Blue Jean Theology Part 4
Tom Shrader examines James 1:2-12, exploring how God uses trials and tribulations to develop spiritual maturity in believers. He emphasizes that trials test our faith to produce endurance, which leads to spiritual growth. Using Moses as an example, Shrader illustrates how God breaks us down to build us up, preparing us to do His work His way rather than our own way.
“God may want you sick, God may want you poor, and God may want you to suffer.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Blue Jean Theology (2011)
Recorded: 1996
Duration: 44 min
Themes: trials, suffering, endurance, faith, growth, perseverance, testing, maturity, going through hardship, facing difficulties, new believer, struggling with trials, seeking spiritual growth, pastor, mentor, experiencing suffering
Scripture: James 1:2-12, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Hebrews 11:1, Hebrews 11:24-29, 2 Corinthians 11:24-28, Exodus 3
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, divine providence, god's sovereignty, faith development, spiritual growth, biblical perseverance, character formation
Full Transcript
We are working our way through the book of James. Actually, this has not gone the way I thought it would go, but that's not new either. We have spent really the first three weeks, and this week also, on essentially the first twelve verses, which are all involved in these ideas of trials and tests and why we have them and the value of them.
What I want to do today is go ahead and look at verses 9 through 12. Then I'll try to put a bow around these, try to help you see the connection from thought to thought to thought, and then give you a biblical illustration of a man who demonstrates this for us. By the way, we could have picked any of dozens of illustrations, but we picked this guy as a man who illustrates the fact that God is going to work in your life through trials and tribulations and hardships and difficulties. He's going to work in your life for a purpose, and His ultimate purpose is to accomplish His desires in your life. So a big job, but I think we can do it in 40 minutes or so.
The Universal Nature of Trials
The book of James begins with the author identifying himself, and then immediately goes into a discussion on trials. The reason I've spent this much time on these first few verses is because of verse 2. The only F that I can remember getting in school was in speech, and it was the hardest subject to cheat in. What I remember about that class, other than this jerk who taught it, was that you're supposed to understand your audience and all that stuff.
I was never much for understanding the audience. It seems to me you do a couple of things. I think you need to understand the audience, but I think much more importantly than that, you need to understand the message and deliver the message. And you don't change the message. You may change some points of emphasis in the message, but you need to understand the message and believe in the message. If you do, that's how I think you communicate effectively. But you do need to understand where people are.
Verse 2 tells me that we're talking about a topic that affects everyone in here. If verse 2 is correct, and it is, "consider it all joy when you encounter various trials." If that verse is true, and it is, then everyone in this room is either about to go into a trial, or coming out of a trial, or in a trial. If that verse is true, there's universal application, because God says in His Word that you will inevitably have trials.
I believe that they come exactly as James says, in various ways, when you least expect it. I would suggest to you that most of us are tried virtually every day, many times not even understanding the trial. When we think of trials, we think of hardships and difficulties. Rarely do we think of probably the most difficult trial to pass, and that's the trial of prosperity and success.
The Equation of Faith
In the midst of all of these things, James says, "I want you to count it joy." The word that's translated "consider" there is actually an accounting term, means to reckon. To reckon these things together, and the way that I do that is to know something. What I need to know is that my faith plus trials equal endurance.
As my faith, which is an ever-growing thing. I can't just have faith, and there's faith, and it comes, and that's it, and we're done with the faith deal. My faith comes into me. My faith continues to grow, continues to change, continues to evolve. Not the truth now. Good grief, don't get me here. Not talking about new faith or new truth. We're talking about our understanding of it, and more clearly the way God makes it real in our life.
One of the ways God does this in the most dramatic way is through trials, and tests, and tribulation. We know this because ultimately God says that testing produces endurance, and endurance produces maturity. It allows us to grow. He says this, if in the midst of these tests, if you lack wisdom, if you're not sure, now again, the context is in the middle of tests, all you have to do is ask God. He'll give you wisdom, how you can understand these trials, and put them in perspective. That's what James communicates in verse 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Asking in Faith Without Doubt
Now he begins to give us some application, or illustration, or expansion of this idea. "Let him who asks in faith, and without doubt," that's how you're to ask. "For the one who doubts is like the surf who's blown here and blown there, and that person should not expect anything from the Lord, because they're double-minded."
