Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. A joyful heart. is always good medicine. We aren't transformed by our commitments to be more productive. We're changed by God's blessing.
Blessing is God's plan for your empowerment. There's no better way to start your day than receiving a reminder of who you are in Christ.
So will you open your heart and be empowered by today's blessing, which is grounded in Proverbs 17, verse 22? Every poison needs a unique antidote. Every pox needs a specific solution, but you have a medicine available that works wonders no matter the malady. a joyful heart. Amidst the troubles of the times, I bless you this day to have a merry heart.
May your heart be light and your laughter be hearty. May your meditations be delightful and your contemplations hopeful. Go ahead. Drink deep of the joy of the Spirit. There's no fine print.
A joyful heart is good medicine, and it has no harmful side effects. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. We might as well not worry because we're not even worrying about the right things. And the things that we do worry about, well, they're probably small compared to the things that could happen anyway.
So either God's going to take care of us or he's not. Either his grace is going to be sufficient or it's not.
So we might as well not worry about any of them. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt. Excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, No Worries, as presented at Ronalda Church in North Carolina.
If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. You can learn more about it and contact us at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org.
Or call 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-444. 4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now.
Let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? The old saying is true. God doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called.
And we're going to see that from a Wonderful, familiar story of the call of Moses as we continue in a mission emphasis. That we call answers for the anxious world because we've been over a number of weeks learning about how the gospel liberates us from our fears. And today, by looking at a fearful Moses, we're going to see some deep riches of the gospel in Exodus chapter 3. I'm going to read a few verses and then we're going to kind of go through the story throughout. But let's just start with this at Exodus 3, verse 9.
After Moses has encountered God through this burning bush, and God is calling him to become the deliverer of the people. We read at verse 9, And now, the Lord said, Behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. And he said, but I will be with you.
And this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God. on this mountain. Who am I? Moses said.
It's a terrible feeling to feel ill-equipped for something. Have you ever had that classic dream? I get it. There's a lot of people who get this: classic dream where you're not prepared for something, and for a lot of us, it takes the form of I'm in this nightmare where I have to take an exam for a class that I've never attended. How many people get that dream?
There's a good number of us get that dream. I've never been to the class, and I realize I don't know where the class even meets. I don't know what books we're supposed to have read. I can't find a syllabus or anything to tell me what we're supposed to do. There's no way to grab the books and cram for the test or anything like that.
And so I just, I just, I've had this, you know, I don't like get it every week, but it's like when I have it and I wake up and go, I'm not a student. I don't have a test. I'm not even a student.
Okay.
Well, I got so tickled sometime in the past year. Our son Bennett, who is a student, a law student right now, and he had a dream, but it went in a different direction. And we just had a big hoop because he said, Dad, he said, I had this nightmare. He said, I was a young pastor. That's a nightmare right there.
And He said, I was a young pastor and I was preaching my first sermon. at my first church. And he said, and we were having breakfast. You were having breakfast with me in the dream. And in the dream, I said to him, well, what are you going to preach on on your first sermon?
And he said, I think I'm going to preach on humility. And I said, well, that's good. He said, but then you asked me, you said, isn't that a little bit of an unusual topic considering it's Easter Sunday? And so Vinnett says, In the dream, he goes, It's Easter Sunday. Oh, I forgot about that.
No. Humility is not a good subject. I need to preach on the resurrection of Jesus. I got to do something. It's Easter.
But he was out of time. And so he said that he, in the dream, he just decided what he was going to do, because he had no time, was he was just going to open up and he's just going to read the Easter story from Matthew. And that while he was reading it, he was thinking, what am I going to say about Easter and about Jesus? And he read the Easter story from Matthew, and he couldn't think of anything to say.
So he just went over to the Gospel of Mark and read it from there. And he still couldn't think of anything to say.
