Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: All right, well good morning everyone. Let's take our Bibles this morning and open them to the book of Exodus, the 6th chapter. Looking this morning at verses 28 through 30 as we continue our verse-by-verse teaching through the book of Exodus.

The title of our message this morning is "Power in Weakness." Maybe you feel weak this morning; you're in a good place, as we're going to see. As you're turning there, just a kind of highlight, accentuate some of the announcements that have already been made. I want to invite you not tonight, but the following Sunday evening, 6:30 PM, October 26th. We're going to be showing in the sanctuary the Dinesh and Debbie D'Souza movie that has just come out called "The Dragon's Prophecy."

And the reason we're showing it is it's not just a political type of movie. It does have some politics in it, but it's a spiritual movie. It reveals the long-standing hatred that Satan has for the Jewish people. It reminds us of Israel's role in the end times. It reminds us that the nation of Israel has a right to be in the land that they're in today.

It talks about the archaeological evidence for the Bible. I mean, you say, "Well, Pastor, aren't these things you talk about all the time?" Yeah, and I'm getting hoarse talking about it. And so it's so great when a movie comes out—and this doesn't happen very often—that reinforces what you're trying to get across over the pulpit.

So if you can work that into your schedule, you guys will love that movie. Copyright doesn't allow us to put it on the internet, so you have to come here to watch it. And I was going to say popcorn will be provided, but I don't know if I can guarantee that at this time.

November the 23rd, right after our Town Center event, which will happen that previous Saturday evening, Shahram Hadian will be in the pulpit. And he's going to teach Sunday school part one, main service part two. And he's someone I know personally; he's a friend of mine. His ministry is called Truth in Love Ministries.

He and his family—his father—got out of Iran just before it was toppled by the Shah being toppled, you might remember, 1979, and replaced by the Ayatollah. So he came to the United States as a very young person, a devout Muslim, and someone bothered to offend him with the gospel, and he got saved.

And he has a powerful ministry exposing the theology and also the political agenda of Islam, which as you've probably noticed is a problem that's proliferating all over the world. And it's proliferating here in the United States of America. So that's coming here November Sunday the 23rd; I want to make you aware of that.

In the meantime, we're continuing our verse-by-verse teaching through the book of Exodus. The first section of the book is dealing with God's redemption of a nation. He's taking the nation of Israel, which has been in Egyptian bondage through a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph. And they've been in that position of bondage for 400 years.

And God is doing a work through this man Moses, bringing the nation out of that bondage. That is sort of a type of what He has done for all of us as believers in Christ. We were steeped in our trespasses and sins, in bondage to sin because of original sin, and God, through the work of a Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ, has redeemed us.

And so we have a picture of how that works personally through a nation that God is using that same pattern with, that same pattern in salvation history. And that's what the book of Exodus is about. Chapter one is how they got enslaved. Chapters two through four is the development of the human instrument that God is going to use, a man named Moses.

A man who is not without flaws. Let me let you in on a little secret: God doesn't use perfect people. Why is that? Because they don't exist, that's why. Other than Jesus, of course. So that encourages me because that means I can apply for the job, right? And that should encourage you as well because God will take you with foibles and all, and craft and mold your character in such a way that He will use you for His eternal purposes.

And Moses is the man that God is using. And then in chapter five, Moses goes out—he's about the age of 80—and he has his first confrontation with Pharaoh, the political leader, political ruler of the known world at that time. And he tells Pharaoh exactly what God told him to say, and Pharaoh doesn't cooperate.

In fact, Pharaoh makes life worse for the Israelis being abused by the Egyptians, I should say. So Moses is very discouraged by the time you get to chapter six. And it's in chapter six, verse one through chapter seven, verse seven, that you read some of the most amazing ways that God encourages His discouraged servants.

So if you've ever been discouraged in life, discouraged in doing the work of God, discouraged in seeking to do what you think is right, but you're getting nothing but headaches and you feel like you're beating your head against a wall, these chapters, particularly chapter six, is just for us.

