Grasping the Past to Gain the Future
Series: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
Brad Bailey – January 29, 2012
Intro
We’re continuing in our series entitled Emotionally Healthy Spirituality in which we began grasping how the Titanic can reflect the nature of our lives… great potential…but while everything looks good on the upper decks… there is damage below the surface, If ignored… it will become tragic. It is like the iceberg it hit… in which only 10% on average is seen.. and 90% is beneath the surface. There is a lot beneath the surface of our lives… which can affect our God given design. Keeping it below the surface and out of sight may just seem natural… but it is there. We can bury a lot…but we buy it alive.
Last week we looked at the life and spirituality of David… Israel’s second kings… … who is an amazing model of emotionally healthy spirituality.
In particular we considered Psalm 139 which he wrote… which ends with a prayer that is open to looking at what lies within…and concludes…and ‘lead him in the way everlasting.’ He is open to God showing him his ways… ways that he can’t see… knowing that God holds open to all…better ways than ours.
This naturally leads to considering our past. I know that it’s common for many to express: Why look at the past… the past is the past. How true it is that the past is the past… we shouldn’t harp on it… become bound by it. But pretending there is no connection between past and present is equally foolish. What we are doing today has a lot to do with what you have come to believe and experience in the past. The past is not just the past when it controls our future. The truth is that there can be a need to grasp the past… our ways… to gain the future.
This is something we discover in…
The Life of Moses
When we ask ‘How does God want to draw me out from my past?’… Moses stands as a powerful example.
• He is the one brought face to face with God’s glory, given the 10 Commandments, leads what scholars estimate may have been 2 million people through the desert, and at the transfiguration of Christ, he is one of two, with Elijah.
• He receives more commendation in Hebrews chapter 11 for his model of faith than any other
• He’s a character we think only Charlton Hesston could play.
> Yet we find that he is the most human of all; that in all his greatness… he faced the hard reality of the power of one’s past.
- I believe the most formative issues arises very early in his life. (and I want to express indebtedness to Jim Dethmer who I once heard speak about Moses’ life in this light.)
- The life of Moses is described in the Biblical book of Exodus and others…but we are going to hear from the summary which Stephen gives in the New Testament Book of Acts… because most notably it offers a briefer summary.
Acts 7:17-19 (NIV)
17 "As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt greatly increased. 18 Then another king, who knew nothing about Joseph, became ruler of Egypt. 19 He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our forefathers by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die.
- There Pharaoh who had appreciated the service of an Israelite named Joesph had invited him to have all his Israelite people come to Egypt when a famine had struck the whole region. But that king had long since passed on and there is no sense of indebtedness… just a sense of threat. The new Pharaoh king recognized that these Israelites, who had been given choice land, were becoming a powerful people…and increasing in numbers.
- He had begun to demand labor… and increasing oppress them more and more harshly. As such, their numbers only became more threatening. So he decided to begin having all the newborn males killed. Orders Egyptian midwives to do this… they refuse…Finally orders all the people to throw any newborn Hebrew boys into the Nile.
… the account picks up with Moses entry into the world
Acts 7:20-22 (NIV)
20 "At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his father's house. 21 When he was placed outside, Pharaoh's daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.
Drawing from the extensive account in Exodus, we know that his mother senses something special about this child, and tries to conceal him, but after 3 months she concludes to do the only thing she can think to save his life… places him in a basket… and places him on the reed-filled edge of the Nile (the enormous though slow moving river)… His older sister follows… and sees that this infant brother… the infant Moses…is discovered by none other than the Pharaoh’s daughter. [1] [2] [3]
How this unfolds is striking… but too often we capture the wonderful providence of what took place, and miss the accompanying pain that is so much a part.
Moses’ mother had been forced to make the best decision she could amid bad circumstances.
… But for Moses, only an infant, it would leave a wound of separation.
Perhaps no words capture it more powerfully than those simple words in
v. 21… “He was PLACED OUTSIDE”
Other translations translate this ‘He was abandoned’
He was cut off from the natural place of belonging he was intended to know. He was abandoned from his very source of life and identity.
That is the fundamental insecurity that every human life knows something of.
1. Our past includes wounds that confine us.
- Not many of us may have been sent down a river, but I believe every human soul knows something of the wound of separation.
Something took place in our past… a separation from our Creator… in which we face the reality of being “placed outside.”
… Moses mother, in love, risked the consequences of keeping Moses for three months… and then sent him down the flowing river…where another might care for him.
- His mother loved him…did her best… now raised in Pharaoh’s own family… but there was still a wound in his soul…deep and defining. In a similar way… the power of parenting is to share in God’s creating and loving of life… but that role as mediators… now comes with limits…often tragic limits. For every parent is bound by their own separation and insecurities… and every child will experience reflections of that work of separation and insecurity… perhaps by a parent’s distractions…detachment….divorce… or death.
