Moses

Pat Steeves · Tidal Church Moncton · June 25, 2023 · Give Me a Break series

Pat Steeves traces Moses' life through Exodus and Ephesians 4:1 to show that God cares more about who we are becoming than what we do. Seeking His purpose opens the way to His provision and promise, even when the wait is long.

More from Pat Steeves · The Give Me a Break series

Topics: Faith, Identity, Purpose

Transcript

[0:01] How many of you guys sense God's presence in this place? You sense His peace here? We wanna welcome those of you that are joining us online, and we believe that God is speaking directly to you wherever you are today. Melissa, I wanna welcome you guys to church. We are excited to kick off a brand new series, a brand new series that we are entitling, Give Me a Break. Look at the person beside you and say, "Give me a break." Like, maybe there's some moms here today. And those kids of yours, God love them, but they have been just crying way too much, and you just throw your hands up in the air and you just say, "Give me a break." For some of you guys, maybe work is stressful and it's just, you just can't take it anymore.

[0:57] And you throw your hands up in the air and sometimes you just say, I hope this is not your story, but perhaps you've experienced this where you've been pulled over by the police for maybe a speeding infraction of, and you look at that police officer and you say, "Give a break. Give me a break." We are starting a series, as I mentioned, that I'm thrilled about. We are gonna look at stories and characters found in the Bible for the next several weeks. And today I get to speak about Moses. Alright? And so how many of you guys have heard, Moses, you know, it's not a new Bible character if you've been in church for just a little bit of time. His stories and the things that he done are kind of iconic. Like, we've heard all kinds of things like, you know, maybe you've heard about the parting of the Red Sea, right? Well, here's the deal. I think if Moses lived in today's time, he would be one of the top five YouTube influencers today of Bible characters, okay? He's got amazing stories.

[2:10] I think that all the students and young people that watch YouTube, you would be waiting for him to upload each and every week because his story was adventurous, okay? And I was just thinking about this message, and I was like, you know, if Moses was uploading today, I feel like the thumbnail of his next, his next video would be just Moses just standing there with his arms stretched out as he's holding out the Red Sea. And that would be his thumbnail, right? And it would just be like, this guy is epic. He's iconic. And so we're gonna look at the story of Moses today. Are you guys ready? All right, we're gonna go fast cuz it's a whole lot to cover. And so we're looking at Exodus, the whole book.

[2:56] We're gonna just hit some stories of his life. But here's what you gotta know about the stories of Moses is this, Moses grew up as an Israelite. And at that time, just before Moses and during Moses' life, the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians, okay? And so you can read through Exodus where the Israelites are crying and asking God, saying, "God, free us from slavery." Understandable. I can't imagine what that would be like. But that is what's happening. The Israelites are in slavery asking God for a plan. And so Exodus 2 picks up the story of this young baby boy being born. And this baby was Moses, okay?

[3:50] And the scripture even says in Exodus 2 that he was a fine boy. Ladies, can you help me out? Can you look at, like, a guy beside you and just say, "You're looking fine today"? Oh, we love to hear that, don't we? And so here's what you need to know, how the story begins to unfold. Here is the craziest thing, which we can't understand, but the Egyptians, some of the guys are just like, man, that felt so good. You're not even tracking with me. But the Egyptians were beginning to get fearful because the Israelites were growing in numbers. They were having babies, okay? And they're like, we're concerned that the Israelites might revolt against us.

[4:40] And so Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, he made this decree and he said, we are going to, there's no more boys that are going to live. And so if you give birth to a baby boy, you need to, you need to put them in the Nile River. And that's the end, okay? Only the girls can live. And so Moses's mom, God-fearing woman, all right? God-fearing woman, you, many of you know the story, but she created this basket, weaved this basket, and put this baby into the basket, okay? And was going to trust God that He would take care of this young boy. All right? How many moms do we have in the room here right now?

[5:25] We have some moms. Now, you guys would understand more than I do, but like, we don't let our kids near water without a life jacket and a snorkel and inflatables, right? Mom, like, can you believe that she would just take a newborn baby, three months old, place him in the Nile River, that I say that God had a plan for Moses. As you see the story unfold, you can see that he goes down the Nile River, and I checked this out this week. Did you know that Nile River, even at its narrowest point, is two times bigger than the Petitcodiac River? So we're not talking this little brook or stream, like it's a big river. And he gets nestled up into some weeds. And guess who finds him?

