Latest / Bayside Davis Podcast / Trusting God | Hebrews 11:23-26

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Trusting God | Hebrews 11:23-26 · Bayside Davis Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Beside Davis Podcast.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: You are now listening to our current teaching series in the book of Hebrews.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: When God calls a person, God prepares that person for their calling.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: An unknown author once said, failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some truth to that.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's also truth to the fact that even if you are well prepared for whatever your calling, your vocation, your endeavor is, you will still fail.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you can learn and become better and grow and solidify who you are through those failures.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: As I think about my life, I see both of those realities at play in what God has called me to do.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that for years God was preparing me, even in circumstances I didn't quite understand.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And also through the everyday life of the evolution of involvement in whatever God has called you to do, you're gonna fail.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully in my life and your life, you are growing and learning and getting better through the reality of failure.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The great Michael Jordan once said, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've lost almost 300 games.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: What a statement.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: We see both of these realities at play in the life of Moses.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Moses was one of the greatest leaders in biblical history, and I would argue in human history.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he had a calling from God, and he had a long period of preparation, which included failure.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when we have a calling from God, we struggle with the preparation process.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: If that's you, say amen.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest devotionals was written by Oswald Chambers, my utmost first highest, and he wrote in one of the sections on his devotional, he said, one of the greatest strains in life is the strain on waiting for God.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: When you're just waiting on God, God, you've called me to this.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm waiting for you.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: When is this coming to fruition?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: When are you gonna open up these doors and what I'm gonna get to do what I feel like I'm called to do?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a strain that we have when we're waiting on God.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: But could I suggest it is so important for you to trust in God?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: As you're waiting for Him and waiting on Him, it is so important that you trust in God.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 11, 23 through 26 is another, another example of one of the great biblical heroes in this hall of faith.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is a history lesson of the people of God living by faith person after person after person.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now we come to Moses.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in this section, we're gonna learn of the circumstances that God used to prepare Moses for his calling.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses becomes, in biblical history, one of the greatest leaders in biblical history, and in the Jewish tradition, he is considered to be the greatest person in history.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: He had a calling and he had a preparation time and he had failures as well.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Look with me at Hebrews chapter 11, verse 23.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, can I just, you know, we're all family, can I just say, I got really sick right after Christmas, and it took, I mean, I still kind of feel off.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the last three weekends, I was teaching at another church last weekend, multiple services, and I taught here the weekend before, and then I'm teaching, I've had these lightheaded, dizzy things, so that's why I'm sitting this morning, if you wouldn't mind.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I feel a lot better sitting.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, 1123 through 26.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: By faith, Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw he was of no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the Pharaoh's daughter.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: He chose to be meet mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is an amazing story.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: This story is told of Moses' preparation leading up to his calling.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And really, there's two highlights that the author of Hebrews brings to our attention, brings to the light.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is Moses' parents' faith.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Moses' parents had the faith to protect him under this evil Pharaoh who had an edict to kill every male child born.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's verse 23.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second highlight is verses 24 through 26, where he talks about Moses' faith.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses' parents had faith that God was doing something special in their baby.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Don't all parents think that?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my baby's gonna do something great in this world.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good thing.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't think that, that's a problem.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, the author of Hebrews, says, he forsook the privileges of Egypt to be identified with the people of God.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was he was royalty.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he decided that being associated with God's people was far better than the royal privileges of ancient Egypt.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to fully understand this story, we have to go back to the book of Exodus.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: The book of Exodus.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Exodus chapter 2 tells us and narrates this story.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Exodus 2.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Moses' preparation in Egypt, verses 1 through 10.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what he says here.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: When she saw that he was a fine child or a beautiful child, she hid him for three months.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then she placed the child in it and took it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: His sister, Miriam, Moses' sister, stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just stop there.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is Moses' preparation, the first 40 years of his life, and it already starts out quite challenging.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was a man and a woman who got married, Omron and Jacobed.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two great biblical names.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they had baby Moe or Baby Moses.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they looked at Moses, notice in verse 2, and they said, He was a fine child.