I wonder why we study the Old Testament. After all, isn't the New Testament more for us today? Well, yes and no. The Old Testament is certainly not written to us because it was written to peoples who lived many years ago and to the Jewish nation primarily. However, it is for us in that there are lessons there for our lives. As the writer of 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul says to us, these things happened as examples for us, speaking about what happened to Israel.
And he says, these things happened to them as an example and they were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So we have a lot we can learn from the Old Testament by way of illustration and instruction. Furthermore, a knowledge of the Old Testament is absolutely essential as a foundation to New Testament truth. One who does not know his Old Testament is not going to know his New Testament. The two go together hand in glove.
So it's important for us to study the Old Testament as well as the New. Now with that in mind, would you turn with me please to Exodus chapter 3. We read here of the commission of Moses, the servant of the Lord. Now, Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush.
And he looked and behold the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, here I am. And he said, do not come near here. Remove your sandals from your feet for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.
He said also, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Then Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings.
So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up from the land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. And now behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to me. Furthermore, I have seen the affliction, the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.
Therefore, come now and I will send you to Pharaoh so that you may bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt. When you and I run ahead of God, we get ourselves into trouble. How much better to wait upon the Lord for His time and His way, and then His purpose will be wonderfully realized. Moses, it seems, had attempted a premature rescue of the Israelites, and he had miserably failed in it.
There are three possibilities for this aborted attempt, and I think there's truth in each of these three. Number one, that was not God's time or God's way. We know that to be the truth. Therefore, it did not succeed. Secondly, Moses was not yet fully prepared himself for that work of delivering the people. That too would seem right, for he has now been through 40 years of post-graduate work in the University of the Wilderness.
And then a third possibility is that the Israelites themselves were not ready for the lessons they would need to learn in the process of their deliverance. And so things had not gelled yet. It was not yet the right time. So Moses failed in his first attempt. But let me say this regarding failure. You and I, like Moses, learn more through our failures than we do through our successes. Failure promotes brokenness. Brokenness that makes us more obedient and more teachable.
And those qualities are essential if God would use us. Therefore, we should seek to make the most of our failures. Chuck Swindoll has these helpful words. We usually continue to make mistakes because we do not stop to learn from failures. This sends us into a tailspin that often drains our strength and shatters our confidence. It is unfortunate that God must often bring us to the end of our resources before we will listen to and heed his word.
But the good news is that we do not have to remain bruised and broken. We can use our failures to move closer to our divine healer and counselor. This can be accomplished by taking some time to reflect on and learn from our mistakes. However, if we keep stepping into the same self-made traps, then our feelings of despair, loneliness, and uselessness will most likely increase and our walk with God will continue to suffer. The alternatives are clear and the choice between them is ours.
Another generation went by in those years as Moses was in the wilderness. Forty years transpired of Israel's bondage in Egypt. During that time, Moses did nothing more than work for his father-in-law as much as we know, as a shepherd. But behind the scenes, God was quietly and imperceptibly working, working to deliver the people of Israel, those whom he had chosen as his own. And God's way of doing that was a man, a human being.
His man was now 80 years old, true, but he was a vigorous 80 years old. He was one who had failed, yes, but he was one also who had learned from his failures and who was now ready for another opportunity. The main lesson I want us to see in our text today is this, that God chooses to do his work through human beings and often human beings who have failed.
God chooses to do his work through people, people who are imperfect, people who have learned sometimes hard lessons, people who have been broken to their own self-will, people who are pliable, yielded, and therefore usable in his hand. It is wonderful to note that God delights to give a second opportunity to those who have blown it the first time around.
They often know better how to trust God than those who have only known the thrill of victory but who have never experienced the agony of defeat. Samuel Chadwick said, the Holy Ghost does not come upon methods but upon men. He does not anoint machinery but men. He does not work through organizations but men. He does not dwell in buildings but in men. I want you to know today that God has a purpose for you to accomplish in life.
We will not all be called to be like Moses, but God has a purpose for you because God's method is people. He chooses to work through human beings and often those human beings who have known failure in their lives. God can and does channel his work in other ways as well. Of course, he uses angels. He can use animals. He uses miracles. He uses nature. But these are all exceptions. God's normal method is to use redeemed men and women to get his work done.
