The Reluctant Mediator

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 4:1-17

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Well, this morning we begin Exodus chapter 4. We spent several weeks in chapter 3 moving through this great revelation of God.
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And not only God as He is in Himself, we saw that in v. 14 of chapter 3 with the divine name.
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I am who I am. But also God as He is for us.
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In the second half of chapter 3, God's plan to deliver His people. He had witnessed and had come down to visit their affliction and He would surely bring them up out of the house of bondage into a land flowing with milk and honey.
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So we saw God revealing Himself and part of that was also the revelation of His plan to Moses and through Moses to the elders and the people and Pharaoh himself.
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And as we walk through chapter 4, these first 17 verses, we're going to see that God has a reluctant mediator on His hands.
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Moses has been chosen by God to be the mediator and Moses gives three excuses why he should not be the one that is sent to go.
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He should not be the mediator that stands between God and Pharaoh. And so we want to look at these three objections, these three excuses, and we'll draw some theological points.
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We'll come at the end to return to them with some application. And I want to highlight not only the fact that Moses is a reluctant mediator, but especially next week, as we continue on in chapter 4, we want to consider our mediator, the only mediator that exists between God and men, the
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Lord Jesus Christ, and all the ways He was not a reluctant mediator. We have some imagery embedded in chapter 4 that will help us consider that more carefully.
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So consider this sort of the prelude to where we're going next week, but there's plenty to apply for us here.
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You'll see Moses now responding to God. Remember, this is all still part of the burning bush theophany.
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Moses still has no sandals on his feet. We imagine his face still bowed to the ground, the voice of the angel of the
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Lord speaking out of the bush that's not consumed, though it is ablaze. And Moses now finally begins to respond to the
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Lord's revelation. And he responds with three objections. We'll look at each objection. The first objection, they won't believe.
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The second objection, I can't speak. And the third objection, send anyone else.
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So the first objection, they won't believe. Exodus 4, beginning in verse 1. Then Moses answered and said, but suppose they will not believe me, or listen to my voice.
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Suppose they say, the Lord has not appeared to you. So the Lord said to him, what is that in your hand?
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He said, a rod. He said, cast it on the ground. So he cast it on the ground.
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And it became a serpent. And Moses fled from it. Then the
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Lord said to Moses, reach out your hand, take it by the tail. And he reached out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand.
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That they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the
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God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you. And furthermore, the Lord said to him, now put your hand in your bosom.
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And he put his hand in his bosom. And when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. And he said, put your hand in your bosom again.
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So he put his hand in his bosom again, and drew it out of his bosom, and behold, it was restored like his other flesh.
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Then it will be, if they do not believe you, nor heed the message of the first sign, that they may believe the message of the latter sign.
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And it shall be, if they do not believe even these two signs, or listen to your voice, that you shall take water from the river and pour it on the dry land.
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The water which you take from the river will become blood on the dry land. So again, all of chapter three is
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Moses bowing before this theophanic vision of God.
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And he finally has an opportunity to respond to the self -revelation and redemptive revelation of God.
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And what is the first word that Moses uses in English translation to respond to God?
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But, who says but to that kind of revelation from chapter three?
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Who says but to that kind of gracious self -manifestation, gracious appointment, gracious revelation of deliverance, the gracious calling upon Moses' life that God would be present with him, empowering him, enabling him to do all of his good pleasure?
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Who says but to the Lord? Well, we do. We do, all of the time.
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We may not have the theophanic presence of God burning in front of us on a random Tuesday, but we certainly have his revealed will.
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And that revealed will, when it's known, when it's in our mind and in our heart, when it's under our tongue, when it's reverberating and echoing in our conscience, when we have his revealed will, just like Moses, we say but.
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But surely, on a day like today, who would? But surely, given my circumstances, given how
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I feel, given what I'm dealing with, given what I'm up against, surely who? Who? Don't judge
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Moses too harshly. We all, essentially, respond the same way to God's revealed will.
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And what is that response? What's embedded in this objection that Moses has toward the
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Lord? It's the response of unbelief to God's revealed will. Whenever we, in our own little way of self -justification and excuse, say the equivalent of but, we are, in unbelief, rejecting the revealed will of God, that which our conscience is even corresponding to.
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At the end of Luke chapter nine, remember, Jesus turned away the one who came to him and said, Lord, I will follow you, but, first.
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And Jesus didn't say, oh, of course, that's reasonable. Of course, are you kidding me? Yes, yes, yes, go, go,
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Barry, go spread the news to your relatives, and then find me, I'm probably not gonna be in this area, but you'll catch wind of where I am.
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Find me, and then you can follow me. That seems natural and suitable. And Jesus says, whoever puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom.
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There is no, Lord, I will follow you, but. Lord, I will obey you, but. Lord, I would do this, but.
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But should not be a word that is employed in this way in the Christian life. But I fear there are many such ones today.
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Lord, I will follow you, but not right now, not in this way, not until I get other things underway, other things settled in my life, and so on.
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But Jesus is essentially telling us in Luke 9, there is no half commitment when it comes to the
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Lord. And there's a lot of people that fill the seats in churches all over our land, all over the world, that like to think there is a way of having a half commitment to the
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Lord Jesus. Would -be disciples that think they are disciples, but they are not fit for the kingdom of God.