He gives him divine reassurance through promises, verses one through eight. He reiterates the command that He wants Moses to follow, verses nine through 13. And then last week we saw, verses 14 through 27, He reminds Moses who he is through a genealogy. He comes from a special group of people, a special tribe, the tribe of Levi.

And because Moses stands in that heritage, he has a special calling on his life. Just like you have a genealogy. And I'm not talking about your genealogy that you try to figure out on an app somewhere; I'm talking about your spiritual genealogy. We went over very quickly, I believe it was last time, 33 realities that God speaks about you the moment you place your personal faith in Him, in Jesus Christ for salvation.

Ephesians one and verse three says we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And you would not feel it and you would not know it unless you studied the Word of God. And that becomes very, very helpful in times of discouragement; God reminds us who we are.

God does this with Moses in a more limited sense, verses 14 through 27. And now that that genealogy is finished—and we covered it all, believe it or not, last week—the conversation between God and Moses that was happening in verses nine through 13 gets continued and concluded.

And that's in verses 28 through 30, which we're going to look at this morning. So we have number one, the timing of the conversation, verse 28. Number two, the command of God, verse 29. And then it ends with excuses, more excuses from Moses as to why he is not qualified for this job.

And this is where Moses is going to learn that God does not call the qualified. He qualifies the called. You take a look at the man that wrote the first book of the New Testament, a man named Matthew. And you talk about a guy that was completely and totally unqualified to fulfill that spiritual priority of authoring a book that features the kingship and the regal authority and identity of Jesus Christ.

Matthew was completely unqualified to write that book because he was a tax gatherer. And as a tax gatherer, that meant that he was a traitor because he was working for Rome, the enemy occupier, to extract money from the Jewish people. And beyond that, he was a thief.

It's well known that a tax gatherer who was Israeli working for Rome could take whatever was necessary for Rome, but then they could take from the people whatever they wanted for their own personal enrichment. And so a tax gatherer in that day would be similar to how we would use the phrase, "Oh, that person's a pornographer."

That person traffics in pornography, or that person is running a child prostitution ring, or that person is an abortionist. I mean, kind of the lowest of the low on the social scale, and yet Jesus took Matthew, forgave him of his sins. You'll find that in Matthew nine around verse nine.

And then He didn't just save him from eternal damnation, which would have been enough, but He used him in a strategic way to write the very first book of the New Testament. And this is how God works. He doesn't call the qualified, because there's no one qualified; He qualifies the called.

And that's what He's doing with Moses here, who had blood on his hands as a murderer. By the way, did you know that God's three top servants that I can think of in the Bible were all murderers? They all had blood on their hands. Who am I thinking of? Moses, I'm thinking of David, and I'm thinking of the Apostle Paul.

I mean, you take away Moses, you take away David, you take away the Apostle Paul, and what do you have left of the Bible? Not much. And yet God took these people, forgave them, and then actually put them into the ministry. And it's the whole subject of grace, unmerited favor, that we have a very difficult time wrapping our heads around.

And Moses is having a very difficult time with it as well, saying he's not qualified. And so here come the excuses there in verse 30. So notice if you will, verse 28, the timing of this conversation that's now reconvened. It says, "Now it came about on the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt."

So this is a continuation from verse 13, which says, "The Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron and gave them a charge to the sons of Israel and to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt." Now that conversation was cut short because of the interjection of this genealogy giving us Moses's Levitical heritage, verses 14 through 27.

Now the conversation between God and Moses reconvenes and it picks up, and God here gives Moses a command. The command is in verse 29. It says in verse 29, chapter six, that, "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'I am the Lord. Speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I speak to you.'"

You'll notice that God calls Himself the I AM. "I am the Lord." I mean, if your boss is the I AM, the eternally existent One, what excuses could you have? I remember when I was younger in the Lord, I was thinking about attending seminary. I was under somebody that was encouraging me to go to seminary.

