Milton Hershey started out by learning to be a printer. He lived just north of Lancaster, PA, and worked on a German paper. But soon, he realized how much he hated the work. So one day, he threw his straw hat into the press, and promptly got himself fired.
And so, needing a job, his mother got him an apprenticeship with a candy maker. But he didn’t stay there very long either. It was 1876, the year of the American centennial, and he realized that thousands of people were flocking to Philadelphia. Like any good businessman, he realized that where there were lots of people, there was lots of money to be made. He borrowed seed capital from his family, and off he went.
Six years later he returned, penniless. So, Milton Hershey moved to New Orleans to make his candy. His business failed there too. The same was true in New York, Chicago, and Denver. And so, by 1886, when he returned to Lancaster, he was a pretty much a broken man. So accustomed to failure, his family saw him as nothing more than a drifter – a boy who had potential but no future.
With one more effort he decided to make caramels in the Lancaster Caramel Company. When a £500 order was placed, he convinced a banker to sign his own signature for the loan he needed to fill it. When the money arrived, Milton Hershey was so overjoyed, that he ran through the streets of Lancaster with the check. He had finally made it.
He wasn’t loaded – but his caramels had made him enough money to be a respectable businessman.
I tell you all this so that you can imagine what is going through his head, when in 1903, he decides that chocolate is the candy of the future. He sells his profitable caramel company and breaks ground for a new factory in his boyhood home in the middle of Pennsylvania dairy country. You see, when he was in Denver he had learned that good candy needs a special good ingredient – fresh milk.
He was about to get very, very successful. I’m sure you know what happened from there. After all, Milton Hershey is synonymous with milk chocolate.
But to think that any old chocolate would be as successful as Hershey’s would be to miss out on some special, secret ingredients. These ingredients are vital to our text this morning too. You see, anyone can be successful, but if you really want to make a difference, you need God.
Moses’ Power
Throughout Lent, we’ve been in a series called “My Deliverer is Coming.” My goal is to walk you through the beginning of the Exodus – to see how God led the children of Israel out of bondage. I’m rather impressed with myself that I could go for three weeks without talking about the person whom God used to do that – Moses.
I’m sure you’re all familiar with his birth. Pharaoh orders all the boy babies to killed, but his mother hides him. When the baby gets too big to be hidden, his mother places him in a basket in the Nile, where he’s found by Pharaoh’s daughter. There, Miriam is smart enough and bold enough to offer the princess a wet-nurse, one who just happens to be Moses’ birth mother. It’s a miraculous story, but this morning, I want to talk about what happens what that boy grows up.
You see, Moses was in a bind. He had been given all the advantages of life as an Egyptian. But he had the eyes of Hebrew. He could see the injustices that were being perpetrated on his people. If you were Moses’ roommate, you might wonder whether you should be jealous of him or pity him. He had everything, including a conscience.
So, you can imagine what happens when, one day, he goes out to see how the other half live. And what he sees is pretty bad. What pushes him over the edge? A cruel taskmaster just doing his job – beating the slaves to get maximum performance out of his labor.
Moses hasn’t forgotten his roots. This makes him mad, and it should. Moses has been blessed or cursed with the ability to see things clearly. There is no reason that the Egyptian should be beating his Hebrews. Moses is going to put a stop to it. And he’s going to do it in a very Egyptian way.
You know, as Americans, we probably wonder why Moses didn’t just fire the Egyptian, or somehow use his position of authority to stop this senseless brutality.
But Moses had been schooled as an Egyptian. He had power, and he knew how to use it. Ancient historians tell us that Moses may have been the general who just took all of Ethiopia. This was a man who knew that if you wanted things done right, you did them yourself.
And so, coldly, calculatingly, Moses looks around, left to right. He doesn’t see a soul. So this Egyptian is going to learn a lesson in Moses’ power. Sadly, it is the last lesson this Egyptian will ever learn. Moses wanted to right the wrong. He had a passion that welled up inside him. But went about doing this deed in the ways he had learned, in his own power. He didn’t know the secret ingredient, and so it came to ruin.
The next day, he’s out again and sees injustice yet again. But this time, it’s one of his fellow Hebrews. He gets angry – and there’s nothing wrong with the anger. But when his fellow Hebrew calls him on it, he’s stopped cold.
