Desert Survival Series Pt 2- Moses the Man of Go — Don Courville

Chapter 2 of Exodus,. And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived and bare a son, and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.

And when she could not hide him longer, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and dabbed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein. And she laid it in the flags by the river's bank. And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to him.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river, and her maidens walking along by the river's side, and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the babe wept.

And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrew children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew woman, that she may nurse the child for thee?

And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages.

And the woman took the child and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses, and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

The Birth of Moses and the Purpose of the Series

Let's bow for a word of prayer. Now, Father, as we continue on now in this second message of this series on the life of Moses, I pray that the Holy Spirit would open up to us the word of God, and that we would draw principles out of the messages that we have, principles by which we can live by from your word.

I pray that the Spirit of God would speak to our hearts, and if there's one here today that doesn't know Jesus Christ as their Savior, that that one would consider that Christ died for them, and that they must repent of their sins and receive him as their Savior.

Holy Spirit, you do the work, as we yield ourselves to you now in Jesus' name, amen. These messages, I hope, will be simple. But as I mentioned in my prayer, I want you to learn principles. Every message that you receive, try to get at least one principle out of it that you can use.

There's going to be many subjects that we cover. Like today, we're going to look at the birth, and probably won't get into the training of Moses until next week. But the beginning message is we're laying the foundation for the whole series.

We're laying really the footers, and we're going to build up. And as we go along, we're going to cover some key principles. Now today, we'll just look at probably the birth of Moses, and then next week we'll get into the training.

But the birth of Moses reveals some key principles to us. And as we go along, I realize that you are in different situations. But many times, you and your situation on this side, and you over on this side, you'll have your situation.

You can take the same principle and apply it. So it'll be up to you to take what's given and apply it to your life. Now during the week, I pray with many of you, I listen to you, and I counsel with you, and I get your problems and everything.

And a lot of times, God says there's a principle for them, right there in that passage. And so God will speak through the word, through me, to you. It'll be up to you, though, to catch it and to use it.

And I'd like to know if he gives you something. Maybe sometimes you get something that I didn't even see out of the passage, and you share it with me, if God teaches you something. Because if it's, you know, if it's really that good, then the rest of us could use it, too.

All right? Now, on the top of your bulletin, there's a little typing error. It's supposed to be, how is a baby like a bullet? It's not, how does a baby like a bullet? It's, how is a baby like a bullet?

And I thought about this because, I'm not trying to be funny, even though it could be funny, but I was watching Our Baby, and thinking about this, and then I was studying on Moses, as we look at Moses as a baby, and here's how a baby is like a bullet.

I won't have to take time to let you throw out your ideas and everything. You can tell me later. But a baby's like a bullet, like this. When you point a gun, and you shoot the bullet, and you point a baby, and you let it go, both, both tend to go in the direction that they're aimed.

Now, I'm not talking about the baby in life, because the baby's going to go all kinds of directions, but in the way of life, a baby tends to go in the direction that it is trained to go. Isn't that true?

You watch some little children, they grow up very sad, and if you see a child that's very sad, like the other day, when I dropped Johnny off at kindergarten, there's one little boy that I've noticed in town, and I've noticed in sports, and I almost felt like stopping right then, if I wasn't in a hurry, I would have.

And going back over to the fence, where that little boy was just leaning all by himself during play period, because the little boy has a problem, and I've noticed through the last few months, and in sports, he has a real problem with self-acceptance, but he's been pointed that direction.

He's been pointed that direction, and a bullet, if you aim it in the direction it'll go, and then it'll tend to go downward, after the first propulsion, then it tends to go down. And we in life, after we get blasted off, and we get directed, if there isn't some sustaining help from the Word of God, we'll tend to go down, too.

It's a downward trend, down in our image, and in our reactions to life, our attitudes and things. So a baby is like a bullet in that sense. Both tend to go in the direction that they're aimed. Now I say that because Moses had very good aiming.