What he's saying here is, I have, when I talk about faith, this body of truth. If I'm one who believes it's true, and then not true, and then true, and then not true, I'm double-minded in this sense. I'm believing God, I'm not believing God. I'm believing God, I'm not believing God. I'm believing God, I'm not believing God.
I want to really emphasize to you, when we talk about faith, we're not talking about what you might associate with much of what you see around you in Christendom today. We had a guy that came to one of the studies one morning, and he was all humped up, and he was all hobbled over, and I said, "How are you doing?" And he said, "I'm fantastic." I said, "Well, that's neat." He said, "I've been healed." I said, "Well, you don't look healed." And he said, "I've claimed my healing."
God's Sovereignty in Suffering
He's not healed, he's humped over. I don't know if he's going to be healed or not be healed. And this is very radical for some of you. God, and I know for some of you this is the last time we'll see you, God may want you sick. God may want you poor, and God may want you to suffer.
It seems to me clearly you can't get around it. These trials He brings into your life, whether they're physical or emotional or whatever they are, those trials that come into your life come in for a reason. And they're either caused by or permitted by God, and you can't get away
from that. He brings them in, and He says, in the midst of these difficult situations, in the midst of the good situations, let me not avoid that, in the midst of times when things are really going well, because a lot of you, when stuff starts to really go well, you begin to think you're really something special. You really begin to think you're the one who closed the deal, or you're the one who thought this out. What I am saying to you is that I've got faith that God is who He said He was, and He'll do what He said He'd do. And I approach life with that understanding. And no matter what the circumstances are, they can't blow you off of that truth.
Eternal Perspective in Trials
Now, in verses 9 through 12, we haven't looked at before, are pretty interesting, because what James does here is begin to relate to us the temporal versus the eternal. Apparently, what James is saying is in the middle of trials and tribulations, it's important to have an eternal perspective. He said, let the lowly brother, the one in humble circumstances, glory in his exaltation, that is, his high position with God.
So, he talks first about a rich poor man. Then he talks about a poor rich man. But the rich man, glory in his humiliation, his low position. Here's what he's saying. Here's a man of worldly circumstances that are very, very high, and here's one very, very low. In God's eyes, the circumstances are irrelevant. The man in this case, in the humble circumstances, has a position with God because he's a man of faith.
Now, let's be clear. Just because you're poor, that doesn't mean you're going to heaven. Or just because you're rich, that doesn't mean you're going to hell. What he's saying, though, is he's acknowledging this temptation that we have to begin to think in those terms.
The Temporary Nature of Worldly Pursuits
The rich guy, the person who's focused on this life, needs to understand something. This stuff is passing away, and he uses a very practical, very real illustration that would make sense to anybody at any time in any generation. He says, the flower of the field will pass away. For no sooner does the sun rise with a burning heat than it withers the grass. It flowers, falls off. Its beauty perishes. So, the rich man will also fade in his pursuits.
If all you're looking at is this world, this world, this world, then you need to understand something. Your focus is all messed up. And what you want more than anything else is temporal, and it's going to blow away. What you're spending your life on is not a worthy goal. To build an empire, to build a business, to build anything, to build your reputation, to be President of the United States, those are not worthy goals. If all you're doing is trying to find your meaning and your satisfaction and your understanding of life in those. That's what he's saying.
The Crown of Life
Now, he closes this section. Blessed is the man who endures temptation. For when he has been improved, in other words, now, he's not focusing about this singular trial and getting through it. He's speaking now over the span of your life. When you have endured this life, you will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
Now, here is, and it's linear, but it really should be circular. Here is a picture of what he's saying. Trials, faith plus trials equal endurance. In other words, I bring my faith to this thing.
What is True Faith?
When we talk about faith, let's be really clear what we're talking about. We're talking about what God teaches. Sunday in church, I called Charles Spurgeon the Charles Barkley of theology. And what I meant by that was, Spurgeon is a guy that now we revere Him, and he was respected in his day, but important to understand some stuff about Spurgeon. He never went to seminary, and they always looked down on him for that. He had some particular little quirky habits, including smoking cigars, and they looked down on him for that. They were very critical of the way he taught, for his messages were laced with biting humor.
In fact, there was one occasion where they went to him and said, we think that you need to become a little more restrained in what you say. And he laughed and said, you don't know how restrained I am now. Well, so in this, Spurgeon frequently drops these incredible insights. He takes a profound issue and makes it so understandable.
Spurgeon's Definition of Faith
Here's what he says about faith. He says this, faith is not a blind thing. He starts to deal with what it isn't. When somebody comes to you and they say, you're a blind leap of faith. He says, faith is not a blind thing, for faith begins with knowledge. And it's not a speculative thing, for faith faces and believes in the facts of which we are sure. It's not an impractical or a dreamy thing, for faith tests and stakes its destiny on the truth of revelation.
So it's not what we commonly think. It's not a leap of faith. It's not impractical. It's a real thing. Here's what he says, faith is believing that Christ is what He is said to be, and that He'll do what He promised to do, and then expect that of Him.
Before I came across this quote, I've been defining Christianity that way for about the last year, year and a half. A Christian is somebody who believes Jesus is who He said He was, He can do what He said He'd do, and then I practice and prepare for my life and death according to those proofs. When we talk about faith, we are talking about what God teaches, a body of truth.
Biblical Hope versus Common Hope
Here you are, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, is where we frequently get a definition of faith. Here's three different translations, little different twists on the same definition or theme. Phillips paraphrases this way, now faith means that we have full confidence in the things we hope for, and it means being certain of the things we cannot see.
Now the word hope is a key word. If I say to you, I hope the Suns win their division, and win their conference, and win the NBA finals, what I'm saying is, when I use that word hope, maybe they will, maybe they won't. When the Bible talks about hope, the Bible talks about something
that is certain to occur in the future, and we are awaiting it to occur, knowing that will happen. So the Bible says, Jesus Christ is our hope. That doesn't mean maybe He is, maybe He isn't. It means He is the hope, and that will begin to manifest itself as we live. It makes us certain of those things that are in the future, and certain of some things we cannot see.
In fact, the New English translation is this: what is faith? Faith gives substance to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we cannot see. Our lives are filled with these realities we cannot see. Even as Christians, there are realities you cannot see.
You have that in the physical plane. You look around this room—I couldn't do this illustration outside—but you look around this room, you don't see the air, and yet you breathe in, and you breathe out, and you know that this air exists. It makes you certain of a reality that you cannot see with your physical eye. There are realities for us that avoid our senses, but that does not mean they are not real.
For example, in your life, there may be a time—you may be there right now—when it feels like God is as far away as He could possibly be. In fact, you even feel like maybe He doesn't care at all, maybe He's even gone away, maybe there's been a shift in His view toward you. That may be what you feel, but the reality that you cannot see is, He'll never leave you, and He'll never forsake you.
It may be that in your life, you've sinned. It's one of those things you said, you know what, I got victory over this, it's never going to happen again. And all of a sudden, one day you go and do it again. And you confess it as sin, and you know it's sin, and you also know that you've been freed from the guilt of this and forgiven. But that's a reality that right now you're not feeling, because you're carrying around a bucket load of guilt. You've been forgiven, even though you can't see it. You could make a list four miles long of realities of God in your life that are absolutely true and real that you cannot see. When we talk about faith, this is what we're talking about. We're talking about this body of truth.
How God Tests Our Faith
So now, back to this. When I take that faith, here's what God does. God tests it. He brings trials in it. He says to you and me, come and get some wisdom. And I'll give you some wisdom on how this is going to come together, and maybe not give you all the specifics, but at least give you the wisdom to understand that this is important, and I'll be with you all the way through. In the midst of this process, you will be stable, and I'll help you stay stable.
As the trials come, my faith grows. As my faith grows, I believe this more and more. It's not that the truth changes, but my understanding of it changes. Remember the illustration. We're reading this stuff, we're studying this stuff, we're saying it's true, but just like I have to do in a science class.
Haley yesterday was so jacked. She went to school, she said, this is going to be so gross. They had to cut up a cow's eye. And she goes, this is going to be so gross, this is going to be gross. She came back, she says, gosh, I love that. And I said, wow, this is great. A little sick. Can you get me a cast, Dad? And I said, no.