- If we look around at the world around us… in our own souls…we all have some wounds we are living with. We have all wondered: Do I belong? Am I really wanted… acceptable?
The separation we fear most…is why security always seems relative. We all face levels of underlying insecurity.
And in response…
- We wear what we are given… and for Moses, there was a lot to cover himself with.
By God’s hand, Moses was now placed in a position of royalty.
- He is raised as part of the family whose royalty is unlike anything that most of us can imagine… the masses are presumed servants of the Pharaoh ruler and his family dynasty. Educated in all the wisdom of this leading civilization, we are told how he became “ powerful in speech and action.”
- If Robin Leech had his Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous show, he would have been the finale episode. He was the bachelor groomed for success, given to sophistication would have been the top bill. He had the finest clothes, cruised in the sportiest chariots. If there was a Bachelor show… he would have been a top pick.
HE HAD IT ALL… but couldn’t compensate for the wound. [4] He was not an Egyptian. His own people were the masses of slaves that served the kingdom…but he had never been a part of them. He was placed outside… and he is still living outside… he doesn’t belong to anyone.This wound has the power to bind him…and confine him. That power is at work in every one of our lives.
Acts 7:23-28
v.23 “When Moses was 40 years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites.”
At 40 yrs old (what would relate to about age 30 in our modern lifespan,) he feels the pain of his separation, and he looks afresh at those who can accept him beneath all he’s covered himself in. The wording implies that he had been taught of his link with the Israelites as he was growing up in Pharaoh’s household. (Hebrews 11:24 explains that, "By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.")
24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.
26 The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, 'Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?' 27 "But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28 Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?'
- Moses seems to have said ‘Hey, I’m home. You can love me now. I’ll kill an Egyptian to prove it. Here’s a way I can be accepted and belong.”…
Moses is doing what any of us might do… he is trying to find a way to belong…to deal with insecurity. He is compensating for the separation and insecurity he feels. [4]
2. Our past forms ways that controls us.
I want to suggest that there are…
Four Common Ways We Try To Deal with Insecurity in Our Own Way
REACHING – becoming important; the way of achievement
What do we do when we don’t feel accepted for who we ARE? We seek acceptance for what we DO. We seek to become important through having new successes… achievements… heights… another performance… customer… close another deal… build a bigger church. We kill an Egyptian.
This type of attempt to compensate for our insecurity is hard to see for what it is. We can find a form of confidence in what we can achieve. We may really become a strong person. But the compensation is a false substitute… because we become human doings that no longer can accept what it means to be a human being.
RESCUING – becoming indispensable; the way of co-dependence
“Doubting they could like me, I’ll see if they can NEED me.”
We find security in the bonds that come when others need us. “I’ll be certain to care & meet each person’s needs. We’ll do one more favor… provide for one more person who will appreciate us.
RECEIVING – becoming impoverished; the way of needs (crisis and sympathy)
I’ll connect with people by needing them… each crisis in my life will help the connection… until they can never depart. My need and their care will become my place.
RETREATING – becoming independent; the way of hiding
I won’t bother anyone. Perhaps if no one really knows me I’ll be safe. Better unknown than disowned. Not much of a connection, but it’s all I trust in.
Many of these actions themselves may appropriate…even commendable. Moses showed courage in challenging a brutal Egyptian, BUT the problem is that they represent OUR WAYS … our WILL BEING ACTED OUT. When can do good things for the wrong reasons.
Moses had a sense that God could use him, but he hadn’t come to the deep realization that he was acceptable by GRACE, so his wound and corresponding will were at work.
Moses would face what many of us may face… that our ways and our wills will inevitably crash.
- The people didn’t give him the big high five & hug… rather…their response… “Get out of here… you’re not one of us… you just caused more problems… we don’t want you.”
- Can you hear the wound of separation? Did his way resolve the real insecurity? Far from it… he is faced with it ever more painfully.
Well, Moses begins an enormous transition in his life at this point in which he “gets it”—he realizes that the deep validation he seeks cannot be found in those around him. He is “put outside” once again… once again his soul is exposed, only now there is no covering up… we come to the final section.
v. 29 – “When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.”
- In Exodus this section states simply, that having headed out into this wilderness region, “HE SAT DOWN BY A WELL”
- …sitting down he would now face himself; a period I believe every one of us may face in one form or another.
In the wilderness… he is stripped from the pride and pretense he has known… and even the heroic hopes he had planned for.
He is grounded in his most basic condition.