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting Hebrew term, Tov.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It means good.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It means beautiful.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It means healthy.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same word that's used seven times in Genesis chapter one, where God created and he called it good.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful, right, healthy.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: They looked at their baby and they said, our baby is good and beautiful.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Don't all parents think that their baby is beautiful?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even when it isn't?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not every, can we just be honest here?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not every baby is a beautiful child.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them grow into beauty.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, sometimes you you can't lie.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: You you you see somebody's baby and you say, oh, what a beautiful baby.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then you see other babies and you say, oh, what a baby.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But they looked at Mo and they said, This is a beautiful child.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't say, Oh, what a baby.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Tov, beautiful, healthy.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason he uses this term Tov because the birth of Moses was intended to be understood as a dawn of a new creative era that God was about to work.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't an ordinary child, this was a special child.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And yet there was an edict in the land according to Exodus 1.22.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then Pharaoh gave this order to all the people every Hebrew boy that is to be born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Moses' life starts out with potential tragedy.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Moses' life, the very origination of his story was trial and tribulation and suffering and challenges, just like some of our lives from a very young age.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, his parents had the faith to protect him.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: His mom, verse 3, she built a papyrus basket that could float along the Nile River.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in an attempt to save his life, the only way that she could save his life was to put him down the Nile.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she knew that women in Egypt would bathe along the Nile, and maybe a woman would pick up this basket and save and deliver this non-ordinary, beautiful life.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So she places him in a basket along the Nile.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Miriam, Moses' sister, remember, Moses had a sister and a brother, Miriam and Aaron.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: She stands in a distance with bravery and wisdom.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she watches the scene as they set baby Moe in the basket in the river and he floats down the river.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then verse 5.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is the daughter of the king.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So she goes down to the, she takes a bath, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: She saw the basket from the reeds and sent her female servant to get it.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: She opened and saw the baby.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was crying and she felt sorry for him.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the Hebrew babies, she said.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: She understood that her father's edict was evil, that they were murdering all the male children, and she had compassion.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is bravery and brilliance.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because Miriam, the sister, the older sister of Moses, knew that if she said yes, that it would be the mother of Moses and the mother of Miriam that she would get to nurse the child.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then his sister asked Pharaoh, Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Which was normal in those days with adopted children.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: They would hire a wet nurse for years who would feed the child and take care of it.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, yes, go, she answered.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the girl went and got the baby mother.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was a good deal.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the woman took the baby and nursed him.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So Mo, also known as Moses, goes back to his mother.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: The child is spared.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses gets to be nurtured by his mom.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And his mom is paid to do it.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is only God and only faith.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: She named him Moses, saying, I drew him out of the water.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is an incredible story.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Moses is in Egypt.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: He has a death sentence because he's a male child.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: His family has the faith that this is not an ordinary child to save him.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: He gets saved by Pharaoh's daughter, goes back to mom, and then goes back to Pharaoh's daughter and grows up in Egypt for 40 years in the household of the Pharaoh who wanted to kill him.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's a story.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Acts 7.23, when Moses was 40 years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think this through with me.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is Moses' first phase of his life, the first 40 years.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: During the first 40 years of Moses' life, he grew up in Egypt.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: He knew the land, he knew the culture, he knew the language, he knew the Egyptian people, he knew the Hebrew people who were enslaved in Egypt.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: He grew up in Egypt.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he grew up in the royal family of Egypt.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: The baby who was supposed to be killed is now royalty.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: He knew the rulers, he knew the government, he knew the influential figures, many of which were his family.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he also grew up educated in Egypt.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: The culture, the royal lineage, the education, which, if you know anything about ancient history, if you wanted to be educated at this time, you were in Egypt.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: The best education in the world.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Today it's Davis, California.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: He would have learned literature, writing, learning how to copy texts, the religions, communication, mathematics, warfare, even sports were big in Egypt.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go, sports.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: He had all the holistic education.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, last night I was really interested, you know, reading this text, I was interested in Egypt, and I found an archaeological documentary of ancient Egypt.