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Moses here expresses his concern, and God answers him. As we will see,
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God is patient with him. First objection, second objection, third objection. His anger is kindled, but here we notice that Moses, expressing his concern, he's essentially expressing not only reluctance, but really a lack of faith.
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We're gonna come back to see that again at the end. A lack of faith, that's where these excuses are coming from.
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Suppose they will not believe me, not listen to my voice. And God, with tremendous condescension, says, okay, this is my plan.
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But suppose, to allay your fears and your anxiety, suppose they would not believe, here's what
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I'm going to do. I'm going to give you three signs. So the first sign is the rod, which when cast down became a serpent, and then when taken up again became a rod.
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The hand, which when inserted into the garment, the bosom would sort of be like the innermost pocket of the cloak.
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When he put it within his cloak or to his bosom and took it out again, it was leprous. When he repeated the action, it was made whole.
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And then the water, that was taken from the river. If you're an Egyptian, there's only one river, as far as you're concerned, it's the
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Nile. Water taken from the Nile, when cast upon the dry ground, it becomes blood. Now, the first of these signs is the rod, and we're going to highlight this next week.
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We're not done with the rod quite yet. We're told in verse 20 that it is the rod of God, and it's vital to understand the relationship of this rod throughout the
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Exodus narrative. With this rod, the Red Sea will be parted in chapter 14. In the same chapter, with this rod,
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Pharaoh's armies will be drowned. With this rod, later in chapter 17,
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Israel will prevail over the armies of Amalek. So the rod is upon Israel to deliver them, to defend them.
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Think of the contrast. What is that in his hand? Well, what is Moses doing in Midian?
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He's shepherding the sheep of his father -in -law, Jethro. So what's in his hand? A shepherd's rod, a shepherd's staff.
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Who's he going to go stand before? Pharaoh, the divinized ruler over the mighty
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Egyptian empire. And what will Pharaoh have in his hand? A golden scepter.
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So you see the contrast of the scepter of the mighty king of the earth, and the shepherd's staff that is in the hand of God's mediator.
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And this rod will be a great comfort to Moses when he goes to stand before that imperial majesty.
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Even though he will walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that rod will comfort him.
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Some of you have seen, maybe in person even, King Tutankhamen's funerary mask.
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And if you don't do it now, but if you ever pull up an image of it in Google, you'll notice that there is a serpent sort of coiled around his forehead.
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And this is something that's common in Egyptian art, and we have many reference points to this.
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This is actually called the urias, a technical term. You could look up online as well.
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They have examples of this specific thing, a hammered gold object that's on display at the Met. You can look that up online.
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And it's simply a depiction of the serpent that was an image of royalty, symbolic of sovereignty in the right terrain.
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That's why King Tut had it on his forehead. That was a common imperial symbol in Egypt.
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And so it's significant that when he casts the rod to the ground at one level, there's this serpent that he flees from.
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In some ways, the ruler of Egypt is the serpent in more ways than one, biblically, theologically speaking.
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But you have here the symbol of imperial tyranny bound up in the serpent.
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And yet when Moses grabs it, rather than fleeing from it, when he grabs it by the tail, not a very, you normally would wanna try to get close to the head.
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The tail can't bite you, but the head can. It's a dangerous thing to pick up the tail. But when you pick up the tail, because God has told you to pick up the tail, it stiffens to death, it returns to a rod.
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It now becomes an exercise of the power of God. So this is all meant to show that though Moses is a lowly shepherd, if he would depend on God's power, even taking up the might, the imperial symbol of Egypt by the tail, it would stiffen in his hand.
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It would become an exercise of God's power. And of course, layered into this imagery is not just the serpent that represented the
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Egyptian goddess Wadjet, but also the serpent from the Garden of Eden.
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When Hebrew words occur, they occur very specifically. And I think we're meant to have something evoked of the serpent in this rod.
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And that's really important to where we're going next week. So I'm gonna allow those things to float as a constellation this morning.
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We'll try to tie them up together next week. The second sign, Moses putting his hand into his cloak, taking it out leprous, and then returning it to take it out whole again.
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This is an image of cleansing and restoration. By this sign, most likely
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God is intending to show Moses and the people through Moses that God can both give crippling judgments and take them away.
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God can create and destroy. We sang it in the first hymn this morning. Alfred Edersheim, in his commentary, points out
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Moses himself was in some way like a leper when he was cast away from Egypt and expelled from the imperial court, only now to be restored, only now to be brought back.
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Further, just as God's people have been in bondage in Egypt, crippled as it were under that slavery,
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God would heal their affliction. God would restore them to a promised land. So all of this embedded within that sign.
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The third sign was for Moses to take water from the Nile, pour it upon the ground, and turn it to blood.
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This is a prelude of the first plague that falls upon Egypt in chapter seven. The Nile is quite literally the lifeblood of Egypt.
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It was the provision, the security, the economic dominance of the empire.
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And once more, we have a sign demonstrating that the might of Egypt would be easily overturned by God.
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There's a great summary. I don't know where this fits, so I'm just gonna share it, because I was so blessed by it. A great summary by the great
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Scottish preacher, John Urquhart, from a few centuries ago. He says, the serpent dealt with in obedience to God's command becomes a rod.
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Those who reject God's guidance will be pursued by terrors, right? If he rejects
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God's word to take it up, he's just gonna be running away in terror. But if we deal with our enemies as God directs us, they will end up helping us, not harming us.
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The hand put in the bosom becomes a leprous. Placed again in obedience to God's command, it is made whole.