[6:14] Pharaoh's daughter. Now why is this significant? This is absolutely incredible. Pharaoh's daughter finds him nestled up and she brings him out and immediately falls in love with this little baby. All right? Now dads, if you have, like, a daughter, you would understand this. I understand this. If your daughter brings you a new puppy, a cat, a rabbit, a turtle, and they say, "Can we keep it?" You're gonna say, "Of course." And so Pharaoh's daughter brings this baby, an Israelite baby, into the Egyptian palace. This is unheard of. And she says, "Dad, can we keep him?"

[7:02] And so Moses begins, he moves from slavery to palace. Here's what you gotta know. All through Exodus, you hear the children of Israel crying out to God, "Save us, rescue us." God has a plan and He has a purpose for Moses. And here's what, thinking about this story, it made me realize that we can't have a slavery mentality and become an overachiever. And that's why I believe that God placed Moses in the palace around kings, around princess, around princesses, so that it would change his mentality because God was preparing Moses for his purpose. Are you guys with me?

[7:59] I believe that what he experienced, the influence that he was around, the things that he did, were all in preparation because God had a plan for Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Somebody say, "God had a plan." God has a plan, and God has a purpose. And I wanna say to somebody here today, I believe that God is preparing you for something. Sometimes we don't understand what's happening in all of this. And as you read the book of Exodus, a lot of it doesn't make sense. But what is happening is there is a preparation happening. And I wanna say to somebody here right now that what doesn't make sense to you might just be God preparing you for what's next.

[8:53] Can somebody say amen to that? Amen. You see, sometimes we live in doubt and uncertainty and we're like, "God, where are You?" The children of Israel were saying, "God, where are You?" God had a plan and God was preparing Moses for what he had next. See, we talk a lot about growing up. What is your purpose in life? Don't we, we place a lot of emphasis on, you know, our kids, our, our university students. Like, what is your purpose? What is your goal? And I don't know about you, but it can be very confusing. And so I wanna help try to bring some clarity this morning as to, you know, what scripture says and what scripture defines as our purpose.

[9:41] Because as we all know, our culture and society, they wanna tell us what our purpose is, right? And I wanna, I wanna warn you that we can get so caught up in what culture and society tells us is our purpose that it becomes so confusing because God's way and the world's way are very different. They're opposite. And so I hope that today as we look into the purpose of Moses, we'll gain clarity for what our purpose is. You see, I believe that God is more concerned, He's more concerned about who we are than what we do. And so God is here, He is, we see Moses is being prepared for what he has.

[10:30] Most of us struggle to discover our purpose in life. And we often wonder two things. Is it even possible to find our purpose? I wanna speak to some young people here today. And I wanna tell you, it is possible for you to find your purpose. Others of you might think that you missed your purpose. That opportunity has come and gone. We live in a TikTok. I have here, we live in a TikTok culture where we associate our purpose with popularity. I wanna say that again. We associate our purpose with popularity. And if that is the mind frame and the lens that we look through, I believe it's gonna become very confusing. I wanna share a quote by Jim Carrey. How many of you guys know the actor, the comedian Jim Carrey?

[11:24] Okay, he's not a Christian. I'm gonna, you know, he's not, I wouldn't say that he proclaim, you know, he doesn't confess himself as a Christian, but he says this, which I think is very profound and fitting for today. Jim Carrey says this, I wish everyone could get rich and famous and have everything they ever dreamed so that they can see that it's not the answer. Here is someone who has everything. They have the popularity, they have the money, they have everything that often all of us would dream of. And he says here, it's not the answer. I wanna remind ourselves that contrary to what popular culture tells us, our purpose is not found in what we do.

[12:19] Our purpose is not found in what we do. Let's look at Ephesians 1 verse, chapter 4, verse 1, Ephesians 4, verse 1. Let's, I want us, as we're looking at what is our purpose, Ephesians 4 is written by Paul. Paul is in prison. I don't know if any of you have ever found yourself in that place in life, but I think that if we were to find ourselves in prison, he is there, not because he stole something, he didn't murder. He is there because he is a follower of Jesus. And he begins to put pen to paper and begin to write to the Ephesians.

[13:06] And so I feel the urgency of what he's saying. It's passionate. He is making a passionate plea to us in this verse. And here's what it says: Therefore, I, a prisoner for serving the Lord. Man, I can't even like fully understand what that would be like. But he says this to you and to I, he says, I beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling. And he says, for you have been called by God. So in that we understand that our purpose is not so much about what we do, but it's about who we are.

