Unexpected Events (Part 1) Series

Today I want to talk about two unexpected events in Moses’s life. One was a glorious encounter with God that set him on the course for the last 40 years of his life. The other was a painful experience that equipped him to fulfill the mission given to him in the first encounter. In both cases the experience was unexpected. We will probably only have time for the first event today and deal with the second one next week.

We can all look back on our lives and see pivotal moments when life turned in an unexpected direction. When I left Dallas to attend a Bible School in Amarillo in 1972, I did not know in advance that I would meet the love of my life there. I did not know that I would marry Jeanie Seymour and we would raise a family together. A few years earlier I would have never guessed that turn of events.

When Jeanie and I traveled through Springfield, MO in 1988 on a trip to Iowa, I had no idea we would spend 30 years of our lives there. I had no idea that we would be asked to move to Springfield and pastor a church named Grace Chapel. It was God’s plan. He led us in that direction. But we did not know those events in advance.

As a child I had no idea that one day in April 1963 I would visit a little Pentecostal church and encounter Christ as my Lord and Savior. I did not know in advance I would have that encounter with God that would change the course of my life and destiny forever.

Reflect on your life and you will realize so much of what happened was above and beyond your control. It was not a result of your planning capacity. It was God’s plan for you unfolding in life. Many of the twists and turns in our lives came unexpectedly.

And so it is for our future. The apostle James flatly tells us in his epistle, “you do not know what will happen tomorrow” (4:14).i Yet we tend to presume that we do know. We tend to make plans with the assumption that we can bring them to pass. But the past should have taught us that the future is unpredictable. Events will occur that are beyond our control. We will handle the unexpected better if in advance we recognize the limitations of our own control and the reliability of God’s control. “Blessed are the flexible for they will not be bent out of shape.” We can make plans. Sometimes having a plan helps us work toward goals with discipline. But those plans must always be made prayerfully with a clear understanding they are subject to God’s revisions (Prov. 19:21).

The UNEXPECTED event Moses experienced at the burning bush was a glorious, life-changing encounter with God. And it came as a total surprise for Moses. Moses is tending his sheep like he had done every day for the last 40 years. Then God appeared to him in a burning bush and announced a new direction for his life. God is about to intervene in behalf of His people. He is about to judge Egypt and free His people from bondage. Out of the burning bush God said to Moses, “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. 8 So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. 9 Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt” (Ex. 3:7-10).ii

For 400 years Israel had suffered as slaves in Egypt. The time had now come for God’s intervention. Four hundred years is a long time for Israel to live under the oppression of Egypt. God could have intervened sooner, but it would not have served his purposes to do so. It was during those 400 years that Israel transformed from a family of 70 people to a nation of millions. It was in that furnace of affliction that God prepared those people to fulfill destiny. No significant intervention by Godfor 400 years. But now dramatic change would come because God has come down to deal with the matter.