Abraham and Moses

Tom Shrader explores the lives of Abraham and Moses from Hebrews 11, defining faith as our obedient response to God's promises and commands. He examines Abraham's supreme test in sacrificing Isaac and Moses' transformation from pride to humility, showing how God breaks our will to do things our way so we can live His way.

“Faith is our obedient response to the promises and commands of God.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Fundamentals of Faith

Recorded: July 26, 2007

Duration: 44 min

Themes: faith, obedience, humility, pride, trust, surrender, sacrifice, testing, struggling with pride, facing difficult decisions, learning to trust god, new believer, parent, mentor, young adult, feeling tested

Scripture: Hebrews 11:1, Hebrews 11:3, Hebrews 11:6, Hebrews 11:8-29, Genesis 22:1-14, 2 Corinthians 5, Numbers 12:3, 1 John 5

Theological Themes: biblical faith, sanctification, becoming holy, divine sovereignty, old testament, covenant promises, spiritual maturity, faith response

Full Transcript

We are in week three of what will be a four-week series, and we're talking about faith. This is the first time that I have done this series in Poverty Living. I haven't done it in church, so we're navigating our way through this in a way that I think this will be something that when it's time for me to travel into some different places and do retreats, this will be part of what we'll talk about. So you're on the front end of helping me create this material.

If you have Bibles, you can open them to the book of Hebrews in the 11th chapter, and that becomes really our base for this study, Hebrews 11. In Hebrews 11, the author defines faith in chapter 11, verse 1, and then gives us two very important statements, one in verse 3, one in verse 6.

The Foundation of Faith

So He defines faith: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." We'll come back and talk about it. Verse 3: "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible." So here's what He says: when you want to talk about creation, you can bring all your scientists together and everything. Here's how the world came into being. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And He created, not assembled. If those are new words to you, grab that tape when you leave and it's on there.

And then verse 6: "Without faith it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He's a rewarder of those who seek Him." So faith is this assurance of things hoped for, and again we define these words. It's this certainty of future and present realities, even though we can't always see them.

One author writes this: "Faith then provides the firm ground on which we stand, waiting for the fulfillment of God's promises. Far from being nebulous and uncertain, faith is the most solid possible conviction. Faith is the present essence of a future reality." Here's a definition we've used as well: faith is our obedient response to the promises and commands of God.

Knowing God Through Faith

So this faith journey, this walk with God, this knowing who He is - we shared with you last week that Albert Einstein, that genius, said this: "Certainly there's a God. Any man who doesn't believe in a cosmic force is a fool." And he got all that stuff right, then the next phrase blows it. He says this: "But we could never know Him."

Exactly the opposite is true. There indeed is a God who created it all, and He is a God that you can know in an intimate and personal way. He knows everything there is about you. He's all-knowing and all of those things, but you can know Him as well, and you know Him by obediently responding to His promises and commands. The first of those is the promise that whoever believes in Christ, believes that He who He said He was - intellectual, emotional, and then action that follows - whoever believes in Him has eternal life.

Living by Faith, Not by Sight

We talked about this last week. That's the beginning of that journey, and now sometimes we just talk about faith, saving faith. I was saved by grace through faith, and sometimes we leave it there. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul tells us that we are to walk by faith. Maybe another way to say that, we're to live by faith. Our life is driven by faith, not by sight. And the context there is the context of understanding life after death.

It is so significant, to me anyway, that God uses this picture of saying we're going to live by faith, and it's in the context. He said here's this illustration of whether I'm absent from the body, I'm present with the Lord, and in both instances my ambition is to please Him. He could have picked all sorts of illustrations, but every one of them would have left somebody of mankind out. He could have talked about faith is hanging in there when you lose a loved one. Well not everyone experiences that in the course necessarily of their life. Or losing material things, or when you're tested in some relational way. He doesn't say that. He picks the universal experience of man, which is death. And He says living by faith is trusting God in the midst of this.

The Perspective of Death and Life

Let me remind you what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5: "We know that if this earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we know that if we die, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands of eternal, in the eternal heavens. For indeed in this house, in this life, we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven." He's saying there's something healthy about us that has our mind focused on heaven.

I think it's so important for us, because I really do - and this may sound almost like a cliche to you - but I really am convinced that I'm not prepared for life until I'm prepared for death. And by that I mean I'll never have life in its proper perspective until I'm ready to die.