[13:57] And that's completely different to what society wants to tell us worthy of your calling. God has something specifically for each and every one of us. And often we get confused with, what we're going to do and the titles that precede our name and the social status that we wanna achieve. And that's going to define our purpose. And Paul flips the script and he says, our purpose is not in what we do, but it's in who we are and who our focus is. And he says, our calling to live a life, and he's gonna go on, we'll share this in a few minutes of what that looks like.

[14:46] But culture has trained us to be me-focused. We have been called by God for His purpose. Somebody say His purpose. His purpose, not my purpose. And I hope that this becomes clear to you that as we think about and pray about, God, what do I do with my life? What is my purpose? I hope that our prayer would shift to, God, What is Your purpose? God, who am I becoming if I make this choice and I get this position or go to this school? Am I gonna be able to be who You want me to be? Or is it going to shape my life into who I want to be? And it's such a massive difference as we begin to shift and focus our attention off of us. Today, God is more concerned about who we're becoming than what we do.

[15:50] The key to finding our purpose is discovering His purpose, not mine. And the only way that we discover His purpose is by what? Spending time with Him, prioritizing the things that draws closer to Him. You see some of the things that are defined in this in Ephesians 4:2 is, you know, somebody who is humble, who is gentle, being patient with one another. That is who, is that who we're becoming. Oftentimes when we focus on what are we gonna do for our purpose, I don't know about you, but it often changes my focus to become more about me.

[16:37] My attitude isn't so patient, right? I'm not thinking about others, but God is calling us to be more like Him, to discover who that is, to think about who instead of do. I can remember, about being 19, probably 19 years old. And as I maybe referenced this morning, there was just in me, there was this stirring of, like, God, what is the purpose for my life? And I always sense this, like, kind of this drawing to God and to ministry or to help people. And I never knew what exactly that was. And, for any 18, 19 years old, how many know, there's lots of other things that you can be pursuing and chasing, right? And I can remember for me, one of the things I was involved in at that time was a sport called motocross, which you take a dirt bike and you take some jumps and you drive the dirt bike as fast as you can over the jumps and hopefully you beat everyone else, right? That's kind of how it works, right? Without getting hurt.

[17:46] And so that's kind of what I was focusing on, but I had this, like, this something that I couldn't describe, drawing me closer to know more who God was so I could discover who I was. And every Wednesday night at our property, we had, this incredible, like, motocross track that people would come and practice every week. And this particular summer, I can remember making a decision to kind of put that on pause and to spend time with God on those Wednesday nights. I could still remember hearing the noise of the engines, those Wednesday nights doing their thing. And I can remember being, just kind of alone in my living room, just saying, God, I want to know who You are so I can discover who I am. And I wanna tell you, that doesn't sound very glamorous.

[18:42] It doesn't sound very exciting. It kind of sounds sort of lame, doesn't it? Right? But in that moment, in that season, God gave me clarity on some things for my life that were important. And they began to shape, catch this. They began to shape who I was. They began to shape who I am today. And I wanna say it again. God is more concerned. Your purpose is tied to who you are and who you're becoming and not what you do. It's so important that we get that, and we see this happening in Moses' life. And I wanna fast forward. How many of you guys, record shows, or now we have TV where we can just, like, fast forward things, right? You guys do that a little bit, right? Or some of you guys are kind of like strange, where I've heard some people, like, will like fast forward almost to the end of the show to see what happens, right?

[19:42] Well, this is what I want us to do because, Moses's story is so lengthy that I just want to hit, like, fast forward here and I want to just hit some details, and then we're gonna push pause and stop here. Alright? And so here we go. So Moses, again, he was in the palace, okay? Israelites are praying, saying, God, rescue us. And so Moses begins feeling this, like, stir, okay, of, like, he needs to do something with his life. And, something crazy happens where the Exodus talks about where Moses came across an Israelite and an Egyptian, and they were in an argument, and he sees the Egyptian h Moses, um, jumps in and, and settles the fight and, and murders this Egyptian. And so, um, things began to change very fast in Moses's life, where now the king is after Pharaoh.

[20:42] And so Moses is on the run now away from Pharaoh. And so in his, in his pursuit, in his getting away, um, Moses, uh, comes across a woman, right? And every story should have, you know, a woman in it where he finds this woman, woman and she's getting water from a well. And so the Bible says that Moses came over and, and began to help her get water from the well so that she could go feed the animals. I can just picture Moses, right? Like just like takes off his shirt, right? And he's just, you know, getting, getting an arm pump on, just pulling up, right? And the story says that she goes back to her dad and he's like, why are you back so quick? And he's, she says, well, this guy helped me. And so she's like, well, you need to go find him and invite him for supper.

