God Prepares His Messenger – Exodus Series #6

The commencement speaker at Southampton College this year was Kermit the Frog. One graduate complained, “We have a sock talking at our commencement. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

Oh, by the way, if you didn’t hear, it’s also official. Hillary Rodham Clinton, when asked, “Are you hoping you’ll have a second child by a time managing editor?” This week replied laughingly, “That was their comment,” replied laughingly, “I have to tell you I would be surprised, but not disappointed. My friends would be appalled, I’m sure, but I think it would be terrific.”

I wouldn’t touch that statement for anything in the world. But what friends is she talking about, for heaven’s sake?

We’re up to our armpits this summer in some very important revelational teaching. We’re really just getting started from the book of Exodus. God wants his covenant people to enter into everything that is his purpose. Everything that is his intention for them. To enter into progeny and fruitfulness and growth and increase.

To enter into inheritance and possession. To enter in, as it were, into a land, into an area, a territory. And above else, of course, above all else, the bottom line of covenant is to become useful. To enter into your ministry. To become available to influence and change the world. And the children of God in all ages from all different lands have a strange family likeness.

They have one thing in common, and that is they have a clear, vivid, compelling sense of a definite personal call from God Himself. And however that call has come to them, its completion and its fulfillment becomes the greatest passion of their lives. It becomes their purpose. And that vision, or that purpose, becomes the overmastering power through which they live.

And whether you’re talking about Abraham or Joseph, Moses, Samuel, Isaac, Paul, Augustine, or one of my favorites, and one I will talk about somewhat this morning, Patrick. We often hear him called Saint Patrick. But in each instance, they have a specific call from God, and they were conscious of that call, and as the scripture fills the book with phrases about them, they said, “Here am I, send me,” or, “Lord, what would you have me to do?”

And you need to know, friend, there are great calls and small calls, but all that matters is that we respond to the call. Well, basically, of course… The first Christian call is to be a saint, and I don’t want that word to trouble you. It’s very clear in 1 Corinthians 1:2, and dozens of other uses of the word “saint” in the New Testament, that it describes all people who are born again.

We’re not only called to be saints but are collections of the saints. Our prayers are the prayers of the saints. When Christ comes, he comes with his saints and so forth. Don’t be afraid of them because the word simply means you’re separated to a purpose. What makes a person a saint, of course, is certainly not the veneration of some denomination or church.

It’s not the exaggerated stories of someone’s usefulness who lived a long time ago. In fact, it’s using that other definition of sainthood. That one wag who’s written a book called “The Devil’s Dictionary” said, “A saint is a dead sinner revised and edited.” One of the most brilliant women who’s ever lived in this nation was a congresswoman and then a senator from the state of Connecticut.

I have read much of her writing, although she was not preeminently a writer. Claire Booth Luce. She said, “The very meaning of the lives of the saints for us lies in the fact that they were sinners like ourselves, trying like ourselves to combat sin. The only difference between them and us is that they kept trying.”

And then she went on to say, “They kept trying precisely because they believed that the revision and editing of a sinner into a saint is done not by man’s pen but by God’s grace.” What a statement. One of the great writers on Patrick, G. A. Chamberlain, said, “What makes the saint is that he hears the call when he comes, and then he bends all the powers of body, soul, and spirit to do what is recognized as the will and purpose of God.”

And then he adds, and I think this is so very significant, “It is along the path of sacrifice and service that true greatness comes. And that’s where men become a blessing. Patrick, in his confessions, wrote, ‘I was a stone lying in a deep mire, and he who is mighty came, and in his might, he lifted me up, and he raised me aloft, and placed me on the top of the wall.'”

You see, that could be said of saints of all generations. Damien, the Roman Catholic, to the lepers of Molokai. Wilberforce, the Evangelical who became the prophet to the slaves. David Livingston in Africa. Sister Teresa and Mark Bontane on the streets of Calcutta, India. David Wilkerson to the generation of addicted people.

And you heard this morning at PCC, the call of God is to get on with His purpose. To somehow identify your life with things that really matter. God’s bottom line is always His promise, His covenant. What His covenant means is what He wants to do through people, any people, any person who will put Him first.

Putting God first is your bottom line. That’s, of course, what we see in this study from Exodus, first through Joseph himself, who identified with the covenant purpose of God. He refused all the enthralling attractions of a material system, all that personally exhilarating enchantment that came from fame and acceptance.

When Joseph wins God’s record of faith in Hebrews 11:22, as we’ve seen for three weeks, it’s a one-verse summary. By faith, Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel and gave instructions concerning his bones. Don’t you love that font? That’s called the Bones font from the computer. I think that’s a very appropriate use of the word. Joseph realized that after the people of God would be blessed and multiplied, after they’d become a mighty nation, they’d have to go out. They would have to leave Egypt. They’d have to find deliverance before they could ever come into an inheritance, into their own land, into the place of fulfillment and ultimate fruitfulness.

And that’s what Exodus means, to go out, to go forth. For us, there has to be a deliverance from old things and former control from the old life before we can ever truly participate in God’s new purpose, in the life which is true servanthood. If you can see what I mean this morning. In fact, let me be very clear again, as I said to you two weeks ago.

