Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Who are we going to be thinking about this morning? The God of Moses. The God of Moses. I have to keep reminding you all and myself, too, that we're not thinking of these men. We're thinking of their God. That's quite different. And we are very glad for that. Okay. So, man is after me. How's that? Fine. We're going to be thinking together this morning about the God of Moses. So turn to Exodus chapter two. Exodus chapter two. We will begin at the beginning about this man, Moses. read the first ten verses. And there went a man of the house of Levi and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived and bear a son. And when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bull rushes and dubbed it with slime and with pitch. and put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off to what would be done to him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river, and her maidens walked along the river's side. And when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child, and behold, it babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children. And said, His sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. The woman took the child and nursed it, and the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son, and she called his name Moses, and she said, Because I drew him out of the water. So God is already on the scene, even before Moses got there. The God of Moses is there. He needs a man. But before he can have the land that he needs, he must have a mother that he needs. And so we read about the mother of Moses. Moses was born in slavery and in poverty. Don't ever forget that. Moses was born in slavery and in poverty. He was born a Hebrew. Hebrew is a word that the Egyptians originally gave the people of God. And the word itself means a people with no rights. The Hebrews were people with no rights. They had no rights in Egypt. We make a great deal of civil rights, human rights in the day in which we live. But in those days the Hebrew people had no rights. I'm making a point here of the fact that God is here before Moses is, because Moses' God is the God who goes before. What's doing that whining? Yeah. Now the interesting thing it seems to me in the in the passage that we have read is that God has gone before. He has prepared the way He has chosen the mother of Moses, and Moses is born. He becomes the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He is given the finest education that is available in the world of his day. And, and this is so like God, this is so like God. Pharaoh pays the bills. Moses' mother didn't have, Moses' mother did not have, thank you, did not have the money to provide very well for Moses. He would have grown up in poverty. He would not have had any advantages, but because God went before He had all of the advantage, the God who goes before. So we have a situation here. Pharaoh had issued an edict that all the babies born to the Hebrew people, all the male babies were to be killed. and this little boy is born. But his mother is a woman of faith, and she isn't about to let her baby be killed. It says when she saw that he was a goodly child, she decided this baby is going to live. And so what did she do? He didn't do anything that would seem very rational to you and to me. She built a little ark, and she put the baby in the ark, and she shoved the baby out among the crocodiles. Nile River. That's really committing him to God. That's what she did. She committed her baby to God. And then she told her little girl to watch now and see what happened. And so Miriam waited, and she saw the princess come down. And as we read, they found the child. And the princess adopted the baby and raised the baby as her own, and he became the son of Pharaoh's daughter. And then Miriam introduced the idea that... the princess hire a Hebrew woman as the nurse. And so Moses' mother is brought back on the scene. And we have a situation here where we have Moses' mother, a slave woman, a poor woman, versus All of Egypt. It doesn't look very even. The word of the Pharaoh had gone out that these babies were to be killed. His life had saved. So Jacob had won round number one, as it were, of this battle with Egypt. And now comes the test. And she's brought in to be nursed to this little boy. And while he is a little boy, she tells him about the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. She pours into his ears the stories that we have been thinking about this week about God. And Moses listens as a little boy to these stories. And as he grows, he begins to be taken into the schools of Egypt. Now Moses went to the finest schools in the world of his day. They were great schools. The University at Karnak where Moses went to school was so great a school that a thousand years later, Plato went there from Greece to go to school. Those universities were renowned around the world for their greatness. Moses went to those schools, and the priest in those schools poured into his ears the idolatry, the philosophy, the teaching, the point of view of the world. And he was there. as prince of Egypt. Oh, how they would swan upon him, how they would give him every advantage as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. And he grew up into manhood in that kind of an environment. Until we come to the time when it was said of him that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Josephus, the great historian in writing of Moses, in those days, said he was mighty in word and mighty indeed. Jacob was a slave, that she was a child of a covenant. Her faith was in Jehovah in the midst of frightful idolatry. she poured into his soul the promises of God. Her son might wear the crown of empire, but she was not interested in crowns. She had set her heart upon Jehovah, and she set her son's heart upon Jehovah. She fought against the mahi schools, the mitreed priests, the glamour of