In other words, his mother and father aimed him very good, especially when they knew they only had him so long. Now I want to get into this passage today by giving you some background on chapter 1. Chapter 1, verses 1 through 7, is the naming of the 12 tribes, and basically what it says is they were very fruitful, the 12 tribes of Israel.

And then verses 8 through 14 of chapter 1 gives us the story of how a new king arose that didn't know Joseph. Remember, Joseph was very influential, way up there next to Pharaoh. Well, time went along, and this new king arises that doesn't know Joseph, and he was afraid of Israel, because Israel was growing in numbers.

He was afraid of them, and he assumed that they would rebel and join their enemies and try to overthrow him. He made just an assumption. And so he began to plan to destroy Israel. His first plan to destroy them, in verse 11, was by hard work.

So he said, we're going to increase the labors. Have you ever wondered where this whole cliché came from? Hard work never killed anybody? I wonder if that's true, because it didn't work there. It says that in verse 12, but the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.

And they were greed because of the children of Israel. There's another principle that is proven true through history, and that is the seed of the church. The seed of the church has been the blood of the saints.

Back in the early persecution of the church, Satan found out that he could not destroy Christianity by killing Christians, because the seed of the church was the blood of the saints. The more they killed them, they martyred them in the arenas, the more they multiplied.

So Satan stopped that tactic, and he started another tactic, and that was the tactic of infiltration and delusion. And he tried to get Christianity mixed together with paganism, and there he found success.

And today his program is switched to counterfeit. He found that if he can counterfeit spirituality and get Christians off into the counterfeit spirituality, he can destroy. So, Pharaoh found out that hard work didn't kill him, and so he tried something else.

And then the next thing he tries, he says, he goes to the midwives, two main midwives, and he says, listen, we want an abortion. And here we have a major abortion attempt. Abortion is always of Satan.

It's never of God. Murder is never of God, of this proportion. So he says, listen, when the male child is born, you take him and kill him. Well, the midwives, they were afraid of God. They wouldn't do it.

And so they disobeyed, and God in turn blessed them, and so Pharaoh had to come up with another attack. And the next attack that he had, we find that he just says in chapter 1, verse 22, he just gives a clear command that all of the male child, when they're born, be thrown in the river.

Let's let the crocodiles eat them. No ifs, buts, let's do it. And it was an order. So I imagine as the soldiers went marching down the street, they heard a baby cry, they go busting in, and they say, where's that baby that's crying?

Boy or girl? Boy, they take it and go throw it in the river. All right, that's the background of the setting. Now, that brings us up to chapter 2, the birth of Moses. A man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi, and a woman conceived and bare a son.

And when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. Actually, chapter 11 of Hebrews, chapter 11 and verse 23 says this same thing. Let me read it to you. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.

Actually, what they saw was that Moses was an unusual child. His beauty, the word proper and the word goodly, had to do with beauty. He was an unusually beautiful baby. And they saw that God, they could just see God in Moses, that God had a reason.

And Josephus, a historian, even has said that it's possible that his father, Amram, had received a revelation that Moses was a special child. And so if that's true, then they knew for sure that God was going to do something.

But anyway, it says that by faith they hid him. They hid him because they saw that God wanted to do something, and then also that they were not afraid of the commandment of the king. And that would take some real faith because to disobey would probably be, you know, your life.

It would take you and throw you in also. Now, back to, I lost my marker, back to chapter 2. Alright? Moses' parents, as they went through this traumatic experience, may have been guided by three principles, three parental principles in raising and surviving in this situation.

Raising Moses, and I'll throw these three out in case you want them. But the first one was parental instinct. Wouldn't it be natural to want to see your child survive? Right? A natural response, parental instinct.

Do the best and give the best that you can for your child. That's a basic instinct. The second thing, the second thing is divine meditation. They dared to step out against the king's command, I believe because of divine meditation.