I think that’s been the problem of the charismatic movement. We’ve tried to bring people into experiences without clearly knowing that they had left the old bondages of the former life. That’s confusion. It’s like putting milk into a dirty cup. In this current series of messages from the book of Exodus, when it’s finally time to go out, in other words, when the 400 years in the strange land, which God had predicted to Joseph’s great-grandfather Abraham, when that 400 years was over, and the 70 people of Jacob had now become millions, through prosperity and persecution, through these twin influences, the covenant people of God were now standing tall.

Then God issued a second call. We heard that in the last two weeks. The saints of Amram and Jochebed birthed a son. A son who bore a divine, recognizable stamp of origin. These saints hid him and nourished and interceded for this divinely born deliverer. Then, by faith, they committed him to the river of providence, which most people in that society would have considered the river of death.

God arranged for a barren Egyptian princess to become his confirming provision. And this little Hebrew child with this unusual countenance of the city of God is drawn out of the water and he’s called Moses. The scripture says that Pharaoh’s daughter explained, “I called him Moses because I drew him out of the water.”

Are you open to learning this morning? Listen to these words. In so many ways, Patrick was exactly like Joseph and Moses. Deeply wronged by his own people, torn out of his own home as a child and made a slave. But he never paused to brood over the wrongs that had been done. He never nursed lurking grudges or sought revenge, save the revenge of serving those who had wronged him. In the spirit of the great apostle, he had the grace to forget things that were behind and to look for things that were before. As Jesus, Jesus himself, set himself to minister to those who despitefully used him. One contemporary writer recently said, “If only the people of Ireland today could catch the spirit of this man and forget the wrongs that have been done to them, there would be peace.”

Today’s topic is the preparation of the messenger. You might as well say, sainthood, or our surrender to God’s call. Please stand with me now. First, turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 3. We’re going to read only 10 verses. If you have your own Bible, you can mark it. Go ahead and stand if you will. You can mark your own Bible if you’re going to use our Bibles out there in the pews. Please don’t mark them. Let me read these 10, actually 12 verses. Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him. I want you to see that verse. I want you to see those first words.

When God saw that Moses turned aside to look, what have you done this week that’s got God’s attention? Isn’t that what it says? It says when he looked, then God stopped to say to him. In fact, he called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, I’m here.” And Moses said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not draw near to this place.”

Take sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. Moreover, he said, “I’m the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, “I have surely seen the oppression of my people in Egypt.”

“They’ve heard their, I’ve heard their cry because of their taskmasters, and I know their sorrows.” Boy, what a word that is, right in that last of the seventh verse. “I’ve come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from a land to, uh, to bring them from that land to a good, large land, a land full of milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites.”

“The Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites. These are all good swear words, I’ve told you. These are cursed people, so you have a right to use them when you strike your thumb with a hammer. Parasites, and Hivites, and Hittites. Now, therefore, behold the cry of the children of Israel, come to me.”

God said, “I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and 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 that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

And God said, “I will certainly be with you, and this will be a sign to you that I’ve sent you. When you’ve brought them out of the land of Egypt, you shall serve God in this mountain.” Please be seated, keep your Bibles open. Last week, we saw principles of how God intervenes in our life, and we learned release, recognition, timing, identity, and separation.

Now we have to backtrack a bit, because we want to talk not about principles of intervention, but principles of preparation of the messenger. And they overlap in a way. And remember, we’re not studying Moses as a case in history, but incredibly revealing principles out of Exodus 3 at this moment about our lives.

The first principle of the preparation of leadership, in other words, the preparation of a messenger for God, it picks up in today’s scripture, but in truth it goes too. It’s the principle that God prepares his messenger, or his leader, by the very origin or nature of his life. Now that’s a big, important mouthful of words.

And some of you will know the meaning of that phrase. In Exodus 2.10 we have the common phrase, “The child grew. His mother brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and she named him Moses by saying I drew him out of the water.” Now what does that mean other than an incidental statement about him coming out of the water?

And by the way, scholars have a great deal of difficulty. Is this a Hebrew name? Is this an Egyptian name? Although there’s no question about who gave the name to this child. I want to tell you something. God names you by your mission.

And in this instance, the name in the original tense is not drew out, it’s drawing out. A drawing out is what the word in the tense that it’s used means. Now you remember in the book of Revelation, it clearly says that a stone will be given to the overcomers, and on that stone will be written a name that no one but God knows concerning that person.

Don’t you understand that the man whom God is going to use to draw forth Israel out of Egypt, must himself first be drawn out of the Nile River? That’s not a coincidence. God doesn’t waste anything. Review with me quickly a very familiar passage, Psalm 139. In the first twelve verses are some interesting phrases.

“Lord, you searched me and knew me. You understand my thoughts. You comprehended my path. You are acquainted with my ways. You’ve hedged me in behind and before. And even though it’s darkness, even the night shall be like light to me.” Now if you go on to the latter verses, you will see very interesting words.