So he said, he just read the Easter account from all four Gospels, and he got done reading it in, and he said, And that's the gospel. That's a nightmare right there. We just have a terrible feeling when we have the angst of I'm ill-prepared for something. We'd rather just not even do it. And in a sense, that's what Moses' story is about.
He just doesn't want to take this call. I was reading about some a job recruiter who said some comical job applicant interviews. A recruiter said to a job candidate, in this job, we need somebody who is responsible. And the job applicant replied, I'm the one you want because in my last job, every time anything went wrong, they said I was responsible. Recruiter asked the job candidate, why did you leave your last job?
The job applicant replied, it was something my boss said.
Some of you have heard that one, hadn't you? What did the boss say? The recruiter asks. You're fired. Yeah, yeah.
Um I love this one. A recruiter asked the job candidate, well, why do you expect such a high salary when you have no experience in this field? The job applicant replied, well, the job's much harder when you don't know what you're doing. All right, just one more. A job applicant was asked: what would you consider to be your main strengths and weaknesses?
Well, the job applicant began, my main weakness is that I can dream too big. I can be accused of getting out of touch with reality. The interviewer said, Okay, well, what are your strengths? He said, I'm Batman. Ha ha ha ha ha.
If this were a job interview with Moses, he was given all the wrong answers. He started out by just simply saying, Who am I? That's the foundational issue we all have. Who am I? I'm not enough for this.
I'm not good enough for this. And when Moses says, who am I? He is betraying the fact that all of his attention is on himself. You know, we think that sometimes when we say, who am I because I'm acting so humble, it actually isn't humility. It's just a form of self-absorption to constantly be thinking about what disqualifies us.
And God spoke back to Moses and he said at verse 12: he said, I'll be with you, and this shall be a sign for you that I've sent you when you've brought the people out of Egypt. You shall serve God on this mountain. I'm going to fellowship with you in the future. That's going to always be the primary sign for you. But essentially, God's answer to Moses was: quit thinking about yourself and start thinking about me.
I'm going to be with you. If there's any assignment that you have in life and your first response is, Who am I? God wants to get your attention and say, That's the wrong question. The question is not who are you? The question is, who am I, says the Lord.
So It says I'm not enough. And then essentially he says, I'm not knowledgeable or spiritual enough, because at verse 13, Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name? What shall I tell them? And essentially, he's saying here: I don't know enough about you. You know, one thing I just want to pause here to say is that.
You know, well As long as I've been walking with the Lord and as long as I've been preaching the gospel and If I were to build a sense of my ability to To carry out the call of God based on I know enough about God. I would sit down and just be quiet. You don't have to know everything. I tell you, sometimes those are their youngest in Christ. are some of the most effective witnesses.
They say, I don't know everything about him, and I don't know the Bible that well, but boy, he sure changed my life. And they start talking to somebody like that. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. The life-changing message of good news has been taught over radio from Alan Wright Ministries for quite some time now. We have assembled the most powerful, best-love messages from each year of the first 10 and put them together in one special album.
When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month, we want to give you Alan Wright's top 10 CD album or digital download. Are you ready for some good news? Make your gift today and discover God's grace afresh with Alan Wright's top 10 of the first decade. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty.
That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. Or come to our website, pastorallen. org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright.
But God didn't chastise Moses for the question about who will I say sent me God answered him at verse 14 And God said to Moses, I am who I am. Or it could be translated, I am being who I am being. The great I am. That's what Yahweh means. And he says, say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.
God said to Moses, Say this to the people of Israel, The Lord, the God of your fathers. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all. Generation. Revealed more of himself to Moses than Moses probably would have ever dared ask God to reveal.
God comes close to us. And he reveals himself to us. Moses' next complaint is: I'm just not. credible enough at verse One of chapter four, Moses answered, Behold, they'll not believe me or listen to my voice, for they'll say, The Lord did not appear to you. They won't believe me.
