My First Sermon
Have you ever heard the song, “I’m in the Lord’s Army”? (Sing, “I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery, I may never zoom on the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s Army.”) I got an email the other day and that song just struck a cord. The saying was this: Prayer: Don’t give God instructions, just report for duty.
Have you ever felt that you wouldn’t be accepted because of your past? Have you always lived in fear of the things you have done, that they might come back to bite you someday? You aren’t alone. I know that I have in the past. Moses in fact did just this as well. In Exodus 2:11-25 Moses fled to Midian in fear of his life because of Pharaoh. Later on when God calls to Moses in the burning bush in Chapter 3, Moses continually questions God and comes up with excuses why not to go back and be God’s servant. Have you ever resisted God, ran away refusing to serve Him, either out of fear or shame, or maybe because you wanted to deny that God could possibly call on you to do a task.
This is going to be our focus today. We’re going to look at the fact that God calls us to a purpose and uses our past to enhance while cautioning us not to “bury it in the sand”. Today we are going to mainly be looking at Exodus 2:11-25, I will also pull verses from Exodus 3:9-14 and Romans 8:28. Open your bibles to Exodus 2:11-25.
Moses Flees to Midian
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 “And where is he?” he asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom,a saying, “I have become an alien in a foreign land.”
23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Exodus 3:9-14
9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, youa will worship God on this mountain.”
13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.b This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
When I read these verses, I feel that Moses is an angry young man, someone who thought he had got away with a serious travesty against God. Then once he leaves, I see someone running away from his past trying to leave it in the past as if it never happened almost as if he had “buried it in the sand” with the Egyptian. Eventually, God caught up with Moses. God used Moses’ past to turn him around and use him as an instrument of His will. Moses’ no longer gave God instructions, he just reported for his duty. For some reason, God likes to use broken people to minister to His children. This is still true today. When I decided to become a minister, I heard people say, “Are you kidding me!? With your past, how can you possibly think you can become a minister??” In my past experience, most ministers come from some of the most broken backgrounds you could possibly think of. My background isn’t quite as broken as some people I know. Anyone who knows me knows that I come from divorced parents, a very serious addiction to pornography and the internet at one point in my life and a series of miscalculated relationships, one resulting in a divorce. Thankfully, God has renewed me and made me whole because our God is a God of second chances. That is why we are all here. God had the compassion for mankind to send his son for us. In these passages we see the beginnings of God leading Moses in the direction He wants him to go down. Regardless of whether or not we think we’re doing what we want, God always takes us down the path we need to go down. Even though the most hideous of things we have done in the past. Here’s a little reminder out of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chapter 8 and verse 28.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, and who have been called according to his purpose.
God has a plan for you. If you have ever felt as if God doesn’t want you or that you can’t be redeemed for your sin, that is not the case. God knows you, God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. When you do, don’t give God instructions, just report for duty”, He’ll teach you the rest.
In verses 11 and 12 we see that Moses has grown up and comes across and Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Notice that the text says that he glanced this way and that to see if anyone was around. In the original Hebrew it says that he looked around and saw no one. Clearly, he was making sure that nobody was about to see what he was going to do. It seems as if Moses was out for revenge against this Egyptian. In the very next verse, it says that Moses came upon two Hebrews arguing and after posing a question of why he would hit his fellow Hebrew, they asked back if he was going to kill them like he did the Egyptian. Moses then realized that his secret had gotten out. He had been discovered and uncovered. Have you ever thought you got away with something? Maybe it wasn’t murder, but a lie? Perhaps it was stealing something and thought uh oh, I’m done for. I know I did as a kid. God always knows…you can’t run, He always finds you and will continue to reveal His will to you until you submit. There are even times where you’ll be exactly where He wants you and you won’t even know the difference until later. Believe me…He wouldn’t leave me alone until I submitted.
When I was a kid, my brother and I asked my dad if we could go outside and play soccer. He told us that we could, but we had to be in by a certain time. We delayed going out and watched tv or something. Around dusk, we proceeded to go out and play soccer. Thinking we had gotten away with it, we played and played. When we came inside, Dad asked the question, “What time did I tell you to come in?” Right there we thought, uh oh, we’re done for.
We do this even today! God tells us that we are to obey His commands and obey the 10 commandments and yet we go down life’s path doing what we want. God tells us not to put any other god before Him. Yet, many of us worship things such as money or material possessions. Then once we realize it, we think, uh oh, we’re done for. But what some of us don’t realize is, God knows the whole story anyway! He knows the outcome and allows things to happen just to use them later! We’re human and God knows this, God knows we‘ll try to “bury it in the sand”. In His infinite wisdom, He uses everything to do His will, even when we don’t want to. Later on, with prayer and a lot of searching for guidance, God may even reveal His plan to you…maybe He won’t. Sometimes, MOST times, we don’t ever know.