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God can make the strength of the disobedient a burden and a horror. That's what he's gonna do to Pharaoh.
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But if we rest in him, our weakness becomes health and strength. And the sweet Nile changed into blood shows us that the delight of the land to which unbelief clings will become a loathing and a curse.
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That's great. The delight of the land to which unbelief clings will become a loathing and a curse.
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So the first objection, again, they won't believe. But notice that God is very kind to Moses.
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He gives him sign after sign after sign in order to answer the fears of the people's unbelief.
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Calvin says, surely if the people neglected the first miracle, they were unworthy to have another proof. Okay, maybe
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I'll give them one sign, but what does God do? I'll give him this sign, then I'll give him this sign, and if that doesn't work,
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I'll give him this sign. Do you see something of the gracious patience and condescension of God?
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Calvin says, it was a wonderful exercise of long -suffering for God to persevere with their dullness.
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Listen to this. With equal mercy does he now overlook our sluggishness of heart.
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He does not avenge our ingratitude, but continually adds new remedies to our unbelief.
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We see the difference between how God is toward his people and how God is to those who are not his people.
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As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. He knows our frame, remembers that we are but dust.
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So that was the first objection. The second objection, I can't speak. So first, they won't believe.
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Now, I can't speak. Verse 10, Moses said to the Lord, oh my Lord, I am not eloquent.
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Neither before nor since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.
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The signs that Moses will perform answer his first objection. They won't believe. It's okay,
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I'll give you signs. Well, that's all well, but I can't speak. So now his fears are not about the people's rejection, but about his own reception, his own capability.
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He says, I'm not eloquent. I'm slow of speech, slow of tongue.
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Literally, in the Hebrew, it's heavy -tongued, heavy -mouthed. Now, we don't know the details of what
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Moses means by that. Incidentally, I was watching, you can watch online
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Sight and Sound Theater out in Pennsylvania. I think this year they're showing
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Moses, and you can actually watch a recording of that play, and they just go full bore into Moses had a speech impediment.
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He was a stutterer. So the whole first act, I found it rather annoying, because they had this great actor playing
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Moses. He's all muscular and heroic, and they have all these stage props flying around, and he's going, but, but, but, but,
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Lord, but, but, but, but, and it's like, give me a break, guys. I don't think that's what's going on here in the text.
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We don't know the details, but we know what Stephen said in Acts chapter seven as a reference to Moses' earlier life.
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He was a man of power in words and deeds. So I don't think that Moses has necessarily a physical speech impediment.
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Surely, he could have been deliberately slow. I think the fear of having been out of the court for 40 years is beginning to haunt him.
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He was barely able to hang when he was in that environment, but 40 years, four decades outside of it now?
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He can't go back. How many, show of hands, I don't do this often, but show of hands, how many of you, and keep your hand up,
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I'll ask when to put it down, okay? How many of you took something like one, two, three years of Spanish, French, German, Latin?
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Hands up if you did that in high school, okay? Hands up, nice and high, keep them up. All right, now put it down if you're not fluent in that language.
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Oh, how surprising. That's probably something like Moses felt.
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I can't go back there. I can't speak like that, I can't think like that,
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I can't. The empire and imperial circumstances, these were the centers of intellectual activity.
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These were where the wisest and the brightest, and this was true of royalty all through history.
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It still is to some degree. It's premier education, multiple languages, all sorts of.
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You want to have your rulers equipped with the latest and greatest advances in insights and technology and intellectual sophistication, and Moses has just been funneling sheep through the desert of Midian.
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I can't go back there, I'm not eloquent enough. Compared to them, I'm slow.
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Now, Americans talk really fast, and speaking fast is not necessarily a sign of intelligence, but normally we see it in that way, and Moses says,
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I'm rusty, I'm slow. My mouth is heavy, I can't go back. There's a great film some years ago called
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The King's Speech, which was sort of based loosely on the history of King George VI, which was
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Prince Albert when he was to be enthroned, and he did have a physical speech impediment, and someone who had had great success treating
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World War I veterans, Lionel Logue, had a practice, and this film recounts
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Lionel Logue's efforts to help King George VI overcome his stutter, and Colin Firth does a great job playing
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King George VI, and there's this wonderful scene where he's sort of stuttering and getting hung up in his thoughts and in his words, and Lionel Logue is sort of going about chattering, trying to distract him and frustrate him, and finally,
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Firth's character sort of lets it out. I have a voice, and Logue stops and says, yes, yes you do.
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It's a great scene, but that's not what's going on here. Moses is not saying,
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I'm just not eloquent, and God's saying, come on, Moses, dig deep, and Moses is going, I have a voice.
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This is not some journey of self -discovery. This is not some grasping of an inner power, an inner ability deep within him.
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What is God's answer to him? Who has made man's mouth? Who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, the blind?
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Have not I, the Lord? Of course you're not eloquent,
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Moses. Of course you're not able to stand before Pharaoh. Of course you're not able to deliver the people from the house of bondage.
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That is what I'm going to do through you, Moses. You will be my mouthpiece. You will be my hand.
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You will be my presence. You will be my power. I will be with you, he says.
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I will teach you what to say. So the Lord responds, and his response notices,
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Moses, you're beginning to think only of Pharaoh, and Pharaoh's might, and Pharaoh's prestige, and the court of Pharaoh, and the armed guards, and the host of Pharaoh, but you've forgotten me.