I won't be effective. I won't be credible. They won't think that. I'm going to come back to God's response on this and spend some time on it in a few moments because I think it's the heart, the meat of the passage, really. I'm going to come back to that.
Another complaint of Moses is at verse Ten I'm not skilled enough as a communicator. Moses said to the Lord, Oh, my Lord, I'm not eloquent. Either in the past or since you've spoken to your servant, but I'm slow of speech. And Tom. I'm not I won't have the right words.
I've got a fear of Speaking in front of people, I I uh I don't feel like I come across as the kind of person that people want to listen to. And the Lord answered at verse 11. Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?
Now therefore go, and I'll be with your mouth. And I'll teach you what you shall. Speak. You know what's interesting to me in this list of Moses' worries? This might sound like strange comfort to us all, but.
Um If Moses was going to worry, These probably aren't the things he should have been worried about. Because looking back on the story, I can give you some things to worry about. Yeah, there's going to be some things. There's going to be a day where you've got all the people of Israel standing in front of an impassable Red Sea. and an invincible army behind you.
Now that's a predicament. If you want something to worry about, worry about something that size. And if Moses only knew there was going to be a time that he was going to lead this people out in the desert, and there's going to be no food and no water. And if it weren't for manna and quail and water from a rock, they would perish out there in the middle of it. If he had known what he was going to face, the kind of leadership challenge he was going to have.
and knowing that one day he's going to go up onto a mountain and meet with God. And while he was away, Just meeting with God to bring the revelation of God, the Torah, the law, bring it to the people. That they had gathered around a fire, thrown their jewelry in, melted it down, and Moses' own brother Aaron had led them in fashioning a golden calf to worship. That's the kind of people that he was going to be leading. If he had known that 12 spies are going to go into the promised land and 10 are going to come back with a negative report that poisoned the faith of everybody else so that they would shrink back and a whole generation would wander for 40 years in the wilderness and die.
Now, those are the kind of things that he should have been saying, God, what are we going to do about that? But you see, the reality is that we worry, and honestly, we might as well not worry because we're not even worrying about the right things. And the things that we do worry about, well, they're probably small compared to the things that could happen anyway.
So either God's going to take care of us or he's not. Either his grace is going to be sufficient or it's not.
So we might as well not worry about any of it. Moses is Worried. At the end of it, at verse 13, he just summed it up. He said, Oh, Lord. Please send someone else.
Yeah. I am not qualified. I am not good enough. I do not speak well enough. People probably won't believe me.
I just sent somebody else. He disqualified himself. in the midst of God calling him.
Okay.
So in the middle of all of this, God Uh has an answer for Moses that is I think the meat of the passage and let's go deeper into this verse 1 of chapter 4 again Moses said, Behold, they'll not believe me or listen to my voice, for they'll say the Lord did not appear to you. And what the Lord did in response at verse 2 is powerfully symbolic. as well as just a miraculous sign. The Lord said to him, What is that in your hand? And he said, A staff.
And he said, throw it on the ground.
So he threw it on the ground and it became a serpent. And Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, Put out your hand and catch it by the tail.
So he put out his hand and he caught it and it became a staff in his hand. That they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.
So a staff. was on the one hand the most ordinary implement imaginable. It was a stick. Um could have a crook at the end of it. A shepherd would use a staff.
for guiding sheep. and for fighting off predators. Why was Moses a shepherd?
Well, here's what had happened. Moses Had been adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. who had found him floating in a basket. in the Nile.
So Moses was raised in the Egyptian court. amongst royalty. Mm. But he was Jewish.
So it was a very odd thing that here he was Hebrew. but he was raised in Egyptian royalty. And you can just see what an awkward situation that was. Because the Hebrew people We're physically and emotionally enslaved. by Pharaoh who proved to be quite cruel.
And one day Moses saw an Egyptian slave master beating one of the Hebrews. And he rose up, Moses just rose up in defense of his own people. And he killed the uh the Egyptian.