But as we think about that, some questions come to mind. The first one is, what kind of person does God use? Well, I think we find the answer to that as we think about Moses' situation. God uses the kind of person in the first place who is faithful in routine responsibilities. God looks for that. He looks for the one who keeps his commitments in the everyday routine of things. The measure of one's readiness for greater responsibility is his handling of lesser responsibility.
In this case, Moses had proved himself consistent and not impetuous for 40 years. Day after day, month after month, year after year, for more years than many of you who are sitting here are old, Moses did nothing but shepherd sheep. When God saw that he was faithful in the routine responsibilities, he then called him to do something greater. We see an illustration of this in a parable that Jesus told in Matthew 25. And I'd like you to turn there with me.
In Matthew 25 and verse 14, we have what is commonly called the parable of the talents. Jesus says, it is just like a man about to go on a journey who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, each according to his own ability. Please notice that the talents were not abilities given to these stewards. The talents were opportunities given according to the abilities they already had.
And so he gave to one the opportunity to use five talents because he had the ability to use it, and to another two and to another one. Then he went on his journey. Immediately, the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them and gained five more talents. In the same manner, the one who had received the two talents gained two more, but he who received the one talent went away and dug in the ground and hid his master's money.
Now after a long time, the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. And the one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have gained five more talents. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful slave. You are faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master. A very similar thing happened with the one who had two.
He said, Master, you entrusted to me two talents. See, I have gained two more. His master said, Well done, good and faithful slave. You are faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master. Notice what the master was looking for was faithfulness, to use the opportunity given to the stewards according to their abilities. And then there was the one who had received the one talent.
He said, Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. And I was afraid and went away and hid your talent on the ground. You see, you have what is yours. But his master answered and said to him, You wicked, lazy slave. You knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have put my money in the bank and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.
Therefore, take away the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. There are three observations that we make as Jesus tells this parable. The faithful slaves experienced blessing in this way. They began with few things. And because of their faithful use of the few, they received many things. They began as servants, but because they proved themselves, they were promoted to be rulers. And thirdly, notice that they were workers.
They worked, but they were promoted to know joy because of their faithfulness. But for the one who was unfaithful, even the opportunity that was given to him was taken away and given to the one who had proven faithful. I remember as a teenager hearing the phrase at that time, use it or lose it, with respect to spiritual gifts. I'm not sure that's entirely appropriate with respect to that subject, but it's certainly true with opportunities.
We either use the opportunities that God gives to us or we lose them. When God is going to choose a man or choose a woman for use, He looks for one who is faithful. One who is faithful first in the little things, who is faithful as a slave, who is faithful as a worker. And then He will bless that one and give that one who is faithful the opportunities to do many things and be a ruler and to enter into joy. What kind of person does God use?
In the first place, one who is faithful in routine responsibilities. Does that describe you? Are you willing, even if you can't enjoy it, are you willing to do the routine things and to do them faithfully for Jesus Christ? Our Lord looks at that and based upon that, He then will select those whom He would use. Secondly I noticed by looking at Moses that the Lord looks for one who is responsive to His holiness. One whose heart is sensitive toward the person of God is the one that He will choose.
Here Moses was told, take off your sandals, the ground you stand upon is holy ground. And then I noticed that when God identified Himself as He did, Moses hid His face. He was afraid to look at God, the New Testament commentary on this says that He shook with fear. He was a man who was responsive to the holiness of God. He knew the fear of the Lord. If there is anything that is cursed, contemporary Christianity is the loss of the fear of the Lord. We no longer remember that He is a holy God.
He is our big buddy in the sky. He is the one we can put our arms around and not have to be afraid of. May I remind you that there is a time for that intimacy and friendship. But that intimacy and friendship must be based upon something and that something is the fear of the Lord. Moses was aware of the holiness of God. Now what do you think of when you hear the term holiness? Usually we think of the purity of God, but that is a secondary meaning to holiness.
Literally the word holy comes from a verb that means to separate or to cut. The idea behind holiness is God's separateness from everything else. This is just the opposite of the religion that is taking America by storm today, the New Age religion, which says that God is in you, God is in me, God is in everything. Isn't it wonderful? God is all of us and what we have to do is tap into that Christ consciousness. That is an absolute lie.