“You formed my inward parts and you covered me in my mother’s womb.” Now some of you spend your life thinking that human genetics are your course. You are what you are simply by human genetics. Obviously, height, weight, basic coloration of skin. But God says a believer comes to understand who was called of God, that he was formed in his mother’s womb.

And that he was fearfully known. And that God knew his frame before he was ever born. That God knew his substance. That is a very important thing. God knew everything about me. My days were recorded in advance. There’s no mystery about this. So that the drawing forth of my life, the experience by which God really names me,

the experience by which I really am proven to be the person that I am to be. And we all know those crisis moments that come in our lives. Five minutes maybe, ten minutes, maybe it’s a year. That one year in which everything else that will ever be known in our lives really finds its identity in what happens to us in that one frame of moment.

Now, before we look at the second principle, I need to continue with this for a moment. The story in Exodus 2 and 3 is very simple. It’s easy to give you the facts, but the principles of preparation are much more complex. For example, Exodus 2:11 says, “When Moses is grown.” When Hebrews says this in 11:24, it says, “When he became of full age.”

But when Stephen records it in Acts 7:23 in the book of Acts, Stephen says, “When he was 40 years of age.” The fact is when maturity came to him, when he grew up, when Moses grew up, the first step was that he took a step to identify with his brethren. The Lord says he, and the word says he visited his brethren.

He looked at the burdens. He saw an Egyptian beating one of his brethren. He looked this way and that; he killed and buried the Egyptian, and the next day he came back to his brethren. Stephen, in Acts seven, says that Moses supposed that his brethren would understand, and they would understand that God had raised him up to deliver them, but they didn’t.

They said, “Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Do you intend to kill us like you killed the Egyptians?” Now here, indeed, we have the awakening of Moses. In a sense, this is his call, so to speak. He spent 40 years of relative quiet. He was raised as a prince, although nursed by his Hebrew mother. He was educated at the great university of Heliopolis.

In all the elite surroundings of pharaohs and viziers. Tradition said he was the marvelous leader of that campaign of the Egyptians against the Ethiopians. Stephen summarizes 40 years in one verse. In verse 22 of chapter 7 of the book of Acts when he says, “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in words and deeds.”

Accepted tradition tells us that the Pharaoh actually considered Moses to be his heir to the throne. What happened in those 40 years was Moses learned how to transport, feed, and care for tens of thousands of slaves at a time. He could take them into the desert and sustain them. He’d had the training of Jochebed; he’d had the training of Pharaoh’s daughter; he’d been in the court of the king.

All of that was important, but listen to me, and this is very critical. Significantly, no great test of the character of Moses is ever recorded until he identified with the people of God, and he identified with the covenant purpose of God. And like Joseph, his real trouble never started until the call of God became awakened in his life.

Now turn with me quickly to a seven-verse statement in chapter 11 of Hebrews, verses 23 through 29. I’m not going to read it all. But verse 24 says, “By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” Verse 25, “Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasure of sin.”

Verse 26, “He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” Verse 27, “By faith he forsook Egypt.” Well, this is like a God-given outline. But I want you to notice some words here. First, the word “refusing.” Refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. It’s an interesting word.

In the original, it means to contradict. It’s actually a word from the concept of the flow of a river, and it talks about fighting the river, going upstream. Now this is very important. You need to keep this in your mind because the second principle of leadership, the first principle says, “I should look at my life because something about who I am is going to determine how God wants to use me.”

But the second principle says, in the same line, that I have to make choices. That I have to be willing to make positive choices. I have to be decisive in decision-making. Leadership means decisiveness. Like Martin Luther, I know this is rare to some of you. It’s very rare for people in this culture to understand Martin Luther, who stood against the whole Catholic Church and said, “Here I stand! God help me! I have to take this stand!” That’s rare for us to understand. You know, we who temper our bathwater to lukewarm, you know. We who are, the most athletic thing is a couch potato kind of thing. It’s hard to understand how this kind of decisiveness comes into a person’s life. He risks everything!

Notice these words. He chose because he esteemed the reproach of Christ. Actually, the words are “for the reproach of Christ.” He esteemed the reproach for Christ to be greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Now, some of us, that’s fantasy. Treasures of Egypt are like watching PBS and seeing the treasures of, what’s his name, Troutmanon, or, I never am able to say that.

Okay, good, whatever you’ve said, it’s right. This man had the treasures of Egypt. This isn’t talking about fantasy; this isn’t Baywatch. He had!

The treasures of Egypt. But he esteemed the reproach for Christ. Someone asked me about this verse last week. They said, wasn’t Moses before Christ? How could he esteem the reproach of Christ? Well, the word here, Christ, is not only a name; it is the Greek word for the anointed one, or the Messiah.

Christos. So what he’s saying is that Moses knew that the Messiah was coming through the family of God, which was a part of the covenant of God, and that Moses made a commitment that it was a better thing to align himself with the purpose of God than to have all the pleasures of Egypt. He esteemed the reproach.

For Christ to be greater than the riches of Egypt, and look into the second phrase of verse 26. Because he looked at the reward. Or if you have the old King James, it says, He had respect to the recompense of the reward. A very interesting Greek word, Abablepen. Abablepen means, very simply, and in its tense, it means he habitually kept in view or in mind that there was a reward to this thing.

