Heroes of the OT:
Moses
Acts 7:17-36
February 22, 2009
It was bedtime for Danny. His mom had taken him upstairs to his room to put him to bed. As they said their prayers, it was obvious the Danny was distracted by the rain storm outside. The wind howled. Lightening flashed. The thundered rumbled. Rain occasionally pelted the windows.
“Don’t worry honey,” Danny’s mom said, “You’ll be perfectly safe. Mommy and daddy will be downstairs in their room and we won’t let anything happen to you.”
“It’s still scary,” Danny replied.
“Just close your eyes and you’ll fall right to sleep. Besides, Jesus is with you.”
“It sure would help if you were with me too. Mommy, would you please sleep with me tonight? Please?”
“I’m sorry honey but mommy can’t because mommy has to sleep with daddy.”
A disappointed frown appeared as Danny thought about it. Danny’s mom turned to leave when Danny said, “Daddy is such a sissy.”
This morning we are going to look at someone who definitely wasn’t a sissy: Moses. Moses is truly one of the great heroes of the OT. He is lifted up as a huge example for generations of people seeking the Lord even to our day. If you want to read about Moses, just read the book of Exodus, the second book of the bible and you will find many episodes from his life. We are going to look at a summary of Moses made by the early church found in Acts 7.
Moses was a model of sacrifice
• Moses lost the world but gained his soul.
I’ve adapted Mark 8:35-37 where Jesus tells what does it profit us to gain the whole world and lose his soul. Moses had the whole world at his finger tips. He grew up in power and privilege. There was nothing that he could not have. He was educated at the highest levels. He enjoyed the high life while his fellow Hebrews worked their fingers to the bone as slaves. He had everything that anyone could ever want.
Except Moses knew his heritage and he knew his religious heritage of a people that were descendents of Abraham and were designated as God’s people. Not just any god but the one creator God. Moses also realized that God’s hand was on him and that he had been divinely placed in order to help his people. So one day, he decided to take matters in his own hand. He was forty and probably tired of waiting around for God and killed an Egyptian who was beating one of his fellow Hebrews.
The next day, two Hebrews were arguing and he tried to make peace but they called him on his murderous actions and rejected him. Fearing for his life, Moses ran. He left the power and privilege. He literally gave up all his possessions and ran off to the desert where he met a man who loved the Lord and became a part of his family by marrying his daughter. He gave it all up trying to do God’s will. At least what he believed was God’s will.
His problem was that he was trying to do it on his own. He used his own rational thoughts and own justification to do what he believed God wanted him to do. This wouldn’t be the last time either. Moses paid a great price later when he decided to do things his way. He was kept from entering the Promised Land because he became presumptuous with the power that God had given when Israel was wandering the desert.
I have to wonder how much was here in American really are willing to sacrifice. Jesus told a young man and his disciples that riches needed to be sacrificed. I have heard preachers talk about this and justify our own greediness. “Jesus was addressing this specific young man and not really us.” But even his disciples wondered who could be saved if it takes such a radical commitment. Of course all things are possible with God but then I have to wonder what Jesus is telling us. Does this really justify us holding on to 80% (or more by some estimates) of the world’s wealth and consume 90% of the world’s resources?
When things get tight as they are now, the temptation for us is to hold back and tighten our belts especially in our giving. I felt it. You’ve felt it. A lot of us have seen our incomes decrease if not by job loss, then certainly by escalating prices without a corresponding increase in income. But this is the time to give less. It is the time to give more. It is the time to sacrifice more. It may be the time to examine our lifestyles and really find the waste and excesses. It is the time to be generous and give to others and help others. Then again, maybe we don’t really believe that with God all things are possible.
For example, tithing. I know many of you have experienced the blessings and joy of giving to the Lord. God shows this practice to give to God’s work first to His church and then elsewhere not because God needs the money but because we need to learn to be over abundant and generous givers. It is just not in our nature to do so. We always want strings. We want a good return whether it is interest or favors or good programs and such. The tithe is God’s basic way to say, “Give and see if you can out give me.” God instructs us that the basic minimum is 10%. Not $2 or $20 a week but at least 10%.
I know it is hard. I know it really doesn’t make sense to give at that level but God always provides. That is God’s very name, The Lord Will Provide. Maybe you need to grow your faith a little and start out small—maybe 5% or even less. But I know that God has always provided. Always! Sometimes I wonder what else I can do but then God always shows me that He has abundantly more than what I will ever know.
Can you imagine being a Hebrew slave and here came this guy who used to be one of the rich kids and then ran away? Moses has come back to free us. That Moses. Yeah, that Moses. He says God is going to help us and that Moses is going to lead us to the land that God promised to our ancestor, Abraham. Not only that, when we leave, the Egyptians are going to give us plenty of stuff for the journey.
Now you are a slave. You are whipped and beaten and work sixteen or twenty hours a day. You don’t have any health care. You don’t even get a day off to worship. The people couldn’t believe that any of this was possible. And to top it off, when Moses went to Pharaoh to ask for this, Moses got Pharaoh mad and made our jobs impossible. How can we make bricks without straw? Lay that concrete slab without rebar. That’s like making a Big Mac but the CEO tells you that you can’t have any hamburger. It’s like giving you hot water and a filter and telling you to make Starbuck’s coffee.
Moses sacrificed his world not once but twice. He had rebuilt a new life as a shepherd but was sent to Egypt leaving behind all the comforts that he had accumulated and the security of family to do the impossible. But then, all things are possible with God.
