Bible tells us then in v. 22 that then Moses returned to the Lord. I think Moses realized he had nowhere else to go . He had no friends in Egypt, his wife was in Midian with the kids and his father in law, Jethro was tending sheep, his brother Aaron was apparently clueless so Moses goes back to the one who called him in the first place and he says Lord, why have you mistreated the people and why did you send me. It was like he was saying Lord didn’t I tell you back at the burning bush when you kept saying you’re the man Moses, you can do it, didn’t I keep telling you Lord I’m not cut out for this…like me I was actually cut out to be a singer, I just didn’t get sewn up right. Ever noticed that everybody on the platform has a microphone in front of them except me and Boonie. What’s up with that? Anyway. He says Lord I finally gave in to this leadership thing and now I’ve got all of this pressure on me…how come nobody told me leadership would be this hard? Moses is saying why me Lord? Why now? Why this? How am I gonna get through this crisis?

Have you ever wanted to be God for a moment? I don’t know what you would say to Moses right here but by this time if I were God I would be a little impatient, maybe even a lot impatient with Moses. But this is one of the things I love about the Lord…He didn’t say Moses you ought to be ashamed of yourself…if you come to him with this aching question in your heart or on your mind that is really crying out for an answer…..He never pushes us away.

In fact look at his response to Moses “now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh. It may seem like Pharaoh is in charge but ….vv.1-2. God was saying Moses listen I’m just getting warmed up. I’ll take care of this…don’t worry.