I was working as a lay leader in a church there in California. And I would go into his office and he would talk to me and says, "When are you going to enroll in seminary?" And I was just kind of hemming and hawing, and at the time I kept using money as an excuse, because I didn't really have two nickels to rub together.

Now, of course today, I'm in the big time; I've got three nickels that I can rub together. But I kept saying, "I just don't have the finances and I don't have the money to go to seminary." And he said something that stuck to me right between the eyes; there wasn't much of an answer for that. He said, "Well, lack of money is never an excuse for a Christian because God is your provider." And that was like, "Ouch."

I wasn't seeing God as He is: the all-powerful One, the self-existent One that can finance anything He wants done. I was just kind of waffling back and forth in unbelief. And sometimes we forget this; we forget who God is. I mean, God is big. He's much bigger than we are.

And what He orders, He pays for. He's not like the guy that orders the most expensive meal on the menu and then sits down and consumes it, and then fumbles around for his credit card because he can't find it, can't find his wallet. I mean, that's not God. Where God guides, God provides.

There's a statement you should write down and you should learn and you should memorize because you're going to need it, because Satan and the demonic realm and your detractors are always going to come to you with, "Well, what about limitations here or limitations there?" Hey, where God guides, God provides.

And so Moses here is being reminded of who God is. There's no reason to be insecure about your role and your task and who you are because you're serving the all-powerful God. You're serving the I AM. God has many names in the Bible: Elohim, Yahweh—they all mean different things; they bring out different aspects of who He is.

Elohim—power—that's primarily in Genesis. Yahweh—relational. El Roi—the God who is aware. El Olam—the God who is eternal; He's always been. Jehovah Jireh—the God who provides. The God Isaac feared—the God who deserves reverence. And then the God of Israel, meaning He is a national God.

Yes, He loves all people, but He has a special role for the nation of Israel. And to that list, you can add another great name of God that shows up in the book of Exodus where God calls Himself the I AM. First time this occurred is in Exodus three, verse 14, where God calls Moses to speak to Pharaoh.

And Moses wants to know, "Who shall I say sent me?" Here's the answer: Exodus three, verse 14. God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent you.'" I mean, what greater resume do you need than that? What greater credentials are there than that?

And keep that in mind as God is calling you to do something specific and you're mentally disqualifying yourself and thinking through all of your limitations. Who are we dealing with here? We're dealing with the I AM. Very sadly, many people, my own mother included, although her thinking is now straight on this—many people are raised in homes where they're told over and over again that Jesus was a good moral philosopher.

Jesus was a good moral teacher, but He never claimed to be God. Has anybody heard that? That is a lie right from the pit of hell. And it doesn't take hardly any theological prowess to figure this out because Jesus in the New Testament, over and over and over again—is that enough emphasis?—claimed to be God.

And one of the things Jesus said is He called Himself, in His incarnate state, the I AM. That's in John eight, verses 58 and 59. It says, "Jesus said to them"—that's His detractors, the Pharisees that wanted him dead, that were being influenced by Satan, the father of lies—"Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.'"

Because earlier, Jesus made the statement about Abraham. And he said, "Abraham saw my day and was glad." And they turned on him and they said, "You're out of your mind. Abraham lived 2,000 years ago. You're not yet fifty. How in the world could you ever say that Abraham, a man that lived 2,000 years ago, saw my day and was glad?"

And Jesus said, "The reason I knew Abraham and everything before Abraham is because I AM. I am the uncaused cause, the eternally existent, self-existent One." And when He did that, He took a title that belongs to God and He applied it right to Himself.

And so this idea that Jesus never claimed to be God, it's like, what Bible are you reading? That was a direct claim to deity. And they knew exactly what He was saying—His Jewish Pharisaical detractors—because verse 59 of John eight follows verse 58. And it says, "Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple."