Sermon: Exodus 3-4 – No More Excuses

*Note:  IN that first paragraph I was actually mistaken, for my dad shared the first week, the evidences of salvation.  The second week preparation for the ministry from Timothy.  And the third week he shared the calling of Jeremiah.  I apologize for that, but I preached it the way it is written.

Exodus 3-4:17 ESV – http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+3-4%3A17&version=ESV

Since the start of the new year, my dad has been sharing sermons that highlight some of the first steps that need to be taken in the Christian journey.  That first week, we talked about salvation using one of the most well-known verses in the Bible – John 3:16.  This is the first step to any Christian’s journey for without placing one’s faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, one cannot be a Christian.  The second week, we talked about the evidences of salvation, or more simply, how one can know that he is saved.  This second sermon was focused on giving us assurance of our station in Christ, for if we are not secure in our position, how can we go about in service for Him?  Last week, we examined the calling of Jeremiah the prophet and how we can learn to prepare ourselves for the ministry God has called us to wherever and whatever that may be.  Before starting any work of God, we must have our hearts and minds ready; therefore, it was a perfect segue to what we will be talking about this week – the ministry that God has called every Christian to – sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and making disciples.

Matthew 28:19-20 states, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  These words were spoken by Jesus Christ to His disciples before He ascended into heaven.  He was just crucified about a month ago; He had been revealing Himself to many of His followers after His resurrection; and now, He was about to leave to return to His Father in heaven and prepare a place for us; and what did He think was the most important thing to tell us?  “Go and make disciples.”  When a person is about to die and starts to give his last requests, what do people normally do?  They listen.  They listen and obey.  They will take every last word that comes from the breath of that dying person and treasure it as if it was gold or diamonds.  As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must ask ourselves if we are doing the same with some of Christ’s last words to us.  They were not his last for those are found in Acts 1, but these are some of the last.  Have we treasured it and followed through with it?  Or have we just been tossing it aside and using excuse after excuse to keep from doing what He has called us to do?  If we fall in the latter group then why is that?  What excuses have we been using to try to stay away from God’s call to make disciples?  If we were to be honest with ourselves, each of the excuses we use have their counterpart in the passage we will be exploring today – a passage which shares how God responded to every excuse Moses gave to God to avoid doing the work He had called him to.  Maybe after today, after hearing the answers God has provided for each of your excuses, you will finally submit to Him.

The passages we will be looking at today are found in Exodus 3 and 4, which describe the calling of Moses and the conversation He had with God at the burning bush.  Throughout these two chapters, Moses continues to bring up excuse after excuse as to why he should not go out and be the speaker for God, but to each excuse God responded with a much better answer, to the point where Moses had to make a personal decision whether he would obey God or disregard His command.

The First Excuse – Who Am I to Do Such a Thing? 

The first excuse and response is found in vss. 10-12:

“Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”  But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”  He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you:  when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

The first excuse that Moses presented for God’s work to deliver the people of Israel was that he was nobody – “Who am I…”  Moses, a child saved from the brink of death in the Nile, raised in Pharaoh’s court, defender of the Hebrew people before he ran away to Midian, now considered himself nobody.  Just forty years earlier, Moses thought of himself as the one to deliver the people of Israel from Egyptian slavery and even killed someone to do so (Ex. 2:11-15), but now, he did not even feel worthy enough to walk into Pharaoh’s court to petition for the freedom of his people.  It was likely that Pharaoh was a childhood friend, seeing that they must have both grown up in the court together, but Moses still did not feel like he could speak in that situation.  He had been humbled, humbled to the point, where he no longer felt worthy to be a spokesperson of God.  But look at how God responds.  Not once in that answer in vs. 12 did God mention Moses’ qualifications for taking the job; instead, God responds with a simple yet powerful “But I will be with you…”  God had no concern about Moses’ qualifications, his education, his background, his ability to speak; all God wanted was a willing heart that would trust in Him to do the rest of the work.  All Moses needed to know was that God called him.  Just look at what followed the phrase, “I will be with you,” “…And this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you…”  He doesn’t follow up “I will be with you” with a list of reasons why Moses is equipped for the job.  No!  He goes straight into the only reason Moses is perfect for the job – because God sent him to do it.  That’s all Moses needed to know.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we also throw around this excuse pretty often, when God has called us to share the Gospel with someone.  We simply tell Him, “Who am I to do such a task?”  And the funny thing is that God responds in the same way He did to Moses except He responds in Matthew 28:20, “…And, behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  God looks at us and says, “This is exactly what I want, a man/woman humbled before me, trusting me to do every work I have called him/her to do.”  Just as with Moses, all we need to know is two things:  1)  God has called us and 2)  God is with us.  It’s like if you were the spokesperson for the President.  Does it matter whether you have had formal speech training at an Ivy League college?  Does it matter whether you have ten or fifteen degrees from the most prestigious universities?  No!  All that matters is that you have been told to speak by the President and that he backs what you are saying.  Who are you to go out and speak for God?  You are nobody, but God is everything, and that’s all there is to it.