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I watched the whole thing.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they're digging at all of these sites, some of these sites 4,000 years old, and they were digging in one site and they found these burial chambers that are like 20, 30 feet into the ground.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: They go all the way down, then they find the coffins, and then they take all the figures out, and then they open the coffin and they hope that they find a mummified body.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this archaeologist found a mummified body, but next to the body was an intact scroll, 4,000 years old, wrapped in some type of leather.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: They picked it up, they thought if they touched it, because it had been there for thousands of years, that if they touched it, it would just disintegrate.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: But they picked it up and it was intact.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And they took it back to the place in Cairo, the museum in Cairo that deals with scrolls, ancient scrolls, and they actually preserved it and unrolled it.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was 50 feet long and perfectly intact.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what this has to do with anything that I'm talking about, but it was exciting to me.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: This was the place of education.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple things about calling that I want to bring to your attention this morning.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, write this down.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: God can use your culture of origin as a part of your calling.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't dismiss that.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Where you grew up, where you were in cultured, where you learned different things about life.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: God can use that as a part of your calling.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forsake your culture of origin.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, God can use your education as a part of your calling.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously you think that because you're paying$40,000 a year at UC Davis.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Or you have a four-bride scholarship, and we all praise God that a few people in here get that.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then some people don't praise God because they wish they had that.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: But we rejoice with those who rejoice.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: So this is Moses.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Moses had a culture of origin and an education, and all of this God used in his calling, and I'll explain how.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: At the age of 40 years old, he goes out and he's rejected by the Egyptians and the Hebrews.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: One day after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, fighting, that's what it means, striking.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of his own people.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses is like, these are the oppressed people, and I'm a Hebrew.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Looking this way and that, so he did, so nobody was there and he wouldn't get caught, seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: The actual verbiage there is he struck him.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: He did the same thing.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: He he punched him.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And his punch, I guess he was really strong.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: His punch killed him.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he hid him in the sand.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting, same word.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he asked one, he asked the one in the wrong, why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: The man said, Who made you ruler and judge over us?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then Moses was afraid and thought, What I did must have become known.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what you don't know is that in the ancient world there was a lot of fighting.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, three times in these verses, the same Hebrew word is used, nakah.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: It means to strike, to punch.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's used in verse 11 of the Egyptian beating a Hebrew.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's used in verse 12 of Moses striking down the Egyptian.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's used in verse 13 of the Hebrew striking a Hebrew.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like there was a lot of fighting in ancient Egypt.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Today we pay to watch it.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Boxing on Netflix.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: MMA.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where you watch M ⁇ A, but I I've watched it before and I have to turn away every time they get hit or kicked.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because it stresses me out.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: These people are getting like destroyed and they're bleeding and they're breaking their bones and it's awful.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now you may like it, it just scares me to death.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of fights in ancient Egypt, but Moses is going out not just to break up fights, he's going out because he feels a calling in his heart to protect his people, to deliver them from the oppression, from the system that they're under.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: He feels like that's his calling, and he goes out and he tries to save people, and he is rejected by the Egyptians, and he's rejected by his people, the Hebrews.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's some important lessons for us in this.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we feel some burden on our heart, we feel a passion in our soul, we feel a calling that God has put in our life, and we go out and we try to accomplish it and we're rejected.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And one rejection sometimes causes people to quit forever.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Moses could have been like, man, God.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: My parents knew that I had a calling.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: You put this on my heart, you spoke this into my life, and now I've been rejected in this moment of trying to save and deliver.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, Moses did not mean to kill the Egyptian.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: This was not intentional.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: He must just had a really powerful punch.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like Mike Tyson back in the day.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not Mike Tyson when he just fought that other guy in the Netflix special.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, Mike Tyson back in the day, like the 80s, before most of you were born.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't even know about that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: You weren't alive in the 80s.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to write this down.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Rejection is not an indication that you are not called.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: You need to sear that into your soul.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Rejection is not an indication that you are not called.