Well, what was I talking about? Oh, I know what I was talking about. I'm in the classroom, but I can study about a cow's eye, I can read about a cow's eye, I can talk to a guy that cut up a cow's eye, but until I cut up the cow's eye, I don't understand it. It's the same thing in this faith. I can read about this, and read about this, and read about it, but until God puts me in the lab, and He allows me to get beat up a little bit, I don't ever have the understanding that I need that I'm going to get from a book. That's what He says. In the midst of this, when all of this happens, I get endurance. And then, I go through it again, and again, and again.
Addressing the Challenge of Hope
Now, I'm going to stop right here and respond to a challenge that I got yesterday. When I finished yesterday, I had a guy challenge me. The look of the people in the two previous studies, they just looked like somebody licked all the red off their sucker for all 45 minutes. I mean, they all looked not unlike some of you look right now. And I made this comment twice yesterday during the lesson. And he came up afterwards, and he said it really well. He said it in love, and he said it in kindness.
He said, I think you have a tendency, I think you do it in this lesson, and I think you have a tendency in other lessons to not present the picture of hope enough. I think you tend to be too much focused on this and miss the idea of—and these are his words—deliverance, that God delivers us from these things. And we had a lengthy discussion, not heated at all, but a lengthy discussion on that.
And I'll tell you, for example, when I sit down, I don't counsel women. But when a woman comes to me and says, I'm having a problem with my husband, and I'll say, come by the house, and Susan and I will meet with you. She'll go by. What she wants to do over and over again, frequently, is say, what about my husband? What about my husband? What about my husband? And we say, no, no, no. What about you? What about you? What about you? And finally, after a long time, she'll go, okay, I'm going to focus on me. Now, as I'm doing this, what should he do? And we'll go, no, the focus is on you. And inevitably, she'll say, if I do these things, will he respond? And my answer is always, we don't know.
Well, I think it's—this is just me. I think it's, and maybe it's my real estate background, where I think it's really important to tell everybody the truth. I think to say to her, you'll be delivered from this, meaning either A, the slug will leave, or B, he's going to turn around and become the perfect husband, that may not happen. If I say deliver, she starts to think that way. Here's what, I do want to give you
This message of trial is the message of hope. It is the only hope that we have in life. I want to make sure that I'm not fighting the same battle with you that I was with others. This is circular in its nature, it's not linear. As I come out to this end, I go back up in here.
Remember this: faith is the assurance of things hoped for. When I say we come from endurance back to a stronger faith, I'm saying there is our hope. As I become closer and closer to Him, my concern about circumstance begins to shrink away. As Paul suffers more and more and more, he can write to you and say, "Hey, suffering isn't that big a deal," because it has in it purpose, and it has in it meaning.
Paul's Perspective on Suffering
Listen to these words. This is one of those passages that you find yourself going to over and over again. It's 2 Corinthians chapter 4, and it addresses all that we're talking about. Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18: "Do not lose heart, though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction..."
Now grab this. That is how Paul describes life—momentary light affliction. Seven chapters later, he talks a little bit about his light affliction. Listen to this: "Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A day and a night I spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger on the sea, danger among false brethren. I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure."
Those are the physical things, and we often stop there. Listen to verse 28: "Apart from the external things, there's the daily pressure upon me for the concern of all the churches." That's what Paul talks about in his life, seven chapters after he says, "our momentary light affliction."
I've got to tell you, if Bo knows baseball, Paul knows suffering. Paul said to you, those things—and he's not minimizing those. He's not saying they didn't hurt. When they whack him with those rods, that hurts. When they give him the lashes, that hurts. He's not saying this doesn't hurt. He's saying, "I can deal with that."
The Eternal Weight of Glory
How can you deal with it? "Our momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory." If I get a scale and put all of my suffering on this side, and I put the value of knowing Christ on this side, that scale just goes like this. You can't even compare them, he said.
I don't want you to miss this. I am not saying that your life and those things in it don't hurt. They hurt deeply. I'm not saying that what you experience in life doesn't cause you grief and pain. It does. But if your focus is on the grief and pain in the trial, you're never going to get to what God has for you on the other end.
