Learning from Moses - Part 2

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Please make your donation today at vision.org.au. If you're looking for role models, the Bible is filled with great people of faith, and among them, Moses stands apart as one of the finest examples. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah continues his look at Moses, an inspiring man of faith for anyone who's serious about their spiritual growth.

From The Life of God Blesses, here's David to introduce the conclusion of his message, Learning from Moses. Well, I have always been partial to personality preaching. By that, I mean I love to teach and preach on the people in the Bible. So I have long series on David, on Joseph, on Abraham, in the New Testament, people like Paul. When you study the personalities of the Bible, you discover that you are not much different than they were.

Elijah said, we are people of like passions. And personality teaching really is, I believe, the most effective in making life change. Because you can see what God did in the person in the Bible, you can relate to that in your own life, and then as you find the principles that are observable in the text, you realize those are the same principles that will work for me.

That's happened for me many times, and I'm sure it has for you. That's why I love studying people like Moses. And especially when it comes to purpose, he's a great illustration. Well, let's get back to our study. Today, this is part two of Learning from Moses.

We open the study hall right now and begin. If you want to learn about Moses, you have to start in Exodus chapter two and read all the way through to Deuteronomy chapter 34. Four out of the five books of the Pentateuch are about Moses, telling the story of his life and of his deeds and of his acts. Now, to outline his life, what you discover is that the first 40 years that he lived, basically, he spent in Pharaoh's court. He was taken out of the bulrushes and taken into the palace and raised by this wonderful woman who belonged to Pharaoh. He was brought up the first 40 years of his life in the palace. The next 40 years of his life, he ended up out in the desert, 40 years wandering around.

You know what he was doing? He was taking care of his father-in-law's sheep from the palace to the desert. And so the first 40 years, he lived in the lap of luxury. The second 40 years, he was a ragtag shepherd out in the wilderness. And then the last 40 years, from the time he was 80 until the time he was 120, that was the major ministry of his career.

Now, listen up, those of you who are aging and whose hair is getting gray like mine. Moses got started in his major ministry at the age of 80, and his greatest deeds were done from age 80 to age 120. There's hope for all of us.

We can just hang in there long enough. Now, each of these three periods in Moses' life began with a crisis, which was met by faith, and God used these crises to encourage the life of Moses. One of the things that I have written down in my notes is this, and God often does this for all of us. God spent the first 40 years in Moses' life letting him find out what it was like to be somebody.

I mean, he was in Pharaoh's court. Then the next 40 years, God taught him how to be a nobody out in the desert. Then the last 40 years, God taught him what happens when he takes a nobody and makes him into a somebody. You know, isn't that the way God works with us sometimes?

You know, we get all high and mighty about what we've accomplished. Maybe we've had a great education, we've had great opportunities, and we get all caught up with who we are, and God has to show us that our wisdom and our strength and our abilities and our gifts are really useless to him unless we're willing to totally yield ourselves to him. So he puts us through a desert experience.

Anybody been in a desert experience? You know what it's like to be in a wilderness? So you come out of the wilderness now and you realize that it's not enough just to be a somebody in the world's eyes, and you surely don't want to be a nobody, but if you yield yourself to God, he can take a nobody and make him a somebody, and that's what he did in the life of Moses. Now, Moses had an incredible opportunity to prepare himself to serve God. Isn't it amusing that God needed to get Moses ready to be the leader of four million Jews and help them through the exodus? And here Moses is, born in this humble place, so God just works it all out, gets him taken out of that humble place, and takes him for the first 40 years of his life to the educational center of the world and puts him at the very hub of learning.

Turn in your Bibles to the book of Acts. You probably didn't know there was this much about Moses in the New Testament, but these are summary statements that are very helpful as we try to get a fix and a picture on his life. Acts chapter 7 and verse 20, and this time Moses was born and was well pleasing to God, and he was brought up in his father's house for three months, but when he was set out, Pharaoh's daughter took him away and brought him up as her own son, and Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and deeds, and when he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel.

Now I want you to notice three things that God did to prepare Moses. First of all, he made him a student. The scripture says Moses was learned.

That means he studied kids, young people, students. He put his nose in the book or in the parchment or the scroll or whatever it was, and he learned. He went to school and he prepared himself and he gained knowledge, and the scripture tells us of that. He was versed in the wisdom of the Egyptians and in all of their science, but he was not only a student. While he was there in the palace, he learned also how to be a statesman because the scripture says he was endowed with unique, oratorical powers. While there, he learned how to use these gifts which God had given to him, but also while in the palace of Pharaoh, he learned how to be a soldier. The scripture and tradition records that while he was in the Egyptian employ, secular tradition says Moses was a great general and a great leader, and he gained many wonderful victories, having been trained by the Egyptian. He learned military training and discipline and patience and quick decisions. Boy, was he going to need that when he had all these cantankerous Jews in the wilderness. I mean, he really needed this training.