Well, because of this, there were people in Egypt that wanted Moses' life, so Moses fled. as a fugitive to Midian. And there He became married and lived a quiet humble life As a shepherd. thinking that's what he was going to do for the rest of his life. hiding in Midian.
for fear of the people that hated him in Egypt.
So now he's not with Either people. He is not with the Egyptian people that he was raised with. And he was not with the Hebrew people. He is an alien. And to make a living, he He shepherds a flock of sheep.
And um That's why it's there.
So the Lord says to Moses, What's in your hand? And he says, well, it's a a staff. It was the most ordinary tool and commonplace item imaginable. Just the staff that was close at hand. And he tells him to take the staff and throw it on the ground, and it.
becomes a a snake. He runs from it, and then the Lord tells him to pick up the snake by the tail. What's God doing here? I think in the first place. He's saying Moses In order to validate you, and show you That you are being qualified by me for the task at hand.
You do not need to go to some exotic place. discover an exotic artifact or some secret key or some elusive weapon in order to have victory. You know, that's the way all the great stories go. They're Indiana Jones stories of. Travel across to some faraway exotic place and go through all kinds of obstacles in order to find a magical key that will open up a treasury, and there will be a secret, powerful tool that you can use.
But this is no such story. This is not a story about pulling a sword out of a stone or some other feat. This is God's way of dealing with us. He says, What what what do you have right in your hand right now? We'll use that.
I think it's one of the most important things that could ever occur to us as Christians. If this really would dawn on you, it would change everything. We tend to disqualify ourselves because we don't have any thing very special we don't think to show. Or we think that we have to be somewhere else. Do something else.
or be like someone else. in order to really be used by God, and that's not the way God works. What's in your hand? You say, well, I don't have much. I've got I've got some grief.
I stumble in the same sins. Gotta wayward child and A struggling marriage, or whatever.
Sometimes all you have to God is just say, this is what I have. And God says, great. I can use that. It's not off in the distance. What's a hand?
But also there's something really important about this image of the staff. Because interestingly, staff was almost always pictured in the ancient. uh pictures of Pharaoh would be Pharaoh standing there with a staff. And Interestingly, the symbol also of the snake, specifically the cobra. was reminiscent of Pharaoh, because Pharaoh would wear a headpiece That had the image right over the forehead part of a cobra.
So, when Moses has this staff that he throws to the ground, and then it becomes a snake, maybe a cobra. It makes you think of what's going to happen of his interactions with Pharaoh. Alan Wright. And we're placing a bookmark here: No More Worries, Moses, part two coming up on our next broadcast in the series, No Worries. And Alan is back in a moment here in the studio with a parting good news thought for all of us today.
Stick with us. The life-changing message of good news has been taught over radio from Alan Wright Ministries for quite some time now. We have assembled the most powerful, best-love messages from each year of the first 10 and put them together in one special album. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month, we want to give you Alan Wright's top 10 CD album or digital download. Are you ready for some good news?
Make your gift today and discover God's grace afresh with Alan Wright's top 10 of the first decade. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. Or come to our website, Pastor Alan.org.
Back here with Alan Wright in the studio, and as we place our bookmark here, looking for our good news thought you could leave us with Alan on no more worries. When God was uh recruiting Moses to be the great deliverer of the people and the great lawgiver, Moses had a long list of fears, had a long list of reasons why he couldn't do it. and God had an answer for them all. And beyond Just answering them, the Lord showed Moses. Through a sign and wonder.
with this staff that turned to a snake and back into a staff. And I just think the good news for us is that You know, you can be honest with God about your worries and your complaints and ask for His help. Mm. And he's very gracious and he's amazingly patient. Um because uh we like Moses can be.
Well, we can be quite reticent and stubborn about answering God's call in our lives as well. But God has a way of not only recruiting us, calling us, but showing us how it's going to be.
so that we can have faith rather than fear. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
