Thank you, Howard Smith, who is filling in on the organ for us today. We are grateful for those who have substituted at the organ over the last few months as we have sought a permanent replacement for an organist. You continue to pray for John Benham as he conducts that search, will you? Very important to have that person in place as the fall commences. Now would you open your Bibles with me to the book of Exodus chapters 5 and 6.
The power of one person to make an impact on a nation was proved this last week once again in the stirring oratory of Jesse Jackson. One doesn't have to agree with his ideas to admire the force of his personality and the power of his speaking. For good or for ill, depending upon your perspective, he is making an impact upon his political party and upon our country. And most especially is he impacting his own people, our black fellow citizens.
3500 years ago, God's people, the sons of Israel, were in slavery in Egypt. Their yoke of oppression was heavy. They cried unto God in their affliction. And God raised up a leader, a deliverer in the person of Moses. In a way that has spanned the century since then, Moses made an impact for God in that generation. God prepared his servant and then in his own way and in his own time, he used him to make history and to bring redemption for his people.
Today God is calling out a people to be his witnesses to the uttermost parts of the earth. Let me remind you of the words of the apostle Peter as he describes the impact that God intends for us to have. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. Those terms are taken directly out of the Old Testament. They referred initially to Israel, but came to refer to the church, to us in this age as well.
He says, you are all of these things that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. That ladies and gentlemen is our mission. That we might proclaim the excellencies of the God who has called us out of darkness into light. He goes on to explain, for you were once not a people, but now you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
The reason that we have received mercy is that we might make an impact for Christ in our generation by proclaiming his excellencies. Therefore he has called us out of darkness to know his light and his salvation. Every saved person is such a witness, not just ministers and missionaries. He has put all of us here to make a difference in our generation. Few, if any, will have the fame of Moses, frankly. But each of us is just as important as Moses in our service for God.
God's plan for your life and for mine in his scheme of things is just as important as what Moses accomplished 3,500 years ago. God has called us to have an impact for his sake in our generation. No one person is the whole impact, but each is a part of the movement of God in this world, a movement which will ultimately culminate human history.
If we would serve God in a way to make that impact that God has designed, then I believe we must grasp four essentials that come to us out of our text today in Exodus chapters 5 and 6. I don't have time this morning to read all of our texts, so I'm going to trust that you will follow along closely with me as we work our way through these two chapters. Four essentials if we would make the impact for God that he has planned for us to make in our generation.
Essential number one, we must accept our mission. We must accept our mission. In verse 1 of chapter 5, afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may celebrate a feast to me in the wilderness. Pharaoh basically said no, and they said to him in verse 3, The God of the Hebrews has met with us.
Please let us go three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with sword. They accepted the mission that God gave to them, Aaron and Moses did. But let's suppose for the moment that they had not done so. Let's suppose that Moses had said no there in the wilderness on Mount Sinai when God appeared to him, and had made that no stick by being stubborn and refusing to do what God wanted him to do.
I'll guarantee you that Moses would not have been a punctuation mark in the history of the world. He would have died an unknown shepherd, an ancient Midian. He would have missed all that God had for him. But however reluctantly, he did accept his mission.
He did return to Egypt, and along with Aaron, his older brother, he was used by God to affect several nations of people, the Israelites, the Egyptians, and several nations that then were living in the land of Canaan, the land God had promised to them, and who were eventually displaced during the time of conquest. Because Moses accepted the mission God had given to him, he made an impact not only on Israel but other nations of people as well.
Indeed Egypt was among the most powerful nations in the world in that day. Did Moses ever make an impact? Accepting our mission is essential too. If our short lives would have maximum impact for the glory of God, God knows what he has in his will, a sign for us to do, and he has gifted us that we might do that. That is true regarding us as a church. God has given us as a church a mission to accomplish.
Thus far we have stated our mission in four terms that you have seen before but which I'm going to bring before you again today. The first part of our mission is evangelism, which we have defined as presenting the gospel to those without a genuine understanding of it. Whether that be here across the street in the city of Roseville or in your neighborhood where you live in another suburb or if it be in the uttermost parts of the earth, evangelism is part of what we're all about.