Here's the key. It's all right here in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. "Our momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen. The things that are seen are temporal. The things that are not seen are eternal." It's exactly the same point that James made.
Focusing on the Eternal
As you and I are going through life, we're in the midst of this. I would suggest there's a sense in which you're at every one of these steps all day long in different occasions. It's not fair to say, "Here's your life and you're somewhere in here." That's just not right.
As you're in there, the ticket, the answer, the key, is to not get hung up on the things around me. They're temporal, but to be focused on the eternal. You are going to suck gas as long as you're looking at the stuff around you. You're going to get bogged down in these things. You're going to get pulled into these things. You're going to get sucked into these things. You're never going to get out the other end. And more importantly, you're never going to understand what God's doing in your life.
Let me be clear. What that is, although that word isn't there, that is the message of hope. Here's the big qualifier: to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. If you're not a Christian, you have no hope. Your only hope is a hope—you will come to Christ in repentance and faith.
The Message of Hope
If you're a Christian, your future is certain, and you do have deliverance in this sense. In an ultimate sense, you'll be delivered from this world into heaven. So there's the ultimate deliverance. Your circumstances may or may not improve. I'll even give you one—they may get worse.
My message of hope? They may get worse. But as they get worse, the only reason they would happen to get worse is because God is going to build up your faith, which is your hope. Do you see that? As we work our way through this discussion on faith and hope, all of that is in there.
Moses as Our Example
In the book of Hebrews, we come to a guy who I think embodies what we're trying to say here. Again, we could pick an awful lot of guys to be our model in this, but I landed on Moses in this process. Hebrews chapter 11—it's what we refer to as the Hall of Fame of Faith. After the author of Hebrews defines faith, he begins to give us examples, obviously Old Testament examples, of faith.
When we talk about faith, especially in the Old Testament context, we are always talking about the future, and we are always talking about the promises. We are always talking about our eyes looking beyond where we are. And he says, "Here's some stuff about Moses."
Moses: The Man of Privilege and Power
We're going to close this way. We're going to look at these five or six verses, and then we're going to look at the life of Moses, and hopefully I can tie this all together so that your eyes don't end up on Moses or don't end up on an overhead. They end up on you. That's what we want to end up with.
So here's what we know about Moses. By faith, Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw that he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Instead, he chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward.
Just that verse right there encapsulates all of what we've been talking about, that in the midst of this, I've got some decisions to make. You make decisions all day long. Some of them are real important. Some of them are no-brainers. Some of them are complex. Some of them have great consequence. Some have little consequence.
You're driving along. You made a decision to stop, probably, at every red light on the way up here and go at every green light. You made a decision, most of you, to comb your hair, to try to dress nicely, to look like somebody would be attracted to you in the way you responded. You make decisions like that all the way through life.
The Most Profound Decision We Face
You also make decisions that are far more complex and profound. And one of those is who you're going to serve. You're going to serve God or you're going to serve man. You're going to pursue the things of this world or you're going to pursue the things that God says are important. You're going for the things you see which are temporal or the things you don't see which are eternal. That's a decision you're making all the time.
I will tell you this: that decision has profound effect. They help you out here. For the Christian, not on your eternal destiny, because if you're a Christian, you're going to heaven. Isn't that right? If I'm a Christian today, I'm as sure of heaven as the people that are already there. What it's going to affect is my life here. So Moses says, I don't care about Egypt. I'm going for the God thing.
By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because he saw Him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.
The Purpose Behind Our Trials
Here's the premise. In life, God brings trials and tribulations and hardship to the men and women of faith. He does it for a reason. He does it to bring you to a point of spiritual maturity. And He does it so you will begin to do supernatural ministry. Now, if you want a message of hope, you can't get any more hopeful than that. That is the message of hope.
Here's the story of Moses, and some of it we'll read to you. I would suggest to you grab your Bibles when you get home or even now when you look through those first three, four, five, six, seven chapters of the book of Exodus. Early on in the book of Exodus, we're told there's a new king in Egypt who didn't know Joseph.
