Even God’s Greatest Servant’s Made Excuses
Exodus 3: 1-12, 4:1,10-12
I love basketball! I love everything about the game. The excitement of hitting the three-point winning shot at the buzzer. The scream of the crowd as they cheer you on to victory. The adrenaline rush as you dunk for the first time while graciously extending your hand to your opponent’s face and utter the words, “not in my house!” Yes, I love this game. But in my ninth grade year at Oklahoma Bible Academy I can not say that I loved the game of basketball. If you were to ask me then if I loved basketball I would have said yes. If you were to ask me if I loved to play I would have said yes. But if you were to ask me if I had a desire to start on the varsity team I would have said “no”. Why? It’s simple. I was scared. I was scared of what would happen if I were to ever mess up in a game. I constantly questioned if my friends and the fans would still like me? Would the coach still want me on the team? Was I even good enough to play? I saw myself as inferior to other players. When in reality the coach did like me and did call on me more than once to play for him. But instead of looking past my fear of being inferior or rejected I simply gave excuses. I said whatever I had to to stay out of the game. One week I had shin splints and the next I would have a pulled muscle. Even though my coach was constantly giving me positive assurance and promised that he would help me I still feared. Finally my coach came up to me one day and said, “Ryan, if you spend everyday making excuses then you will never get off the bench of life."
TRANSITION: In our own lives I am sure that all of us you have made excuses to try to get away from doing something that we did not want to do. Maybe we made excuses to our parents to get out of cleaning our rooms or from going on a date with someone we did not like. Maybe some of us struggled with God and made excuses as to why we did not want to come to this university and major in ministry.
And maybe even now some of us in this room may be struggling with God and making excuses as to why we should not go into a specific ministry, continue our educational study or even witness to our unsaved roommates.
At some point in our lives we have to stop and ask ourselves why do we make excuses? Do excuses ever really benefit us? How affective can we be when all we do is make excuses?
I am sure if I asked anyone of you if you would like to be fully ready without hesitation to take on any task that God throws at you you would say yes. If I asked if you would like to able to walk up to the poor dirty beggar on the street or the rich millionaire in his limousine or even your unsaved roommate and be able to witness to them without hesitation; with firm confidence in your voice, and with the love of God flowing from your heart you would say yes.
Some of you may be asking, “ That is what I want, but how can I become like that? How can I fully follow God without excuses?” I am glad you asked.
There are many places found in scripture that talk about following God without excuses, but on place I want to look at is found in the 3rd and 4th chapters of Exodus.
But before we do lets look at some of the historical background.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The third and some of the forth chapters, which we will be concentrating on today, takes place forty years after Moses had fled from Egypt to Midian. As we should all know Moses was raised as a Prince of Egypt but ran away to Midian at the age of 40 for killing an Egyptian that was beating a Hebrew slave. In the beginning of the 3rd chapter Moses is seen tending to his flock when an angel of the Lord appears to him in a burning bush. God tells Moses that He has heard the cry of the Jews and he wants to rescue them from the Egyptians and move them to the Promised Land. He calls Moses to return to Egypt, demand the freedom of the Jews in the name of God and to lead them to their Promised Land. To our surprise Moses does not automatically jump at the chance to follow God and do this great work for the Hebrew slaves. Moses becomes scared, and soon begins to make excuses as to why he can not be the one to lead the people. God assures Moses after every excuse that he will be with him and ultimately Moses does God’s will and we all should know how the story turns out.
Today I would like to show you that the excuses that Moses gives to avoid his calling from God are very similar to the excuses that we give today in our own callings. By looking at Moses’ excuses and how God helped him overcome them we will also be able to overcome our excuses and ultimately be able to follow God without excuses.
In order for us to follow God without excuses we must do three things.