It denies the holiness of God, which says that God is absolutely separate from all of His creation. Not in the sense of the way the deists use that idea, that God has just gone away somewhere and doesn't really care what happens to His creation. Please remember that God is not His creation. He is the creator. He is separate from the universe. He is brought into existence. Percy Sproul suggests that holiness might be defined as transcendence. You say, well that is a big ten dollar term.
Yes it is. Listen to his explanation of it. The word transcendence means literally to climb a cross. It is defined as, quote, exceeding usual limits, close quote. To transcend is to rise above something, to go above and beyond a certain limit. When we speak of the transcendence of God, we are talking about that sense in which God is above and beyond us. It tries to get at His supreme and absolute greatness. The word is used to describe God's relationship to the world.
He is higher than the world. He has absolute power over the world. The world has no power over Him. Transcendence describes God in His consuming majesty, His exalted loftiness. It points to the infinite distance that separates Him from every creature. It is an infinite, He is rather, an infinite cut above everything else. When the Bible calls God holy, it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us.
To be holy is to be, quote, other, close quote. To be different in a special way. And that, my friend, is what God is. He is different in a special way from us. He is above and beyond us. When God looks upon the earth to see a man or woman that He can use, He looks for someone who knows that and who, because he or she knows that, has the fear of God in them. The response to holiness that is appropriate is examination.
It is that response as Isaiah had when he saw the holy God and said, woe is me. It is that same response that Peter had when Jesus exposed His deity to the fishermen. Peter fell on his face before Jesus and said, depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. The holiness of God. When God would use a man or woman, He looks for someone who is able to respond to what that means. Do you know what it means? Do not be casual in drawing near this God. Do not be careless with God.
Jesus said, yes, I call you friends, but remember with whom you are a friend. And do not take that lightly. The more you realize who God is and that God is holy, the more you and I will fall upon our face as did Moses and even be afraid to look at God. When God selects a man or woman, He also looks for one who listens with a willing heart.
One who listens with a willing heart reminds me of Samuel, who having heard the voice of God and then understanding as a child what it was, responded by saying, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. A willing heart. It reminds me of Saul, who when he saw God on the road to Damascus, fell on his face and said, Lord, what would you have me to do? And again is Isaiah, who said, here am I, send me.
And like those early disciples who when they heard the voice of this God say, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. It says they forsook their nets and they followed Him. God looks for those who will listen with a willing heart. If one would be used of the Lord, a surrender of one's own will, one's own rights, if you please, is essential. For God will not use a person who clings to his own rights.
But he looks for that person who knows what it is to open the hand and to give those rights to God. Have you given him the rights to your life? Then one who would be used of God is one who is aware of his personal insufficiency. I think we see that in Moses. Perhaps an awareness of his own sufficiency was what helped cause his initial failure. You see, God is not above allowing us to experience defeat in order that He might teach us our own inability to know success apart from Him.
God looks for one who is aware that he needs God. God will not choose one who feels himself independent of God, who sees himself as autonomous and self-sufficient. He looks for one who calls upon the Lord out of a sense of desperate need of the Lord. May that describe all of us. Then finally, when God selects a person for use, He looks for one who is groomed by divinely arranged circumstances. We need to see our lives, beloved, as the teaching discipline of a loving Father.
That the circumstances that come to you and to me are divinely arranged by Him to teach us, to instruct us, to build us. When God is looking for someone that He can use in His work, He looks for that person who has been groomed, who has been adequately prepared by those divine arrangements. So, instead of chafing at our situation in life or those circumstances that have fallen to us, how much better for us to accept them from a loving Father and to trust Him in the midst of them.
My friend, God would use you today. That's the kind of man, that's the kind of woman He's looking for. But there's a second question that comes to mind, and it is this. How does God speak to His servant? If God chooses people to serve Him, how does God speak to them? Well, we look at Moses, and I think we see some lessons that we can learn for ourselves. Notice in the first place that God speaks in the realm of the familiar.
Moses did not know this particular morning that this was going to be a different day. This day dawned like others for the last 40 years of his life. He got out of the place where he was sleeping, took the sheep and led them off to find some pasture to eat. This day was like every other day except for one thing, God intervened. God does not forewarn us, folks, when He's going to do something unusual in our day. That's kind of exciting.