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a moment of failure.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was protecting, he killed somebody, he hid them, he didn't mean to.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you might think, oh, I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna do this thing, God's called me.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then along the way, in that early narrative of you doing what God said.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Calls you, you fail.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And can I say some of us we're really hard on ourselves?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have such high expectations that we think failure means permanent.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: That we're not good enough, that we're not competent enough, that that people are always gonna see our failures, and that's how they're gonna define us and what we're called to.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the reality that Moses learns failure is never permanent.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: It does not stop you from fulfilling your calling.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your calling when it comes to failure is you believing that failure is permanent when it is not.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Rejection is not an indication that you're not called, failure is not permanent.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then, fifth, this is the fifth thing about calling in the life of Moses, timing is very important in your calling.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Moses.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: He could be like, I've been waiting for 40 years.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: 40 years.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you are 20 and you're like, I can't even imagine being alive 40 years.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: 40 years is a long time to wait.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then he goes out and he's rejected.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then he goes out and he fails.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we do not see God at work when God is at work.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think God was on the sidelines in his life?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, God was at work, he was preparing him.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're like, God, this doesn't make sense.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: You must have departed me.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: This must not be real.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I must not be called.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: All the while God is at work preparing you.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what happens next.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 15 through 22.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Moses' preparation in Midian.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 15.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's how discouraged he was.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: He goes to a desert and he sits down by a well.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure he's like resigning, like, I'm a failure, God.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: How can you use my life?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Look at what I've done.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not even in Egypt where I feel called to rescue my people.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they came to draw water and fill the troughs, uh, their father's troughs for their flock.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some shepherds came along and drove them away.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not the flocks, but the seven daughters.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: But Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: When the girls returned, they're like, this guy's awesome.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: When the girls returned to Rheal, their father, he asked them, Why have you returned so early?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: They answered, An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: He even drew water for us and watered the flock.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And where is he?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Rheal asked his daughters.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you leave him?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds like a great guy.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he'll marry one of my daughters.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Invite him to have something to eat.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Moses agreed to stay with the man who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's a name that you might never want to name your kid, saying, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's stop there.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Moses goes far away from Egypt to a land called Midian.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Midianites were a part of Abraham's line, the line that was supposed to produce the Messiah Jesus.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: They became a nomadic tribe, and they kind of wandered in the deserts.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses goes out to Midian, a desert land, and he's discouraged, defeated.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he sees seven daughters of a priest.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And an Egyptian comes to those seven daughters, and literally the Hebrew verbiage is with force drives them away from watering or from finding water at the well.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what does Moses do?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Moses delivers them.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see something in this pattern of his story?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Moses again and again reveals his heart to save and deliver people.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: First, in verses 11 through 12, where Moses delivers a Hebrew from being beat by an Egyptian.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Second, in verses 16 and 7, when 17, when Moses delivers the priests of Midian's seven daughters from being driven out away from the well, he is a rescuer.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: All indications are that in these small paradigm, illustrative way, he is using his gift, but it's not to the extent that it will be later on.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses delivers them.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he decides I'm gonna set up shop in the desert.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: I can't go back to Egypt.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be killed.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: I did something bad and made a mistake, I have a failure.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So he marries one of the priest's daughters, he has a child, and he spends the next 40 years of his life in the desert.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: 40 years in Egypt learning Egypt.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: 40 years in the desert learning the desert.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: While he's in the desert, he takes on a job in his father-in-law's family of becoming a shepherd of sheep.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: For 40 years.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: He takes these little fragile animals, he feeds them, he cares for them, he learns to lead them and guide them through the desert.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is germane to the story.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Exodus 7:7.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Moses was 80 years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Moses was 40 when he goes out to Egypt to see his people.