I hear it all the time in the church, “Oh, don’t talk about works, we’re saved by grace.” You know, works don’t really count. Baloney. They don’t count. And you’ll discover in the first five minutes of eternity that there’s a difference between the pew-warming Christian who never could do anything more successful than crawl out of bed and come to church and the Christian who’s committed their resources and their life to the purposes of God.

Moses continually focused on the ultimate eternal reward. It was a daily, consistent necessity in his life to habitually keep in view what his life was all about. Hey, there were real riches in Egypt. There were real treasures. Hebrews 11 isn’t playing games. Get your head out of the sand, Christian!

Understand, this is a reality that was an allurement to ease, to worldly materialism, to success, to power, to fame, to identity with the security badge of a worldly position. And many swallow that. That’s their whole self-worth. Some are the vice president in charge of management. Or some, the supervisor of the third watch.

Well, big deal! I think all Christians ought to be supervisors of something. And I think if you do your job with integrity and commitment, it’s a mark of that, and God sees in your company that you come to that. But is that who you are? Is that your identity? Is that your self-worth?

Many swallow that, as Richard Kaba did. The young Kaba, uh, Kaba do rather. The young historian who several years ago wrote a Wonder Book, uh, book called “The Young Evangelicals,” and then followed it closely by two books on the charismatic movement several years ago, wrote a fourth book on the same subject called “Those Worldly Evangelicals,” and the subtitle of that book was, “Has success spoiled born-again Christians?”

What a commentary that is. You have to go out before you can enter in. You have to make some choices. Joseph said, “I’m not gonna be known for Egypt; I’m gonna be known for God, so take my bones into the promised land.” Moses said, “I refuse this and I choose this because I’ve esteemed which is better, and I’ll tell you in the long run there’s more reward by choosing identity with Christ.”

Not dumb. Not spiritual. Not spooky. You sit down and you look at it, and you say this is where the winning is. This is where the reward is. And every day in my life, I’m going to get up and keep that reward in front of my mind. He made a definite. Definite decision. Years ago, our kids did a little musical here.

Some of you remember it, I’m sure. It was about the life of Daniel. And there was a little song, I’ve never forgotten it, as many years ago as it’s been. And it was, the words were, “That Daniel knew, yes, he knew how to say no. Yes, he knew how to say no.” See, it wasn’t Nancy Reagan who came up with that slogan.

“Just say no.” Ultimately, of course, that was exactly what he said. He was saying, “I identify with this thing of the Messiah coming. That’s my life. That’s who I am.” In the story of Patrick of Ireland, there’s an interesting quote. Born into a Christian home, at least two generations of believers and preachers ahead of him.

He lived his early youth on his grandfather’s farm on the western part of Britain. At 16, he was captured by Irish freebooters, and he was made a slave, tending sheep and swine. His story reads exactly like Joseph, and here’s his confession: He says, “I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and least of all the faithful.

The most contemptible to very many had for my father, Capernius, a deacon, a son of Potius, a presbyter, an elder who dwelled in the village of Bonavon, Tabernai. He had a small farm hired by the place where I was taken captive. I was then 16 years of age. I did not know the true God. I was taken to Ireland in captivity with many thousand men in accordance with our just desert because we had departed from God and not kept his precepts, and we were not obedient to our priests who admonished us for salvation.

God works in mysterious ways. I don’t know what it will take to bring you into your identity with God’s purpose. I look at some of you with great sadness and realize there’s a long road to hoe before you personally come to that place. Listen to Patrick’s words. Or when you read from the book of Hebrews, chapter 12, 27 through 29, I probably quote this to myself every week in one form or another.

Everything will be shaken that can be shaken, so that only things that cannot be shaken will remain. That has special significance to people who live in California. And for some reason this week, almost every time I’ve turned on the TV, there’s been a discussion about earthquakes, earthquake insurance, and properly protecting and preparing for earthquakes, and so forth.

Identity with God’s people is not the kind of lip service that people have today. It’s when you align your lives with the person and purpose of God, so that the destiny of your life and your family will be found in what happens to God’s people. Moses’ positive decision and choice to identify with God’s people was important and needed, but what’s the next thing that happened?

Almost always, after a positive choice in leadership preparation, is that you make stupid decisions. You make presumptive activity. Now, we have more teenagers than normal here this morning, so I’m going to really have to be careful about what I say. But have you ever wondered, have you ever thought to yourself you’d like to take kids about 13 and lock them in a box?

And let them out when they become about 20? Not because you don’t love them, but you know that suddenly, at thirteen or so, they become capable of everything that an adult is capable of sexually and in other ways, and yet they do not have the maturity to understand how to use that, and you wish you could protect them.

I feel the same way about people who’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit. I’d like to lock them up for about eighteen months or two years because they do such stupid things. Right after that experience. I certainly feel that way about divorced people. Lock them up for two years. Because if you don’t, in six months, they’ll marry the same person they just divorced.