Let’s keep going. Pharaoh finds out what Moses had done and attempted to kill him. In turn, Moses runs away to Midian to flee for his life. Even though Moses did his very best to “bury it in the sand”, God sees Moses through to the desert and introduces him to Jethro, who ends up giving his daughter Zipporah to him in marriage. Even though Moses doesn’t know it, God was conditioning him to someday lead His people out of the bondage of Egypt. Later in the 2nd chapter we see that the prayers of the Hebrews have reached God’s ears and have heard His people’s cry. Is God conditioning you for something?
Then, in chapter 3, Moses proceeds to give God instructions and question Him. Have you prayed about your past? Have you prayed about what God's telling you? "Did you give God instructions, or did you just report for duty?"
I would like to offer a suggestion. When we leave here today, let’s ponder on the passages, the meaning of what Moses went through and what we can do to apply it to our lives. Let’s pray to God for direction in our lives not only with our past, but also with our future and to what God wants us to do. Let’s pray for His direction and the wisdom and knowledge to see where God is leading us. God does have a purpose for you, and everything; God is calling you to your task in life. He created you, there is a purpose for everything you’ve been through. We may never know what His purpose is, but there is a purpose. We can even be doing God’s work before we realize that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Let’s not “bury our troubles in the sand” anymore. Let me venture a possibility…take it to God in prayer when we’ve realized that we’ve done wrong, even if it‘s something we‘ve kept “buried in the sand” for years. Admit we know we’ve done something against what He wanted us to. Pray that God will use our mistake to somehow teach others not to do what we have. Pray that God will turn what we’ve done into a fruit of our labor. Let’s learn from our mistakes so as to not make them again.
So here’s the idea for today. First, no matter what our past holds, don’t “bury it in the sand”; hiding the past only hinders our progress. Second, in prayer and service, don’t give God instructions, just report for duty. God uses the past for good things, to better yourself or someone else, or both. Confess it to Him in prayer because God knows you, God loves you and He wants to have a relationship with you. If you’ve never had a real relationship with Christ, I encourage you now to do that. Ask God to come to your heart and reside within you.
Have you ever felt that you wouldn’t be accepted because of your past? Have you always lived in fear of the things you have done, that they might come back to bite you someday? You aren’t alone. I know that I have in the past. Moses in fact did just this as well. In Exodus 2:11-25 Moses fled to Midian in fear of his life because of Pharaoh. Later on when God calls to Moses in the burning bush in Chapter 3, Moses continually questions God and comes up with excuses why not to go back and be God’s servant. Have you ever resisted God, ran away refusing to serve Him, either out of fear or shame, or maybe because you wanted to deny that God could possibly call on you to do a task.
This is going to be our focus today. We’re going to look at the fact that God calls us to a purpose and uses our past to enhance while cautioning us not to “bury it in the sand”. Today we are going to mainly be looking at Exodus 2:11-25, I will also pull verses from Exodus 3:9-14 and Romans 8:28. Open your bibles to Exodus 2:11-25.
Moses Flees to Midian
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 “And where is he?” he asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom,a saying, “I have become an alien in a foreign land.”
23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Exodus 3:9-14
9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
12 And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, youa will worship God on this mountain.”
13 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.b This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
When I read these verses, I feel that Moses is an angry young man, someone who thought he had got away with a serious travesty against God. Then once he leaves, I see someone running away from his past trying to leave it in the past as if it never happened almost as if he had “buried it in the sand” with the Egyptian. Eventually, God caught up with Moses. God used Moses’ past to turn him around and use him as an instrument of His will. Moses’ no longer gave God instructions, he just reported for his duty. For some reason, God likes to use broken people to minister to His children. This is still true today. When I decided to become a minister, I heard people say, “Are you kidding me!? With your past, how can you possibly think you can become a minister??” In my past experience, most ministers come from some of the most broken backgrounds you could possibly think of. My background isn’t quite as broken as some people I know. Anyone who knows me knows that I come from divorced parents, a very serious addiction to pornography and the internet at one point in my life and a series of miscalculated relationships, one resulting in a divorce. Thankfully, God has renewed me and made me whole because our God is a God of second chances. That is why we are all here. God had the compassion for mankind to send his son for us. In these passages we see the beginnings of God leading Moses in the direction He wants him to go down. Regardless of whether or not we think we’re doing what we want, God always takes us down the path we need to go down. Even though the most hideous of things we have done in the past. Here’s a little reminder out of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chapter 8 and verse 28.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, and who have been called according to his purpose.
