Sermon Central
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Moses - Fearful To Faithful Series
Contributed by Scott Kircher on Sep 7, 2008 (message contributor)
Summary: How can we overcome fear and be faithful in following the Lord?
Moses – Fearful to Faithful
How do we overcome the Fears we face in Following God?
Focus on God’s Presence with us
Focus on God’s Power through us
Focus on God’s Provision for us
Slide
When I say the name Moses, what do you think of?
Man of Faith?
Great divider of the Red Sea
Great leader of Israel out of Egypt.
Great lawgiver of the Old Testament.
Extraordinary man of God?
Moses was all of those things, indeed.
In the Bible we see Moses described as
A faithful servant (Hebrews 3:5)
The servant of the Lord (Deuteronomy 34:5)
Faithful in all God’s house (Numbers 12:7)
Someone who spoke with God “as a man speaks with his friend” (Exodus 33:11)
He was definitely an extraordinary man of faith.
He is not someone we think of in any way as ordinary.
But even Moses had some ordinary times in his life
And even for Moses, the great man of God, it was not he who was extraordinary, but it was the God he served, who did extraordinary things through Moses.
We are going to see this morning the less than extraordinary way that Moses initially responded to God because of some of his fears, so we might have hope even in the midst of our own weaknesses and fears, and be able to overcome those fears and be used by God in an extraordinary way.
Turn with me this morning to
Exodus 3:1 (p.41)
Slide
A bit of background on Moses.
Moses was born when the Israelites were becoming more numerous than the Egyptians so the midwives were supposed to kill Israelite boys that were born.
Moses mother instead put him in a basket and into the river. Pharaohs daughter found him and later ended up raising him in Pharaoh’s house as a prince.
When Moses was about 40 years old (Acts 7:23), he saw the Hebrews being abused and he ended up killing an Egyptian. It became known what he did and he had to flee Egypt. He went to Midian and got married and he was there for 40 years (Acts 7:30). Now he is about 80 years old out tending the sheep.
This is where we pick up the story in
1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight--why the bush does not burn up."
4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!"
And Moses said, "Here I am."
5 "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." 6 Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
7 The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey--the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."
11 But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"
12 And God said, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain."
13 Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ’The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ’What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?"
14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ’I AM has sent me to you.’"
15 God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, ’The LORD, the God of your fathers--the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob--has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