There is not a day goes by that I don't think about dying. I think about it every day, and oftentimes many times during the day. As I was driving in this morning, I was thinking about my death, what that means, where I'll be, the rejoicing in heaven, and the closer that gets, and the older that I get, the more I look forward to that day. I wish it was because I wanted to be with my Savior. I pray every day that God will put in my heart a deeper desire for the right motive to want to die and be with Him. But frankly, most of my desire to be with Him is to get out of here. But here's what I know: I know to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

I've never been a huge fan of Jim and Tammy Baker by any stretch, but I have watched her over how many years this has been, and she's been in this process of dying. And she has died in a wonderful fashion. I mean, the way that she conducted herself in those interviews with Larry King and others, just incredible. And that last interview, you know, when she's at 65 pounds, and I mean, this sounds negative, I don't mean it negative. She almost looks like a caricature, really,

at that point. And she was just spectacular. Barely could breathe, barely had enough energy to speak. And I could disagree with her about a thousand things, and if we were to debate and argue theology, we would agree about a few things and disagree about many. But I know this: it was a confirmation that her faith was real when you saw her peace with her death.

I'm going to recommend a book to you, and I do this with a level of reservation here, because there's some wacky theology in it. Well, I'm going to trust you to figure out—I think you'll wear out in the book before you ever get to the wacky theology. I think you'll only read the first half anyway. But the book's title is Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death. And it's got some goofy theology toward the end of it.

Let me explain the title, and again, I know that we're kind of retracing some steps from last week, but I love this. There's a pastor over in San Diego, and he was observing people in his congregation who were dying. Three ladies he writes about in particular. One was singing her favorite hymn as she died, and her son said that watching his mother die was the greatest moment of his life.

Stories of Happy Death

There was another lady who was preoccupied as she was dying, the last two or three weeks of her life, in teaching her husband to cook. She was still baking things for people, and she's dying. And her family said what they remember most in those last three or four painful weeks is her smile.

There's another lady from the congregation who was so excited about her death, because God was using her death to bring together her two sons, who had irreconcilable differences until this moment, and He was bringing them together. And the guy writes that as she was meeting with him to talk about her funeral and her plans for her memorial service, she simply clapped her hands with joy.

Now he was taking that, and he was comparing it to what he reads about as he talks about other people dying, and you hear fear and anger. Pearl Buck, about a month or two before she passed away, wrote this: "There are times in sleepless nights when I ponder upon this planet to which we cling. I meditate upon how utterly lost we are in space. We bear the total isolation as we must, for however we may hope there is a God, we do not hear His voice, and we do not see Him."

And there's just an emptiness there. It just sounds hollow when you hear it. There's no hope there. I cannot imagine a more desperate feeling than to finally be facing death.

The Emptiness of Unbelief

By the way, all these giants, when you really read about them—you read about the Bertram Russells, and you read about these great atheistic minds—when you get them at the end of their life, they're folding like a cheap suit. There's an emptiness in there, and they've got no peace. They're all of a sudden going, "Uh-oh, this is the real deal. What if I'm wrong?" And there's no peace there.

Contrast that with what this gentleman saw in his congregation. So he writes this: he comes across a phrase called "happy death." And it was a phrase that was prevalent a couple hundred years ago. So he picks arbitrarily a date, 1801. He grabs a magazine in London and he's going through some archives and he finds an article about Mrs. Hunter.

Mrs. Hunter was a 26-year-old lady who died of an unspecified illness. She died on January 17th of 1801. And this story is a combination of her journal and others who watched her die about the rejoicing and the joy of her death. And he's going, "What is all of that?"

So he asks these questions: What's the secret of people who die content and fulfilled? What makes it possible for them to attain such spiritual heights as they approach their physical demise? What enables them to make death a completion of life rather than a tragic ending? What can they teach us about life and death and love and loss and grief and spiritual growth?

The Answer is Jesus

And of course, the answer is they know Jesus. "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." My faith is my obedient response to the promises and commands of God. That faith journey begins when God opens my eyes to understand who Christ is. And now I am indwelled by the Holy Spirit and my life now has a whole new direction and meaning and purpose.

Well, we're to live by faith. If you're a follower of Christ, your deepest desire is to please Him. Hebrews 11:6: "It's impossible to please Him without faith." And then in Hebrews 11, the very chapter that you have open there in front of you, after the definition and after verse three and six, the author gives us a whole series of illustrations.

And we've said to you, we could take almost any of these illustrations and make a series out of each of these. And he, the author, highlights some of the great men and women of faith. We looked last week at Noah, this picture of persistence, also a picture of God's patience.

And I said, here's what we're going to do this week and next. We're going to look today at two other Old Testament figures. We're going to look at Abraham and then we're going to look at Moses. And then next week, I want to look at somebody who's not in the Hall of Fame of Faith but a New Testament figure. He's kind of a guy that I can relate to a little bit. We're going to look at Peter and then maybe Paul or one other fellow. And then a group. I'll give you a tip here at the end and I'll let you see who it is.

Abraham: Called to Obedience

So look at—here we go. Look at Hebrews 11, verse eight: "For by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for inheritance. He went out not knowing where he's going."

Abraham's living in a pagan land. God calls him and he responds to this call. Faith: the obedient response to the promises and the commands of God.

I had a gentleman who called me one time and he said, "I'd like to get together with you. You don't know me. I know who you are. Can we meet?" And I said—subsequently I've changed this policy just a bit because I used to always say yes and

never ask why. Then I realized I'm just going to a lot of meetings I don't need to go to because a lot of people think that they want to talk to me but they really want to talk to somebody else. So now I would say why.

I didn't to him. So we get together and we sit down and he said, "Here's my question to you. God has told me to move to Seattle. What do you think?" Here's what I said. I said, "Okay, is this a trick question? If God has told you to move to Seattle, you shouldn't call me. You should be calling Allied Van Lines. If God's told you to move to Seattle, what are you doing talking to a bunch of other people? If God has said to you, move to Seattle, then you want to be on the phone to a real estate agent in Seattle and a real estate agent here to sell your house here, load up your stuff and go."

The call came to Abraham to go to a land he didn't have the opportunity to scout out and do an internet search on. And Abraham goes. As we look at Abraham and these other Old Testament figures here in Hebrews 11, what we see are Old Testament characters who take God at His word. So if God says, do something, you do it. You don't ask the people around you, "What do you think? God says, don't steal. What do you think about that? Good thing, bad thing. God says, don't slander. Or God says, to love Him with all your heart. What do you think about that? Think God missed that one?"

Abraham's Pattern of Obedience

Abraham begins this wonderful pattern of obedience, but it's a mistake I can make in my life. And I see that mistake made in people all the time. They will have this huge moment with God. Maybe it's a test, maybe it's a challenge, maybe it's a difficulty, maybe it's something that you and I would look at and say, "That's not that big a deal." But to them, this is this really important moment.

There's this testing, there's this challenge, and they get through it. And then there's like this idea, "I'm glad we're done with that, no more of these." God never stops testing. Sometimes they're huge semester finals, but oftentimes they're little pop quizzes along the way.

The Supreme Test

Turn with me to Genesis chapter 22, and we are going to look at the supreme test in Abraham's life. Here's what's happened. God has made a promise to Abraham that He takes Abraham outside. He said, "Look up, there's the stars. You're going to have descendants as many as the stars." And here's what's happening. Abraham's biological clock is ticking. Sarah's biological clock is ticking. And this promise doesn't seem to be coming along.

So Abraham kind of does this preemptive strike and impregnates one of his handmaids. And we go through this whole thing and back and forth. And God said, "Well, you blew that because I said I'm going to promise it through Sarah here. That'll be the one." And now at age 100-ish, and Sarah's 80, 90-ish, Isaac is born, the promised one.

Genesis chapter 22, verse one: "It came about after these things..." There's a span in there from the end of chapter 21 to the beginning of chapter 22. There's a span in there of 20-ish years. So for sake of discussion, let's say Abraham at this point is about 125-ish, Isaac about 25-ish.

"It came about after these things that God tested Abraham. He said to him, 'Abraham,' and Abraham said, 'Here I am.' And God said, 'Take now your son...'" Now what comes next is really important. "Your only son." And then to even make it more specific, "whom you love, Isaac."

See, if God would have just said, "Abraham, there's a test coming, take your son," Abraham would have said, "What? Ishmael, we're going on a trip. That's what he would have said. We're going for a ride. Ishmael, grab a little bag, get some Twinkies and some water, here we go." But God doesn't leave that open. God is really clear. Take your son, which son? Your only son. What's his name? Isaac.

The Command and Response

"And go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will tell you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled a donkey, took two of his young men with him and Isaac, his son. He split wood for a burnt offering and arose and went to the place where God had told him."

There's a couple of things that are missing out of here. And I want to warn you, I'm moving outside of scripture here. So when you do that, you can disregard everything that I say. There has to be an emotional response that isn't recorded here. There has to be. There has to be something that's going on in Abraham's life at this moment that's not recorded.

There has to be a sense of confusion. "Wait a minute, God. You promised me all these descendants. Sarah is now 115 and it's unlikely we're going to have any more kids. It doesn't seem likely at this moment. I waited and waited and waited and you brought me this son, God, why would you allow this to happen if you intended to hurt me like this?" You can imagine this. You can imagine, you can take yourself and interject yourself into this story pretty easily.

What is recorded is not the emotional response, but the physical response. The word of the Lord comes to Abraham. He speaks clearly, verse three, and early the next morning he goes. Immediately he goes.

The Nature of Faith

What is faith? An obedient response to the promises and commands of God. Immediate obedience. It's like raising a child. When you're raising a child, we responded this way, that delayed obedience was the same as disobedience. So, when I said, "Sarah, you need to do this," if she didn't respond, I didn't stand there and go, "Okay, one, two, three." If you're a parent that does that, let me count to three before I whack you in the head. That's not the way you deal with your kid. You go, "Sarah, do this." And if you have to tell her again, you discipline her quickly. You train her.

If you want, there's that show where the guy that trains the dogs, I don't know the guy's name. What's his name? Yeah, Caesar, whatever his name is. And I am not, everybody always thinks I'm joking. I'm not joking here.

The best instruction on parenting I ever saw was Caesar dealing with those dogs. It's the same thing. This isn't complicated.

I finished last week and got done here and I went down to meet my son-in-law at 10 every Thursday morning down at the Biltmore. I got down there a little early and went through the bookstore. I have spent cumulative a billion hours in bookstores in the last month and a half. When I go on vacation, part of it is to go back to the bookstore.

I decided to go to the courtyard. Hadn't been back there in a long time. I went over to Macy's and they weren't open yet. They don't open until 10. These stores ought to open at nine. I don't understand why these stores open at 10. That drives me crazy. Anyway, Macy's is closed.

A Lesson in Discipline

So I'm driving down and there's this little kid running around all over. I hear, "Nathan, Nathan, come over here, Nathan. Come over, I'm telling you, right?" One, two, three, 99, 108, 47. This kid's running all over and I'm thinking, "Lady, you gotta go get this kid. Do you want me? Because I can fix this kid fast." She's reading a book.

I can't leave this alone because I need to know what people are reading. So I get over and she's reading "Your ADD Child." Now, I got a long letter when I used this illustration the other day about ADD and "you don't understand it" and all that.

Here's what I understand. The letter went like this: "We had a very compliant child and then we had this child." Here's what I wanted to say. I'll bet you had a very compliant child and then a very difficult child. You tried to raise the difficult child the way you raised the compliant child. It didn't work because the difficult child needs to be disciplined early on. If you don't deal with it, this is what you're going to earn.

I know if you take him to a doctor, he's going to give him a pill. I know the principal wants to give him a pill. But what he really needs and she needs is loving, consistent, difficult discipline. Are there exceptions? No.

Having said that, I know there's a lot of pain in here and I want to minimize your pain. I really don't mean to make light of it at all. But the majority of this is done really easy as you deal with those kids.

Abraham's Immediate Obedience

What's this have to do with the lesson that we're talking about? Here's the point. Here's Abraham with this kid and emotional connection, but what he does is obedience. Delayed obedience is the same as disobedience and the same is true with God. When God says do it, He's not going "one, two, three." He expects you to respond. This is a huge test in Abraham's life. He responds immediately.

Look at verse four: "On the third day." Now, that says a ton to me. It's not like "go and do it and it's over with." I was talking to Susan the other night. She was getting ready to give herself a shot. I said, "You know, I know everybody does that all the time, but I don't know if I could do that." She said, "You just gotta close your eyes and just get it over with." Well, that would be a little bit of this. God gives you this command, just get it over with.

But now for three days, he's walking with Isaac. I'm outside of scripture, but I'll bet Isaac's saying things like, "Hey dad, when I grow up, do you think I'll get married? Do you think I'll have a mom? Do you think I'll have a wife like mom? What do you think it'll be like? Are we going on vacation? What are we going to do?" Abraham's heart's breaking for three days.

The Promise of Return

Here's what he says. He sees the distance, he sees the place. Verse five: "And Abraham said to the young men, 'Stay here with the donkey. The lad and I will go yonder.'" If you mark in your Bible, you need to circle, underline, square, star, because this is a key word here - plural, personal pronoun. "We will worship" and implied in that sentence, in the structure of the sentence, "we will return."

Now think with me. Abraham is going and his intention is to what? Sacrifice Isaac. He is going to kill him. He understands that's a requirement and yet he says to these guys, "We're going to return." How can he say that?

He's a man of faith and he understands that Isaac is the fulfillment of the promise of the descendants. Somehow, he may not know the specifics, he may not know this whole idea of resurrection or resuscitation, he has no idea how God's going to do it, but he knows this: there are promises that God's going to do it and he doesn't need to understand how He's going to do it. He just obediently responds to that.

Faith Without Complete Understanding

Isn't that a great picture? That's the same picture in your life and mine. I don't always understand what God's doing. I don't need to know. It's not my job to know. It's my job to obey. Sometimes I know, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I can figure it out, sometimes I can't. None of that changes everything.

If God said to you, "Move to Seattle" and you've got all these questions about, "Well, what if we didn't and what if the schools aren't good and what if I can't make a living and maybe residential values here are different," none of that matters. If God said move to Seattle, then go. If God says in here, "Here's a promise, here's a command," it's just do it. That's what Abraham does.

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering, laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand

The fire and the knife and the two of them walked together. By the way, and we're not going to get into it, here's the imagery of the father voluntarily submitting and slaying the son, the son submitting to this. It's a picture of Christ that we see in the Old Testament.

They're walking along and Isaac said to Abraham, verse seven, "Father." He said, "Here I am." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, we have those, but where is the lamb?" And Abraham said, "God will provide for Himself the lamb." And the two of them walked together. They came to the place of which God had told them and Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son and laid him upon the altar on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand, he took the knife to slay his son, but the angel of the Lord called from heaven. He said, "Abraham, Abraham." "Here I am." He said, "Don't stretch out your hand."

Isaac's Faith

Now there is a wonderful picture of faith, isn't it? I'll tell you a guy who's got a boatload of faith in this picture: Isaac. I'm guessing this 25-year-old could outrun and out-wrestle the 125-year-old. How would Isaac become such a man of faith at such a young age? I can guarantee this is easy. How? He watched the old man. He's saying, "I watch this guy at every turn and He just does what God tells Him to do and tells Him to do and tells Him to do and tells Him to do."

I'll tell you what, if you're a dad or a mom or a grandpa or a grandma or you are somebody who has people around you, they can watch and learn from you and you can communicate to them. Some of you have this wonderful heritage where God has just provided you these wonderful blessings of people in your lives.

A Grandfather's Heart

Everybody's watching. These last two or three nights, I just can't sleep. So I sleep for an hour. I mean, it's just the worst and then I wake up and then I go back and then I'm up and back. So I'm constantly hitting the radio. I hit the radio and on comes a story about yesterday, a one and a half or two-year-old that his parents found him in the bottom of the pool.

My heart - I must be getting old. I'll tell you what it is: it's the grandkids coming along is what it is and I think of Brayden. Gracie's starting to get to this cute age and Yale will be good but Brayden's there now. He just makes me laugh. I mean, I just love to talk to him and He's got the thing. I think we talked about it in here that He does. It started with food but He does it with everything now. And when He's done He'll go - He stutters - He'll go, "Ah, ah, ah, all done. Ah, ah, ah, all done."

So I had him at church the other night, and the little girls, the women can't keep that red hair, they can't keep their hands off of him. This lady's talking to him, and she got up close to him and goes, "Ah, ah, ah, all done." And I said, "Well, He's done with you at this point, ma'am."

So He had to go to the doctor the other day, He's not feeling very good, He's got some small issues. And Haley said, "What do you think happened there?" I said, "I know what happened." She said, "That doctor got about a foot away, and He said, 'Ah, ah, ah, all done.'"

Guarding Against Idols

When I - I can't imagine Brayden dying. But then I have to be careful with how much I love him, because I can't love him more than I love God. I can't love Susan more than I love God. God's God.

1 John chapter five, end of that book. John ends the book in a weird way. He says, "Little children, guard yourself against idols." An idol is anything that would creep into your life that would come between you and God, that would cause you to disobediently respond to the promises and commands of God.

Abraham is tested in an extraordinary way, and Abraham absolutely blows through that test. It's not that He had all the answers, but He understood this: God said it, He did it, and then the result is up to God.

Moses: A Man of Faith

We've got about six, seven, eight minutes. There is another gentleman we want to look at, back to Hebrews chapter 11. His name is Moses, and there is - I think, and I haven't - I think there's probably more about Moses, maybe Abraham too, but certainly Moses and Abraham are the two key figures here in Hebrews chapter 11.

Verse 23: "By faith Moses, when He was born, was hidden for three months by His parents." Pharaoh's killing all the male-born Israelites because they saw that He was beautiful and they were afraid of the king's edict. "By faith Moses, when He'd grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure the ill treatment of the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin."

Look at verse 27: "By faith He left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for He endured as seeing Him who was unseen." What drives him in the middle of that challenge? God. Doesn't see God, but He is as real as can be. "By faith He kept the Passover." And then verse 29: "By faith they passed through the Red Sea." Verse 30: "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down."

Moses' Three-Part Life

Let me give you Moses' story real quickly. Moses lives 120 years and His life divides real easily into three 40-year sections. Moses, similar to Joseph, rises to a position of prominence within the nation of Egypt. The Israelites are enslaved. One day He comes upon an Egyptian who is badgering an Israelite. Moses has a confrontation, slays the Egyptian. The next day as He's talking to the Israelites, He begins to challenge them and they say, "Wait a minute, are you going to kill one of us like you did the Egyptian?"

Moses at this point, at this 40-year juncture, Moses was at this point where He was saying, "God, You need to get these people out of here and I am the guy to do it." And you know what? This is really cool. He was right. He was God's guy to do that job. But God has two other things. Besides just having the right person and having the right mission, God has two other things that are important: the right time and the right way. God said, "You're the right guy and

That's the right mission and you got the message, but it's not time yet. There's a problem, Moses, and you know what the problem is? The problem is you. Moses was proud and arrogant. Moses was highly qualified, intellectual, articulate.

Moses now walks for 40 years in a desert. God comes to him and says, "All right, Moses, it's time to get these guys out of Egypt." And Moses said, "I stutter, I stammer, I'm inadequate. I'm not the guy." And God goes, "That's what was missing before, Moses."

Let me read you a verse. Sometimes it's reading through scripture and all of a sudden there's a verse you've read it a billion times. You had to because you read through it, even though it's found in the book of Numbers and I don't camp there a lot. I know I've read through that two, three, four times. Numbers chapter 12, verse three, and it's in parenthesis, it's a parenthetical insert. In Numbers chapter 12, verse three, God's word says this: "Now the man Moses was very humble more than any man who was on the face of the earth."

The Key to Moses' Life

What's the key in Moses' life? It's the same key in your life. God was calling him with a job, mission, right guy, right job, wrong time, and totally wrong heart. God hates the proud, resists the proud, and is drawn to the humble.

God does this extraordinary thing through Moses. You know the story, right? How he leads these—think about this now—he's leading two million people on this journey. Some of you are trying to get your family ready for vacation, and that's a chore.

I have people who are 10 to 15 minutes late for church every week, and they will say to me, because that bothers me, that bothers me. I find that discourteous, I think it's inappropriate, I think it's wrong, I think it minimizes, and sends a whole message you don't want to send. And if you're chronically late, then you have a problem. You're saying that your agenda's more important than everybody else's.

I speak as somebody who spent a whole bunch of their life chronically late. One of my friends one day said, "Every time I meet with you, you're late. And what that says to me is you care more about you than you do me." And that was the end of me being late. And he's right.