The Second Excuse – Who Will I Tell Them You Are?

The second excuse Moses gives comes right after God’s response to the first excuse.  It is found in vs. 13-17:

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. 16 Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, 17 and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

This second excuse that Moses presented to God was in issue to what he would tell the people of Israel or Pharaoh if they asked who sent him; simply put, Moses was telling God, “I don’t know what to say.”  The first excuse was in reference to who he was – “I can’t do it, because I’m nobody.”  The second excuse was in reference to what he knew – “I can’t do it, because I don’t know what to say.”  Just like in any situation, if we were told to relay a message to another, we would want to know exactly what that message was.  The best illustration I have for this is when I am told by my parents to call one of my relatives on the phone and tell them something.  Instead of calling them themselves, they ask me to do it; but very often, they don’t tell me what to say until I’m already on the phone with them.  Then, I have to juggle two conversations at once, trying to get information from my parents while dealing with my aunt or uncle on the other side of the phone who is also trying to figure out why I called.  It is extremely frustrating to be in the middle, which is why I usually tell them to just talk themselves.

In Moses’ case, God was sending him to be the middle man.  He was the one to relay the message, so Moses, like myself, tried to wriggle his way out of the job by saying that he didn’t know what to say.  But once again, God quickly responded with a simple answer – “I AM WHO I AM.”  Moses asked, “Who should I tell them sent me?”  God told him, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”  What did this even mean?  When God said, “I AM WHO I AM,” He was basically telling Moses that He is self-existent.^[1]  He is not dependent on what people say about Him, what people believe about Him, or what they want Him to do.  He is not dependent on anyone or anything.  He is who He is.  This illustration might help provide a better understanding to this statement.  There is a famous comic book series out right now called Fables, which tells the stories of famous fairy-tale characters who live in our modern world today.  It shows what it would be like for Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Pinocchio, and others to live in what they call the “Mundy” world, our world.  In this series, they present an interesting fact about themselves, in that, they get their strength from how popular their stories are with us.  So if people recently made a movie about the Big Bad Wolf, then the Big Bad Wolf would be even stronger than he normally is, being able to do what he could not have done without that popularity.  It was even said that as long as you were popular among the “mundy folk” you would basically be immortal.  Simply put, how strong they were and how they lived was dependent on us and how we thought of them.  Their lives were in a way defined by us.  God is not like that.  He is not dependent on us in any way, shape, or form.  God is God.  That’s it.

He goes on to clarify to Moses who He is by telling him to tell the people that He is “The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  In saying He was LORD, He gave Himself a formal name to call Him by YHWH, Jehovah, “the Existing One.”^[2]  This name is called the Tetragrammaton likely because when Jews would write it they would write it with only four letters YHWH.  The Jews held this name with so much reverence that they avoided writing and saying it and replaced it with adonay.  They honored God and His name so much that they would not even want to risk saying His name incorrectly.  But in this second phrase, God helped Moses to have a clearer picture of who He was.  He was not just self-existent and separated from human kind, He was also personal – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of their fathers.  Now, Moses had no excuse.  He knew what to say.

