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.
Moses developed such a close fellowship with God that it put a fire in his bones. Witness the confidence in His voice and the trust in his God when he announces to the people as they stood anxiously before the Red Sea: “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Exodus 14:13-14). Then read his song to the Lord in Exodus 15:1-18.
Multiple times along their wilderness wanderings, as they grumbled and complained, Moses would defiantly defend God with the question, “Who are you to test the Lord?” and remind them of His goodness to them.
Don’t forget either his jealousy for God’s glory when he came down the mountain and spotted the golden calves! What righteous anger burned within him because the people had already betrayed their covenant with God!
How do you see your passion for God? Is it lacking in enthusiasm for the God who has done so much for you? Do you passionately love God and worship Him with more desire than you love your spouse and children? Tell me who has done the most for you in your life, and then tell me how much passion you have for them!
Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravians, and the one who influenced John Wesley and aided in his famous conversion, was famous for saying, “I have but one passion; it is He, He only.”
Oh, that modern-day Christians would recover such passion for God! It would set the world on fire.
A. W. Tozer said, “God dwells in a state of perpetual enthusiasm. He is delighted with all that is good and lovingly concerned about all that is wrong. He pursues His labors always in a fullness of holy zeal. No wonder the Spirit came at Pentecost as a sound of a rushing mighty wind and sat in tongues of fire on every forehead. ... Whatever else happened at Pentecost, one thing that cannot be missed by the most casual observer was the sudden upsurging of moral enthusiasm. Those first disciples burned with a steady, inward fire. They were enthusiastic to the point of complete abandon.”
Are you passionate for your God? The second area where Moses’ passion was seen is:
II. He Was Passionate about People (verses 24-25)
When Moses was a member of the royal family of the Pharaoh, he could have easily adopted its customs and lifestyles, as well as its hatred for the Hebrews. But, knowing these were his people, he chose not to overlook their hardship, and deliberately chose to join them even in their mistreatment. That choice was first made when he killed the Egyptian taskmaster, and became more evident when he willingly chose to obey God and represent them before Pharoah.
Perhaps the greatest display of Moses’ passion for his people was before God Himself. In Exodus 32, God informed Moses, who was still on the mountain, that the people had already turned against Him and were worshiping golden idols. God said, “Get out of my way and let me just consume them! Then I will make of you a great nation!” Sounds tempting, doesn’t it? Knowing people the way we do, some of us might have been willing to make that deal!
But not Moses! He interceded on their behalf and plead with God not to do such a thing, because it would dishonor God and ruin His name. This man of God asked God to remember the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God stayed that execution, although he did send a plague upon them.
Do we have a passion for people? As those redeemed by God, shouldn’t we?
We need a passion for the people of God, our brothers and sisters in Christ. This was apparent in the early church as recorded in Acts 2:42-47:
"And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved."
Believers in the early Church would have given up on the mission quickly if there was no fellowship and concern for one another. Passion begins to die when believers stop caring for each other, and the church dies, too.
But we must also have a deep passion for the lost. To know that there are souls, like we were once, full of sin and guilt and going to a Christless eternity, should fan a flame of passion in our soul for those people. It should be our sole desire as Christians, and as a church, to propagate the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all we meet.
When Dwight L. Moody was in London during one of his famous evangelistic tours, several British clergymen visited him. They wanted to know how and why this poorly educated American was so effective in winning throngs of people to Christ. Moody took the three men to the window of his hotel room and asked each in turn what he saw. One by one, the men described the people in the park below. Then Moody looked out the window with tears rolling down his cheeks. “What do you see, Mr. Moody?” asked one of the men.
“I see countless thousands of souls that will one day spend eternity in hell if they do not find the Savior.”
Obviously, D. L. Moody saw people differently than the average observer does. And because he saw eternal souls where others saw only people strolling in a park, Moody approached life with a different agenda.
William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, once had an audience with King Edward VII of England. His Majesty highly commended the salvationist for his unflagging zeal and wonderful work among the poor. How revealing was Booth’s reply to the King’s glowing words! He said, “Your Majesty, some men’s passion is for art. Some men’s passion is for fame. My passion is for souls.”
May our passion for people override our selfishness to help us become the people God needs in today’s world!
III. He Was Passionate about God’s Word (verse 28)
As a child, within the confines of the palace, Moses had been taught by his own mother about the God his people worshiped. But not until the confrontation at the burning bush did he understand that God demanded obedience. His own commissioned work depended upon his obedience to God’s Word.
Not only that, but he delivered God’s Word to Pharaoh with a fiery rhetoric that must have irritated Pharaoh to no end. Who was this nobody telling me that his God demanded that I let His people go? Pharaoh must have thought. Yet the passion with which Moses delivered the messages reveals something of the passion He had for God’s Word and for it to be obeyed.
After receiving God’s Word on stone, written by God Himself, Moses came down the mountain to find what God had said was true: the people had made golden idols and were now worshiping them. His passion for God’s Word was so great, that he smashed the tablets to the ground, as if to say, “We just made a covenant to obey God, and now you are breaking his laws already!”
Moses was constantly reminding the people of their covenant of obedience along their wilderness wonderings. In fact, as they stood on the brink of crossing the Jordan River into the land of promise, Moses recounted all of God’s laws to them, and demanded that they adhere fully if they would be blessed. That recounting of the law for the second time became known as our book of Deuteronomy, and the name means “second law.”
How much passion do you have for the Bible? We have the completed, God-given Word in our possession, yet we often ignore it. We place it in a prominent place in our homes, we even may bring it to church on Sundays. But do we really know its contents?
John Wesley, our Methodist founder, loved the Bible! Here are a few of his well-known quotes:
“God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God! Let me be a man of one book.”
“My ground is the Bible. Yea, I am a Bible-bigot. I follow it in all things, both great and small.”
“The faith of the Protestants, in general, embraces only those truths, as necessary to salvation, which are clearly revealed in the oracles of God. Whatever is plainly declared in the Old and New Testaments is the object of their faith. They believe neither more nor less than what is manifestly contained in, and provable by, the Holy Scriptures... The written Word is the whole and sole rule of their faith, as well as practice. They believe whatsoever God has declared, and profess to do whatsoever He hath commanded. This is the proper faith of Protestants: by this they will abide, and no other.”
Do we have a heart’s desire to know the Bible better so that our relationship with God will grow? Do we have a passion to share God’s word with the world so that they might know Him?
CONCLUSION
Someone anonymously wrote: A church that has passion is a church where “Discouraged folks cheer up, dishonest folks fess up, sour folks sweeten up, closed folk open up, gossipers shut up, conflicted folks make up, sleeping folks wake up, lukewarm folk fire up, dry bones shake up, and pew potatoes stand up! But most of all, Christ the Savior of the entire world is lifted up.”
Is your Christian life, like Moses, a life of passion? Are you passionate about the God you serve? Does the world see in you a passion for people? Has the Bible inspired your passion for it, to read, study, meditate, and memorize it?
Someone today needs to see a Christian who displays a passion that goes beyond the passions of the average person. They need a hero to demonstrate what true passion is, and where it should best be directed. Is that unlikely hero you?