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Have not I, the Lord, made Pharaoh's mouth, and made your mouth, for that matter? Am I not sovereign over your eloquence, over your slowness of tongue?
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If I've appointed you, will I not give you all that is necessary for you to stand before him?
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The plans of the heart belong to men, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord, Proverbs 16, one.
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Far from rescuing Moses, his weakness, or sorry,
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I read that wrong. Far from recusing Moses, his weakness, and his sense of inability actually qualifies him.
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This is a huge theme in scripture. The very things that Moses feels disqualify him from being a suitable vessel of God's work are the very things that qualify him to be a suitable vessel for God's work.
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It was because Moses felt he was wholly insufficient. Who is capable of these things?
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Who is sufficient for these things? I'm not able to do this, and God says, that's exactly why I've chosen you.
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I've chosen you because you're not able. You're not sufficient. You can only do it if it's my might, my power, my presence working in you and through you.
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God has this interesting way of choosing spokesmen, doesn't he? When God came to call
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Jeremiah, we have almost the same response from Jeremiah and the answer by God. Oh, Lord God, behold,
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I cannot speak. I'm too young, Lord said.
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Don't say you're too young. You will go to whoever I send you, whatever I command you, you will speak.
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Don't be afraid of their faces because I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. By the time you get to Jeremiah 20, he's so burdened by the message, he doesn't want to speak it, he doesn't want to face it, he doesn't want to bear it.
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There's a reason we call lament, the act of lamenting, a Jeremiad. But he says in chapter 20 with that message, it becomes like a fire in my bones and I have to let it out.
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That's the impact that the presence and power and empowering presence of God makes in a person's life.
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Let me ask you, do you ever feel that tension that Moses is feeling here? The tension that Jeremiah felt in your encounters?
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I cannot speak. Then you feel the tension of the Lord saying, you shall speak.
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I can't speak. You shall speak. Spurgeon says, it may be that a slow tongue is not so great an evil as a fast tongue.
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Fewness of words ends up being more of a blessing than a flood of verbiage. Real saving power does not lie in human rhetoric.
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If God is with our mouths and with our minds, we shall have something far better than sounding brass of eloquence or tinkling cymbals of persuasion.
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God's teaching is wisdom. His presence is power. Pharaoh, this is
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Spurgeon, Pharaoh had more reason to be afraid of a stammering Moses than of the most fluent talker in Egypt.
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If the Lord is with us in our natural weakness, we will be given supernatural power. Therefore, let us speak for Jesus boldly as we ought to speak.
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So the second objection is, I can't speak, but again, notice the Lord's response.
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It's a redirection to what he will do, to who he is. Have not I made man's mouth?
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I will be with you. I will teach you what to say. Moses, you're so worried about the people not believing, but you're the one who's not believing.
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Remember who I am. I'm the one who creates and destroys. I raise up, I bring down,
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I guide, I move, I accomplish all my good pleasure. If you're feeling insufficient, you're feeling correct.
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You're feeling right. Now go, and I will be with you.
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God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.
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1 Corinthians 1. Why does Paul say that this is the way God chooses his vessels, his spokespeople?
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Why? Because in this way, no flesh glories in his presence.
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So God has chosen Moses, not because Moses was the preeminent speaker and such a man full of faith.
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Are you reading chapter four? He chose him because though he was a meek man, he was a weak man.
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And the kind of man that could be filled with the power and the glory of God. And so it is not might that makes us capable to serve.
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It's not capability that qualifies us to be used in God's kingdom. It's the lack of that and yet the need for it.
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It's the want and yet the desire. That is what God loves to use. I was reading of William McCullough.
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I was reading Robert Rayburn and he pointed out William McCullough. I said, I've never heard of William McCullough. And so I spent some time this week reading about him and I read an account.
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He was connected to the Cambuslang Revival which took place in 1742, outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland.
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And the Cambuslang Revival was notable. Thousands, estimates of 3 ,000 were converted over the course of 1742 and it was very much in conjunction with the overflow of the
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First Great Awakening as Scottish men in that area and William McCullough was among them, ministers were reading the accounts published by Edwards of the awakening and they were praying and seeking after revival in their own land.
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And McCullough, reading about his life, he had graduated from seminary. He's somewhat of a plain man.
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He couldn't obtain a parish for eight years. A part of that was the Duke of Hamilton made it very difficult as an evangelical to obtain a parish, but he eventually obtained a parish and by all accounts, he was a man with a heavy tongue.
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This is, I was reading a biography. Usually, evangelical biographies are sad to say they tend toward the hagiographical, meaning they tend to flatter and hide warts and hide blemishes and they make everything very rosy and beautiful, especially 19th century accounts.
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But even this one said, McCullough was not a good preacher at all.
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I'm like, what? Let me read the whole sentence. McCullough was not a good preacher at all, but he had a passion for the things of God.
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He was not a good preacher at all, but he had a passion for the things of God.
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Let me tell you, it is far better that McCullough could be described as a lousy preacher that had a passion for the things of God than a tremendous preacher that had no passion for the things of God.
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And yet we gravitate toward the giftedness and the capability rather than the content of the heart, the things which please the
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Lord. And I'm sure many of you feel that you lack capability, lack eloquence.
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I can't speak. Don't concern yourself with that. The Lord will be with your mouth and He'll teach you what to say.