The same goes with us.  Another excuse that we like to use with God when asked to share the Gospel is that we don’t know what to say.  We act like we have no clue what salvation is and how we received it.  But we do, or we could not have become disciples in the first place.  We know who God is by reading His Word.  We know what God did for us, for we experienced it ourselves.  We know how God saves, for He has shared that with us through His Son.  As with Moses, we know exactly what to say and how to make disciples – by teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded us.  If the only excuse we can muster is that we don’t know what to say, we have been answered back in two fold.  First, study God’s Word and be ready with what to say and share as I Peter 3:15 states, “…Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…”  Second, trust Him to speak through you, for Mark 13:11 states, “And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.”  And most important, just as Moses was to tell them who God is, we are called to do the exact same.  If you don’t know what to say, do the simplest thing, tell them who Christ is, for we are not to preach anything but Christ crucified.  Not knowing what to say is not an excuse that we have.

The Third Excuse – How Are They to Know That You Sent Me?

The third excuse Moses presented to God is found in Exodus 4:1-9.

Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you.’ ” 2 The LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” 3 And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. 4 But the LORD said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— 5 “that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6 Again, the LORD said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. 7 Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. 8 “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. 9 If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.”

Moses’ third excuse shifted from “I cannot do it, because I am nobody” to “I cannot do it, because I don’t know what to say” to “I cannot do it, because they won’t believe that you sent me.”  He was running out of excuses and was desperately grasping for straws, so he went with the next logical issue that might come up – “They might ask me to prove that you talked to me.  How will I do that?”  This time God did not just respond with simple and clear words, He showed Moses His power.  He shared with Moses three different signs that he could perform to prove that God had spoken to Him and was calling Him to do this work.  The three signs included turning a staff into a serpent, turning a hand into a leprous hand, and turning the water of the Nile into blood.  These were three incredible miracles that could not be done simply with a wave of a hand.  There needed to be a great power behind it to pull something like that off, much less all three.  But God gave Moses all three of them to prove that he was sent by God.  If they questioned him, all he would have to do is show sign after sign and that would validate God’s calling him.  He had no excuse here.

We like Moses can also present that same excuse, “They may ask me to validate my credentials for sharing the Gospel.  They may ask me to prove that God has sent me and chosen me to do this work.  How will I do that?”  It’s pretty simple.  You live showing God’s work in your life.  To think that God took a wretched sinner as I am and put me here on the pulpit before you today; that is a miracle.  To think that God could take Nixon’s hatchet man and made him a key player in prison ministry; that is a miracle.  To think that God could take people who are immoral, greedy, conniving, judgmental, slanderous, and all other wicked things and make them pure and right before Him and before the world; that is a miracle.  Like Moses, we have the opportunity to show the world, the power of God by showing them what He has done for us.  There is no greater witness, no greater proof, no greater evidence of God’s calling you to His service than you living your life for Him.  What draws people away from God is not a lack of evidence but a lack of Christians truly living out their lives for Him.  We need to do that and display His power before we even speak.  The power of God is best seen not in the miracles of healing or provision but in the plan of salvation.  How He can turn a worthless lump of clay into something great is a miracle of epic proportions.  It is a “miracle of miracles.”  Once again, another excuse bites the dust.

The Fourth Excuse – How Am I Even Capable of Such a Task?

Moses was running out of room to run, so he went with his last ditch effort in Exodus 4:10-12:

But Moses said to the LORD, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”  Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth?  Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind?  Is it not I, the LORD?  Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