wealth, the trappings of royalty, were slave mother in the home of poverty, trusting the God who called Abraham and who guided Joseph. He listened to the priests of the temple and to the experiences of his mother. And it came a time in his life when he had to make a decision Which way was he going to go? He might have the throne of empire. Or he might take his place with the rejected people with no right. The poverty-ridden, oppressed slaves of Egypt. We know what he did. He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Oh, what a decision this was. Can you imagine the situation when Moses came to the time when he had to make up his mind which way he was going? Can you imagine the counsel he got from those who loved him, from his friends, from his peers all around, from his professors, from his teachers. You know what direction that council would have led him, would have led him into Egypt. Don't throw away your great opportunity to have think what you could do for these people as the Prince of Egypt. All the counsel he got sounded great, but his heart was set upon Jehovah, and he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God. A great decision. He had a great idea. He had a great heart. Now, all of this looks like things are moving in the right direction. And then Moses made his decision, and he moved out to do the work of God, for God's people, for their blessings. But he was moving out his way. Moses' way. Moses was accustomed to thinking like the Egyptians thought, and like men think. So he began his program of delivering the people of God by killing the Egyptians. And that would not go up the way. That was man's way, not God's way. And so God in effect said, Hold it. Hold it. We're going the wrong direction. And we read later that he made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of his God needed to teach Moses something. And so God took him out of Egypt, and he put him on the back side of the desert, alone for forty years. He was a shepherd on the little flock of Jethro, his father-in-law. And this was a trauma for Moses. We know that because he called his first son whom he had while he was out there, Gershom. And Gershom means the son of the rejected man. He felt rejected. He felt that he'd been turned away and turned off, that Egypt didn't want him. God couldn't use him. And yet another son later. He called that son's name Eliezer. Eliezer means God is my help. So we know that in the backside of the desert there, he was making progress in the knowledge of God. He was coming to know God back there. He thought through the way God had led him in his youth and brought him in all his ways. Then God came to him and said, now, go back and do it my way. And Moses said, it won't work. I can't do it. I haven't got it. I tried. I failed. God encouraged him and said, certainly I will be with the You don't have to worry, Moses. I will be with thee. That was the guarantee. Moses' wife was going to be used of God to the accomplishment of God's purpose. You picking this up as we go along? God operated with Moses how he works with you and me. Have you sometimes turned down an assignment or an opportunity to serve God because sometime in the past you tried that and it didn't work? A lot of people like that. A lot of people sit silent in church and do not get involved in the Lord's work because at some time in the past they stubbed their toes. They made a failure of what they tried. It didn't work out the way they thought it should work out. From then on, no way. That's exactly the way Moses did. He had made a great failure, and he thought it shouldn't try again. God revealed his way. and revealed the fact that he does great things in and through his people. And we cannot frustrate God. We cannot turn him off. When he wants to do something in us, he knows how to go before. Remember another connection in which he said, Go in this I might have, not I, sent me. And God gives us a job to do. He gives us all the wherewithal to do it. He gives us all the ability we need. He opens the way. He goes before. He speaks to heart. He does all that needs to be done. We just do the things that is given to us to do. leave the results with him. And this is a lesson that Moses had to learn. And Moses was learning it. He chose to suffer affliction with the people of God. And he went about it the wrong way. And so God had to put him in school again. And after forty years of quietness and meditation in the back side of the desert as he led the flocks of his father-in-law at Jethro, he was walking along the path one day when to his amazement he saw a bush on fire, but the bush was not consumed. And he said, I will turn aside and see this great thing. He'd never seen a bush burn before without being consumed. So he stopped and he heard a voice say, Moses, the voice of God. And he stopped. And he took off his shoes. And God called him back into his service. And he called him back by revealing himself to Moses as Jehovah. the Lord. I am that I am. Jehovah has to do with God's essential being, and with the fact that God becomes all his people need. God not only is, he is all we need. And before he sends us on our mission, he would assure our heart that we will find all we need in him in order for the accomplishment of the job that he has given us to do. If God calls you to do something, oh, don't turn away because you think you cannot do it. Because of course you cannot do it in your own strength. Nobody can do it in his own strength. Nobody can accomplish anything for God in his own strength. It is God that works in us. And if God works in us, he can use any instrument he wants to use. He can use it effectively for his glory. And forever after that, Moses' over-mastering thought was the present God. God with him. That's why Moses prayed as he prayed. Oh, if thou go not to live out there, send us not out. I'm going to take this off if you don't mind. The city is just hot up here. You know