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Concern yourself with this. Do you have a passion for the things of God? What I love about McCullough, as I was reading his own account, he wrote a letter reciting his experience of the revival about nine years later, and he said, to this day,
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I'm personally interacting with 400 people who for these past nine years have pressed on in their newfound faith.
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So he was speaking to the legitimacy of this revival being a work of God. And this is what he wrote.
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I would not ascribe this to any creature. The entire glory of it must be given to God. It was
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His work. True, there were many ministers here from places near and from places far.
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And some of them were of great eminence, and they came and preached here. Whitefield, for instance, came and preached.
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But what could all these avail without the divine power and blessing? Whoever plants and waters, it's
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God that gives the increase. No praise is due to the ram's horn, though Jericho's walls fall down when they blast.
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It is God, not the means, that must have the praise. It is very fit that he who builds the temple should bear the glory, and Christ is both the foundation and the founder of the church.
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Therefore, let all glory be ascribed to Him. William McCullough had a passion for the things of God, though he was a lousy speaker.
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And God used him mightily. Third objection, send anyone else.
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Verses 13 through 17. But he said, oh Lord, please, send by the hand of whomever else you may send.
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So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, it's not Aaron the Levite, your brother?
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I know that he can speak well, and look, he's also coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.
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Now you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do.
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So he shall be your spokesman to the people, and he himself shall be as a mouth for you, and you shall be to him as God.
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And you shall take this rod in your hand with which you shall do the signs. So this third objection is
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Moses' final attempt to bail, to avoid, to run away, to get on the boat and head toward Joppa.
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The grammar's a little tricky here. Translation does as best as it can. Please send by the hand of whomever else you may send.
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It's an independent relative clause in Hebrew governed by a genitive, really hard to translate, but essentially the gist of it is, here
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I am, Lord, send someone else. Anyone but me.
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I'm happy to stand by and watch. I'm happy to participate, happy to give. I'll pray, but just send someone else.
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God offered three signs. Moses gave three excuses. Interesting symmetry.
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And with this third attempt, we read, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. We're gonna see this again in verse 24, a very difficult passage.
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Here we see Moses as not only a reluctant mediator, but really as the quintessential Israelite.
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Because as the story unfolds, God's anger is often kindled against the lack of belief among his people.
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And so the Lord's anger is here, kindled against Moses. It will be again kindled against his people. And remember, it's very important that Moses, throughout these first three chapters, has been, in some ways, anticipating
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Israel's own experience when God leads them out. 40 years wandering in the desert land, and awaiting to be brought to God's promise.
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Now, the Lord condescends. So his anger is kindled, but look at the response.
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He actually, graciously, condescends even to this objection. He says,
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Aaron's on his way. I don't know how that came about. I don't know if a postcard popped up on Aaron's refrigerator and he just said, oh,
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I better go out to Midian. But somehow the Lord had orchestrated in his providence that Aaron is already en route to be with Moses.
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And when he sees Moses, he's going to be glad. Most likely, not just because of the reunion, but glad because of what
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Moses has to share to him. God is going to act, brother. It's been 400 years for us and our fathers, and God is now going to act.
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And by the way, you're gonna be the mouthpiece. Now, notice that when we get to verse 17, we have the sort of summary, right?
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You shall take the rod in your hand, with which you shall do the signs. We're brought again to the significance of the rod and the signs.
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And if you look at the repeated phrases, you have a little chiasm here. Verses eight and nine, you will do the signs.
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And then again in verse 17, you will do the signs. In between that, I will be with your mouth and teach you, verse 12.
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Again, I will be with your mouth and teach you, verse 15. So signs and presence.
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God's signs demonstrating his power, God's presence with his people.
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That's embedded within these first 17 verses. And Moses will be like God to Aaron, giving him the words to say as he receives them from God.
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And Moses will become the mouthpiece for God in the same way that Aaron will become the mouthpiece for Moses.
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But you see, this is in some ways not a gracious arrangement but more of a chastisement upon Moses. Aaron now will receive the honor and the dignity of that which
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Moses could have received if he had had faith. Moses is still gonna be used by God.
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Moses is still the mediator. Moses is still accosted with great glory and dignity throughout the biblical storyline.
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But here, the Lord's anger is kindled. And as it were, Moses is demoted.
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Rather than it being God's mouth to Moses' mouth.
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Now it's one step removed. God's mouth to Moses' to Aaron's mouth. I think we're meant to see something of the way that God graciously chastises his children.
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We read his anger was kindled. And this doesn't dissolve or change his plan at all, nor does it take
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Moses away, but it does have an impact on the way that Moses is able to carry out his plan.
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And so, we're talking about God's intention. And so Moses is in a sense losing a place of great privilege in bringing
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Aaron in to help him. And this is all stemming from his lack of faith. Now brothers and sisters, that might be one of the most important applications to take away this morning.
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That our lack of faith, relatively speaking, our hardness of heart, our slowness to believe, the objections that we throw up to God, it might not be that it takes us away from his plan of salvation, or that it prevents us from being used of him in great ways, or it robs us of our communion with him, but it may be that in like ways, we are forfeiting that which would be otherwise.
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Forfeiting greater blessings and greater privileges in the kingdom. And we're willingly forfeiting them because of our fear, our lack of faith.
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So let's look at these by way of application in the time we have left. Again, three excuses. Excuses, excuses, excuses.
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What was the first excuse? They won't believe. And what I see here is really a lack of faith.