His classmates in the Egyptian university would have been from all parts of the world, so he would have gained an understanding of the world system and what goes on, and he had a liberal education and would have certainly traveled to many parts of the world. And tradition says that when the Ethiopians invaded the land, that Moses was at the head of the army and routed the enemy. Moses, for 40 years, was getting ready. Now, I want to stop there for just a moment.

I don't think there's anything more frustrating when you really want to do something with your life than to feel like you're caught in the parentheses of getting ready. I remember when my wife and I were in Dallas and I was in seminary and I had this heart to want to serve God, and sometimes when we would go over to our little church in Fort Worth where we worked as interns and we drive home after the evening service, I remember this like it happened yesterday. I'd turn on the radio and on the radio every night for some reason at that particular time when we came home was a preacher by the name of C.M. Ward. It was revival time and they had a great choir and C.M. Ward would preach and he'd give this invitation over the radio and I would think to myself driving back from Fort Worth, going back to seminary, back to the books, back to Hebrew, back to Greek, back to all these irrelevant things at least at that point in time in my life.

What am I doing here? And I would say to Donna, you know sometimes I feel like I ought to just get out of here and go find a church someplace and pastor it because I want to serve God, but I want to tell you something. I'm glad I didn't do that because it was the discipline of being in school and being prepared and I know that I could not do what I do today in the human realm if I had not prepared myself and been willing to stay under the discipline of learning. I want to let you know if Moses could spend the first 40 years in school and the next 40 years out in the desert trying to review what he already learned and then get involved in serving God, what that said about him was he spent two-thirds of his life getting ready to serve in the last third. No wonder he is recorded in the scripture as the great emancipator and the great lawgiver. He was a man of great principle. In fact, the honorable DJ Brewer who was associate judge of the Supreme Court of the USA at one time viewed Moses as a lawgiver and he wrote these words, he who on Sinai's summit received the Decalogue from the hand of Jehovah was gifted with a power enabling him to fashion a body of law which has been the code of a race in some respects the most unique in human history. A code which is also a mighty force in the wondrous civilization of today, Moses does not fall short when placed alongside of the great lawgivers of the entire human race.

Did you know that much of what we observe in jurisprudence today in this country finds its roots in the law of Moses? He was an incredible man, but listen up, he was an incredible man because he was willing for God to prepare him. How all of this preparation was fleshed out in the things that he was allowed to do in his encounters with God. He was a man who was prepared. Now we're going to see some major themes that go through the entire story of Moses life and they're themes that God often uses in our lives. What were the things that God used to make him what he was?

And the first thing that I wrote down was the priority or the principle of isolation. When Moses was in the palace of Pharaoh for the first 40 years of his life, he learned and had an opportunity for training his intellect. He was learning how to think, how to react to situations, but in the second phase of his life, that second 40 years, he got a different kind of education. An education that took him away from all the excitement of the university, that took him away from all of the influences that could have touched his life, that isolated him with God so that he had to learn how to listen to the voice of God.

You know what? It's an important principle for us today in this busy, noisy world in which we live, that if we're really going to ever learn to know God, we have to learn how to be comfortable with solitude. You can't really learn to know God in the busy world.

You have to get alone with him. God had a special plan in view for Moses and I've learned as I've read the stories of the great men who have influenced this world, both secular and righteous, that solitude is often an important factor in making a great man. And that Moses' years in the desert fulfilled that wonderful function of tempering his spirit.

Do you remember how he got out there in the first place? Moses had a great intellect, but he didn't have control of his spirit. He had an unruly temper, so much so that he committed murder. And God had to shove him out in the desert and give him the opportunity so that he could work through these uncontrolled passions in his life. While he was in the University of Egypt, Moses learned how to work with the upper class. But in the backside of the desert, Moses learned his deepest lessons. He learned how to go and live in Egypt with the slaves. Remember what were his people doing when God called him to go emancipate them?

They were slaves in Egypt. And God prepared Moses to go and identify with them through his experience in the desert. I'm still learning that lesson.

I don't know about you. I have to consciously walk away, consciously get alone, consciously make it a priority to get away from everything, from every sound, from every music, from every influence, so that somehow I can isolate the voice of God from all the rest of the noise in the world. I still believe God uses that principle to prepare his people. And it's something we ought to at least consider as we watch God's dealing in Moses life. And then I've already told you that God used in the life of Moses the principle of preparation, that his major achievement took place after he was 80 years old. Here is a reminder to us that we are never too old to learn and never too old to enroll and never too old to get excited about gathering new truth. I've made this observation as I've watched people grow old, that those who continue to learn and to grow and to read and to ask questions and to get involved in serving and in ministry are the people who stay vitally alive and exciting.