“Who do you think you are to judge me,” this Hebrew asks. “You think you’re God or something? Are you going to kill me like you did that Egyptian?” Moses has realized his secret is out. And so, Moses does the only thing a righteous avenger can do. He runs.
Moses runs as far as his strength can take him. He runs so far that he crosses the desert, all the way to Midian – that’s across the Sinai desert and into what is now southern Israel or Jordan. You’d think that somebody doing “the right thing” stopping oppression and standing up for the little guy would get something better than to lose everything.
But there’s only one problem. Moses had tried to do this work using Moses’ own recipe. If you’re going to do God’s work, can I suggest to you that you need to do it on God’s terms? Our God is the very source of power, but he never uses that power to overwhelm. Our God wants justice, but he wants us to choose it, not be forced into it.
Moses had forgotten the most important ingredient of all. God (alt. ’Love’.) And now, Moses was going to have to learn everything he thought he knew all over again.
The Flocks
Moses had run as far he could, and now he had to stop. As far from Egypt as his legs could take him – nearly two hundred miles away – he stopped by a well for a drink. And what should he see when he gets there? Nothing less than the same type of injustice he saw in Egypt.
Here, there were several shepherd girls trying to water their sheep. But whenever they tried, bad men would stop them. This wasn’t right, and Moses knew it. And Moses was a man of action – he was going to intervene, just like he did with the Egyptian. But this time, it was different. No killing, just standing up to evil, and serving the little guy. It takes a lot of humility for a great general just to water sheep. But that’s what he does. He does God’s work on God’s terms.
It seems so simple, but in my life I know how much of a control freak I am. This world constantly tears at my soul. I want to live in a better world. I want to see us take care of one another. I feel cursed with the ability to see clearly.
When I was younger, I thought the government could fix all this, and so I thought I’d go into politics. But the more I saw of politics, the more I realized that we have a deeper need. If we’re ever going to live in the way God intended, we have start by living the way God intended. God doesn’t do that by judicial decree. He does it lovingly, personally, ministering to each person individually, wooing them to do the right thing.
Hershey School
Moses had to learn that out in the desert. Milton Hershey had to learn that in Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, and Denver.
But both of them did eventually learn they needed the secret ingredient.
I’ll tell you, I had just assumed that Hershey was some corporation just like any other. But having learned his lessons the hard way, Milton Hershey did something that I think is pretty amazing. When Hershey became the super success that it did in 1909, Hershey sold his company again. Only this time, he didn’t sell it for a million dollars.
He simply handed the deed of trust over to a school he founded – a trade school simply called the Milton Hershey Trust. To this day, Hershey foods and Hershey chocolate answers not to a board or a corporation, but a charitable school that ministers to kids one at a time.
It operates using the secret ingredient that God always uses, love.
Frankly, that’s not my natural instinct. I want to do things my way, in my power, using my methods. But God isn’t like that. One at a time, he calls each person to himself. He’ll take you wherever you are – a failure, a success, and he can make you his.
But he’ll only do it on His schedule, and in his time. Would you pray with me?
Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Enter to Worship
Prelude David Witt
Invocation Michael Hollinger
*Opening Hymn #375
“Tis’ So Sweet to Trust in Jesus”
Welcome & Announcements
Morning Prayer
*Responsive Reading [See Right]
*Offertory Hymn #389
“Stand up, Stand up for Jesus”
Offertory Mr. Witt
*Doxology
Scripture
Sermon
“The Secret Ingredient”
Invitation Hymn #409
“Trust and Obey”
Benediction
Congregational Response
May the grace of Christ of Savior / And the Father’s boundless love
With the Holy Spirit’s favor / Rest upon us from above. Amen.
* Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
RESPONSIVE READING
At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful before God.
For three months he was brought up in his father’s house;
and when he was abandoned, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son.
So Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds.
When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his relatives, the Israelites. When he saw one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian.
He supposed that his kinsfolk would understand that God was rescuing them through him, but they did not understand.
It was this Moses whom they rejected when they said, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ and whom God now sent as both ruler and liberator through the angel who appeared to him in the bush.
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter,
Choosing suffering with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.
He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward.
By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king’s anger;
For he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible.
By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.
This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people as he raised me up.’ Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him; instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt.
- Acts 7:20-28; Hebrews 11:24-28;Acts 7:37