I mean, maybe not literally, but they’ll choose the same characteristics. The point of my saying this to you is that there is a critical moment in which we’ve come to an identity with God’s purpose, and we get all excited about what God wants to do, and we get all excited about God’s purpose and provision. Almost always at that point, we do something presumptuous in the flesh.

You remember, of course, what Moses did. It came into his heart, the Bible says, to visit his brethren. No direction from God. He wasn’t sent; he just went. His first action was to kill an Egyptian, and that’s the proof. He looked around this way and that. I tell you, when God sends you, you don’t have to kill Egyptians.

And notice the difference between “it came into his heart” and then in chapter 3 when God says to Moses, “Come now, therefore, and I will send you.” That’s a different thing. Here’s divine authority. Good ideas, good purposes, holy zeal, but it’s under the flesh. We used to sing a chorus in this church years ago.

I still love it. I haven’t heard it sung here or anywhere else for many years. “In his time, in his time, he makes all things beautiful in his time.” And then the little verse part of it says, “Lord, please show me every day as you’re teaching me your way that you’ll do just what you say, but it will be in your time.”

How many of the called people of God spent most of their life burying dead Egyptians in the sand? Hiding the results of preemptive and empty fleshly activities. Thank God, God heard, remembered; he said this about his people, and that’s true with you and me. We do presumptive things, presumptive things, but God brings Moses to Midian, which is a word meaning contention.

He guides the future leader and brings him to a specific family, the family of Rehual, who is a priest. Everything in spite of Moses’ presumptive activity. It is classically contended that Moses spent 40 years being educated in the household of Pharaoh, 40 years being trained by God in the back of the desert, and only 40 years actually identifying with the released purpose of God.

I told you about Dwight L. Moody last week, who said that in Egypt, Moses learned that he was somebody, and in the backside of the desert, he learned that he was nobody. Only in the last forty years could he discover what God wanted to do through a somebody who was willing to be a nobody. Positive precision and presumptuous activity bring us to this fourth important principle, which is purposeful preparation.

Preparation under the hand of God to enter into His purposes, what He wants to do. Moses, of course, had to leave Egypt. He had to come into preparation under the hand of God before entering the purpose and promise, because that’s what was going to have to happen to Israel. They were going to have to leave Egypt. They were going to have to come into a place of promise. And because he was going to lead Israel back out of Egypt, he himself was led into the wilderness, where he prepared for the purpose and promise of God. Do you understand that? Do you understand that you can never minister something that has not been worked out in your own spirit?

That’s one of the great tragedies of Christianity: Christians trying to speak with authority about things they’ve never lived out in their personal lives. There’s never authority in your ministry when you’re speaking about something you’ve not walked through personally. Those 41 years of Moses, in the House of Pharaoh, at university, learning to deal with people in the desert, military campaigns, all of that was something. It was important. It was valuable. God was going to use it. But that didn’t prepare Moses to follow God. It took the desert for him to learn to follow God. Let me quote C. H. Macintosh who writes, “This man, or the man whom God educates, is educated, and no one else. It does not lie in the range of man to prepare an instrument for the service of God. The hand of God could never mold a vessel fit for the Master’s use. The one who is to use the vessel is the only one who can prepare it.” And we have before us a beautiful, singularly beautiful sample of this mode of preparation.

What an important word this is. In the last two chapters of Genesis, when we were studying the life of Joseph, I’m sure you remember a verse. It’s in chapter 46, verse 34, where we’re told that the Egyptians hated shepherds. They despised shepherds. Shepherds were an abomination. And when Moses is fleeing from Pharaoh into Midian, he comes to the well, to the daughters of Rehuel, and the father invites him home. The daughters say, “This man is an Egyptian,” and what’s the father’s first act? He says, “Make him a shepherd.” Moses spends 40 years hating shepherds. Shepherds are an abomination. The first act of the Word of God in beginning to prepare man is to make him a shepherd.

You and I need to know something: generally, when the process of God’s preparation comes, it will cut across the grain of our life. It’s one thing I love about Youth of the Mission. I love a lot of things about Youth of the Mission. But one of the things about Youth of the Mission is, if you have a PhD in Biblical languages, if you’re going to work in Youth of the Mission, you still have to go through the same DTS that the kid goes through who doesn’t even have a high school diploma. No difference. And you don’t think that cuts across the board?

Here’s a guy with a PhD who’s taught for 20 years in Bible college, and he’s sitting in the same pew, listening to the lesson with a kid who can’t even find the book of Jeremiah.

Twelve years ago, we started foot washing in this church. It’s always interesting to me. Smallest service we have, no matter how much we publicize it. I can’t even get all the elders here. Oh, there are always lots of excuses. Always lots of reasons. A busy time of the year. But you know, foot washing, and I’m not talking about the kind of symbolism that’s used on the Christian television. In Lent, I mean real foot washing. You know, the embarrassing thing about foot washing isn’t that you’re not willing to wash somebody’s feet; it’s that you don’t want someone to wash your feet. And those of you who do finally get around to coming, you go home and you bathe and you dump cologne on your feet and put on a brand new pair of socks, you know. It’s… You see, you have to clear the deck. When God’s going to really use you, there’s this kind of despicable, fleshly thing. God doesn’t hand out positions. That’s what my friends in Bible college never understand. You don’t graduate with a degree from Bible college and end up as the pastor of a large pulpit.