They had meditated upon the word, and I believe that they understood what the situation was. They understood scripture. Now, scripture said in Genesis 15, 13, that there'd be a captivity period of about 400 years, and they understood that this captivity period was almost over.

And also, they understood the principle of a deliverer coming. Remember in Genesis 3? The Messiah, the first promise of the Messiah. And so every Hebrew woman, when she had a baby, she hoped it would be the Messiah.

And finally, that was fulfilled with Mary, when she had Jesus. So it could have been that maybe Moses' mother thought that this was the Messiah. Well, in a sense, he was the Messiah because he was a type of Christ, right?

He was the deliverer. So that principle of divine meditation, that meditate upon the word of God, and the word of God gave them the strength there. And then another thing, hope in God's deliverance. These three things, these three parental guidelines, hope in God's deliverance, they were looking for a deliverer.

So it was all set up. It was all set up. Now, we have the situation, all right? Now, let me share something else with you on this that takes it into a little bit deeper. They had three other things, along with the three parental instincts of the Hebrew parents.

They had these three things. They had a conviction, they had confidence, and they had a commitment. The conviction, the conviction did something. It destroyed the fear. It destroyed the fear. Somebody was sharing with me about a pastor down in another city, down in North Platt, how when the authorities told him that he could not have, I think it was a Christian school or whatever, he told the court that, and everything was done right and legally, but he told the court that he was doing this because of a conviction.

And the interesting thing about it that was mentioned was an unsaved lawyer, an unsaved lawyer told, the gal that told me, he says, I have a lot of respect for that man. An unsaved lawyer said this, I have a lot of respect for that man because he is standing on a conviction.

And when he stands on his conviction, when his conviction is that nature, and he did everything right that he could according to law, except that he could not violate a law of the state because it violated his conscience and conviction, then I have a lot of respect for that man.

Interesting that an unsaved lawyer would say that the Christian is right in his case, and he went through all kinds of stuff, lost his house, they took everything away that he had. But this is the case here.

It destroys fear. Now, if you are afraid of somebody, then you will bow to them. But if you are more afraid to disobey God, then you will not bow. Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? They wouldn't bend, and they wouldn't bow, and they wouldn't burn.

They had a conviction. And they stood. And that's the way that we should be. I believe they had this too. They had a conviction that God was going to do something. They saw the unusual beauty. And then a confidence.

Confidence does something for your faith. It develops your faith. Conviction destroys fear, but confidence develops faith. One of the things that we learn when we grow up is that man will let us down.

People will let us down. And we just get used to that. Even Christians sometimes fell us. But God never does. And so God is teaching us to develop our faith in Him. Ultimately our faith is to be Him. And so when they hid in three months, they had confidence in God.

That God was doing something. And then the commitment. That dares to follow. And the commitment. This is interesting. I was doing a little study on commitment. If I have some time this morning, I'm going to share a few notes on it.

Extra things outside of the sermon. We go along with commitment, and that's that. This. They committed Moses. What do you commit? Moses. That's what they commit. Now I'm building up to something. This is one of these sermons where it's just jumbled a little bit.

But I'm building up to something. And we're building up to you and your situation right now. What do you have that would be a similar situation? You see, Moses' mother and father, they were in a position where they got to the point where there's nothing they could do.

They were getting to the point of despair. And when you get to the point of despair, you're getting to the point of where you get to the miraculous. Where God has to do a miracle. And guess who specializes in the miraculous?

Oh, God. He said, that's right up my alley. I've been waiting for you to get to that point. No big deal if I do it and everybody say, oh, ho-hum. But when God does something and it's in the miraculous, he gets more glory.

And when he gets us to the point to where he can trust us with bigger and greater trials, to where he can get more glory, then that's better. The trouble is that he can't always trust us. Because we're going to blow it.

We're going to go off crying and everything and grumbling and dishonor him. But they committed Moses. Now, what they had to commit was what they wanted but could not keep. They wanted to keep Moses, but they couldn't keep him.