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Fear here, they won't believe, that's the fear, and this fear is simply a lack of faith. When we say something like, you know,
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I would, but they won't believe. You know, I would take a little extra time to try to move this conversation, but they're not gonna, it's not gonna work.
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They're not gonna believe. I remember, this is almost painful to admit, but it's still been on my conscience, probably eight, nine years ago,
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I was out, Alicia and I were out with Greg and Melanie at Friendly's, and there was a waiter, and he came over and we kind of just did the cordial, how you doing?
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And this guy just all started unloading. It's like, oh, you know, not good, and he started unloading all these problems, and he was almost at his wits end.
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And this is nothing against Greg here, it was me kind of leading the show. We kind of looked at each other, and kind of looked at the menus, and we're like, okay, and quickly went on to order.
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And then Melanie goes, guys, that was a good opportunity, and we're kind of like, yeah, yeah, well, you know, it's not the right setting.
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That stuck with me still all these years. It's like, why? This guy, it's like I wasn't afraid of him, but why?
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Why would I be so cold to that? It's like, you couldn't have asked for a better opportunity. Like, you go about praying,
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Lord, give me opportunities today, and some waiter comes up and unloads his whole life in front of you, and you're just like,
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I'll have the grilled chicken sandwich. What kind of response is that? It's like, they won't believe.
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They're not gonna believe. Why even bother? They won't believe. And it's really saying, I don't believe.
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I don't believe. I have a lack of faith. Spurgeon often told a story of the first student, he started at Pastor's College, Spurgeon's College, and he told the story of the first student who came to him and complained that he had been preaching a few months, he was out of this program, and there wasn't even a single conversion.
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And Spurgeon said, brother, do you really expect that the Lord is going to bless you and save souls every time you open your mouth?
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And the young man said, no, no, sir. And Spurgeon said, and that's why you don't have souls. If you had believed the
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Lord, he would have blessed you. Now, this is not to make conversion a mechanical process.
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It's to expose our unbelief. We like to think we don't witness because other people won't believe.
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The reason we don't witness is because we don't believe. We need a real, living, dynamic, active faith that is a real, living, dynamic, active faith.
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I don't know why it's this way. I think there's a number of factors, not least of which are our theology.
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Speaking of reformed theology here, it highlights God's sovereignty. It seeks to give him preeminence in everything.
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It understands that salvation is completely monergistic, not synergistic. We don't cooperate with God to bring about our conversion.
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It is something that is done by God. And I think that somehow filters into the way we think of and speak about our faith.
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And it becomes something as passive and mechanical as the conversion experience. And we don't know what it's like to actually saddle into our faith, to understand that our faith is a living, active call every day to take steps when you have reasons not to and not what you're looking at, but what you're being led to behold.
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And we don't view it as something living and dynamic and active. We view repentance that way.
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We say the Christian life is repentance and faith. But we mean living, active, dynamic.
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We better see that repentance and then the faith is just kind of there. The faith is just kind of the umbrella of it all.
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No, faith should be as active, as dynamic, as wrought out as repentance is.
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A faith working through love because whatever is not a faith is sin. And without faith, it is impossible to please
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God. And so perhaps unbeknownst to us, the
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Lord's anger is kindled. And even though we're still within his hands, we're forfeiting great blessings, great power, great privileges in his kingdom.
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Idlet de Bure, Calvin's wife. He married her in 1540.
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She had been a widow to an Anabaptist and basically spent her whole life just raising his children, training them up in the
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Lord. When she married Calvin, he was much older in life.
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He had no time for young romantic love. He was looking for a woman who was about it, about the work of the
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Reformation. He had a whole host of health issues and problems and he needed the support, but more than the physical support,
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I think he needed the spiritual encouragement. And he found that with Idlet de Bure. She was a Protestant refugee and as a refugee with her children, she became known to Martin Bucer in Strasbourg who suggested her to Calvin.
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You're looking for wife material, Idlet is your gal. And from a biography by Smith called
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Calvin and His Enemies, this is what we read about Idlet. Kind of like McCullough, he was a lousy preacher.
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This is what poor Idlet. Externally, there was in this woman nothing very attractive. She wasn't a looker.
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She was encumbered with several children from the first marriage. She had no fortune. She was always dressed in mourning, but for Calvin, she possessed the best of treasures, a living and tried faith, an upright conscience, and many lovely and strong virtues.
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And afterwards, she only, they married, had nine years of marriage. They had one son,
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Jacques, who only lived for a few days. And then seven years later, he lost her. And in thinking of her, this is what he wrote.
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He never really spoke of personal matters. It's rare. We don't even know his conversion experience, for example. And he rarely spoke of her, but when he did, we get some window into just how highly he esteemed
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Idlet. He said of her, she would have had the courage to bear with him in exile, poverty, and even death.
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This is how she felt about the truth. She was about that life. She was a
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Protestant's Protestant. She wasn't looking for her best life now.
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She wasn't looking to do Snapchat moments with Calvin. She was about the truth.
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She had a living and tried faith. Where is that breed of Christian today?
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Where are the kind of Christians that live out their faith in such a way that it's obvious they would die for it?
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At times, it seems, brothers and sisters, we would hardly be inconvenienced for our faith.
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What we need to overcome this lack of unbelief is a living, dynamic, and active faith.
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Second objection, I can't speak. What is this? It's a fear of looking foolish.
