Moses: Man Of Passion Series

INTRODUCTION

There is a tale told of that great English actor Macready. An eminent preacher once said to him: “I wish you would explain to me something.” “Well, what is it?” asked Macready. “I don’t know that I can explain anything to a preacher.”

“What is the reason for the difference between you and me?” queried the preacher. “You are appearing before crowds night after night with fiction, and the crowds come wherever you go. I am preaching the essential and unchangeable truth, and I am not getting any crowd at all.”

Macready’s answer was this: “This is quite simple. I can tell you the difference between us. I present my fiction as though it were truth; you present your truth as though it were fiction.” (G. Campbell Morgan, Preaching)

A key emotion for a believer is passion. But we must be careful about where we allow our passions to go. Today we have passions for many things: cars, sports, gardening, music, video games, etc.

Where do your passions lay? What passions drive you in your Christian life? Or, are you passionate at all?

BACKGROUND

Again, we find today, in our series Unlike Heroes, as unlikely of a hero as you will ever encounter. His name is Moses.

Dr. John Walvoord once described the life of Moses in this fashion: He spent the first 40 years in the palace of Egypt, learning to be something; he spent the next 40 years on the backside of a desert, learning to be nothing; and he spent the last 40 years of his life leading God’s people, learning that God could make something out of nothing! Now that, my friends, is an unlikely hero!

He was born through the lineage of Levi, son of Jacob, to very loving parents and an older brother and sister. But, at the time of his birth, his people, the Hebrews, were living in the land of Egypt, in servitude to its Pharaoh. As if that wasn’t enough, because of the rapid population growth of the Hebrews, an order had been given to kill all baby boys under the age of 2! Long odds for any infant to overcome. Unlikely indeed!

But Moses’ parents hid him away, and at just the right time, sent him on a bulrush-ark expedition down the Nile River, guarded closely by his sister Miriam. He was discovered by attendants to the princess herself, who adopted him as her own. Seems young Moses would forget his people.

But God intervened, and Miriam fetched Moses’ mother, unbeknown to the princess, to nurse him and care for him. His mother, in due time, taught him that he was a Hebrew, not an Egyptian.

Then he murdered an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew man, and he ended up fleeing for his life into the desert. There he married out of his race to a Midianite and worked for her father.

So, here is the hero, away from his people and living covertly in a foreign land. Out of reach from God? Not hardly. God appears to him in an on-fire but not-consumed bush and calls him to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt to their originally promised land. The unlikely hero then reveals another reason why he could not be a hero: he has a stammer! But God, who is always ahead of us, loosened his tongue and had already appointed Moses’ brother, Aaron, to speak for him.

There you have it! Is this the man God would use for so great a task? Yes! Why? Because inside of Moses was that one characteristic that all unlikely heroes need: Passion!

As we will see, Moses’ exhibited great passion, at times the unneeded passion of anger. We see it when he killed the Egyptian soldier, when He breaks the stone tablets, and when he strikes the rock instead of speaking to it as he was instructed. What we see most, however, is the kind of passion that we as God’s people can mimic and display in our own lives, and model for others who may be spying on us.

In our text for today, Hebrews 11:23-28, there are three areas about which Moses was passionate. READ:

I. He Was Passionate about God (verse 27)

After Moses was called by God to go, like Abraham before him, he went. But he went back to the familiar place of his birth and childhood. Exodus 5-13 reveals that there he boldly challenged the Pharaoh on God’s behalf, often revealing his passion through his thunderous words, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel. ‘Let my people go!’”

He bravely stood time after time, receiving Pharaoh’s scorn and rebuke while relaying God’s message. The plagues he courageously announced and executed without hesitation, finally leaving Pharoah no choice but to send the Hebrews away.