[21:36] And so now Moses falls in love with this girl. And, And so he's on the run, but now he's married, but God is still calling his life. And so, the Israelites are continuing crying out for God to help. And Moses is trying to figure out his purpose. He's trying to figure out what all this means. I was a slave, I was in the palace, now I'm on the run. And then he sees this burning bush that's on fire, and he goes to check it out. And it's just this weirdest thing. And in that moment, God speaks to him very clearly and He tells him to take off your feet because the ground that you're standing on is holy ground. My prayer is that for some of you here today, I pray that you would have a moment where you're trying to figure out again some things in your life. And I pray that God, like Moses, would just cause something to happen in your life where you would just stand and say, you know, in awe of God and say, "God, a lot has happened, but God, I stand here now in Your presence, God, what is it that You have me to do?" And in that moment, God begins to direct his life and say, "You are gonna be the leader of My people.

[22:48] You are going to take them from slavery and you're gonna take them to a land of milk and honey, two of My very favorite things, to this land that I've promised you too." And so Moses are like, all of us are like, "No, God. Like, I'm not doing that." And so he begins to argue back and forth with God and the whole thing kind of goes, you know, there's a lot happens where, you know, Moses makes excuses. How many people make excuses when it comes to like, "God, I'm gonna do this," right? And you're like arguing with Him. Moses went through all of those stages and then God says, "You know what, I'm gonna do some things, some miraculous things that are gonna be undeniable." And eventually Moses buys into this.

[23:36] And the most craziest thing happens is Pharaoh releases, okay? The children of Israel, he releases them from Egypt and says, "You guys can go free." And so today we're talking about purpose, but I also wanna us to look at God's miraculous power and how God provides provision for the Israelites. And so we continue to just pick up this story of what God is doing. So now Moses begins leading over 600,000 people. That's a lot of people, right? As you imagine them, yeah. Heading out, all of the planning and what goes into that.

[24:26] So Moses is leading this big group of people, God is providing for them. They left with just literally the clothes on their backs. And as you read the story, it's incredible where God, you know, He provided a cloud in the daytime to give them some shade. He gave them fire by at night to be able to direct their way, like God is providing for them. And it's interesting to see how the story unfolds where they would ask God for things. "God, we're thirsty," right? And Moses would like tap a rock, water would come, right? It was just incredible the provision that God is providing for them. You know, they begin to ask for food and, you know, Chick-fil-A just kind of falls from the sky, like life is good for them.

[25:19] But what's so fascinating as I read the story this week is that they began to complain, the Israelites, in all of God's provision, in all of the things that He's doing. They began to complain, even so much so that they're like, "We wish we were back in slavery." And now I know for none of us, we never complain about our situation, right? Like, that's just in this story. But the reality is, it's easy for us to complain and to get our eyes off of God's provision and focus more on our problem, no matter how much God provided.

[26:06] The people complain. When we focus on the problem, we fail to see His provision. And I just wanna share with us sometimes our perspective. It's so easy, isn't it? To focus on the problem and we forget about all of God's provision. Like, just for a moment, like, just think about what has God done in our lives? What has He protected us from? Look at the lives that we get to live, the country we get to be in. We have incredible provision. But if you're anything like me, I can leave this afternoon and I can get so focused on the problem. Are you guys with me?

[26:52] And I believe that God has provision for us, but we need to be able to be reminded of it and encouraged to live in it. I always say this to my kids, to be leaders, not followers. And I believe that as leaders, all of us are leaders in some way or another. Leaders look for the solution, followers focus on the problem. And I believe as Christians, we need to be leaders in our conversations, shouldn't we? We need to be leading the conversation where we are not getting stuck into just talking about the problems. You see, God's provision for us. Let us be reminded today that God's mercies are new each and every day.

[27:45] What happened yesterday is past. Today God's provision, His mercy is here for us today. We have the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us. That's His provision for us. He promises He will never forsake us. And Philippians 4:19 says, "My God shall supply all of our needs." I want you to know that God has a purpose for each of us. And in His purpose is His provision. As we jump back into the story, as we jump back into the story, I was thinking and planning and asking, "God, what do You have for today? What should I speak?" And so clearly I just was kind of given these three words: purpose, provision, and promise.

[28:45] And I was like, "Oh man, that's incredible. Those go together so well. This is gonna be a phenomenal message." And as I got into the message, I realized that God promised Moses that He would lead the Israelites to the Promised Land. And I was like, "Oh, this is incredible. God's purpose on Moses' life. When Moses lived in God's purpose, God provided His provision, which led him to his what? Promise, right?" I was like, "That's amazing," but guess what?

[29:30] Here's the Give Me a Break moment in this story. Moses never got to the Promised Land. And so as I began to read this, I'm like, "Well, God, this story doesn't really work, right?" And I was reminded, and I wanna share with us a little bit, that we have to be careful in how we live our life. Because what was supposed to take the Israelites just a couple of weeks to travel from Egypt to the Promised Land, which is present-day Israel, just a couple of weeks, it took them 40 years.

[30:16] I know some of y'all drive real slow, walk real slow, but like, that math just does not add up. And as you begin to read more into the story, we see that there was consequences to their disobedience, to their distraction, to their complaining. And we even see so much that Moses disobeyed God and God was like, "You are not going to enter the Promised Land." And so there was some stiff, stiff consequences that the Israelites continued to struggle with, which prolonged their journey.

[31:02] And I think that there's a truth in there for us that sometimes our lives can get delayed and prolonged because we are choosing to complain or we're choosing to be distracted, or we're choosing to not follow what we feel like God is leading us today. And it's a harsh reality that we all face. So my question for us as we begin to close today is what is it for you that's delaying the provision or the promise? For some of us, it's the voice that we're listening to.

[31:47] And I wanna caution us to ensure that we're listening to the right voice because there's always two voices speaking to us. There's the voice of wisdom, and there's the voice of worry. Which one do you spend your time listening to? As we look at the story of the Israelites, they kind of fed into the story of worry. And the more they did, the longer it took, the more prolonged their journey was. There's another voice that we listen to. It's the voice of gratitude, thankfulness. Or are we gonna be listening to grumbling and complaining?

[32:36] We can listen to the voice of faith over here, or we can listen to the voice of doubt. So I wanna ask us today is which voice today are we listening to? Which voice are we feeding? Because the voice we listen to today matters. What we watch, what we consume, there is a voice behind it that's either speaking faith or it's speaking fear. And as followers of Jesus, that to live out the purpose, His purpose, not our purpose, but to follow His purpose, we need to make sure that we're listening and feeding on the right voices.

[33:25] As disappointing as it may seem in this story's ending, the reality is that God still used Moses to do incredible things. And I wanna leave us encouraged today that for some of us, we sometimes live with maybe a guilt and shame of some of the consequences to our decisions, just like we see here in Moses. But I want you to hear this today, that I believe that we all have pictures and dreams and visions of perhaps of something that God wants to use our life to do or to accomplish. I believe that we do have those same pictures and thoughts of what we see in our future.

[34:18] And often we don't live in that reality. And it's so easy to become discouraged. And as I read this story, I was reminded of what God promised Moses. Catch this: what God promised Moses was not in his lifetime, but it was in his lifeline. What do I mean by that? I believe that God has given each one of us dreams, visions, ideas, and sometimes we get discouraged because it's not happening the way we want it or it's not happening as fast as we would like it. But I wanna give you hope today and know that whether it's in your lifetime or not, I believe that His promise, that God is true, that He is faithful, and for you to not give up, because it's in your lifeline. It could be in your children, it could be in the next generation of people that you are leading, but God is calling and asking us today, which voice will we listen to?

[35:23] And I believe as a church it's very important that we have a massive role to play in our community, in our city. And God is calling us to His purpose today. So the next time you find yourself saying, "God, give me a break," I pray that we will look to His purpose, not our purpose, but we'll seek His purpose, which will unlock His provision so that we can experience His promise. Would you join me as we just, I just wanna invite the worship team to just sing in a moment, but could we just have a quick word of prayer and to say, "God, what are You saying to each of us specifically in this moment? What are You saying, Holy Spirit, to each one of us?"

[36:25] God, for those of us that are trying to figure out what is this whole purpose thing, God, I pray that somewhere in this message Your Holy Spirit would just say, "Let's take the focus off of me for a moment, and let's focus on who You are." God, I believe that in those moments, God, You will make things clear. God, Scripture says that your gift makes room for us. God, for somebody here today that they're like, "I just don't know which, what to do, where to go," God, I pray that You would just show them that their gift, as they are faithful to You, as they give their very best to You, God, that gift on the inside of them will make room for them and unlock and make clear to them Your purpose for their life. Holy Spirit, speak to us in our own personal way and help lead and guide us, God, so that we can experience Your provision and Your promises.

[37:37] In Jesus' name we pray, amen.