Do you know what? Some of you are in your 50s and you haven't read a book in five years. You haven't thought deeply about anything that would challenge your mind in so long that if you're not careful your mind and your spirit is going to atrophy. And when the time comes that God really wants to use you, you won't be prepared.

The principle of preparation. And finally, if you follow the life of Moses you will discover that God taught him the principle of consecration. You know what you discover about Moses life? That his life is the story of failure and success. Failure and success.

Here's what happened. Every time Moses depended on God he was a success. Every time he took things into his own hands he fell on his face. And you would think he would learn that once and for all.

Why don't we learn it? But he kept falling on his face and God had to keep picking him up. In fact, if you know the story of Moses life it kind of ended on a downer.

I mean you'd like to see this guy rise to the top and then just go on to glory like Elijah. Moses ended his life in what at least at that time seemed to be tragic. Do you remember how he disobeyed God? How he spoke rashly with his lips according to the Psalms?

And God said, Moses, because of what you've done you brought all these people out of the land of Egypt and you've brought them right up to the threshold of the promised land and because you disobeyed me you don't get to go in. Can you imagine what that did to him? I mean that was his whole goal. That was his whole focus in life. Getting the children of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt. Leading them through that terrible time and right up to the threshold. And then Moses forgot to be obedient.

And you know what happened? The same spirit that he thought he had dealt with out in the desert after he had taken the life of an Egyptian. That same spirit returned to haunt him again and he lost control for a moment.

Can you identify? And it kept him from the goal of his heart. And the Bible says that his heart was so grieved and he was so discouraged about this that he came to God and he asked God please, please don't let me not see the promised land. In fact the scripture says three times he asked the Lord would you please reconsider and let me go in.

That's very human isn't it? And you know what the Lord said to him? I'll read you his words. The Lord said speak to me no more of this matter. That sound fatherly? You know when your father says that you might be tempted to ask for the fourth time but when God says speak to me no more of this matter it's wise not to bring up the subject again. So Moses didn't bring it up again. And you know what?

That doesn't seem fair does it? I mean he's the guy who took all the heat. He's the guy who challenged Pharaoh. He's the guy who put his rod out across the sea and they walked through on dry ground. He's the one who lived that miserable existence with those cantankerous people who murmured against him and said we would God we were back in Egypt Moses this desert is the pits and we don't like it. He went through all of that and he got right up to the end of his life and he blew it and because of his disobedience God said you don't get to go into the promised land. And when he asked God three times God said speak to me no more of this matter.

But you know what? One day I was reading the New Testament and I got so excited when I read this I just about jumped out of my chair. Because God is a gracious God. And if you read the New Testament you know that this wasn't the end of the story. On the Mount of Transfiguration in the land of Canaan in Palestine two men were conversing with Jesus whose majesty and glory for a few moments was unveiled.

That's why they call it the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus was transfigured before them for a few moments they were able to see the glory of Jesus. And do you know who those two men were? They were Elijah and Moses. They were admitted for a few moments to the land of promise. And maybe Moses even got a chance to look around but I'll tell you something not for long because the brilliance of the Lord Jesus overwhelmed every other hope that he had ever had. And I think in one short moment Moses could have cared less about the promised land because he was face to face with the promised one. When I read that story I realized that Moses heart longing was granted. The exclusion that God put on him for his disobedience was only temporary and he was given a foretaste of the glory that was to come. He did enter the promised land and this time in the company of none other than the Lord of glory himself. I picked up a book on the life of Moses and the title of it intrigues me. The title of it is the God of second chances the life of Moses. Moses continued to have to learn the hard way and yet God was always there always showing grace and doesn't he do that for us? How many of us would say here I am and but for the grace of God I could be a statistic a casualty but God has continued to help and encourage me and bring me another chance to serve him. Moses was indeed a man of God. He was the servant of God and hard as it is for us to understand he was the friend of God who spoke to him face to face. Amen. You think about all that happened in Moses life the good the bad and the ugly but the Bible says he was a man who was a friend of God and God spoke to him in a special way face to face.

Well tomorrow we're going to learn about studying the manual. I won't say any more about that I'll leave that for you to find out as we meet together tomorrow right here at the same place. You know one of God's most beautiful promises to us is that he will bless us when we follow him and then give us the joy of blessing other people. I've said this often the only reason God ever blesses us is so that we can bless others. I'm David Jeremiah I'll see you right here tomorrow. Our message today originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah the senior pastor. Would you like to tell us how Turning Point ministers to you. Please write to us Turning Point Post Office Box 3838 San Diego California 92163 or visit our website at davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. Ask for your copy of Jack Countryman's new book God's blessings just for you.

It features 100 inspirational readings and reflections and it's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app for your smart device or search in your app store for the keywords Turning Point ministries that's for instant access to our programs and resources. Visit davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary Hoogfleet. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series The Life God Blesses that's here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us go to vision.org.au