Albert Einstein said, “A person starts to live when he can live outside of himself.”
• Moses was rejected by his people.
The NT makes many comparisons of Jesus to Moses. This is a huge one. Jesus was rejected by his own people even to the point of being crucified by them. Moses was rejected early on and continued to be rejected by his people. Even though Moses led them out of Egypt the people complained and moaned but everything under the sun. Some even tried to stage a coup and probably would have killed him except that God intervened.
Following Jesus is not easy. Being faithful is not easy. Giving and sacrificing. Generosity. Showing kindness and love. Being faithful and consistent. Offering praises and worship even when you don’t feel like it can be a huge sacrifice. You will most likely be rejected at some point. You might even be ridiculed. You might even be passed over for a promotion. Maybe even targeted with cruel pranks. Then again, if you take seriously the call to live a life of sacrifice you might actually have to give up much more.
You might have to leave the comforts of home. You might have to leave the security of a good paying job. You might be called to leave this country to serve others in a Third World country. You might be called to help the homeless where the stink of people who urinate themselves and haven’t ever washed themselves with soap gets into your nostrils and stays with you for hours. You can’t get the stench out of nose and you smell your clothes to make sure that something didn’t get on you. But it is not there because it is in your nose.
You might be rejected because you follow Jesus by helping those people who are rejected. Then again, you might have to leave home to serve in a place that makes examples of those who follow Jesus. Believers all around the world follow Jesus to the detriment of their lives. I have seen estimates that have put the numbers of those who truly modeled a life of sacrifice by giving their lives as martyrs in the last century (especially in the second half of the 20th Century) to be greater than all the other people who have died for Jesus in other times put together. This includes the first century church.
Why is it that we can’t stand up and be a brighter light when we really have very little to lose compared to others? Are we perhaps guilty of rejecting Jesus like the Hebrews rejected Moses? Have we rejected the call to live a life of sacrifice and thereby rejected Jesus? Are we guilty of constructing a religion of convenience where we give money when we have extra and help others when our schedules are not messed up?
Next Wednesday begins the season of Lent. It is the season where we sacrifice in order to prepare ourselves for Easter. I know God is saying to some of us that we have to give up in order to go up. Will we reject what God is saying to us? Have we been rejecting Jesus all long? Give up yourself. Give up your sin. Give up your disobedience to live for Jesus. Please don’t reject Jesus. Take up your cross and follow him.
I read about a guy who ministers to the unfortunate, the downtrodden, the broken and used on the streets of Chicago. One day a prostitute came up to him said that she had heard that he helps people and she desperately needed help. She was homeless and her health was failing because of her ongoing drug binges. With tears in her eyes, she even confessed to renting out her daughter—only two years old to men to get money for drugs. The guy was taken aback for a moment. He was shocked and speechless. She continued sobbing and finally he got past the initial shock and asked her if she had tried to get help from any of the local churches. He later told one of his friends that he will never forget the look on the woman’s face. “Why would I do that?” she replied, “They’d just make me feel worse than I already do.”
Jesus had a knack for attracting those people who were unsavory. These are the different kinds of people that Jesus attracted: a Samaritan social outcast, a military officer under the tyrant Herod, all sorts of tax collectors, a woman possessed by seven demons, lepers, and on the list goes. Yet, the upright and those that had their act together thought Jesus was in league with the devil. They questioned Jesus and tried to trap him. They rejected him and eventually killed him.
Moses wasn’t much better. His people even though they saw a pillar of fire lead them and saw the Red Sea swallow up Pharaoh’s army and so much more, kept rejecting Moses and rejecting God. God was going to wipe them out and start over but Moses interceded on their behalf just like Jesus intercedes on our behalf.
Why is it that people today often can’t stand to be around those Christians? Why did Jesus attract the worst of the worst? Why were the broken and hurting and the sinners so attracted to Jesus and why do we find the same people so offensive?
If you are here and you are hurting and broken and just don’t know where to turn, then you are in the right place. Because you can turn to Jesus. You don’t need someone to introduce you or to open the door for you. You don’t need someone to get you on the inside. Jesus is here for you. He is here to forgive you, to touch you, and heal you from the inside out. Jesus is here to comfort the afflicted. At the same time, those who are self-confident and self-reliant and got their act together, Jesus is here to show you a better way. While Jesus comforts the afflicted, Jesus also comes to afflict the comfortable. You need Jesus. You need to live his way—a way of sacrifice. Don’t reject his offer of love and grace and forgiveness. We all need him.
Moses was a great hero. He was broken before God. When that happened, God could use him. And God did use him to do what nobody including Moses thought was possible: lead a whole nation out of slavery in one of the most powerful countries in the world. What is God calling you lay at the foot of the cross? A sin? Your life? Your money? Moses learned as we need to learn you never stop sacrificing for God. We don’t sacrifice something one time and then can say, “I’ve made my sacrifice. I’ve done it for you God. There is no need to give up anything more.”
There is an old pizza delivery joke that when someone comes into the shop to ask for directions the standard reply is, “You can’t there from here.” When you are loaded down with guilt, and all your emotional baggage, and all the comforts and securities of life that you have earned, then you can’t get there from here. You can’t get to the kingdom of peace. You can’t get to the promised land of grace and forgiveness unless you can lay down at the feet of Jesus. Unless you can give back to God those things that you hold dearest, you will never get there from here. Not until you surrender it all to Jesus.