You don’t get, with a degree, a position. Now denominations will do that. Denominations will do that. They will say, with the credential, we’ll give you a position. God never does that. In fact, in preparation for ministry, it’s a desert. And the desert’s always a contradiction to everything you’ve learned to do.

First full-time job I ever had in missionary, in ministry. My salary was $250 a month. I’ve said this story several times to you. But that’s not important because God did many wonderful things, and He built a lot in my life. And I stayed with, in the rescue mission, and I ate food with the other people in the rescue mission.

It was very, very good for me. But later on, after I’d gone through a time in Mecca, and I’d received not only my credentials but also my acceptance. And then in the process of God, He led me back to that same place. And we opened a serviceman’s ministry. And I will never forget one night swabbing, standing with a mop, swabbing out the results of the weekend when we’d had servicemen staying in the dormitory section of that place.

And here I was swabbing out, and my spirit was fighting. I have a master’s degree. I’m credentialed. I’ve had this position with the denomination. This is who I am. What am I doing swabbing the floor of this room?

The interesting thing is all God could say to me, I mean, I was really concerned about Him, not me so much. It was His reputation I was really worried about. And God said, “Don’t worry, I think this is worth it.”

I really think this is worth it. And that really helped me. I mean, I can’t explain it to you because maybe some of us are on a different wave this morning. But when I felt the Holy Spirit say, “I think this is worth it,” I relaxed. Because my real concern was, God’s put all this time in my life, what am I doing doing this?

And God was saying, “It’s worth it. Don’t you think Moses, in the 40 years he’s in the back of the desert saying, ‘Look, if I’m God’s man and He spent all this money training me, what am I doing here?'”

Getting ready to love sheep. See, that’s a problem in my ministry. I missed that moment somehow. I remember a woman who was saved in this church. I remember this story very, very well. Very wealthy, sophisticated family. In fact, her husband was one of the wealthiest men and a premier entrepreneur on this peninsula.

And she herself had been trained as a chef in the highest order of French food preparation. Very distinguished woman. She walked into a room, you immediately knew she was present. Shortly after she became a Christian, she came up to you in the middle of the aisle, this very aisle, and said, “Pastor, I want to do something for this church.”

That’s what any man who’s really born again wants to do. That’s what any woman who’s really born again, the first thing that God says to you is, identify with the people of God, find a place of service in ministry. So here she was, and naturally my mind is racing. Think of her gifts. Think of who she is. Think of all the stuff, you know, and I was thinking all the things that she could do.

And then she said, before I could say a word, she said, “And I know what God wants me to do. She said, “I’m supposed to care for the plants out in front of the church.” Oh yeah? One of the funniest things in the world. She would drive her red Cadillac convertible. Newest year model. She’d drive it up to the front.

Top down. Out comes this distinguished-looking woman. Rummaging in the back for her gloves and work. And, by the way, half the time she brought her own gardener along with her. Especially if it was a big project. It was Maxine plus her gardener. You don’t understand, God. If you think this is a ladder that leads up, I make this commitment, I make this preparation, this is the next step.

I mean, prepare. Look out world, here I come. That’s when God boots you for forty years into a place that you would have never dreamed you would be. Moses learned to despise shepherds and so God’s first activity was to become a shepherd. And of course, the backside of the desert is a reality. Listen to Patrick again, this sixteen-year-old boy.

He said, “After I came to Ireland, tending flocks was my daily occupation. I was used. I used the time to pray in the daytime. Love of God, the fear of God increased more and more. Faith grew. My spirit was moved. And one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and at the night nearly that many. I used to stay even in the woods and on the mountains.

Before daybreak, I would be aroused to pray in snow and frost and rain. I felt no hurt, and there was no sluggishness in me as I now see it because the Spirit of God was fervent in me. What’s the period of time he’s writing about? When he was a slave?

When he’d been drugged as a 16-year-old boy out of his family.

And if you want to read something about what kind of treatment he received, read, read something about the violence that was a part of Irish history in those days.

Two different things. Quickly now, a fifth point, and that is there has to be powerful personal revelation to you. That’s a part of what the transitional thing does. In other words, this is what doesn’t happen to. How many preachers we know today who are standing in pulpits, they have a hollow tone. The hollow tone because there’s never been an experience.

They’re preaching other people’s notes. In fact, I just read a major article the other day that said they are preaching warmed-over seminary notes. That’s what it is. Until you’ve been there, and out of personal experience comes revelation. And that’s why, greater than the Bible school or theological seminary or whatever you want to say, as important and great as they are, is the desert.

And of course, this verse in chapter 3, verse 2 says, “The angel of the Lord appeared in the flame of fire in the midst of the bush. The bush burned with fire. The bush was not consumed.” And Moses said, “I’ll turn aside and see this great sight.” And God said, “Because he turned to see, I will speak to him.” Now this is probably the little acacia bush.