I. WE MUST NOT QUESTION OUR ABILITIES BY OUR STATUS IN SOCIETY. (Exodus 3:11)
But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
Moses said that he could not fulfill God’s call for him, because he was a nobody. While he had once been a prince, he was now just a lowly shepherd living out in the desert. Who was he to go to someone as powerful as the Pharaoh was the ruler of what was then the world’s greatest and most powerful nation?
It is important to note that God did not deny Moses’ insignificance. He did not question if Moses was comparable to the Pharaoh in greatness; he already knew the answer. Moses was a nobody. But in verse 12a God says, “I will be with you.” It did not matter how insignificant Moses was or how great the Pharaoh was because it was the all-powerful creator of the universe that would be behind Moses. “It wasn’t little, nobody Moses challenging the Pharaoh, but it was little nobody Moses and Big, Somebody God together saying to the Pharaoh, “Let my people Go.”
Many times we are like Moses. When God calls us to witness to somebody we say that we are nobody compared to them. We think that they are much smarter, better educated, or more powerful and we are not. Just like Moses we sometimes say that we can not answer our calls that God gives us because we think that we are nobody’s.
The evangelist A.E. Shuttlesworth sums it up when he says, “When a nobody meets a somebody, he can begin to touch everybody.”
We can fulfill God’s call to witness, preach, and teach because we have the assurance that no matter who we come into contact with in our lives whether they are big and powerful or lowly beggars we can have confidence because God says that he will be with us no matter what.
II. WE MUST NOT FEAR THE REJECTION OF SOCIETY. (Exodus 4:1)
Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, “The Lord did not appear to you?”
Moses feared that if he went back to the people that they would not believe him. Maybe they would think that he made it up or that he was crazy. Realistically the story would be hard to swallow.
Again God does not deny that the people would not believe his story, but instead in verses 2-9 God tells Moses that by doing three miracles: turning the rod into a serpent, making the hand leprous, and turning water into blood the people would believe. God is essentially saying to Moses that he just needs to show up and He will do the rest.
We are just like Moses in the way that when God calls us to do His will whether in witnessing or any kind of preaching and teaching we give the excuse that the people will not believe. And just like Moses God does not deny that the people will not believe our story but it is only our job to faithfully show up and do what God called us to do then we can sit back and let God do the work.
In Ken Davis’ book, How To Speak To Youth he tells a story on believing. In college I was asked to prepare a lesson to teach my speech class. We were to be graded on our creativity and ability to drive home a point in a memorable way. The title of my talk was, "The Law of the Pendulum." I spent 20 minutes carefully teaching the physical principle that governs a swinging pendulum. The law of the pendulum is: A pendulum can never return to a point higher than the point from which it was released. Because of friction and gravity, when the pendulum returns, it will fall short of its original release point. Each time it swings it makes less and less of an arc, until finally it is at rest. This point of rest is called the state of equilibrium, where all forces acting on the pendulum are equal.
I attached a 3-foot string to a child’s toy top and secured it to the top of the blackboard with a thumbtack. I pulled the top to one side and made a mark on the blackboard where I let it go. Each time it swung back I made a new mark. It took less than a minute for the top to complete its swinging and come to rest. When I finished the demonstration, the markings on the blackboard proved my thesis.
I then asked how many people in the room BELIEVED the law of the pendulum was true. All of my classmates raised their hands, so did the teacher. He started to walk to the front of the room thinking the class was over. In reality it had just begun. Hanging from the steel ceiling beams in the middle of the room was a large, crude but functional pendulum (250 pounds of metal weights tied to four strands of 500-pound test parachute cord.). I invited the instructor to climb up on a table and sit in a chair with the back of his head against a cement wall. Then I brought the 250 pounds of metal up to his nose. Holding the huge pendulum just a fraction of an inch from his face, I once again explained the law of the pendulum he had applauded only moments before, "If the law of the pendulum is true, then when I release this mass of metal, it will swing across the room and return short of the release point. Your nose will be in no danger."