He was going to be found out. He was beginning, you know, three-month-old begins to cry. And when you get up to, like, we've got an eleven-month-old, when they cry, they'll just raise you right out of bed at three in the morning.

You know? So here's a guard walking along in the middle of the night and they're listening. And he hears this cry. They knew that one of these days their number was going to be up. So they had to commit what they could not keep.

Okay? Now, who were they going to commit it to? Well, we know it's to God. The question is, who are you going to commit your problem to? Now, I like what James Elliott said. He said, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

That one may have to run by a couple dozen times. But it says, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Primarily, let's say this about your soul. If you do not commit your soul to Jesus Christ, if you do not commit your life to Jesus Christ, you will lose it.

That's what that's saying. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, your soul, to gain what he cannot lose, salvation. You're not a fool if you'll give to God your soul. Then you won't lose it. But if you try to keep it and don't receive Christ, you'll lose your soul.

That's what Jesus said. It's the Mark 8 .35 principle. The Mark 8 .35 principle is a key principle where Jesus taught, and this is a crucified truth principle. But he says, whoever will save his life shall lose it, but whoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospels, the same shall keep it.

If you're afraid to give your life to Christ, you're going to lose what you're afraid to lose. You see what we're talking about? Now, this goes for your problem too. Whatever it is that is a big issue with you, give it to God.

Very simple. Now, let's keep going. I'm going to throw out a principle here before we keep going. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget it. But whatever is given to God is never lost. Isn't that good? All right?

Whatever is given to God is not lost. Whatever we try to keep, we lose. Now, think of your situation that you're in. You'll lose if you just try to keep it yourself and do it. But give it to God. That's the principle.

Dying to Self and Resting on God Alone

Now, there are some victory principles in this passage. And we've already read the passage. I want to share the victory principles with you. Jochebed, that's Moses' mother, she had a name. When she was faced...

She was really the one that... Moses' father was probably off in the salt mines, tromping out clay, you know, making bricks. And so she was the one that had to deal with this every day. Because he was gone most of the day.

She was the one that had to try to put up with the pressure. Can you imagine? The pressure of trying to keep a baby hid in a society that wanted to kill him and throw him to the crocodiles? Okay? God dealt with her and her husband in these areas, these two main areas.

And these two areas are victory areas. These two areas are victory areas. The first one is she had to die to self. She got to the point to where she just had to die to herself. And I say that's self-effort, the self-survival for Moses, the self-struggle.

Just die to self trying to do it. Alright? Now the second one is this. Now this is very profound. In other words, it's so simple. Watch it that you don't miss it. She had to rest on God alone. I believe many times we do not see things happen in our lives, in our situations, because we're just not willing to rest on God alone and come up and lean completely on Him to where we're really leaning.

If I try to lean that far, I'll fall over. But just really say, God, whatever you do with it now, I'm going to accept. And you just have complete peace in God. We don't have the peace when we're not willing to commit.

Alright? Now I want you to notice something about her faith in verse 4. Her sister stood afar off to know what would be done. In other words, she put him down in the river, and then she got off and she hid just to see what was happening.

They committed Moses. They committed Moses. Her problem was put into a basket, and her basket was put into the river, but really her basket was put into God's hands. Up to that point, it had been her concern, her struggle, trying to clamp the kid up and keep him quiet when he'd cry, and muzzle him so he wouldn't sound so loud.

But now he was cast completely onto God. Alright? Here's something about faith in verse 4. We need to realize this one. Faith is not reckless abandonment. Faith is not reckless. You notice they're not reckless.

She sets him there right in the edge, and she's going to watch. She's not going to let a crocodile, what we call down in Louisiana, crocogators. We're not going to let a crocodile get her. We don't have crocodiles down there, though.

We just have alligators. But she's not going to let a crocodile get the baby, but she's just going to see what God will do. Alright? So it's not reckless abandonment. It's not presumption. Faith is reasonable actions.

We take a reasonable action. So she put her problem in the basket. She put her basket in the river in God's hands, really in God's will. Okay, God, we can't do anything anymore. Now what happens? Here's the good part.

What had Pharaoh said? Death. River. Put him in the river. The river symbolized death. Now what do they do? They put Moses into the river. And what does God do? He delivers right from the thing that Pharaoh had issued as death.

God's going to take that same thing and make life out of it. The result was victory. Because Pharaoh's daughter came along. She found the baby. And she liked the baby. And of course, I believe the whole thing, you know.

It's almost to me very obvious that Pharaoh's daughter knew what was going on. And then the little girl comes up and she puts it together. That that's the sister probably. And so she knows that that's the mother that's going to nurse it.

But she has a soft heart. But God is the one that softened her heart. Now here's the thing about it. What's the result? Victory. When she was willing to completely give it all to God and see what God would do, there was victory.

Two things. Short range and long range. The short range was she got Moses back. The long range was the very thing that she committed to God completely was the thing that God used to deliver her and her family and all of Israel out of the land of bondage.

Now if you'll take your situation, whatever it is, and if I'll take mine and just let God do what he wants to with it, we'll see victory. But when I try to keep my hands on it, it's a mess. And that's the way our Christian life is.

It's a mess if we keep our hands off of it. Victorious Christian living is me keeping my hands off of my life and letting God keep his hands on and do what he wants to do. Doing my best for God will be the devastating principle of my Christian life.

God doesn't want me to do my best. He wants me to just be dead and let him do what he wants to do. You know, we even sing the song, give your best to the master. In a sense that's true. But really God just says, let me do what I want to do.

And you just be quiet about it. You know, I don't want to complain. You know, and bellyache. But when she did what God wanted to do, then she had victory. You know, when Christ went to the cross, when Christ went to the cross, that's the same principle.

When Moses went to the water, it was death. Really, as far as she was concerned, Moses was dead. But she was willing to see what God would do. Because all the guard had to do was walk along, see the baby, and kick the basket over.

Whatever, throw a spear down. When Christ went to the cross, as far as Satan was concerned, it was death. For Christ, he was done with. He was dancing with glee. But on God's point of view, what looks like death ends up to be life and victory.

When Christ died on the cross, that was the very thing that you and I needed for life. And these principles that we're going to learn in this passage are so liberating. So, when Christ went to the cross, it seemed like defeat.

But it resulted in victory. And when we will go to the cross and just be dead, let God do what he wants to do, we've got our problem. God is going to crush me. But when we'll just die to ourselves and let God do what he wants to do, then we find that we get the very thing that we wanted anyway.

A victory in that situation. And when I listen to people talk, many times I just listen. And many times I'm finding that people don't ask for biblical advice. They just want to have some encouragement to do what they want to do.

And I have to wait until they're really willing to listen to what God wants to say. And God's had to do that. Many times I get advice and counsel and everything. But I really don't want what God wants.

I want what I want. And when I'm completely willing to totally commit it to him, then I'll get victory in that area. All right? Let me share these principles with you real quick and then we'll close up.

Crucifixion, Surrender, and the Christian Life

These are the extra notes that I wrote on total commitment. It's a man on a cross. Remember Galatians 2 .20? Paul said, I am crucified with Christ. That's death. He says, I am dead. He says, nevertheless, I live.

Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who died for me. There's a story that goes along with this. That was a little boy, or maybe an older boy.

I don't know his age. But he asked a man about a cross. What was death? What was this about? Dying on the cross. For a Christian to die on the cross. And the old man told him these three things. He said, well son, a man on the cross is facing only one direction.

Remember I shared this with you? He said, if we're going to be on the cross, we're going to face only one direction. When you're nailed to a cross, you can't turn around. We can't turn around. We stop looking back.

And the faith life is looking forward. Satan will say, look back. Turn around. I got something here I want to scare you with. But we keep looking at Christ. We keep looking ahead. And the direction is God and God's word.

