Part 2
Moses has a lot to teach us. One of the things I want to talk about today is by looking at the life of Moses I want to ask this question: How do you and I remain faithful in the small things day in and day out? How do we remain faithful to following God’s ways day in and day out?
last week says, What do you do when God captures you’re attention with all this big stuff happening?
All this stuff has been big: Follow your dream! Reach the world! All this stuff. Because of that today I want to go small. I want to focus on the small. Because really for the big to ever happen you’ve got to be able to master the small. How do we stay faithful in the little things, day in, and day out following God’s ways?
To help us find some answers and connect with last week’s message I want to look at the life of Moses. The journey that Moses took and why he finished well.
Deuteronomy 34:10. That talks about Moses at the end of his life. It says this. “There has never been another like Moses whom the Lord knew face to face.” Here’s a guy, it’s describing him. There’s never been another like him, the Lord knew him face to face. When you know somebody face to face you’re not a stranger. This passage was written right before the death of Moses. It was talking about Moses’ life.
What’s interesting to me I think is one of the things that pulls us away from knowing God is the busyness and the bigness of stuff around us. But here’s a guy Moses – he was surrounded by the big and yet he was faithful in the small. ” The stuff with the Pharaoh, the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna, the food coming down from heaven, the ark of the covenant, – all that stuff that surrounded Moses. Yet in the midst of the big, he didn’t lose sight of being faithful to God in the small. In all the activity, he was with God. In the midst of all the noise he was able to find silence. With all the chaos of the people that was always around him he sensed God’s presence.
Can I tell you what Moses did? Let me just give you a summary of what Moses did. He loved God and he loved others. That was the life of Moses. He loved God and he loved others. Can I tell you what’s very clear throughout all of scripture? That message is very consistent. That is God’s call to us. If you were to read the Old Testament, you would find that’s what it’s all about – love God, love others. Then it’s shouted in the New Testament in the life of Jesus. God comes on to earth as Jesus and says, “Love God, love others.” As a matter of fact when Jesus was asked to summarize the entire Old Testament, the entire what was called the Law of Moses at the time here’s how Jesus summarized it. Matthew 22 they asked “’Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the Law of Moses?’ Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important. Love your neighbor as yourself.’” God shouted it in the Old Testament, lived it in the New Testament. Basically simplifying it so that in the twenty-first century a knucklehead like Joe Parks could not only understand it but teach it in the simplest form. You want to remain faithful in the small? Love God and love others.
Some of you are thinking, “Hey, Joe, that’s nice. I’ve heard that before, though. How about something new and fresh?” My response is, Are you living it? I look at a lot of people’s lives and I wonder how different our world would be, our homes would be, our relationships would be, our families would be if that’s all we did – love God and love others.
Why don’t we do that? What is the hang-up with this?
I want to talk about these distractions today.
I believe it’s longing inside of us all, God hard-wired that into their soul, it’s longing to do right would draw them to Him because He wants a relationship with them. But whether you’re a non-Christian or a Christian today there are distractions. If you’re not a follower of Christ there are distractions to doing what is right and being a moral person and living the right way. And if you are a Christian there are distractions to loving God and loving others.
I want to walk through four distractions that I think get us off track.
1. Lack of confidence.
These distractions don’t come out of just my life although I can see them in my life. You probably see them in yours. I also see this in the life of Moses. Sometimes the biggest distraction is not other people – that’s the other three we’ll talk about. Sometimes the biggest distraction is ourselves. We are our own worst enemy in the pursuit of being faithful in the small.
I’ve heard people say, “I’m not very religious,” or “I’m not very spiritual.” They lack confidence to get involved in different things. They go, “I don’t know that much...so I’m going to feel dumb so I don’t want to extend myself and put myself out there. It’s this whole lack of confidence.
What I want to say to you is if you lack confidence about being able to love God and love others, you’re not alone. This isn’t new. A s a matter of fact, the story of Moses, God appeared to Moses in this burning bush – the presence of God. The Bible says God said, “Moses, you’re on holy ground.” Even when Moses was standing on holy ground and God said to Moses what He wanted him to do, listen to the very first words that Moses says back to God, “But who am I?” God appears to Moses and He tells him what He wants and there’s an immediate lack of confidence. “But God, who am I?” – this total lack of confidence.
I wrote in my Bible the word “doubt” next to that.
Immediately it goes to doubt.
Why did Moses doubt? I don’t know. But he had doubts. Maybe he doubted because he had some of the same feelings that you and I have. Why do you doubt?
Some of you doubt because of your past. Moses didn’t have a stellar past. If you know something about Moses you know that one of the reasons that he was in the desert is because he murdered somebody. He killed somebody trying to defend an Israelite. He killed an Egyptian then he ran away. Murder
That’s in his past. That’s not like a minor character flaw.
Maybe you’re sitting here and you don’t feel all that great about your past. You’re not alone. Every one in here has a past. Many of us are ashamed of things that we’ve done. When you think about your past it’s hard to focus on what your future could be like with God. People have doubts about your past. Maybe you?
Does God really love you? Could He really use you? Maybe Moses had doubts because he didn’t think he was smart enough to do this whole job. I’ve heard people say that. “I don’t know if I have what it takes… I don’t think I’m ready…” This lack of confidence enters in.
Moses may have been thinking that. For forty years you know what his job was? Tending sheep. He was a shepherd. That’s not a cool job. You don’t put that on your resume. It’s not sexy. “Watching sheep.” Sheep are dumb.
That’s his job. Sitting there every day, watching the sheep. And he wasn’t even the head shepherd. He was the co-shepherd working for his father-in-law. What a loser job that is!
So when God says, I want you to know Me and love Me and follow Me and love others, “I don’t know that I have what it takes.” A simple command.
This simple command – love God, love others – I just want to ask you a question where you’re sitting right now. Do you really feel right now that you can love God and love others? Or do you lack confidence in that? Do you feel like I can have a loving, vibrant, growing, passionate relationship with God and through that love I can extend that to other people. Or do you have doubts that that can actually happen with you?
Because if you do have doubts God’s answer to you is the same as it is to Moses. When Moses doubted, God came up with an answer. Moses says, “’Who am I? How can You expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?’ God told him ‘I will be with you.’” Those five words are key for today. Would you underline those five words? In that promise, in the moment of doubt with Moses lacking confidence here’s what happened. God says, “I will be with you.” That is a promise. With the promise comes His presence. And with His presence comes His power. So He made a promise – I will be with you. That’s the promise of His presence. And with His presence comes His power.
The second distracter I want you to write down is what I would call…
2. Consuming challenges
The challenges that Moses faced, they were not small challenges. This main challenge that Moses had… Imagine God saying, “I want you to lead that entire nation who have been enslaved by these Egyptians who loved having slaves. I want you to lead them out of Egypt. I know you’re eighty years old, Moses, and it’s going to take you forty years even though if you just walked from Point A to Point B where I want you to go it would only take about eleven days, but you’re going to wander for about forty years. And this people group that you’re leading out they’re not always going to be happy with your leadership. They’re going to be prone to what I might call Miracle Memory Loss. They’re going to occasionally worship some cattle along the way.”
Imagine that challenge for a minute. But really how different is it from the challenges that you and I have? Our lives are filled with challenges. Some of you in here today you have children who are sick and when they’re sick they’re a challenge and work. Some of you have parents who are aging and sick. And that’s a challenge. For some of you your job has disappeared and you’re surrounded by challenge. Maybe you’re a mom here this morning. You’ve got little kids in diapers and you’re always exhausted. And that’s a challenge. Maybe you have a job where you’re always frustrated because you work for an unpleasable boss. Whatever it is, we all have challenges. What do those challenges do? They take our eyes off of God, that simple command – Love God, love others. They take our eyes off of Him and put it on the problem or the challenge.