After that final restatement of this law, I looked him in the eye and asked, "Sir, do you believe this law is true?" There was a long pause. Huge beads of sweat formed on his upper lip and then weakly he nodded and whispered, "Yes." I released the pendulum. It made a swishing sound as it arced across the room. At the far end of its swing, it paused momentarily and started back. I never saw a man move so fast in my life. He literally dived from the table. Deftly stepping around the still-swinging pendulum, I asked the class, "Does he believe in the law of the pendulum?" The students unanimously answered, "NO!"
Even though the people had the clear scientific explanation of how the pendulum worked and even after it was proven through experimentation that it worked they still had trouble believing when it was tested on them. Just because we may have all of the answers and can even prove God exist it does not always mean the people will believe. We need to trust God to do the work of believing and not worry whether or not the people believe because of what we say.
III. WE MUST USE OUR PERSONAL HANDICAPS AS MOTIVATION. (Exodus 4: 10)
Moses said to the Lord, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
Moses main excuse was that he had some sort of speech impediment. God was telling Moses to go speak to the Pharaoh but Moses was not able to speak properly which would make him seem foolish. Moses felt that he needed to remind God that he was physically incapable of speaking properly to the Pharaoh.
Again God does not deny that Moses had a speech problem. But instead in verses 11-12 God simply reminds Moses who was the creator of his mouth. God gives Moses the assurance that his problem of speech will not be a problem because He will give him the words to speak.
We also at times feel as though we are incapable because of our personal handicaps. Like Moses we never know what to say when we are witnessing. Or maybe some of us have some other form of disability that we feel will keep us from effectively doing God’s work so we use that as our crutch to escape His calling.
Instead of using our disabilities as crutches we need to praise God for them. For by having them people can see how with God’s help we over come them. Because of our imperfections in ourselves we must rely on God all the more to help us in His ministry. We need to see them as strengths instead of weaknesses and allow God to use them for His glory.
In Ted Engstrom’s, A Time for Commitment, he tells a powerful story of overcoming our disabilities: I smiled with delight when I read Art Linkletter’s story of Wendy Stoker, age 19, freshman at the University of Florida. Young athlete. She placed third, just 2.5 points from first place, in the Iowa’s girls’ state diving championship. She worked two hours a day for four years to get there. “ Now she’s at the University of Florida,” he says. “She’s working twice as hard and has earned the number two position on the varsity diving squad. She’s aiming for the national finals. Wendy carries a full academic load, finds time for bowling, and is an accomplished water skier. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Wendy Stoker is her typing. She bangs out 45 words a minute on her typewriter with her toes!” And then he says, “Oh, did I fail to mention? Wendy was born without arms!”
No matter our handicap we should never allow it to keep us from our ministry. Handicaps are not problems they are God given gifts. We should praise God for them for because of them we must rely on Him totally to give us the strength and support we need to over come and use them for His glory.
If we are to fully follow God and His call on our lives then we must accept and overcome our personal handicaps. To follow God’s call means to act without hesitation. To be ready at any time and to be willing to sacrifice anything, even our own lives.
To live a life without excuses means to be part of the fellowship of the unashamed. What does that mean? Simply that we have Holy Spirit power. The die has been cast. We have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. We are His disciples. We won’t look back, let up, slow down, or back away.
Our past is redeemed, our present makes sense, our future is secure. We are finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed vision, mundane talking, cheap giving and dwarfed goals. We no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotions or popularity.
We don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded or rewarded. We now live by faith, obey with out excuses, lean on His presence, walk by patience, lift by prayer and labor by His power. Our face’s are set, our gait is fast, our goal is heaven, our road is narrow, our way is rough, our companions few, our Guide reliable, our mission clear, we cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded or delayed.
We will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity. We won’t give up, shut up, let up, until we have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, preached up for the cause of Christ.
We are disciples of Jesus. We must go till He comes, give till we drop, preach till all know, and work till He stops us. And when He comes for His own, He will have no problems recognizing us- our banners will be clear.