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I go up, ragged from all these years in Midian, and I go into the imperial throne room and stand before Pharaoh.
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I'm not eloquent enough to do that. I cannot go and speak your statutes before kings and governors.
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We say, that's not my gift. I can't speak, I'm too young, I'm not eloquent.
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We have the same excuses, and we pull them up to justify why we're running away from opportunities the
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Lord has put before us. What does Paul say in 2 Corinthians 1?
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Remember, they're clamoring after prized speakers, orators of the day, and he comes to Corinth, and he says,
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I desire to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified. What does he say in 2 Corinthians 1?
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We don't want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction. We were burned excessively, beyond our strength. We despaired even of life.
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We had the sentence of death within ourselves, but it was so we would not trust in ourselves. In 3 .5,
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because we are not sufficient in ourselves to consider anything as though it was from us, our sufficiency is from God.
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And that's the key. You're thinking that you'll look foolish because you're trying to find some sufficiency within yourself.
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I can't speak, I don't have it in me. You don't have it in you. But God will be with your mouth, and he'll teach you what to say, and your sufficiency needs to be with him.
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This doesn't happen by zaps. You don't scroll through YouTube shorts eating a bag of Lay's potato chips and get zapped with God teaching your mouth what to say.
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It doesn't happen passively. God doesn't bless those who don't diligently seek him.
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He rewards those who diligently seek him. And when you're a man or a woman, a young man or a young woman, and earnestly seeking the
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Lord. If you would have the fire, build the altar. If you would have the loaves multiplied, bring those five little scraps of bread.
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God loves to reward those who seek him in this way, who say, I come to you because I have no sufficiency.
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I'm not eloquent enough. I'm not smart enough. I can't hang with these guys. And the
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Lord will teach you what to say. The Lord will receive the glory. We have a fear of looking foolish.
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Isn't Moses' problem our problem too? So what we need is not the gift of gab.
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God doesn't say, well, don't worry, I'm gonna make you eloquent. And then Moses becomes the most intelligent debater in the ancient world.
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That's not how God moves. He says, yeah, you're not eloquent. And I'm gonna send you like that.
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And I'm gonna do my power through you. So we don't need the gift of gab.
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I think what we need is what I would call the goat of grace. You know a goat, it's that sharpened stick that when the cattle wanna turn back or the donkey doesn't wanna move forward, you goad them on.
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Paul's experience of conversion, when the Lord came to him, he said, it's hard for you to kick against the goats, prompting you and convicting and steering you on and you wanna keep turning back, stopping and kicking against it.
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I think we need the goat of grace, not the goat of guilt. Oh, another blown opportunity.
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I'm such a lousy Christian. Why am I so frightened? That's not gonna really amount to anything. We need the goat of grace.
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God, you've been gracious to me. God, let me meditate upon your grace and be so saturated by the wonder of the grace that I've received that I can't but share it, that the experience of your grace is goading me to testify of that grace, to share that grace to others.
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You don't need the gift of gab to do that. That might look for you like your knees knocking at the lunch table, because you're aware that someone may or may not be a
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Christian and you're trying to talk about how you became a Christian to them. And you've got butterflies making a hurricane in your stomach and your palms are sweating.
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It's the goat of grace that will make you do it though. If I've been given this grace, I have to share it to others.
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Third objection, send anyone else. What is this? I think this is a lack of godly fear.
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Someone else will do it. I didn't go to someone else. Someone else will rise to the call.
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I didn't give this call to someone else. I haven't shown these things to anyone else. It's a lack of godly fear to say, not me.
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It's essentially saying, Lord, I don't fear you enough. I fear all these other things, all these other excuses, all these other reasons.
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This is why I won't respond. So what we need is not a fear of those things, but a fear of God.
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We cannot vicariously live the Christian life through others. We cannot outsource what
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God has put on our minds, on our hearts. J .H.
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Jowett put it this way. In such a state, obedience is not primary.
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It waits for something else. Rather than, yes, Lord, it's, well, someone else.
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And in the meantime, I'll keep my eyes open for the next chance. In this case, obedience is not primary.
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It waits for something else. And so our obedience is not a straight line. It's crooked, and it circles back.
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It takes the bypass meadow instead of the highway of the Lord. In such a case, he says, we don't wait upon the
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Lord's pleasure. We ask the Lord to wait upon ours. That cannot be for a
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Christian. There is something fundamentally wrong with this lack of godly fear.
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What do you need to overcome it? I'd put these two words together, and hopefully you understand what this means.
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We need an ambitious reverence. Not just a reverence,
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Moses is there bowing before, that's reverence. He's bowing. Oh, Lord, please, he's reverent.
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But he's not ambitious. We need an ambitious reverence. Yes, Lord.
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Yes, Lord, I will go. I don't know how. I don't know how I'm gonna do any of this. But if you send me,
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I will go. If you promise to be with me, I will go. No one, having put his hand to the plow, looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
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There's no half commitments when it comes to the Lord. I know it's been church history session today.
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This is the last thing, as we close out this third point, that I'll bring up. C .T. Studd. I wonder if any of you have ever heard of C .T.
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Studd. What a tremendous man of God. One of the
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Cambridge Seven, if you're already ordering books for summer reading, you oughta order a book about the
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Cambridge Seven. There's a few you could choose from. Part of this really exciting time in the 19th century when people were being stirred toward God's kingdom advancing over the face of the earth and global missions was becoming not a thought but a reality.