• He lends a hand to some women at the well, is taken in by their father who gives one of their daughters (Zipporah) in marriage. The great prince of Egypt is now just Mo & Zippy… with two sons (…that will bring you down to earth)… with some sheep… for his father-in-law had given him sheep and taught him something about how to live in this desert country.
• Think of the profound change… the most privileged of all lives… prepared to rule all of Egypt… is now waking up saying ‘Hey sheep, let’s go for a walk.’
… He’s as grounded, ‘brought down to earth,’ in the wilderness.
- It is here that we must come to terms with our past attempts & failures… sort through the process. And that is what the wilderness represents… that place in which all that usually surrounds isn’t there… and we must face the deeper and more essential truth of who we are… and where we belong.
3. Our past can lead to a wilderness that confronts us.
When our pretense and pursuits are removed, we face the futility of our own wills, come to terms with God’s absolute acceptance,
Then we’re prepared to hear God’s calling
-
30 "After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31 When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord's voice: 32 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.' Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. 33 "Then the Lord said to him, 'Take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.'
God is calling Moses to go back….
Moses says… “Awesome… I can’t wait to go back and face all that pain and rejection !”
No… As Exodus explains, his initial response is … ‘no way…not me.’ [5]
No one wants to face their past. Moses spent 40 years trying to put it behind him… forget it. Many of us have spent most of our lifetimes trying to disassociate from the past.
Our ways have been protecting us from our dealing with the separation… the sense of being unacceptable…exposed (naked)…unwanted.
God doesn’t say go back…but that “I will send you back.’
You
It is my calling upon you that allows you to go.
The problems with the past is not the past itself… but the self protective way it was playing out… you way and your will.
God is saying: I can set Egypt right…. I can bring freedom… you can know your place in it all but such lies in my ways and will.
When you stop trying to be the great deliverer in yourself… you will be with me in my deliverance.
Moses spent…
40 years trying to be somebody
40 years learning how to be nobody… and will now spend
40 years discovering what God can do with a nobody…when they are God’s somebody
Can you identify with such a journey to discover who you really are?
Have you known something of this pursuit/journey?
I’ve known my life to echo the pursuits of Moses. Inside like any other young kid… trying to cover my sense of inadequacy… then I heard of what God had done, of his love… a love so able to cover my wounds (though I may not have called them that) so full of the truth that my soul longed to be filled with… but as quickly as I laid myself in His arms, my own options for acceptance were ready to play themselves out.
I’ve had to face the pursuits that reflected my will. I had killed my share of Egyptians. I faced a wilderness within. I’ve felt the humility of the prodigal son & the anger of the older brother and the answer is the same. “I’m glad you’re home.” But I don’t sit down very easily and I must face the wilderness to face my pretense and hear God’s pure call. As we learn, it’s never too late. The cost of authentic experience with God is honesty of need and turning our will over to him.
The power of the past to define the future lies not in the past itself….but in the ways that have been set. God knows that the past involves the pain of separation… and the insecurity of life… but also that we our bound by the ways we have chosen to deal with it… that do not restore us in freedom.
- Can you sense how defining this issue rooted in his past must have been? It is the inner challenge that he would face all his life… the sensitive core that he would face. Do you recall how his life would end? While we are not going to finish all of his story… you may recall that he rises as the greatest leader of freedom ever known. He becomes God’s prophet confronting the powers at hand… his own father figure… and leads the people from slavery to the Promised Land. But he would not be allowed to enter that land. For jus before they reach it… the people become defiant of the process… and state once more…’Look what you’ve done… we don’t want you.’ The old wound is still there… and he breaks from God’s will and ways… and strikes a rock to get them what they want. For that God… God explains that he cannot enter the land…even while God makes clear that God still blesses him… for God still loves and approves of who he is.
And let me conclude with declaring the greatest part of the story… that the separation which Moses’ life never fully resolved at it’s deepest level… God had always planned to come with a deliverer from himself who would.
• Egypt was only a form of the deeper enslavement.
• The Promised Land was only a temporal reflection of God’s rule for the first of the chosen people… His kingdom rule would ultimately be over all when the eternal realm of heaven reigns over all.
• Moses was only a forerunner of deliverance. Jesus would come as the One promised all the way back in Genesis… to Abraham… as the deliverer.
God would send one who fulfills the greater restoration of all.
Jesus…the one who knows no separation…on whom the Father declared “this is my son whom I love…in whom I am well pleased.”
Who was then taken out to the Wilderness…for 40 days… where the enemy tries to draw him into the ways of self will.
In his refusal… he chooses the Father’s will… the Father’s love.
By this, he breaks the power of separation:
No more condemnation in Christ….breaks the power of shame.