And it’s not just challenges at home. It’s challenges everywhere. It’s challenges in the marketplace. Just by show of hands how many of you have challenges at your work that consume a lot of your thoughts? You’re not alone
Here’s my point. We all have challenges. Challenges have different faces but we all have challenges.
Different settings, different circumstances. But you can’t go through life without challenges.
Whatever Moses’ challenges were he remained faithful. You know why he remained faithful? Because he never lost sight and he never forgot those five words – “I will be with you.” And with that promise was the promise of God’s presence and with His presence came God’s power – I am and who I am is enough. And Moses believed that in the midst of these challenges. That’s why he was able to remain faithful, to love God and love others.
There’s another distracter I want you to write down.
3. Conflict
Conflict is a big distracter. I think if it was just challenges, just the difficult tasks, Moses would have said, “Bring them on. I like a challenge.” But conflict has a way of making it a little more difficult and painful. Moses had conflicts with all kinds of people.
Let me read a verse out of Exodus 14 says “They turned against Moses and complained. ‘Why did you bring us here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? Why did you make us leave?’” Here are the people. They were in captivity for 430 years as slaves and Moses frees them. Now they’re saying we’re going to die in the wilderness. We could have died as slaves. He had conflict not just with the masses.
He had conflict with his key leaders. There’s one time when he went up to the mountain to spend time with God and he stayed up there a little too long for some people. By the time he came back down some of his key leaders were melting down gold to build calves for idol worship. He was always around conflict.
But really that’s no different than you or me. Our stories are filled with conflict. Sometimes I think the word “life” and the word “conflict” are synonymous. God walked on earth as Jesus and everywhere He went there was conflict. Those who are closest to Jesus, His disciples, were in conflict with one another. The Apostle Paul who wrote half the books in the New Testament was in conflict with Barnabus. This was the guy who was known as the Encourager. You’ve got the guru of theology, Paul, and Barnabus who get in conflict so much so that they have to go their separate ways. Why would we think it would be any different in our lives? When we experience conflict in our homes, with roommates, family, neighbors, people that we work with.
It’s everywhere you go. What happens is these things are distracters.
But the thing with conflict is it eats at you, doesn’t it? You feel it, you think about it. You’re in the shower. You’re quiet. You turn off the radio. It’s all consuming. And what does that do? It takes us away from focusing on God. It takes us away from loving God and loving others.
What was the secret of Moses? He remembered and hung on to those five words – I will be with you. When conflict hit his life he remembered God said, “I will be with you,” that promise was a promise of presence and with His presence came His power. “I am” is enough.
There’s a fourth distracter. This distracter is bigger than conflict. It’s a little more personal. This one is really a drag.
4. Criticism.
b/c it’s personal. Conflict is like a boxing match. Criticism is like backyard wrestling where anything goes and nothing is unfair. These people that should have been the most thankful to Moses were criticizing him all the time. They questioned his leadership, they attacked his faith. Exodus 16 says “The whole community of Israel spoke bitterly against me.” Some scholars believe there was over two million people. He’s saying everybody did.
Numbers 14 – I love the word picture here – “Their voices rose in a great chorus of complaints against Moses.” I think of a choir. I picture everywhere Moses went there was a chorus of “We don’t like you… Your leadership stinks…” Whatever it was. He was always being criticized. I can’t even imagine that. I get my share of criticism but I can’t even imagine a whole chorus of it.
I understand criticism and so do you. Some of you are criticized for coming to church....criticized for being a Christian...criticized for the way you raise your kids...
criticized for where you live and who you hang out with and what you listen to and who your friends are. What we try to do is we try to go through life pretending that criticism doesn’t hurt. But it stings. Even though criticism doesn’t require truth, nor intelligence. And criticism doesn’t typically come from a critical mind. It usually comes from a person’s critical heart. Hurt people, Hurt people.
And even though we can try to talk ourselves out of some of this stuff you can only hear this depressing junk for so long and it begins to demoralize your spirit and drag you down.