Remember the story of Joseph. Sold into slavery, he lands in Egypt, and in less than an hour, he goes from a prisoner in the dungeon to the prime minister of Egypt. Like that. How'd that happen? God. God's in absolute control. And one of the areas we know God's in control is in the leaders He places over you and over us. Scary thought.
From Favor to Oppression
He goes from prisoner to prime minister, and his brothers come for food, and after a period of time, those little handful of people at the time of Moses now number two and a half million Jews in Egypt. About the size of the population of the valley. You got two and a half million Jews in Egypt. And they are so powerful that a new king that doesn't know Joseph says to the midwives, as these Israeli babies are being born, "I want you to look. If it's a boy, kill him. If it's a girl, let her live." It's exactly the opposite of the slaughter that you have going on in China, where they're killing the girls and letting the boys live. Kill the boys, let the girls live.
Moses' mom gives birth to him. She nurses him for three months, then puts him in a little ark, and shoves him out into the river, and the cries of the baby attract the attention of Pharaoh's daughter, who is there. She brings in Moses as luck—I say that with a smile on my face. Understand there's no such thing as luck. As luck would have it, she goes and gets, of all people, Moses' mother to come and to nurture this boy.
Moses' Education and Early Confidence
This boy then grows, and we learn from the book of Acts in the seventh chapter that Moses was educated in all learning in Egypt, and he was a man of power in word and deed. He grows in Egypt. He becomes a man of great prestige, great influence. He's a handsome, debonair guy, strong in word, strong in deed, strong in knowledge, strong in himself.
So strong that at age 40, he looks around and he says, "You know, these Hebrews are being suppressed." He goes down to visit them, and in the course of visiting them, he sees a Hebrew struck by an Egyptian, and do you remember what Moses does? He kills the Egyptian. Remember what he does then? Buries him in the sand.
The next day, Moses comes upon two Hebrews who are fighting, and he says to them, "You guys, knock it off." Here's what they say to him: "Who made you a prince or judge over us? Are you intending to kill us like you did the Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid. See, as he killed the Egyptian—
Here's what the scripture says. He looked this way. He looked that way. He looked around to make sure nobody was seeing. Then he killed the Egyptian. Now these Hebrews say, "You're going to kill us like you did him." Moses goes, "Oh my, the word is out." When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh, and he ends up in Midian.
Here's what he ends up as: He's this powerful man of influence and power and word and deed and political influence and wealth and intelligence, and 40 years later is where we pick him up in Exodus chapter 3. He is a stinking shepherd. The bottom job level—it's like starting at McDonald's, except it's never getting out of there. He's there.
In fact, in the midst of this, God comes to him and says, "Moses, you're going to lead my people out of Egypt." And Moses goes, "I don't think so." Now here's what you need to understand. At the beginning 40 years ago, Moses was God's man getting ready to do God's job that God had given him, but he was going to do it Moses' way.
God's Way vs. Moses' Way
So God says, "That's not going to work. You can't do my work your way, because when you do my work your way, it's your work. You're going to do my work my way, and then it's going to be my work."
So He lets Moses go into the desert for 40 years, and over those 40 years, He breaks him, He cuts him, He prunes him, He chisels him, He takes a little off here and a little off there. So that when God comes and says, "Okay, Moses, you get them out of here," Moses comes back, and here's what he says. Listen to this: "I've never been eloquent, neither in recent times nor in the times before." Now we know that's not true. Moses is so broken that he goes, "I've never been able to do this. I've never been able to talk. I can't lead."
God says, "You're the guy." And he said, "What am I going to say? They're going to say, 'Who are you?'" He said, "You go to Pharaoh and you tell him to let my people go." And Pharaoh's going to say, "Who is He? I don't care."
The Staff: God's Provision
And God says, "Take your..." Remember what Moses had with him? It was the only weapon he had with him. Remember what he had? He had that stinking staff, and that's all he had. And he said, "What am I going to do with this?" And God said, "Well, throw it down." And he throws it down, and it's a serpent. Now he's afraid of the serpent, and now he's going to leave the staff there and—good grief! "Don't do that. Grab its tail." So he grabs its tail, and he's got this staff. That's all he's got.
This guy is going to go against Pharaoh and his army with this staff, and he's going to say to this atheistic, heathen pig, "Let my people go." Who said to do it? God did. There's no way. There's no way this is going to happen.
So he goes, and Pharaoh says, "Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Now, get out of here." We go through ten of these plagues, and finally says, "Get your people out of here."
The Exodus: God's Deliverance
And then they're on the move, and all of a sudden, Pharaoh's having second thoughts, and they come to the Red Sea. All he's got is this staff. He's got nothing. And all of a sudden, God says, "I'm going to take care of you," and the Red Sea opens, and two and a half million Jews smoke their buns right through the Red Sea, and up come these Egyptians. And when the Egyptians get in the middle, what happens? They drown. That's the story right there.
This is God's man doing God's work, but he's finally doing it God's way. And it took God 40 years to get him to that point. And then He got him to the point and made sure that there was no way Moses could say, "I did it."
Provision in the Desert
Now they're out in the desert. They're not out there very long, and they find out some stuff about the desert that we know from living there. It's hot in the day. It's cold at night. And Moses said, "I don't know what to do because I don't have any way to make clothes." So God gives him a cloud to give him shade in the day and a cloud that gives him fire and heat at night.
They're not out there very long, and they say, "Moses, what are we supposed to drink? There's no water in the desert." And Moses says, "I don't have a clue," and God says, "Right there," and there's the water. Then they say, "Hey, what are we going to eat? We've got nothing to eat." And then God says, "I'm going to rain food on you called manna." God's man doing God's work and doing it His way.
Three Principles from Moses' Story
There are about three things, and then you've got to go. Number one, there's no way that God is going to accomplish in your life what He wants to accomplish until He breaks your spirit, but not your will. Until He just breaks you down. Until He takes you and busts you to the point where now you're ready to be God's man or woman doing His work in your life His way.
Here's the second thing. All that Moses accomplished and all that he did, he provided nothing of what was needed in this process. It wasn't Moses who brought on the plagues. Moses didn't separate the Red Sea. Moses didn't rain manna. Moses didn't bring the cloud. He didn't bring the fire. He didn't bring the water. It was all God.
And here's the last thing. You can be God's person doing God's work His way, and you've got to know everything's not going to be smooth.
Human Nature in the Wilderness
Moses has 2.5 million whining Jews—not winding, whining Jews—working their way through this desert. They aren't there very long. They just got across the Red Sea. They're just barely into this whole thing, and they're going, "What are we going to drink? Let us go back. What are we going to eat?" Remember their cry? "Let us... Where are leeks and garlic and onions and cucumbers? Take us back, Moses."
I mean, think about this. "Take us back to slavery, Moses." This is a comment on man. Living in slavery and eating leeks was preferable to eating what God had provided. Isn't that a scary thought? Even in the midst of all of that. As they had seen, you and I have read about this, and I think part of this, I just—my frustration in these stories...
The message is this: God is going to bring into your life whatever He needs to bring in the form of trials and hardships, in the test of prosperity, in whatever test you need, until you get to a point where you become His person, doing His work, His way. At that point, you will see God do supernatural things in your life, things that you never thought possible. You will see things happen in your life for which you'll have no definition and no explanation other than to say, "God did it."
The Reality of Pain and the Promise of Hope
Let me close with this. I understand that there is hurt and grief and pain in life. I know that. What I'm saying to you is two things. Number one, there's a reason. Number two, there's hope.
The hope is the person of Christ, and the reason is that in your life, He's going to use those things to help you become the man or woman He wants you to be. That process will continue until the day you die, when you are ultimately delivered to a place in heaven.
There are times when I have to teach things I really don't know very well, and there are times I have to teach things I don't really understand. Next week, I teach something, and I got a Ph.D. in this. I could do it right now. I don't need to study very hard. Next week, we're going to look at sin, and I got that wired.
Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You that it's true and real. We pray and ask You to do whatever You need to do in our life to bring us to this point of faith and understanding in You. God, please, we pray that You would help us see the hope that we have in a relationship with You.
God, thanks for the men and women that are here. I pray that this day and every day that we're together, You use this time to speak to them through Your Spirit. Father, we love You, and we ask You to make us people who want to do Your work Your way. God, we ask these things of You. In Jesus' name, amen.