where there's a worm down there that is up here. Your gizmo doesn't hold together here, Bob, very well. Okay. He provides everything that is needed. Now, what about the task that Moses was called to do? He was called to face the opposition of a mighty king. He was called to face the dull insensibility of those he would serve, the dread of increasing their burden, the struggle against misunderstanding and distrust, the difficulty of raising long, dormant religious in people who had been slaved for four hundred years as twice as long as this country has existed as a country. Now that is an assignment. We can't blame Moses for feeling as Moses felt. Who was he to go and overcome all these obstacles? But he went on as the leader of his people. He led wisely and safely through a wild and desolate wilderness for forty years. He became the founder of their religious, social, and political life. He gave them a creed. He gave them a creed which in the course of the ages prepared for the revelation at Bethlehem and at Nazareth. In its conception of God as Father, Protector, and Judge, it was the sublimest concept of God that the world had ever seen. until the Lord Jesus came. He founded a nation unique in the earth for thirty-five hundred years. He gave them a code that brought us the law of all civilized nations today. And I suppose there is no figure in ancient history so grand as the figure of Moses after the start that he had. You know, we ought to think about this. Who would have thought it when they saw Jacobin and her baby in Egypt. Who would have thought? It really makes you want to sing out how great thou art to God, what he can accomplish in a human life. But you know, it would be too bad, it would be too bad if we would sit here as we're sitting here this morning and think how great it is that what God can do in a situation like that and then not having to do anything in our lives, didn't it? I'm almost sure that there are people sitting here that are throwing this over their shoulder. saying that was fine for Moses. That's fine for the young people. That's fine for somebody else. And not making any application of it in your own life. God is able to work in every one of our lives in ways that we do not know, in ways that we do not understand, to bring the knowledge of God and the work of God into the lives of other people in such a way as to encourage them and carry it forward in the earth. We don't think so, do we? But God's word says it is so. And that's the reason we have the record of the way God works in the lives of people like Moses. He was surrounded by the splendor of a constantly recognized presence of God. There were times in Moses' experience when the people couldn't even look on his face as shown so with the presence of God. And the testimony of God. about this man. He said he was faithful in all of his house. Here's a man who took what God said and he went out of it. He complained about it. He was afraid. He expressed his fear. He pled with God. He wept. He cried. But he went on. Sometimes that's what it's called. God said that Moses was the meekest man in all the world. What did he mean by that? Not that he wasn't a good leader because he was one of the greatest leaders in human history, but that he was teachable, that he would listen to the voice of God, that he would appropriate what God said and he would ultimately move. The Lord Jesus said, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And he is saying to you and to me this morning, how teachable are you? How much of this will you appropriate for yourself as you leave the conference and as you go out into the world? Are you going to go out in the power of the Spirit of God, counting upon his guidance to do great things for God? That's who he wants you to do. He doesn't want you to forget this. There was a man with a high character himself, and he molded and educated the character of a nation. He had strength of purpose and firmness to principle, and he sacrificed the greatest of prospects in the whole world for the good of the people of God. He would never take an advantage that would accrue to himself at the expense. of the people of God. This man loved God's people. He was utterly unselfish in his devotion. He was totally free from ambition. There was a man who could have established a dynasty. His sons could have followed in his steps. He wasn't interested. He was interested in serving God and serving his people. Here was a man who could be trusted with power. Here was a man who had tenacity through all the discouragement of a million malcontents. And who had a unique success, perhaps one of the greatest of men. The only man who could say in the Old Testament God will send a prophet like unto me. And me, my Lord Jesus. Isn't that something? Would you dare to say there was a man lived in the earth nineteen hundred years ago who was like unto me? Moses Christ. He could say there is coming a man like unto me. God used this man because God went before him. God went with him and he was able to accomplish things for God that are beyond all our thinking. What did he do? Well, he did God's great work, as we noticed in our study of the book of Exodus the other evening. He did God's great work in the earth. He led the people of God from bondage to freedom. He nourished and cared for them over forty years in the wilderness, and he brought them to the gate of the promised land. He delivers to them the word of God. And he made in the midst of the camp a place where God could dwell among them. This is a great man. But he is a great man because he had a great God. Now there is such a thing as the things in the Old Testament seeming to be rather remote from us. We get to thinking of them as stories, and we enjoy them as stories, but they don't really connect with us somehow. When we read these things that happened so long ago, it's interesting history, but somehow these things don't have any direct connection