No More Worries Moses! [Part 1]

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 it. 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 Reynolda 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 Alan 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. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Are 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 three.

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 three verse nine after Moses has encountered God through this burning bush and God is calling him to become the deliverer of the people. We read it verse nine 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 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've 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 get this classic dream where you're not prepared for something and for a lot of us it takes 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?

This is a good number. 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. There's no way to grab the books and cram for the test or anything like that. And so I just I've had this you know I don't like get it every week but it's like when I have it 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 hoot. Because he said he said that 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 we were having breakfast you were having breakfast with me in the dream and uh and I 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 gonna preach on humility and I said well that's that's good he said but then you asked me you said uh isn't that a little bit of an unusual topic considering it's Easter Sunday and so then it 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 gotta I gotta 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 just going to read the Easter story from Matthew and that that while he was reading it he was thinking what am I going to say about Easter and about Jesus and about and he read the 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 in a sense that's what Moses's 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've heard that one hadn't you what'd the boss say the recruiter asked you're fired yeah yeah I love this when a recruiter asked the job candidate 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 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 I'm not enough for this I'm not good enough for this and 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 he says I'm not enough and then essentially he says I'm not knowledgeable or spiritual enough 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 asked 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 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'd I would sit down and just be quiet you don't have to know everything I tell you sometimes those that are youngest in Christ are some of the most effective witnesses because 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 can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly envision it being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection if you mess up people don't roll their eyes make fun of you or love you less imagine no more of that anxious feeling that you get deep down in your gut that makes you feel like the pressure is always on so you can never really relax what you're imagining and longing for is a life with no shame in paradise before sin came into the world the Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship they were naked and felt no shame ever since the fall the human heart has been riddled with shame it's a lie that says until you measure up you can't be truly acceptable shame causes some to say I'll try to be perfect in order to be accepted and others to decide well since I'll never measure up I might as well rebel either way the heart is poisoned by shame and there is only one antidote the grace of God in Jesus Christ in his highly acclaimed book for yourself be yourself pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul discover freedom joy and destiny as you shed performance-based living and let God take the shame off you for good it's a life-changing full-length book from Alan Wright free yourself be yourself the gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries when you give today we will send you today's special offer now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month we are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries call us at 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastoralan.org today's teaching now continues here once again is Alan Wright the 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 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 he just 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 answer 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 that God's be I'm gonna 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 of the passage really we'll come back to that another complaint of Moses is at verse 10 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 tongue I'm not I won't have the right words I've got a fear of speaking in front of people 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 yeah you know it's interesting to me in this list of Moses's worries this 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 gonna be some things there's gonna 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 if Moses only knew there was going to be a time that he's 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 for 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 known 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 gathered around a fire throwing their jewelry in melted it down and Moses's 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 a 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 real 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 is 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 said oh Lord please send someone else I am not qualified I am not good enough I do not speak well enough people probably won't believe me I just send somebody else he disqualified himself in the midst of God calling him so in the middle of all of this God has an answer for Moses that is I think the meat of the passage and let's go deeper into this verse one of chapter four 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 two 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 a staff 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 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 but he was Jewish so it's 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 were 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 Egyptian well because of this there are people in Egypt that wanted Moses's 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 that's why he's there so the Lord says to Moses what's in your hand and he says well it's 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 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 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 far away 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 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 this is God's way of dealing with us he said what do you have right in your hand right now we'll use that I think it's one of the most important things 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 I don't have much I've got I've got some grief I stumble in the same sins I got a wayward child and a struggling marriage or what 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 off in the distance what's at hand but also there's something really important about this image of the staff because interestingly staff was almost always pictured in the ancient 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 book mark 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 can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly envision it being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection if you mess up people don't roll their eyes make fun of you or love you less in his highly acclaimed book free yourself be yourself pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul discover freedom joy and destiny as you shed performance-based living and let God take the shame off you for good it's a life-changing full-length book from Alan Wright free yourself be yourself the gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries this broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support when you give today we will send you today's special offer we are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month call us at 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastorallen.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 recruiting Moses to be the great deliverer of the people and the great lawgiver Moses was had a long list of fears and 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 and he's very gracious and he's amazingly patient because 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 yeah 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.