Presenting the gospel to those without a genuine knowledge of what it means to be saved. We've also said that our mission is about fellowship, the second key word. We have defined fellowship as bringing together members of the body in meaningful relationships. We are told that it is essential that a person coming into a church make between six to eight of those meaningful relationships within the first year that he's there. If he doesn't, he will likely go on somewhere else.
Fellowship is essential to all of us, and part of our goal as a church is to create fellowship. All of us have to be involved in that. It's not something that they do, it's something that we do in creating meaningful relationships within the body. Thirdly, we have said that part of our mission is edification. That is, building up each other to know Christ more intimately and to serve Him more fruitfully. We believe that the body is here to build up one another.
My essential job as the pastor of the church is to equip the saints to the work of the ministry. We are not among those churches that believe that the pastor is hired to do the ministry. For the pastor and the pastoral staff are hired to be equippers of the saints who are to do the work of the ministry. That's biblical. And so edification is part of our mission as a church. That is, building up each other. And then finally, but certainly not least important, is worship.
Worship is part of our reason for being here. We have defined worship as living daily in the light of Christ's presence and gathering with other believers to share that joy and bring praise to Him. Worship is not something that merely happens an hour on Sunday morning, but worship is an everyday experience as we live in fellowship with the living God. And when we gather together on Sunday morning and Sunday night, too, by the way, we are gathering to share the overflow of our lives.
God has accumulated and built up through the week in our walk with God. And honestly and frankly, if there's been nothing through the week, there would be very little on Sunday morning or Sunday night. Worship is only meaningful when we're together, if it's meaningful when we're alone with God. We have a mission as a church that God has given to us. And I think that those four words that have been outlined now for a couple of years as a part of our mission are encompassing words.
And I think also that they're worthy of our best efforts. We have a long way to go in accomplishing that mission, don't we? And the further you get involved in the ministry, the more you see how much further we need to go. But that's fine. It means that we must trust God and depend upon Him. God didn't give us a mission to accomplish it in our own strength, but He intends for us to do it in the grace, the resources, the strength which He provides.
But I have to ask this question, you who are a member of Grace Church, you who are an attender and I hope progressing toward membership, will you accept this mission? Do you believe in this mission? Do you believe in the four words we just talked about? Because this church will only have the impact that God has planned for it to have to the extent that every person who calls Grace Church his home says, that is my mission. I accept that mission. But it's also true of us individually.
God has a mission for you personally as well as a mission with a body of people. God has a design for your life. He has a life message that He is designing and building into you to deliver to those He brings you into contact with. Are you young man, young woman seeking the will of God for your life? Is that your highest priority, your number one purpose to know what God wants you to do? You might do that with all of your might and strength. I beg of you to make it so.
To make God's mission in your life your number one priority and then not to be sidetracked by anything and then miss God's best. Seek the will of God above everything else and then do that knowing that that is what will make you supremely happy in life too by the way. The Apostle Paul said, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. What we need today as individuals is a heavenly vision of what God wants us to do.
When we have pretty well run our course as Paul was at the point he made that statement, may we like him be able to say, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, the mission God gave to me. If you and I wish to make an impact in our world, an impact God has designed for us to make, then we must first of all accept the mission that God has given to us. Secondly, we must anticipate the opposition. In our text there is both expected and unexpected opposition.
The expected opposition of course is from Pharaoh who responds in verse two to the mission of Moses and Aaron, who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? You have to understand that Pharaoh considered himself deity as did the people of Egypt. And so he sees himself as one God answering to another God, the God of the Jews. Who is Yahweh? I do not know Yahweh, besides I will not let Israel go.
He elaborates upon that then, verses four through nine, makes their burden even greater in their bondage. Here we see the hardened heart of Pharaoh exposed. May I say that such is ever the spiritual condition of the heart of the unregenerate person, hardness. And unless the Spirit of God sovereignly works in that heart, it will not respond to God because there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God, says the Word of the Lord.