God wants us to learn to live each day within the routine, but also with an alertness to see His possible intervention. When God speaks, He speaks in the midst of the familiar. And when He speaks, He speaks when He has our attention. I want you to notice that in this case, that familiar day, God arranged a shrub, a bush, just a thorn bush, just a plain bush, like undoubtedly millions of others in the Sinai desert.
But in this case, there was an angel in the midst of that bush which caused it to burn with fire and yet not to be consumed. God uses uncommon events in our routine also to get our attention. Swindle calls these God's taps on the shoulder. It's that time when God arranges something so that He can intervene in the familiar routine. And by that, He is trying to speak to us. Do you remember the time when we were going through the God hunt together about a year and a half ago?
And we were looking for those interventions of God. That's exactly what we're talking about now. So often we classify these as coincidence or as chance, when in fact they are God's ambassadors. God speaks to us when He has our attention. I think it's instructive to notice that it says in verse 4, when the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to look, God called to him. Had Moses only glanced and gone on, God would not have spoken to him that day.
But Moses recognized that here in the midst of the familiar was something very unusual. And he actually turned aside and went toward the bush to examine what was going on in this strange sight. And it was then that God spoke to him because God has His attention. Does God have your attention today? And then when God speaks to us, He also speaks with personal knowledge of who we are.
Do you notice here that God didn't say, hey you, fellow, you guy over there with the sheep, you, come here a minute. Did God do that? No. God didn't know who that fellow was. That was Moses. And when God spoke, the very first thing He said was, Moses, Moses. When God speaks to you and me, He knows who He's talking to. In this case, God had been watching him for 80 years. God knew everything there was to know about Moses. His ups and downs, his successes, his failures.
There was nothing hidden from God. And I remind you that when God speaks to us, it's the same way. There's nothing hidden from the knowledge of Him with whom we have to do. He knows our strengths. He knows our weaknesses. He knows our victories. He knows our defeats. He knows our past. He knows our future. He knows your potential, just like He knew Moses' potential. And God called him.
I may be speaking to some people here today that God has tapped on the shoulder regarding some very special work. And your response thus far has been, who, me? That was what Moses said, as we'll see next week. But I want you to know that when God tapped you on the shoulder, it wasn't an accident. God knew who He was tapping. God knows the people He commissions. He knows what potential lies within you. He knows the gifts He's given to you. And He knows what you can and cannot accomplish.
God will never ask you to do something you cannot do. And everything that God asks you to do, He can enable you to do because He knows you. When He speaks to commission us, He speaks with personal knowledge of who we are. And I want you to notice that He also speaks through His Word. Here it is a verbal word from God which was very audible to Moses. There was a conversation personally between the two of them. But God does not do that today. Not that God could not do it.
But God does not do that today. He does it in a written form. We have in the Bible what God has to say. So whatever that quiet inner voice of God might seem to say to us on the inside, we must always check it with this invaluable written Word of God. For God will never tell us subjectively, inwardly, with that still small voice, something that is inconsistent with this Book.
We have this objective propositional truth written down to guide us as we seek to interpret what we believe God is saying to us internally. God speaks through His Word. But I have a third question. It's the question that seems to be obvious but I think it's worth thinking about in the light of Exodus. It is, why does God send His servants? I want you to notice in the first place in verse 7 that God is a God who knows and cares for those in bondage. That's why He sends His servants.
I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. Why does God commission His servants? Because He knows the suffering of those who are in bondage. God is not isolated from His creatures, though He's separated from us, He is holy. He knows the sufferings that are caused by sin, as surely as He knew the suffering of His people Israel in their slavery. God is a compassionate God.
He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. God does not delight in the death of the wicked and because of the great compassion of the heart of God, He commissions His servants. That's why God has sent us into the world. Because God cares for those who are oppressed and afflicted by sin. God loves every sinner. Do you know the meaning of burden? Some of you do.
My youngest son was listening to a tape this morning on which was a tune to 1 Peter 5, 7 that says, God cares for you. They were using the term burdens. And he looked at me and said, Dad, what are burdens? Can you remember being six years old and not knowing what a burden was? It doesn't take you long in life, though, to discover what burdens are. As I talked this morning, there are some people here in this auditorium who know the meaning of burden.
I want you to know that God is compassionate for you. God loves you. And God wants to deliver you. Why does God send His servants? Because He has compassion for those who are afflicted. Secondly, He is a God who takes action to bring about deliverance. Look in verse 8. He says, I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to the land that I have promised them. God had come down from heaven, as it were.