God has a plan for you. If you have ever felt as if God doesn’t want you or that you can’t be redeemed for your sin, that is not the case. God knows you, God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. When you do, don’t give God instructions, just report for duty”, He’ll teach you the rest.
In verses 11 and 12 we see that Moses has grown up and comes across and Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Notice that the text says that he glanced this way and that to see if anyone was around. In the original Hebrew it says that he looked around and saw no one. Clearly, he was making sure that nobody was about to see what he was going to do. It seems as if Moses was out for revenge against this Egyptian. In the very next verse, it says that Moses came upon two Hebrews arguing and after posing a question of why he would hit his fellow Hebrew, they asked back if he was going to kill them like he did the Egyptian. Moses then realized that his secret had gotten out. He had been discovered and uncovered. Have you ever thought you got away with something? Maybe it wasn’t murder, but a lie? Perhaps it was stealing something and thought uh oh, I’m done for. I know I did as a kid. God always knows…you can’t run, He always finds you and will continue to reveal His will to you until you submit. There are even times where you’ll be exactly where He wants you and you won’t even know the difference until later. Believe me…He wouldn’t leave me alone until I submitted.
When I was a kid, my brother and I asked my dad if we could go outside and play soccer. He told us that we could, but we had to be in by a certain time. We delayed going out and watched tv or something. Around dusk, we proceeded to go out and play soccer. Thinking we had gotten away with it, we played and played. When we came inside, Dad asked the question, “What time did I tell you to come in?” Right there we thought, uh oh, we’re done for.
We do this even today! God tells us that we are to obey His commands and obey the 10 commandments and yet we go down life’s path doing what we want. God tells us not to put any other god before Him. Yet, many of us worship things such as money or material possessions. Then once we realize it, we think, uh oh, we’re done for. But what some of us don’t realize is, God knows the whole story anyway! He knows the outcome and allows things to happen just to use them later! We’re human and God knows this, God knows we‘ll try to “bury it in the sand”. In His infinite wisdom, He uses everything to do His will, even when we don’t want to. Later on, with prayer and a lot of searching for guidance, God may even reveal His plan to you…maybe He won’t. Sometimes, MOST times, we don’t ever know.
Let’s keep going. Pharaoh finds out what Moses had done and attempted to kill him. In turn, Moses runs away to Midian to flee for his life. Even though Moses did his very best to “bury it in the sand”, God sees Moses through to the desert and introduces him to Jethro, who ends up giving his daughter Zipporah to him in marriage. Even though Moses doesn’t know it, God was conditioning him to someday lead His people out of the bondage of Egypt. Later in the 2nd chapter we see that the prayers of the Hebrews have reached God’s ears and have heard His people’s cry. Is God conditioning you for something?
Then, in chapter 3, Moses proceeds to give God instructions and question Him. Have you prayed about your past? Have you prayed about what God's telling you? "Did you give God instructions, or did you just report for duty?"
I would like to offer a suggestion. When we leave here today, let’s ponder on the passages, the meaning of what Moses went through and what we can do to apply it to our lives. Let’s pray to God for direction in our lives not only with our past, but also with our future and to what God wants us to do. Let’s pray for His direction and the wisdom and knowledge to see where God is leading us. God does have a purpose for you, and everything; God is calling you to your task in life. He created you, there is a purpose for everything you’ve been through. We may never know what His purpose is, but there is a purpose. We can even be doing God’s work before we realize that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Let’s not “bury our troubles in the sand” anymore. Let me venture a possibility…take it to God in prayer when we’ve realized that we’ve done wrong, even if it‘s something we‘ve kept “buried in the sand” for years. Admit we know we’ve done something against what He wanted us to. Pray that God will use our mistake to somehow teach others not to do what we have. Pray that God will turn what we’ve done into a fruit of our labor. Let’s learn from our mistakes so as to not make them again.
So here’s the idea for today. First, no matter what our past holds, don’t “bury it in the sand”; hiding the past only hinders our progress. Second, in prayer and service, don’t give God instructions, just report for duty. God uses the past for good things, to better yourself or someone else, or both. Confess it to Him in prayer because God knows you, God loves you and He wants to have a relationship with you. If you’ve never had a real relationship with Christ, I encourage you now to do that. Ask God to come to your heart and reside within you.
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