The hardened heart of man is the natural heart, and that is the heart we see of Pharaoh, and he opposes this mission. But in the middle of the chapter, actually toward the end of the chapter, we see also opposition come from an unexpected source. It's from some of the Jews themselves who were foremen. There were taskmasters, referred to in verse 10, who were Egyptian.
But in addition to that, there was another layer of overseers of the Israelites called foremen, verse 14, who were the sons of Israel. These were Jews, you see, who had been appointed by the Egyptians over their brothers. And they were upset with what had taken place, the harder slavery. And so they appealed their case directly to Pharaoh, who mocked them and called them lazy. He said that was their basic problem, had them beaten. They came out from the presence of Pharaoh.
Moses and Aaron were waiting on them, verse 20. And they said to Moses and Aaron, verse 21, may the Lord look upon you and judge you, for you have made us odious in Pharaoh's sight and in the sight of his servants to put a sword in their hand to kill us. And so now here are some of Moses and Aaron's own people who have turned on them. From a human perspective, we might be able to understand why they felt the way they did. They had heard the message that Moses came to deliver.
And now instead of the deliverance, they've gotten harder work to do, indeed almost impossible work to do. And so they were upset and angry about it, and their appeal to Pharaoh had failed. And so they took it out upon Moses and Aaron. I want you to be sure that if you accept your mission, and you make a determination in your heart to serve God, you will have opposition. You underscore that and you write it down in your mind because it's true. You can anticipate opposition.
As much as you underscore it, I want to also warn against developing a persecution complex. But the fact is we will have opposition. Our Lord Jesus Himself warned about this. Listen to His words. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. Remember a word that I said to you. A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. Those are the words of our Savior Himself.
He said, the world will persecute you because they do not recognize me. Because they hate me, they will hate you. And so the Apostle of the Church, the Apostle Paul, established churches on his first missionary journey. And as he went back to strengthen them and to encourage them, these were the words that he spoke. Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. Those are encouraging words.
Yes, they are because it's a word that reminds us that tribulation is a part of what we're called to do in this world. We're called to suffer. And as we accept our mission, there will be opposition that will persecute us and will cause us to suffer. Now these are purely academic words for the most part in our culture or have been up to this point. Things may change. And then the words again of the Apostle Paul as he recounts to the Ephesian elders his own service.
He says, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews. Here we have the greatest of the apostles, the man whose mission it was to put down the foundation of the church in the Gentile world. And what is his experience? Tears and plots against his life by those who opposed him. Perhaps the most difficult kind of opposition to deal with though is the kind that Moses and Aaron faced from the foreman.
That is opposition from those who are our brothers, from others who profess to be Christians in our day. One expects it from the enemy in the world, but one does not often expect it from those who should have the same vision and the same commitment but don't. Let me guarantee you that any enterprise which is intended to deliver people from Satan's hold will stir up persecution and affliction. The Pharaoh of souls is not going to look the other way.
He is not going to roll over and play dead just because we happen to get serious about our mission. When his subjects face the possibility of being delivered from his bondage, he is going to enter into active, energetic, vicious opposition. We often don't like to think of things going from bad to worse, but sometimes they do. That was the case, wasn't it, with Aaron and with Moses.
And yet in the end, God's mission was accomplished just as today, folks, even though opposition may come to us in the office building, the classroom, in the church, in the world, even though opposition may come, in the end, God's mission will be accomplished if we trust Him and are not intimidated by the opposition. If you and I are serious about making an impact for God in our generation, we must anticipate the opposition. And when it comes, not run with our tail between our legs.
A third essential if we wish to make an impact for God is that we must abandon ourselves to the Lord. Did you get that? We must abandon ourselves to the Lord. When He assigns a task, He is going to do it with a view to our growth, not to our comfort. When He gives us a mission, it will challenge us and it will stretch us beyond what we can do, we think, so that then we can experience the joy of His faithfulness in providing for us.