Moses’ last ditch excuse was “How can I speak?  I don’t have that skill.”  Moses had tried everything in his arsenal from not being a person worthy enough to speak to not knowing what to say to not being able to prove that he was sent by God.  Now, he was left with his last chance, “I cannot do it, because I am not capable of such a task.”  God didn’t even waste time on this excuse, for He could clearly see that it was a last-ditch effort.  God went straight to another simple answer, “I made you.  I made everything.  I know if you are capable of doing it or not, and I will be with you to do it.”  God would not allow Moses to hide behind this petty lie, for it was likely a lie being that Moses was trained in the house of Pharaoh.  Moses was not afraid to speak when he first tried to free his people in Exodus 2.  Moses was not afraid to speak to God and give Him excuse after excuse.  Moses clearly could speak and wasn’t slow to do it.  God knew that and called Moses out on it.  God knew everything about Moses.  He formed him in his mother’s womb.  He planned for his life even before he was conceived.  God knew what Moses was and wasn’t capable of.  And even if Moses was not a silver-tongued orator, God gave him no wiggle room, for He said, “…I will be your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”  God would be the speaker not Moses; all Moses needed to do was obey.

Like Moses, many of us have also tried this excuse with God – “I am not capable of doing what you called me to do,” to which God always answers, “I’m God.  I made you.  I know what you are capable of.  And even if you don’t have that skill set, I will fill that part in for you.”  Who are we to think that we know more than the God of the universe about ourselves?  People say, “No one knows you better than yourself.”  But that statement is completely wrong.  God knows you better.  He knows all the in’s and out’s of you.  And if you follow and obey Him, He will show you parts of you that you never dreamed could have been in there.  If you heard me share the Bible the first time, you would have likely came to the same conclusion that I had come to that day, “Preaching and teaching is not for me”; but surprisingly, God has taken me from a boy who cried about not saying the right words to a guy who is no longer afraid to make a fool of himself in front of you so that God may be glorified.  God has shown me that He knew me better than I knew myself.  He did that when I first left home for a summer internship in Boston.  I didn’t think I could survive alone, yet He took me there for two summers and even left me for a year in Maryland.  God did some amazing things that I didn’t even know I was capable of.  Just look at Lottie Moon.  She was a little nobody, a person that nobody thought would be capable of serving as a missionary to China; but with God’s blessing, she became one of the biggest foreign missionaries in Christian history lending her name to the Southern Baptist foreign mission fund.  Look at Gladys Aylward, a poor servant, who nobody also thought could become a missionary, but with God’s help, she helped saved dozens of children and even had a movie made about her life called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.  God can do some amazing things, if we will just let Him be God in our lives.  God said that He would speak through us through His Spirit (Mark 13:11), so why don’t you let Him?

The Conclusion of the Matter

In the end of this whole conversation between God and Moses, Moses was left with one choice – obedience or disobedience.  Surprisingly, even after all of God’s rebuttals, Moses still answered with the stubbornness of Jonah, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” (Ex. 4:13)  He was without excuse now; all Moses could do was come to the conclusion of the matter, “I don’t want to do it, so I won’t.”  Instead of obeying God whole-heartedly, he would rather go reluctantly, having Aaron do the speaking instead of him.  To this choice, God was angered, yet God never gave up on Moses but still continued to use him, eventually having a willing servant who would lead the people of Israel to the Promised Land.  It is just a sad ending for this conversation, for instead of obedience, Moses chose to rule his own heart.

Today, we are faced with that same choice.  You are without excuse now.  You say that you cannot share, because you are not anything special.  God has told you that He is with you and that doesn’t matter.  You say that you cannot share, because you don’t know what to say.  God has told you to share the simple Gospel truth you know as in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 – Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, He was buried, and He was raised again according to the Scriptures.  You say that you cannot share, because you cannot prove that God has called you.  He has told you to live for Him and that is enough evidence.  You say that you cannot share, because you are not capable.  He has told you that He knows what you are capable of and everything else He will fill in.  What more excuse can you give Him?  That today is not the day to share?  Well, He has said that now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2).  That you did not know that you needed to share?  Well, He has made that clear to you now and will not excuse you for it as stated in Proverbs 24:11-12.  You are without excuse, my friend.  If you are not His child, then turn to Him today for He wants you to be part of this glorious ministry, but you must first give your life to Him.  If you are already His disciple, you have been called to share the Gospel.  Do it today.  You have no excuse any longer.

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^[1] Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: Complete and unabridged in one volume (99). Peabody: Hendrickson.

^[2] Strong, J. (2001). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.