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Out of the royal household.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Moses was 80 when he leaves Midian and goes to speak to Pharaoh.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Moses spends 40 years in Egypt, and Moses spends 40 years in Midian, the desert.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes we're like Moses.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're 40 years in Egypt.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: We go out, we feel like we're going to fulfill our calling, and then we fail, and we're like, God must not be at work in my life.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then we spend 40 years in the desert, and we're in the desert, and we give up and we lose hope that we'll ever get to do what God has called us to do.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Moses could have been thinking, like, what is God doing?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in this hot, sweaty, dirty.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen the Egyptian desert?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: They get sandstorms.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can't even open your mouth because you'll swallow.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be like inhaling pounds of sand.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: That probably wouldn't turn out too well.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hundred and something degrees in a sandstorm does not sound great.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Moses is there with these baby sheep, these little fragile animals.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's sandstorms, and there's heat, and there's sweat, and it's boring.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's no culture.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: All the culture was in Egypt.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: No sports.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: No academia.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's away from his family and friends and home.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: He could have thought, what a waste of my life.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Don't presume that your timing is the same as God's timing.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: What you may think is a waste of your life is God preparing your life.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: What you think, I'm on the football team, God, I'm not even playing.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna play.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in this lab, God, and I don't yet, I see things, I have vision, I have inspiration, I'm in this lab.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: God, you've given me a brain to understand this aspect of science.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get your time.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Don't underestimate the preparation in the deserts of life.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: God is always at work.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, there's no culture.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is slow and boring and no entertainment, and I've got these little sheep, and I'm away from my family and in my home, and I can't do this because God's not doing this on my time.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't take control of God's preparation.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Think about this.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Someone once said, we don't know who.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Moses was 40 years in Egypt learning to be something.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Moses was 40 years in the desert learning to be nothing.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses was 40 years in the wilderness providing, proving, pardon me, God to be everything.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Moses spent 40 years in Egypt learning Egypt to deliver Israel out of Egypt.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Moses spent 40 years in the desert learning to shepherd, to shepherd Israel through the desert.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses spent the last period of his life, 40 years in the desert, with God's people, leading them and showing them that God was a gracious redeemer and miraculous provider.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Without the first 40 years in Egypt, he would never have been able to go into Egypt and talk to Pharaoh and understand the Egyptian culture.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Without the second 40 years in the desert, he would not have been able to know how to survive and lead a flock of people.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Two million people through the wilderness.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: God used all eighty years of Moses' life to prepare him for the forty years that would change the world.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes we are quite impatient.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Me too.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: We want to understand everything.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: We want the full grand plan before us.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the Lord is saying the years of preparation are just as important as the years of success in your vocation.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Don't undervalue the opportunity to be prepared.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that preparation looks different than what we think.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure Moses was like, oh, after 40 years, I'm ready, God.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us would say, 40 years?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's way too long.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Moses had to wait 80.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: After 40 years, I'm ready, God.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then he had another 40 years that he must have thought, this is never going to happen, God.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Don't take God's calling and plans for your life into your own hands.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let the journey and narrative and circumstances of life all be a part of the interwoven narrative that prepares you for what God has for your life.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: And can I tell you, God has something for your life?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let any voice or any person say otherwise because it's not the truth.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: God has something for your life.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, write this down.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Trust God's preparation and timing to fulfill your calling.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: It might be 20 years, it might be 40 years, it might be 60 years, it might be 80 years, but God is preparing you for something great.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Allow his process to take place so that when those 80 years in Moses' life were over, he was ready to lead two million people through the desert and show them how real and good and powerful God is.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: God has a plan for your life, but God has a preparation for that plan for your life.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Allow him, just surrender.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: God, whatever you want to do to prepare me for what you have designed me to do.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hands, pardon me.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Prepare me.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your preparation is far better than my preparation.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Prepare me for what you've called me to do in Jesus' name.