We will only experience that joy of His faithfulness though if we learn to abandon ourselves to Him and die to self, the death that seems impossible in the American culture, in a culture which ethic is, be true to yourself. God's word says die to self. When Moses faced his opponents, his recourse was to return to the Lord. We see that in the end of chapter 5 and verse 22, he returned to the Lord and said, oh Lord, why? Have you ever felt that way?
I want you to notice the honest questions and the complaint that Moses delivers to God. Lord, why has Thou brought harm to this people? God, wait a minute. You said to me You're going to deliver them. Why have you brought harm? It gets a little more personal. Why didst Thou ever send me? Have you ever felt that way? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, He has done harm to this people and Thou has not delivered Thy people at all. Now Moses is not rude. He's tactful.
He's also very transparent with God. He's just pouring out his heart to the Lord. This is how he feels. I want you to notice that he doesn't attack his opponents. He doesn't try to defend himself. In fact, if there's one thing that characterizes Moses throughout his many difficulties, even with the people of God, it was that he didn't try to defend himself. Why? Because he was a man who was abandoned to the Lord.
He had gotten so far out there on the end of the branch, that's the only thing he could do. Here he comes to God and he begins to pray. Notice God's gracious response to Moses. First of all, in verses 1 to 5 of chapter 6, a response to Moses, and then in verses 6 through 8, it's a response through Moses to the sons of Israel. In both responses, he basically says the same thing. I am, therefore I will. I want you to notice how many times those two phrases are used. I am and I will.
I am, of course, is his redemption name. It is the name of God as one who keeps his covenants with his people. Notice in verse 3, he says, I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty, as El Shaddai. But by my name Yahweh, I did not make myself known to them. Time out for just a moment. They did know that name. God had used that name before, but what God is saying is I have never acted out this name. I have never fully exposed it and revealed it before now.
So what he's basically saying to Moses is this. Yeah, you're in a tough spot, Moses. The experience you're going through is difficult, but I am going to give you new insight into me through this. I'm going to give you understanding of me that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob didn't have. You're going to get it.
Isn't it great to know that when we go through the tough times, part of that is that God is, the reason for it is that God is going to show us something of himself, a new insight, new understanding of him. Verse 5 he says, basically I haven't forgotten, Moses. He says, here's what I want you to say to the sons of Israel. Say to them, I am the Lord. Notice he says that in verse 6, verse 7 and verse 8.
This little dictated paragraph to the sons of Israel begins with I am the Lord and it ends with I am the Lord. And in between those two pieces of bread, he sandwiches in seven I wills. He says, I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will. I will deliver you from their bondage. I will. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. Outstretched arm meaning that God was going to actively work on their behalf. I will take you for my people.
I will. I will be your God. You shall know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. You think about those seven I wills, you will see some wonderful parallels to salvation. I will bring you out from the burdens of the Egyptians. Egypt in the Bible always stands for the world symbolically.
God is saying to us when we are saved that he will bring us out from the burdens of the world. I will deliver you from that bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm. My friend is that not a picture of Calvary? I will be your God. You will know that I am. I will bring you to the land that I swore to give you. I will give you those possessions. Referring to our heavenly home and inheritance. We can trust ourselves to such a God as this. We can. We can abandon ourselves to him.
But I want you to know that doesn't necessarily mean that our circumstances will do an immediate 180 degree turn. Look at verse 9. Moses spoke thus to the sons of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses on account of their despondency and cruel bondage. For disillusioned servants who give themselves to the Lord, God gives several reminders. Minder number one, he reminds of his faithful sufficiency. Four times in this conversation with Moses he says to him, I am the Lord.
I am all that is necessary as the occasion arises, Moses. You're troubled? You think I failed? I am the Lord. You may be confused at the moment, but I am the Lord. He also reminds of his unchangeable purpose in verse 8. From Abraham on, that purpose was to give the people of Israel that piece of real estate that we call Palestine. God has not yet fully done it, but I want to tell you that one day God is going to give that to the Jewish people before time ends.