Not that He wasn't always on the earth. He is omnipresent. But He had come down in the redemptive sense. He had come down to deliver them. Now He was about to use Moses as His human channel to accomplish it. Does that not remind you of the way that He has come down in the greater sense still? For He has come down in the sense that He came in the incarnation Himself.
He the great God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, came down and united Himself to sinless humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, the God-man. And He said, the Son of Man has not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. He knew exactly what His mission was in life. He said, I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. Our God is a God who takes action to deliver.
My friend, He came down 2,000 years ago in the person of His Son to deliver you from your bondage and sin. You who are groaning under the oppression and the weight and the guilt of your sinful life. God has compassion on you. In fact, God had compassion on you before you were born. He provided a Savior who went to the cross and paid the ransom that He might deliver you and free you from the oppression of your sin. All you have to do is respond in faith to Him who came down to save you.
And instead of running from Him, run to Him. And instead of resisting Him, believe in Him and receive Him, He will save you as surely as God came down to save the Israelites. There is another application I want to make to believers and it's this, that today, today, in 1988, God still comes down. God comes down through the personality of His chosen servants whom He commissioned to represent Him to a lost world. God comes down to that office building where you are employed.
God comes down to that neighborhood where you live. God comes down to that circle of friends, to that business group. God comes down to them and as it were incarnates Himself in you. Why does God come down? Because He has compassion on those who are afflicted by sin. Today He wants to use you, my Christian brother and sister. He wants to use you in those relationships He's given you in life, in family and friends and business, neighbors, casual acquaintances. God wants to use you.
Will you let Him? Will you be the kind of person that God can use? The kind of person we described in the first part of this message. Will you be like Isaiah the prophet who said, oh Lord, here am I, send me? Will you say, God, make me the kind of man, make me the kind of woman that you can use? Commission me? God will be delighted to hear that because that's exactly the purpose that He's had in view all along.
You may moan and groan about the fact that here you are now an old person of 30 or an old person of 50 or an old person of 90. You say, I'm just now learning what my purpose is. Hey, Moses was 80. Moses was 80. And the best years of his life were the ones that followed his 80th birthday. When he understood the kind of man he needed to be, and he understood what God wanted him to do, and he did it. It's not the age, it's the hard attitude. That's what counts. Let's pray.
Will you say in your heart, oh God, make me a person that you can use? When he says to you, follow me, will you leave everything? Will you forsake all and follow him? If you will, tell him right now, tell him how humbling it is that God chooses to use imperfect vessels like we are. But that, my friend, is His plan. And even the failures that you and I have experienced in life, God uses those. He delights to give new opportunities. Will you put yourself in His hand afresh this morning?
Are you here without Jesus Christ as your Savior? You desire to be saved today. You can seated right where you are by opening your heart and trusting Him. If you need someone to answer some questions or to help you, seek me after the service, and we'll find someone who will be able to do that before you leave the building.
You know it's possible just before I pray that there's someone or some couple here today who have been wondering whether God has called you to special ministry, to vocational Christian service. God doesn't call everyone to do that, obviously, but there are those that God does commission to invest themselves full time in ministry in a local church, in teaching, in church planting, either here or overseas. Will you tell God you're available today?
Perhaps God has arranged some intervention in the realm of the familiar, and you're wondering if you should turn aside to see. Oh, yes, my friend, don't miss this opportunity, for God would speak. Father, I pray that all of us today will respond to this word from you in a way consistent with your good purpose for our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. You may not even need the words to it. It's have thine own way, Lord. Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Follow me and make me after thy will while I am waiting, yielded, and still. Let's remain seated and prayerfully sing that verse of 445. Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way. Thou art the potter, I am the clay. Follow me and make me after thy will while I am waiting, yielded, and still. Now let's stand together, please, for the benediction. Father, I'm reminded of the chorus we sometimes sing that says, in His time, He makes all things beautiful in His time.
There are occasions in life when we don't know what your time is or what your way is, but even in those confusing moments, may we trust you, may we respond to you as we've sung, being still, being yielded, and waiting. We confess you are the potter, and we make our hearts moldable before you, as moldable as clay, form us and fashion us into those individual vessels you want us to be, and then use us for your glory. In Jesus' name, Amen.