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And nations were falling before the Lamb who had been slain. It's glorious.
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C .T. Studd, one of these Cambridge men, had a very successful and promising opportunity to devote himself to cricket.
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I don't know anything about cricket, so don't ask me the rules of the game of cricket. It's like you have to be a legal scholar just to understand that sport.
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But he early on joined, along with many of the young men at Cambridge at this time, Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission.
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And later on, he himself went to India, spent the last decades of his life in the interior of Africa. His father had been converted under D .L.
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Moody's campaign. And then later, his older brothers converted as well as he himself, and he went to Eden.
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He had very upper -class education, upper -class environment, and yet he put that all away.
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He went to Eden. If you know anything about Eden, he's high -level. But when his brother became ill, he had already been converted, his brothers were
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Christians, and he had this incredible prowess as a cricket player. And then his brother became very ill, and he reflected on his life.
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He's looking at his brother, he's thinking, my brother could be on his deathbed, and what about me? What if I were on my deathbed?
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If I am this world -class cricket player, what will it profit me then? And so this is what he wrote, speaking of this time.
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What is all the fame and flattery worth when a man faces eternity? Remember, he's already a believer.
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Goes to church faithfully, reads the scriptures faithfully, shares faith when he has opportunities. He's already a believer.
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No one's taking that from him. But he's saying, am I forfeiting some greater blessing in the kingdom of God?
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I can be a good Christian cricket player, or I can surrender it all to the
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Lord with faith that I will get a greater blessing. He said, in the six years since his conversion, he was in an unhappy, backslidden state.
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So he came away with this resolve. I knew that cricket would not last, and the honor would not last, and nothing in the world would last, except living for the world to come.
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And he wrote one of his famous things, The Chocolate Soldier. That's where I first heard about Stud. It was from a Stuart Elyot name drop, and he mentioned
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The Chocolate Soldier. It was a pamphlet that C .T. Stud used and distributed, and it was meant to goad people into thinking about missions, into joining the missionary cause, whether by support or by actually joining up and going overseas.
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And he says this. Remember, he's comparisoning the real soldier to a chocolate soldier, the kind of soldier that melts in your pocket.
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He says, battle is the soldier's vital breath. Peace turns him into a stooping asthmatic.
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War makes him a whole man again, gives him heart and strength. Any Christian that's not this way is a chocolate soldier, dissolving in water, melting at the smell of fire.
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Sweeties, bonbons, lollipops, living their lives on a glass dish, each clad in soft clothing and little frilled white paper to preserve their little delicate constitution.
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You see what he's saying? Am I willing to suffer for the kingdom of God? At the very end of this tract, and you could spend some time reading, it's not very long, the last page, like an enlistment brochure, he has two boxes.
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And it says, okay, you must choose. Will you be this or will you be that? Will you be the chocolate soldier or the
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Christian soldier? And then there's a place, sign your name here. And then here's the guarantee that comes to what you've chosen.
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I don't know which to start with for dramatic effect. I'll go this way.
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We'll start with the chocolate soldier. For me, chocolate my name, tupidity my temperature, a malingerer
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I, a child of men, a self -excuser, a humbug, 19th century. Sign here, here's your result.
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I will spew you out of my mouth, the other box.
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For me, to live is Christ, to die is gain.
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I'll be militant. I'll be a man of God. I will gamble all for Christ.
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Sign here. I am with you always. Where there is a lack of godly fear, we need an ambitious reverence.
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Stud put his money where his mouth is, quite literally. When his father died, his portion of the inheritance was
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I think something like 29 ,000 pounds, which in 1893 currency, if I did the math,
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I don't know how accurate this is, it adjusts to something like 4 .9 million pounds. He didn't take a penny of it.
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He gave it all to Moody and all these other missions, China Inland Mission. All, it was all about Christ for Stud.
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Where there is a lack of godly fear, we need an ambitious reverence, encountering the
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Lord with real, living, dynamic, active faith. When we encounter the Lord and we pursue
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Him with this kind of faith, the result is not, they won't believe, but I'm going to compel them to come.
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I'll go to the byways and the hedges and drag them into the kingdom. Stud, one of his famous quotes says,
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I don't want to be within earshot of a church bell, I want to set up a rescue shop within a yard of hell. When you encounter the
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Lord with this kind of faith, the excuse, I can't speak, becomes, I must speak, woe to me if I don't preach the gospel.
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And when you encounter the Lord and lay hold of Him with this living, active faith, send someone else becomes, send me, give me the privilege.
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Though it's a thorn in my side, though it takes all else from me, send me, Lord. Do we have that kind of faith?
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Do we even desire that kind of faith? Or are we chocolate soldiers?
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Let's pray. Father, thank
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You for Your Word. Give us the faith that we lack. Where we're unbelieving, give us belief, Lord.
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Where we're irreverent, give us ambitious reverence. Let us not melt. Let us stand and find the strength that we were meant to have, not in ourselves, but from You.
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And find Your promise that in those ways that we've sought You and found our inability and insufficiency, there we find
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Your presence. And not otherwise, Lord. Give this church a more vibrant faith.
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Let us not turn aside the opportunities You give us. In fact, let us make opportunities.
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Ever -seeking to have Your presence in our lives. Ever -seeking to be goaded by Your grace, to speak of You and of Your Word and of Your great salvation.