Moses The Vision Caster Series

Moses the Prince of Leadership

The Vision Caster!

Exodus 3-6

Helen Keller was once asked the question: “Is there anything worse than being blind?” “Yes," she replied, having eyesight but no vision.” Vision is the ability to see what others can’t. Vision is able to see beyond the norms of each day to the possibilities of tomorrow.

So, let me ask you this morning, “how is your vision?” What’s your vision for your life? Are you satisfied with merely getting by? Do you have a desire to press on and do all that you can to grow and stretch yourself? Are you doing everything possible to fulfill the potential that God has placed inside you? We need to ask this question as individuals but also as a church, as a community and as a country.

Last week we began a series on the life of Moses and last week we saw that he accepted the call of God to lead. He accepted the challenge but the difficult part was yet to come, to cast the vision of freedom to over a million Israelites and to persuade Pharaoh to let the people go. This was not going to be an easy task. But casting a vision is never easy whether you are a housewife, an executive, a salesperson, a teacher, an administrator or even if you are retired. We all have our circles of influence where we try to cast a vision of what we believe is necessary for the future.

How do we do that? Moses shows us how. It begins with introducing the vision. Notice that God first introduced the vision to Moses. He lays out the plan and basically says, "Moses, you are going to be my tool to accomplish this vision." In Exodus 3:7-9, God says, “I have heard the suffering of my people and I am going to rescue them and give them a land flowing with milk and honey." And then it says, "It’s the home of the Canaanites, and the Perazites, and the Hittites and the Amorites and Hivites and Jebusites, [and the termites and out of sights, they are all there]."

The introduction of this vision began with the leadership. Moses first went to Aaron, who was one of the influencers. Moses knew that if the other leaders were not involved, if they weren’t on board, then the mission was going to be doomed from the start. It would be like me coming in here this morning and saying to you, "I think we should build a new auditorium. I know that there has been a lot of talk about doing that in the future, but lets push the plan up and let’s vote on it today. Matter of fact, let’s go ahead and take up an offering today." Now you wouldn’t go for that. You wouldn’t do that would you? We all know that wouldn’t work. The leaders wouldn’t go for that, and neither would you, because you would want all the leaders on board with the project.

Look at Exodus 4:29-31,, "Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told them everything the LORD had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, and they believed. And when they heard that the LORD was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped."

Moses begins by explaining the big picture. He says, "we have been in slavery but our one true God wants to give us freedom." He starts with the leadership and talks with them about their roots. As we begin to look to our future as a church, we must never forget where we came from. We started in a house down here on Elk Creek Road, and someone said that if are going to continue to grow, then we need to find someplace else to worship. So we went to the High School, then someone said we need more room and a permanent place to worship, so someone said, "let’s build a building." So we came to this place and look at us now. We need more room so somebody said we need to build an education space. You see the past and current leaders have led us to the place where we are right now. And I believe they would ask us to do the same thing, and that is to cast a vision for a great future.

John Maxwell said, “People will not reach for the future until they are in touch with the past.” I remember two years ago when we kicked off the “His Land Our Faith” Campaign. That day we talked about all the lives that had been changed by the ministry here. We talked about how the land was used in the past as a piece of wonderful farm land and how God had some other plans for the future. We also talked about how this building was designed, so that educational rooms could be built when it was necessary. And now God has shown us His plans as to how to do this.