with us, except for stories. And part of the reason why we think this way is that we are looking for the connection between these things and us in the wrong place. We're looking for this connection in time and in space and in circumstances which we share together and that kind of thing. And we'll never find it. These things will always seem remote to us if that's where we're looking for the connection. The connection between these things, whether they have to do with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Moses, the connection between these things and us is God. And that's why I have kept insisting that we are not studying the lives of these people. We're not talking about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. We are talking about the one thing. to connect us with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. And that is that our God is the same God that they had. And he is the same today as he was then. I am the Lord. I change not today. And that's why I can say to you without the apology and without wondering whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong, that God can do in our lives what He did in those lives. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He still has the same will to bless that He had in the life of Moses. He's still looking for men and women He can use, as He did back in those days. He still has His power available for his people to do his will. All the same. And our connection with these events and with these people is a connection through him. Now it says some great things about Moses and his relationship with God. For instance, we can look at chapter nineteen of Exodus in verse six. No, verse three. And Moses went up unto God. And the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Egypt. You have seen what I did to the Egyptian, and how I bear you on eagle's wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people. All the earth is mine, and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and then holy nations. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. I can't help wondering, as well as I wondered about you. How many of us are going to go from this place up unto God and learn from him what he wants us to do? Or are we going to leave these meetings and go into the hustle and bustle and the everyday affairs of our lives and go on and in a few weeks look back and say, wasn't that a nice time we had at the heart of the pound? Nothing wrong with that. But you know, the reason God was able to work in the life of this man, Moses, was that Moses got into his presence and found out from him what he wanted done. And I wouldn't doubt very much, but with a lot of us sitting here this morning, this is the big question. Well, what would God want me to do? Do you want to know what God wants you to do? Ask it. God is not in the business of keeping secrets from his people. He is in the business of revealing to people things about himself and his will. Speaking of his will, the older I grow, the more persuaded I am, that this business of knowing the will of God is not nearly as complicated as people may get out to me. In the first place, if we want to know God's will, we can know it, because He wants us to know it. And if we say that we do not know the Lord's will for ourselves, what we are saying is that God is incapable of communicating to us what he wants. I don't think we can say that. He seemed to be capable to communicate to Moses what he wanted Moses to do, unthinkable as it was to Moses. And we could go through one character after another in the study of the Word of God and find that God is always ready and always able and make his will known to people so that people are found in his will. They may reject it like Jonah, you know. God made his will known to Jonah. He said, Go down to Nineveh. Jonah said, Nothing doing. And he went the other way. He said to Ezekiel, when Ezekiel had been taken away in the captivity and was down by the river Kibar, working among the slaves there, building a canal. And God said to him, come out, I want to show you something. And Ezekiel went out and God revealed himself to Ezekiel. And then he said, now I want you to go to my people and tell them about me. And Ezekiel said, no way. Five times the Lord went back to Ezekiel and said to him, go and tell the people. And five. Ezekiel said nothing doing. Well, you know, we haven't got a frustratable cause. He finally said to Ezekiel, you remember, all right, we'll have a Jew. You don't want to talk to the people? That's all right. And he made him an illustration. What do you call it? an example to the people. He didn't have to talk. His life spoke out what God wanted to say until finally Ezekiel came to the place where the people came crowding around and said, tell us what these things mean that happened to you. And then Ezekiel told them what God told God's still looking for people, you know. But people are still saying, like Ezekiel, well, I'm not a very good speaker. I don't want to do it. That's not my dish. And so God keeps looking for men and women who are willing to do what they're told. He is the God who goes before. He is the God who makes known his way unto Moses. He says, don't do it your way, Moses. It won't work. Do it my way. And it looks like my way won't work either, but my way will work. He said to Moses, when you go back down into Egypt, you go to Pharaoh. And you have a talk with him. And Moses said, we go to Pharaoh. Who am I to go to Pharaoh? I said, you go. I'll put the words in your mouth. I'll tell you what to say when you get there. So he went down to Pharaoh and he found out that God was able. God did great and mighty work. And God said, Pharaoh won't let you go. No, not by a mighty hand. That's the beginning. But before you're through, he'll let you go. Believe me. And God was right. They practically chased him out of Egypt. God is able to do these things because he goes before.