You know what Moses did in the midst of that being criticized? With big challenges and conflicts and already feeling a little bit insecure about himself you know what he did? You know what he wanted God to do? Kill him. Surprise! Here I’m talking about this great man of faith and it got pretty dark and he said, “God, kill me.” Numbers 11:11-16“He asked the Lord, ‘Why have You brought this trouble on Your servant? What have I done to displease You that You put the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? They keep wailing to me. I cannot carry all these people by myself. The burden is too heavy for me. If this is how You’re going to treat me put me to death right now. But if I have found favor in your eyes do not let me face my own ruin.”
If you ever get to the point where you’re deeply discouraged, you’re in good company. One of the things I love about the Bible is how real the Bible is to true human feelings. Have you ever got to the point in your spiritual life where you just wanted to cash it in? You wanted to give up? You waned to turn your back to God and to the church and to other Christians and just walk away? Because your prayers don’t seem to be answered. You come here to church and you hear a guy talk about having great dreams and God gives everybody a dream and you’re sitting there going, “I don’t have a dream.”” You hear people talk about cool things God is doing in their lives, “He’s not doing that in my life.” You really want to love God and you want to love others but you are just so distracted. And you want to cash it in.
Can I tell you that when you have that feeling you’re not the first? You’re not the last. That’s part of it. That’s part of the journey. Moses spent forty years walking in the desert, being faithful to God, loving Him and loving others. It wasn’t a walk in the rose garden. That’s not the Christian life. The Christian life is surrounded by distractions where the enemy wants to take our eyes off of God and off of loving Him and loving others.
But you know what Moses did to get that reputation of being a man like no other? You know what he did? As I study his life because I have really studied his life I go, “What was it about him?” it is painfully basic.
He got before God.
He was always getting before God.
Folks, I want you to get this so bad. Here’s why I want you to get it. People in church and out in the community when it comes to their spiritual life they’re spiritual life is dry. They’re spiritually anemic. They’re relationally void. Because they think just coming to church, sitting in a chair and singing some songs is going to do it all. They’re inundated by all these distractions when it’s really simple –
love God, love others.
How do I do that? You get before God. Mon - Sat
So my rhetorical question to you is, How are you getting before God? When are you getting before God? I’m not telling you what to do when you’re before Him. I’m not saying, Read three chapters, memorize this, write in a journal, create acrostics. I’m just saying get before God. Whatever that looks like for you.
Then second is follow God’s ways.
Do what God tells you to do. That’s what Moses did.
Somebody says, “How do I do what God tells me? How do I know?” Start here in His love letter, which is really the direction for living. If you’re a Christian listen to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is going to impress on you decisions, direction. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit. Don’t know what to do, here’s what I would suggest. You think, What step would honor God and love others. What direction would I take to do what God wants me to do? What would be honoring to God and loving to others? Chances are that’s what God wants you to do.
A third thing is you point out the goodness of God to others. Point out God’s goodness to others.
That’s what Moses was always doing. He said, The reason is God is good.
There’s something I want to ask you to do.
It’s little experiential for us here today.
I want to ask you something. Would you write down what distraction you’re feeling right now? What’s the main one that’s kind of gripping your heart? Is it a conflict? Is it a challenge? Is it a criticism? Is it your lack of confidence? You don’t have to write down the word. Maybe write down the initials of the person or something. When we’re done, What I’d like you to do is I’d like you to symbolically take this and give that distraction as an offering to God. That’s what an offering is. You’re saying, “God, take what is mine and I want to give it to You.” Put this in the offering basket, your distraction. Then my prayer this weekend is that you will feel in that moment, maybe you just need to say to yourself in the silence of your heart, I will be with you. I will be with you. So you give the distractions as an offering and you sense God’s presence saying, “I will be with you.” Write down a challenge that you’re focused on, a conflict that you’re facing, a criticism that you’re feeling an area of your life where you lack confidence. What God wants for us is when we’re doubting He wants us to hear those words,
“I will be with you.”
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