And I want to just say this to you so that nobody leaves here without understanding this this morning. There’s no great problem to acacia bushes burning. They burn every day in the wilderness. I mean, these acacia bushes spontaneously ignite under the desert heat, and the dryness that the sun produces, these things burst out.

Every shepherd in the back desert saw hundreds of acacia bushes burning. There is no miracle to the burning of the acacia bush. The miracle was the bush wasn’t consumed. And these next moments are so important. One whole group of people in this church see only the sovereignty of God. God elects whom he chooses.

It has nothing to do with the will of man. The whole emphasis on the power of God. Man’s like a puppet, an existential cork on an ocean. Another group of people only see man’s choice. Man chooses, man disciplines, man brings himself into this place. And in the same way, there’s a confliction between many of us, between the holiness of God and the grace of God.

We have an elder in this church. I’ll tell you, every time he opened his mouth, I would shudder because I think he only knew one book in the Bible, Jeremiah. That’s not a very pleasant book. And every time Gordon wanted to say something, it always came out of Jeremiah! And about the time he’d begin to speak, I would say, “Do you mind if I excuse myself?”

Most of us never learn a balance between God’s grace and God’s holiness. Here is the point. God’s a consuming fire. That’s not only true individually, it’s true collectively. That’s why when Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Ghost about what they’d given to the church, God struck them dead.

Now, if you want to play in the world, you play in the world. But if you want to get to do with the things of God, don’t play with them. At the end of the world is hell. There’s fire there, too.

But in the church, it’s fire after commitment. And the miracle of this is that the Holy Ghost comes upon a human vessel. A weak, sinful human vessel. But the holiness of God doesn’t burn the vessel. That’s what some of you will not learn.

How this holy, righteous, positive power of God can come on this weak, sinful flesh. And here’s the miracle, the fire burns, the bush is never consumed.

And of course, it’s in the revelation of this that he discovers all about himself and who he is. You know, it’s interesting. Patrick, by the way, escapes, all you know this story, he eventually escapes Ireland with a bunch of other seamen. He comes, he goes by way of the Mediterranean, he comes back home, his mother’s still alive, and according to tradition, his grandfather was dead.

And his mother says, “Here’s acreage, your grandfather died, here’s 20 acres that he wants to give you, and there’s a home on it, and you can live now, you no longer live in slavery, now you can live in peace. And God surely wants you to enjoy these, these days.”

And Patrick says, “No, I was lying on my bed several months ago, and I saw the very men of Ireland who had persecuted me. I recognized their faces; they had piles of letters. It was like a Macedonian vision to Patrick. And he went back. By the way, when he did, Ireland was a horrendous place of violence in those days. They knew he was coming with his followers – Patrick was coming with Christian followers to bring the gospel.

They set out to kill him in one instance. You know what literally happened? The whole army that had come to kill him suddenly saw a flock of sheep. The flock of sheep was Patrick and his men. They let the flock of sheep pass them. God did something in the eyes of that army until all they saw was a flock of sheep.

After that, he wrote this wonderful song, and the last verse of it, most of us know very well. It’s called the Lyrica of Patrick. Lyrica is a word that means breastplate, the covering. Although it’s a wonderful doctrinal statement, it’s the last part I want you to see: ‘Christ be within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me. Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in the hearts of all that love me, Christ in the mouth of friend and stranger. I bind myself to the strong name of the Trinity. Praise to the God of salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord.’

It’s interesting to me that if God is going to prepare you for ministry, He begins by revealing Himself. We’ve seen this many times in the story from Exodus and Genesis. The first thing He’ll do is to contradict all that’s innate against nature. He’ll conflict and contradict all that is natural and bring you to a place of solitude where He can train you because only He can prepare you for His purpose.

The first thing He does, having emptied you of everything else, is to reveal His character in a confrontational manner, like burning fire in baptism. It’s not incidental that on the day of Pentecost, it was tongues of fire that sat on their heads, and at Sinai, it was tongues of fire. The revelation of who He is, balanced with the revelation of who you are, becomes that which God begins to use.

I want you to bow your heads with me for a moment, and as we close, I want to ask you a couple of very serious questions. First is a matter of identity. Are you aware of a time and date right now when God’s shaking things? Some king is dead, some king is prosecuting. There is a shaking going on, in which only the things that God wants left will remain. Are you aware of that process right now? May I see your hand? That’s where you are – in a shaking.

Now, secondly, in the same way, are you willing, in obedience to Father God, to go to the backside of the desert to learn the process that He has? Can you believe in the timing of God? Can you believe in the ritual of the Holy Spirit? That though you’ve been trained in the highest universities, and you’ve got the best training in the world, God still has something He has to teach you. The only preparation for your becoming a vessel is His training of you. Are you aware of that kind of moment? And are you willing? Would you raise your hand and say, “By God’s grace, I’m willing, whatever it takes for God to prepare me, whether it’s for the last 5 years, 5 minutes, 5 days, or 5 years.” Raise your hand and hold it there for a moment.

