Excuses And Abilities (October 2, 2022)

EXCUSES and ABILITIES

Text: Exodus 4:10 -12

Exodus 4:10-12 But Moses said to the LORD, "O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." (11) Then the LORD said to him, "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? (12) Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak."

I learned that many years ago, in the South Carolina United Methodist Conference, there was a young man who stuttered that felt the call to ministry. After hearing him talk with a stutter, his District Superintendent told him that he would not be able to use him. He then said to the District Superintendent “God called me to preach. You did not.” Later, when he went to preach his very first sermon, the late Rev. Denver Lee preached without stuttering. He never stuttered when he preached.

Moses was called by God to be an instrument of deliverance for the children of Israel who were in Egyptian captivity as slaves. God had heard their cries and wanted to set his chosen people free. Moses tried to come up with excuses. He claimed that he was not eloquent with words.

Have any of us ever tried to create a legitimate alibi for any of our illegitimate behavior? Have any of us ever made a valid excuse for our sins of omission? We all know that a sin of omission is sin because we left something undone that we should have done!

We are all without excuse and guilty as charged when it comes to answering those two questions!

We have been called by God to set people free in our time and on our watch. Like Moses, we want to make excuses. Those excuses will not exempt us from our calling.

We all have abilities. We all have responsibilities, accountabilities, liabilities and we must be obedient to God in order to accomplish His will.

RESPONSIBILITY

Did God call us to sit in the sidelines while people will perish?

1) Question: The answer to this question is no. The Lord did not call us to sit on the sidelines.

2) An undeniable fact: If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.

What are some of the most common excuses that we tell ourselves? I came up with a list of twenty excuses. How many of them have we ever used?

1. I’m too old

2. I’m too young

3. Nobody will ever know

4. I’m too busy

5. Somebody else will do it

6. I’ll get to it later

7. I’ll ask for forgiveness later

8. I’m bored

9. They don’t matter anyway

10. That is the way we have always done it

11. I fell asleep

12. I overslept

13. The devil made me do it

14. It’s so and so’s fault

15. I forgot

16. Everybody else is doing it

17. The dog ate my homework

18. I left it at home

19. That’s just the way I was brought up

20. I’m not eloquent with words

If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.

ACCOUNTABILITY

If responsibility precedes accountability, and it does, then how can we avoid giving an account?

1) Moses’s call: God called Moses to be his chosen vessel to help liberate the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage.

2) Our Call: God had called us to be on the move in making disciples (Matthew 28:19). How do we answer our call today?

If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.

Remember the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14 -30)?

1) Talents: All the servants had to give an account of their work when the master returned. Some were rewarded and the lazy were condemned. How many of us bury our talents?

2) Burying talents: If we bury our God-given talent, then how can we expect to reap where we have not sown?

If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.

LIABILITY

What do you think of when you hear the word liability?

1) Obligation: One of the synonyms for liability is obligation. Are we not all obligated for our own work?

2) Test scores: They don’t grade you for someone else’s work in a school setting. Just like the servants in the story of talents, they were all graded individually for their individual work.

What about the collective work of everyone involved? God called Moses to be the key leader of delivering the children of Israel from Egyptian captivity. God worked through Moses’s leadership to overcome the obstacle of the hardness of Pharoah’s heart. The children of Israel all left together on foot once they liberated.