God has an unchangeable purpose and covenant with them, and he will fulfill it. He says, you may be discouraged, but remember my purpose is unchangeable. He reminds disillusioned servants also of his gracious mission. In the end of chapter 6 and then into the first part of chapter 7, he reiterates to Moses who is now really down, that he has a job to do. He has work to do and needs to get with it. He says, Moses, you are to go to Pharaoh. You are to say, let my people go.
When you and I are down, it's good for us to be reminded that God has graciously given us a mission too. I wonder if that isn't hinted at in what happened at the cross with Jesus, where it says in Hebrews chapter 12, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. In the time of his suffering, what was it that caused the Lord Jesus to suffer so faithfully? It was that he was reminded of his mission, that joy that was set before him of bringing many sons to glory.
When he saw that mission again, when that mission was refreshed in his spirit, he endured the cross, despising its shame. For disillusioned servants, God also reminds of his eternal motive, which is found in chapter 7 and verse 5, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. God's eternal motive, my friend, is his own glory and honor. That is entirely what motivates him. It is not proud, it is not selfish, it is absolutely right and pure.
It is God's eternal motivational force that he, the eternal sovereign God, might be glorified, and rightly so. And he says, this is my motive that I be glorified. But we must conclude, and I do that with pointing to you to one more essential. If you and I would make an impact for God, we must appreciate our heritage.
Do you notice with me that in the middle of chapter 6, this time of tremendous stress in Moses' life, that God leads him as he is recording it to write down the genealogy of himself, beginning in verse 14 down through verse 27? What an odd place for a genealogy. It cuts right into the middle of the narrative. What concludes there in verses 12 and 13 picks up in verses 28 and 29. Why did the Holy Spirit put down the genealogy here?
I think it was a reminder to Moses of his own heritage, where he had come from. The written heritage and genealogy here proves his rightful place to leadership, the authority that was given to him as a son of Levi. I want to say to you that in the midst of your battles, my friend, it is good for you to be reminded of your spiritual roots too. You and I follow in a spiritual train of men and women who have served Christ with everything that they've had. Can we dare do less than that?
We serve in the train of Ignatius, Ignatius who was the bishop of Antioch, who was a friend of John, the beloved apostle. His attitude is reflected in this statement that he made back in the first century. I would rather die for Christ than rule the whole earth. Leave me to the beasts that I may by them be a partner of God. Welcome nails and cross. Welcome broken bones, bruised body. Welcome all diabolic torture if I may but obtain the Lord Jesus Christ. In 107 A.D. he was thrown to the lions.
We follow in the train of people like Ignatius, my friend. You and I today follow in the train of Polycarp, who but a few years after Ignatius, and of whom he was a friend, was burned at the stake. And when he was asked to renounce his faith in Jesus Christ, Polycarp replied, 86 years have I served him and he hath done me no wrong. How can I speak evil of my king who saved me? And with that he was taken out and burned alive. We follow in the train of Polycarp.
We follow in the train of Christastum, John of Antioch, who was called the Golden Mouth, who in the fourth century was reared in Antioch and became the Archbishop of Constantinople. He preached about sin in high places and the Empress Eudoxia banished him because she said that he had insulted her. Soon he was recalled but not tamed. He continued his strong preaching against sin until he was banished again to the desert where he died.
We follow in the train of Christastum as well as in the train of Columba, who in the sixth century was born in Ireland and was a missionary in Scotland until it is said the whole island turned to Christ. He probably had more to do with influencing the British Isles for Christianity than any other single man until the days of John Wesley. We follow in the train of Columba and of William Tyndale, who 900 years later was a part of the Reformation who translated the Bible into English.
He preached against the sin and errors of the Church of his day and was tried for treason and heresy against the Church. He was condemned and degraded from his holy orders and then was strangled and his body was burned. His last words of prayer were, Lord, open the eyes of the King of England. We follow today in the train of William Tyndale and of William Carey, the father of the modern missionary movement. William Carey, who was so poor that all he could do was be an assistant to a shoemaker.
