EXCUSES and ABILITIES
Text: Exodus 4:10 -12
Exodus 4:10-12 But Moses said to the LORD, "O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." (11) Then the LORD said to him, "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? (12) Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak."
I learned that many years ago, in the South Carolina United Methodist Conference, there was a young man who stuttered that felt the call to ministry. After hearing him talk with a stutter, his District Superintendent told him that he would not be able to use him. He then said to the District Superintendent “God called me to preach. You did not.” Later, when he went to preach his very first sermon, the late Rev. Denver Lee preached without stuttering. He never stuttered when he preached.
Moses was called by God to be an instrument of deliverance for the children of Israel who were in Egyptian captivity as slaves. God had heard their cries and wanted to set his chosen people free. Moses tried to come up with excuses. He claimed that he was not eloquent with words.
Have any of us ever tried to create a legitimate alibi for any of our illegitimate behavior? Have any of us ever made a valid excuse for our sins of omission? We all know that a sin of omission is sin because we left something undone that we should have done!
We are all without excuse and guilty as charged when it comes to answering those two questions!
We have been called by God to set people free in our time and on our watch. Like Moses, we want to make excuses. Those excuses will not exempt us from our calling.
We all have abilities. We all have responsibilities, accountabilities, liabilities and we must be obedient to God in order to accomplish His will.
RESPONSIBILITY
Did God call us to sit in the sidelines while people will perish?
1) Question: The answer to this question is no. The Lord did not call us to sit on the sidelines.
2) An undeniable fact: If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.
What are some of the most common excuses that we tell ourselves? I came up with a list of twenty excuses. How many of them have we ever used?
1. I’m too old
2. I’m too young
3. Nobody will ever know
4. I’m too busy
5. Somebody else will do it
6. I’ll get to it later
7. I’ll ask for forgiveness later
8. I’m bored
9. They don’t matter anyway
10. That is the way we have always done it
11. I fell asleep
12. I overslept
13. The devil made me do it
14. It’s so and so’s fault
15. I forgot
16. Everybody else is doing it
17. The dog ate my homework
18. I left it at home
19. That’s just the way I was brought up
20. I’m not eloquent with words
If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.
ACCOUNTABILITY
If responsibility precedes accountability, and it does, then how can we avoid giving an account?
1) Moses’s call: God called Moses to be his chosen vessel to help liberate the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage.
2) Our Call: God had called us to be on the move in making disciples (Matthew 28:19). How do we answer our call today?
If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.
Remember the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14 -30)?
1) Talents: All the servants had to give an account of their work when the master returned. Some were rewarded and the lazy were condemned. How many of us bury our talents?
2) Burying talents: If we bury our God-given talent, then how can we expect to reap where we have not sown?
If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.
LIABILITY
What do you think of when you hear the word liability?
1) Obligation: One of the synonyms for liability is obligation. Are we not all obligated for our own work?
2) Test scores: They don’t grade you for someone else’s work in a school setting. Just like the servants in the story of talents, they were all graded individually for their individual work.
What about the collective work of everyone involved? God called Moses to be the key leader of delivering the children of Israel from Egyptian captivity. God worked through Moses’s leadership to overcome the obstacle of the hardness of Pharoah’s heart. The children of Israel all left together on foot once they liberated.
If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling.
OBEDIENCE
Why is obedience such a big factor for our mission to make disciples?
1) Obedience: If we do not obey God’s will, then we will lose our focus.
2) Compared to Moses: We have to be obedient to our calling to accomplish God’s will for our mission. It was true for Moses with his mission and it is also true of our mission.
Do we ever let excuses get in our way because we are stuck in the past?
1) Irrelevant Complaint: Remember how it happened to Moses? He led the children of Israel out of Egypt and then they began to complain. Consider Exodus 16. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death" (Exodus 16:2 – 3 NIV).
2) Moving forward: How do we drive a car? Do we look through the windshield as we move forward or the rear view mirror?
3) Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
Does their complaint sound familiar to you?
1) Excuse number ten: Let’s refer back to excuse number 10: That is the way we have always done it. They were complaining about how it was in Egypt during their days of slavery while neglecting to praise God for delivering them. Do we not often resemble them when we complain about how things used to be in the past?
2) Glory days: How many times do churches reflect on their glory days instead of working to grow their churches for the present day? How many say “Well that is that the way we have always done things!”
Doesn’t God call us to move forward through the ages as we make disciples?
1) The Amish way: When you get home today, I want you to do something. I want you to look up how the Amish move buildings on YouTube. They don’t use trucks, cranes or even anything that has an engine! They all pick up the building from the floor joists inside the building and work together as a team, all moving in the same direction literally picking up that building and physically moving it.
2) Relevance: Do you see something of spiritual relevance to the church here? Do you want this church to grow? Isn’t that ability to grow within our grasp? What excuses are we making that prevent us from spiritually picking up our church and literally inviting others to come join us? Excuses will not do it. Only our abilities with God’s help will help us accomplish God’s will in building up this church!
3) Pick up this church: Pick up this church in prayer! Pick up this church in evangelism! Pick up this church in loving others! Pick up this church and move forward with God’s help allowing Him to speak through us and our actions! Pick up this church and go make disciples in the Name of Jesus Christ!
We all have abilities, and we can all make excuses. We can even pass the buck.
If it is up to us, then there can be nobody to blame but us if we avoid our calling. In many ways, the future of this church and its moving forward through the ages is in our grasp!
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