Take your pick. Look at me for a moment. We’re going to stand and be finished. I’ve gone five minutes later than in the first service this morning, and I think that’s a pretty good record with communion, graduates, and dedications. But get this straight: when God begins to do something in your life, you have two choices – bitterness or brokenness. Because the dealings of God will always look more like persecution than they do training. Do you understand that? It always looks more like persecution than it does training when God starts dealing with you, and it always looks like it’s from somebody else’s hand other than God’s. Doesn’t it?

There’s some fellow you want to kick, but God’s… Now, honey, you shouldn’t laugh so hard at that. That had a definite female laugh to it; I don’t know what that meant, but anyway. Not your husband, not your wife. You have to understand that it’s God’s training. And the backside of the desert is His place, and then He begins to open up the Revelation, and He gets you ready so you can do with other people what He’s done with you.

You can draw them out; He’s drawn you out. You can lead them through the wilderness because you’ve been to the wilderness. I love what God says. The greatest proof that you’ve known me will be out; you’re going to lead the people right back to this mountain, and you’re going to worship God right here. I’d say, whoopee!

Big deal! The biggest proof that I’m really in this thing is we’re coming back here again. Yeah, they’re going to come back with you right to this mountain, and you’re going to worship me in this place. You know, you are, as a whole, a very, uh, unique and different group of people. You’ve committed yourself, and this church has committed itself to unique and different understandings to make sure the Word of God has an imminent place in our sharing and understanding.

But as good as that is, and as wonderful as it is, until that gets shaken down in who you are personally, God wants to prepare you. I’m not a prophet. I believe, I’m very sure, we’re heading for the greatest outreach of the gospel in the history of the Christian Church. I know that’s been confirmed by enough prophets; I believe it’s true.

Two things: the greatest influx of people will happen in the next few years, and probably a very deep persecution, a shaking, probably upon our whole economy, not just upon the church. We’ll probably just be a part of it; we’ll probably be blamed somehow for much of it, as we’re already being blamed for much of what’s happening in this country and its politics and so forth.

But get this straight. In that wonderful moment, God’s looking for leaders. And I’ll tell you where they’re not going to come from, and I’ll tell you where they’re going to come from. They’re not going to come from the normal planes of man’s educational system. They’re going to come from God’s training, God’s preparation.

Now all of you know, I believe in education. I’ve stood behind some of these young men and made sure they finish their education. I believe in it. But when it’s done, when you’ve gone to Heliopolis, and you’ve been trained in the courts of Pharaoh, and you’ve gone through everything you can go through,

When it’s all done, then you wait for the moment that God’s going to kick you into a place of very vital reality. You become broken sometimes in that. It can have to do with bad marriages. It can have to do with brokenness, failure. But in it comes a personal relationship with God, not the God of your fathers—your relationship. And out of that, you become a leader. You have something now. The message has been birthed in you for others. Stand with me now, please. And let’s take hands across the auditorium just in this moment of time.

I believe very much that God has people; He continues in this church, and it’s amazing. I’ve shared it with the elders. I don’t know of a church in the entire nation that raises up and sends out like this church does. God just continues raising up mature people, people who have come to grips with His purpose, sending them in, placing them into His purpose, placing them into His plan, and that’s exciting.

It’s exciting and it’s heartbreaking. I think of Sean and Luke, and I’m not trying to make an exception to them, but just to say these two young men that God’s had among us for a period of time, it’s heartbreaking to see them going. It is for me. I’ve watched Sean, particularly from the very moments, and Luke as well, from the moments they were literally children, and watched their choices, and watched God’s Spirit challenging them on choices.

But the exciting thing is that when you begin this process, step by step, early on, high school, grade school, wherever the process starts, and you begin putting God focus in your life, and you start surrendering all the experiences of your life because He doesn’t waste anything, and He begins naming you for your mission out of your life, and that’s so exciting.

A person whom God wants you to be, how He wants you to work and step and walk and what He wants to release in you. Those who are comforted with great comfort become comforters. 2 Corinthians says you can’t comfort someone until you yourself have been comforted. In moments of great distress, you become someone who releases comfort.

I mean you can be. You can be. You’re holding somebody’s hand in the midst of wherever they are. God loves them. God called them by a name. Someday in heaven, He’s got a stone as they overcome. It’s got a name on it that’s going to qualify how all of their life has fit toward the direction and purpose of God.

He wants that released now so that others will find fullness. Let’s pray. Lord, thank you. Deeply work into us. What it is to be prepared by you. Lord, I keep going back to these words that no one can prepare a man for your ministry. This church can’t, this pastor can’t, no school can’t. Only you can prepare a man to be the instrument of your purpose.

Or a woman to be the instrument of your purpose. So Lord, teach us and prepare us and release us and relax us in the process. And Lord, when we’re 40 years in Egypt and 40 years in the desert thinking we’re going to die without ever having a ministry, teach us that in 40 years you’ll do more than in all the presumptuous activity of the flesh.

Teach us that principle, Lord. And work in us by your grace and spirit, in Jesus’ name. And everyone said, Amen. You’re dismissed. God bless you. Have a good afternoon. See you tonight at 6.