He was a cobbler, but a man who was brilliant and though he had a limited education before he was 20 years of age, while he was a teenager, he mastered Dutch, French, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as well as his own English language. His burden was to see his own denomination, the Baptist denomination, become missions minded. And he was told, sit down, young man, when God sees fit to convert the heathen, He will do so of His own accord. That only fired in him more burden for missions.
He helped organize the English Baptist Missionary Society and was one of the first missionaries to the country of India. You and I follow in the train of people like this and time does not permit us to talk about Adoniram Judson, who laid down two children and a wife in Burma and then himself died later at a younger age because of his ill health due to his service there. He said, I will not leave Burma until the cross is planted here forever. You and I follow in the train of people like this.
What about our spiritual heritage? What about William Booth? What about Mary Slesser or Harry Ironside or W.B. Reilly of this very city by whom some of you sitting here were baptized? You and I follow people in a heritage and we must appreciate that. Any impact for God that we have must be born with an appreciation for His work yesterday in previous generations. We do not stand alone. We are not the only ones who have had opposition or who have had great opportunities.
Times change, leaders change, but God is the same. He does not change, nor do the principles by which He uses men and women. Those who understand their mission in life and to accept it and those who are yielded to the will of God, whatever that means, those who are broken before God of their own abilities, their own selfish efforts and ambitions, those who are obedient to do what they can do and who are then willing to trust God for all of the rest.
God saves men and women from hell, which we deserve, and appoints us to make an impact in our generation. Are you ready to have that kind of an impact? Do you meet the qualifying principles? What is your mission? Have you said, God, whatever it is, I'll do it? I lay aside my selfish goals and what I want in life, and I recognize that the advancement of your eternal kingdom is more important than anything that I might plan myself.
Are you willing to say, God, I don't know how in the world I can do that? I will trust you. Brainerd, Minnesota is named after David Brainerd, who was born in 1718. Early in his life, he felt a call to ministry. He was very impatient until the day that he could preach the gospel. His formal education was only three years at Yale, which at that time was an evangelical school. After which he had to return home because of ill health.
He completed his studies through a private tutor, but then he turned down two pastorates in order that he might be a missionary to the American Indians. David Brainerd did his greatest work, it is said, by prayer. He was alone in the depths of the forests of primitive America, unable to speak the language of the Indians, but he spent whole days in prayer.
It is said that once he preached through a drunken interpreter, a man so intoxicated he could hardly stand, and yet scores were converted through that sermon. He was plagued by ill health and by the hard conditions under which he lived, and he died at 29 years of age. He did not die in the forests. He died at the home of Jonathan Edwards, a far-famed evangelist and revivalist, to whose daughter he had been engaged to be married.
After his death, his diary, which was never written to be published, but which was published, was read by William Carey, and it was that diary that stimulated him to be burdened for India. Robert Murray McShane read the diary and went to the Jews. Henry Martin read his diary and also went to Southeast Asia to India. What was it that the deep prayer life and communion with God of David Brainerd, who poured out his life in 29 years by the will of God, but who after he died still spoke?
My friend, do you want to make an impact for God? You say, I am too small. I am insignificant. I cannot have a notable impact. Do not you ever think that? I wonder if Moses ever thought that. God can use whatever you are. He has put it into your hand. Will you give it to Him and say, yes, Lord? Let's bow together. Will you give yourself a fresh to Christ right now in these closing seconds? You may be here without the knowledge of Jesus Christ as your Savior.
My friend, your need today is to repent of your sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He died for you and rose again. That is the gospel. Will you receive the gospel? Will you receive Christ? If you say that you have done that, if you say you profess to be a Christian, then my fellow Christian, what about your mission in life? Are you on board? God's will?
Father, I pray that every one of us will today be able to say yes to that question and will respond with yieldedness and brokenness before you to be that man, that woman you called us to be in this generation to make an impact for Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, amen.