No more separation of death.
What is the reality that life in Him offers: The reality that there is no separation between your existence and the eternal source of love from which you began. Nothing can separate you from that love. Nothing.
Resources: I drew this general pattern of Moses’ life from a message I once heard Jim Dethmer share at a conference for pastors entitled: Why Moses Hit the Rock. I am indebted to how it spoke to me then and served to shape this message now. While the general three major points reflect what Dethmer said, I have developed this message only on the general ideas recalled, not from any written or audio material.
Notes:
1. Regarding the name “Moses” Wikopedia provides the following summary:
The biblical text explains the name Mošeh משה as a derivation of the root mšh משה "to draw", in Exodus 2:10:
"[...] she called his name Moses (משה): and she said, Because I drew him (משיתהו) out of the water." (KJV).
The name is thus suggested to relate to drawing out in a passive sense, "the one who was drawn out". Those who depart from this tradition derive the name from the same root but in an active sense, "he who draws out", in the sense of "savior, deliverer". The form of the name as recorded in the Masoretic text is indeed the expected form of the Biblical Hebrew active participle. Josephus argued for an Egyptian etymology, and some scholarly suggestions have followed this in deriving the name from Coptic terms mo "water" and `uses "save, deliver", suggesting a meaning "saved from the water".
Another suggestion has connected the name with the Egyptian ms, as found in Tuth-mose and Ra-messes, meaning "born" or "child".
2. The parents made a choice that reflected faith:
“By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.” - Hebrews 11:23 (NIV)
What they saw or grasped that was ‘not ordinary’ or was ‘beautiful’ (NRSV) is given many translation.
a proper child—Greek, “a comely child.” Ac 7:20, “exceeding fair,” Greek, “fair to God.” The “faith” of his parents in saving the child must have had some divine revelation to rest on (probably at the time of his birth), which marked their “exceeding fair” babe as one whom God designed to do a great work by. His beauty was probably “the sign” appointed by God to assure their faith.
Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., Fausset, A. R., Brown, D., & Brown, D. (1997). A commentary, critical and explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments (Heb 11:23). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
It was by faith that Moses was hidden by his parents and his life was thus preserved. The phrase because they saw he was no ordinary child might be better read, “because they saw he was a beautiful child.” (“Beautiful” is the Gr. asteion, which occurs in the NT only here and in Acts 7:20, which also refers to Moses.) Delighted by the precious gift of a son which God had given them, they evidently believed God had something better for this lovely baby than death. Not fearing Pharaoh’s edict, they kept him alive, and God rewarded their faith by their son’s illustrious career.
Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-). The Bible knowledge commentary : An exposition of the scriptures (Heb 11:23). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
3. Regarding some general historicity on the life of Moses: http://biblelight.net/moses.htm
4. Compensation – “a mechanism by which an individual attempts to make up for some real or imagined deficiency of personality or behavior by developing or stressing another aspect of the personality or by substituting a different form of behavior.” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/compensation)
5. In the full account in Exodus we see how resistant Moses is to God’s calling.
Exodus 4:1-5, 10-17 (CEV)
Moses asked the Lord, "Suppose everyone refuses to listen to my message, and no one believes that you really appeared to me?"
[2] The Lord answered, "What's that in your hand?"
"A walking stick," Moses replied.
[3] "Throw it down!" the Lord commanded. So Moses threw the stick on the ground. It immediately turned into a snake, and Moses jumped back.
[4] "Pick it up by the tail!" the Lord told him. And when Moses did this, the snake turned back into a walking stick.
[5] "Do this," the Lord said, "and the Israelites will believe that you have seen me, the God who was worshiped by their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
… [10] Moses replied, "I have never been a good speaker. I wasn't one before you spoke to me, and I'm not one now. I am slow at speaking, and I can never think of what to say."
[11] But the Lord answered, "Who makes people able to speak or makes them deaf or unable to speak? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Don't you know that I am the one who does these things? [12] Now go! When you speak, I will be with you and give you the words to say."
[13] Moses begged, "Lord, please send someone else to do it."
[14] The Lord became irritated with Moses and said:
What about your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know he is a good speaker. He is already on his way here to visit you, and he will be happy to see you again. [15] [15-16] Aaron will speak to the people for you, and you will be like me, telling Aaron what to say. I will be with both of you as you speak, and I will tell each of you what to do. [16] [17] Now take this walking stick and use it to perform miracles.
6. Herbert Lockyear said: "In the first 40 years, in the palace of Pharoah, Moses learned to be SOMEBODY. In the next 40 years, in the desert, Moses learned to be a NOBODY. In the final 40 years, during the time of the Exodus, he learned that God was for EVERYBODY!"