We look in that direction. Then another thing he said, son, he's not going back. He's not going back. The Christian life. And here's where we miss out when we lead a lot of people to Christ. When we talk to them about being a Christian.

The Christian life is a crucified life. He's not going back. The Christian life is a life where you're dead to self. And this is what the Bible says. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he's a Christian.

The old things have passed away and a new thing has come. A new life. But what we have is somebody, I'm a Christian, yeah. But the old things have never stopped. And they never do stop. They stop when Christ comes in though.

And so what we've been fed is an intellectual line from Satan. Oh, you're saved. Yeah, you received Jesus. Yeah, you've been born again. He intellectually feeds us with that stuff. But yet our life never does show Christ being there.

He's not going back. When you join Christ, when you receive Christ, when I do, I'm finished. I'm finished. And Christ has taken over. And that's where the joy comes in and the victory and the power and the purpose.

And all of the good comes when Christ comes in. But we see so much bad in Christian lives because they're still there. And really Christ isn't there. And if you try to live and if I try to live and reign where Christ is supposed to, then there's all kinds of trouble.

Christ doesn't want my best. He just wants me to be dead. And that's what he did with Jacobad and Amoran. He just brought them to the point where they just had to die and let God do what he wanted to do.

They died to their self-effort and their self-solutions and all of this. And so he's not going back. And any time we backslide, all backsliders have a lot of problems. They never have any peace and they never have any joy.

And I know that because I've tried it. And then the third thing that man told the son, he said, the boy, he says, Father, third, he has no further plans of his own. Now that's been a real problem for me in my Christian life because I make plans.

You know? And I set goals. And that's okay. If I'm willing to have God change my plans and change my goals. But a lot of times we've got our mind made up. And we don't want God to be God in our life, really.

We say it. But when you're on the cross, somebody else makes your plans for you. You know what's in the middle of sin? I. If we'll stay out of the middle of our life and keep Christ there and keep I up, we'll stay crucified.

Moses, the Desert Experience, and Becoming Like Christ

Now that's what this desert survival series is about. Moses, we're seeing him born. And we're going to see what God does with him. And as we see what God does with him, we're going to see Jesus Christ, and we're going to see ourself, too.

And we're going to go on a trip. And we're going to go on a trip through the desert. We're going to go on a trip in the desert through the word of God. But also we're going to see ourselves as God takes us through our personal deserts.

And we'll find out. If you haven't found out already, I'm finding out that the desert experience, those really hard times that almost crushes you, those times are the times when God is able to make you most like Christ.

And that becomes the most valuable experience. Like Paul, when he first got saved, God buried Paul out in the desert. And you don't hear much about it. But he was teaching them about himself. Let's bow for prayer.

Lord, I thank you for this time we've had now. And it's a time of study. It's a time of listening to you. And as we're just beginning now, Father, beginning by building in some basic principles as we study this series, I realize that you want to take this study, and you want to make us like Christ.

And how better than to let us study the life of a man who you broke, who you molded, and who you made. And let us see how Christ was developed in him. And at the same time, we'll take these lessons, and we will apply them to our lives.

And, Lord, we'll apply them to the situations that you let us go into. And we'll learn that there's victory in life when we let go and just let God be God. And, Lord, I'm learning there's real victory when I just let you do what you want to do.

And I let you lead, and I don't try to lead you. And I thank you for the time that we've had. And again, Father, I pray if there's one that needs to make a decision about Christ, that they'll do it today.

That they'll just receive Christ. They'll quit struggling and just surrender. And also, maybe there's someone here, Father, that's been carrying their burden. They've been carrying their load. And it's just been weighing them down, bending them over, crushing them.

And you're just saying, My child, let me carry the load. Let me have the basket. Commit it to me. And watch what I can do with it. Thank you, Father, for this time we've had now, in Jesus' name. Amen.