I have these people saying, "I'm late, you don't know how hard it is to get three kids ready and get everything packed to get here on time." I don't buy that for a second. Moses is getting two million people ready to move.

God's Formula for Success

The key to the whole thing: God's man, God's mission, God's timing, God's way. And Moses' heart had to be broken. John Stott writes this: "At every step of our Christian development, in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is our greatest enemy, humility, our greatest friend."

I wrote this, and I don't know if I copied it from somewhere else or I wrote it, it sounds like it could be either one: Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him. That's what pride is. Pride says, "You know what, God, I understand you got a plan, I understand you got a way, I understand you got promises, I understand you got commands, but you know what I think we're going to do? We're going to do it my way this time."

My Way or God's Way

When I was a lost fellow, I had a plan for my funeral. The plan for my funeral was this: I would not be in a casket, but I would be in a chair. I would be in the front of the church, and when it was all over, they would carry me through the throngs people gathered for the occasion, as Frank Sinatra belted out, "My Way."

I can't tell you how many guys I've met—now, they have to be my age, younger guys, not necessarily—who have said at their funeral, "I want them to play 'My Way.'" When somebody says that to you, you got to understand at that point, you're dealing with someone who's fatally flawed. The last thing you want is to do it your way. You want to do it God's way.

I've come a long way through God's grace and mercy, and I would much rather have them sing, "How Great Is Our God," than "How Great Is Our Tom." Now, there's the choice. There isn't any medium ground here. You're either going to do it your way or God's way.

Pride is me saying, "I'm going to do it my way. I know, God, you've got some rules. I know you've got some promises. But I've got to be the exception to this." God says, "No, you're going to do it my way or your way."

God's Breaking and Remaking Process

If you do it your way, and you're a Christian now—that's just as a Christian, right? As a Christian, you can still say, "I'm going to do it my way." And here's what God's going to do. He is going to break you, and break you, and break you, and break you, and break you. Not to be punitive, He's going to tear you apart so that He can put you back together so that you become His guy, His gal, to live life His way, not your way.

That's His whole picture of faith. Isn't that amazing? And you just see it. The scripture is just rich with this. Watch these guys, and you see their flaws. You see Moses and all his flaws. You see David. Oh, my golly, this guy is like a giant flaw. You see Samson, and you're going, "Come on." And then I see him in the Hall of Fame of Faith. How can that be?

Well, because God understands that there is a struggle going on in our lives between our way and His way. You can fight. You can struggle. But ultimately, if you're a Christian now—you're not a Christian, God's really going to say, "Whatever, do your thing." But if you're His kid, it's like me at the Biltmore.

Everything in me wanted to grab that kid and just give him a little loving, kind discipline. But I didn't discipline him. You know why? He wasn't my kid. If that would have been my kid, we had a heart-to-heart moment right there. God's the same way. If you're kind of sliding along and you're just sending your little brains out and nothing's happening, that would scare the snot out of me, because—

maybe you aren't His. But if you're His kid and you're sinning, He's going to take you to the woodshed, my friend. He's going to take you there again and again and again and again and again, not to break your spirit, but to break your will that says, "I will my way. I will my way."

I met with a guy yesterday, and it was wonderful. He's there, and his marriage has fallen apart. Everybody's counseling about marriage, and he's talking about this. He said, "I'm sick of talking about my marriage and all the problems." I said, "Boy, I can see that. We've only been together 10 minutes. But your marriage is not your problem. That isn't your problem. Your problem is you."

He said, "Absolutely. I'm selfish. I'm arrogant. I'm proud. I don't even care. I don't even care that much. I kind of love my four-year-old girl. She's really cute, but isn't that interesting?" Everybody's trying to help him fix his marriage. Forget his marriage. His marriage is the least of his problems. His problem is he's lost. He doesn't know Christ.

Your greatest enemy is pride. Your greatest ally is humility. Faith, the obedient response to the promises and commands of God.

The Other Side of Faith

Now, tucked in Hebrews 11, in the beginning and the second part of verse 35, are all of these, to me, exceptional stories. Because we look at those first 35 verses, and it's by faith, Abraham and Joseph and all the rest. And then you get to verse 35, and here's what the author says: "But there were others who were tortured and sown in two, who were stoned." We'll look at some of that next week.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you for this wonderful truth. Let us be men and women who live in a way that brings honor and glory to You.