Episode Transcript
You're listening to the Travis Rutland Podcast. Travis Rutland is a spirit filled pastor and ministry leader who has been featured on International Christian Television. He serves as lead pastor of Liberty Square Church in Cartersville, Georgia, and as president of Global Servants. His sermons focus on clear biblical teaching, practical truth and encouragement for everyday life. Each message is designed to strengthen your faith and draw you deeper into God's word. This podcast is brought to you, to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global servants, please visit globalservants.org now here's Travis Rutland.
[00:00:42] We're going to talk about Moses this morning. There's a lot of different journeys we could talk about with Moses, of course, but this morning we wanted to. I wanted to talk about one early or earlier in his life before he really became Moses, who the deliverer and all of that. And so this is Journey to Midian. This is Journey to Midian. So turn, if you will, to Exodus, chapter two. We're going to begin reading with verse 11. Now, before we get there, I just want to remind you, you remember that Pharaoh, the Pharaoh of Egypt, grows nervous and worried about how large the Jewish population in Egypt is growing. And so what he does is he begins to practice. You know, he decides to try and slow down the Jewish population, so to speak. He tries to make them grow less quickly. And so he decides, he passes a law that all male children of the Jewish people have to be killed. And so Moses, the baby Moses, is born and rescued and saved. They put Moses in a little boat, they float him down the Nile and Moses is rescued. You know the story, I assume, But I just want to remind you, Moses is rescued by Pharaoh's own daughter. And he is raised, raised not in the Jewish community. He is raised in Pharaoh's own household. He is raised among the Egyptians. However, based on these verses, there's.
[00:02:07] There's no question that Moses realizes his lineage and where he is from. Even though he is raised among Egyptians, even though he's raised in Pharaoh's household, it is clear that Moses understands that he is Jewish and from the Hebrew people. Okay, so this is where we're at. Moses raised in Pharaoh's house, but he knows he's Jewish. The Jewish people have been put in slavery in Egypt. All right, Exodus chapter 2 and verse 11. Now, it came to pass in those days when Moses was grown that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens, that is the Jewish people, his brethren.
[00:02:42] And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren, and he looked this way and that, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and, and hit him in the sand. And when he went out the second day, behold two Hebrew men were fighting. And he said to the one who did the wrong, why are you striking your companion? And the man said, who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me? As you killed the Egyptian, so Moses feared and said, surely this thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian.
[00:03:18] Let's pray. God, we ask in the next few moments that you will speak to us, each of us, all of us. We want to hear all that you have for us.
[00:03:25] Your spirit has moved so wonderfully in praise and worship. We ask that you continue to speak to us right now, in this moment. In Jesus name we pray.
[00:03:34] Amen.
[00:03:36] Great Britain or England, is an island nation. It's been an island nation for centuries and centuries and centuries. It's been an island, of course, and the issue with being an island nation is that you need to have in order to project power, in order to project strength. If you are an island nation, you have to have a large and impressive navy. That's critical because you can't march from your country to other countries and wage war. You can't defend your empire. You can't anything. If you're an island nation, you understand that? So you have to have boats and ships that take your soldiers to the places they're supposed to be. You also have to protect your empire. So in order to be an island nation that has strength and power and might, you have to have an impressive navy. And in order to have a large and impressive navy, you have to have a lot of sailors to work in the navy, to be on those boats, to do the stuff that you're supposed to do as an impressive navy. But here's the thing, you usually can't find enough guys that want to spend years at a time alone on a boat.
[00:04:42] So what happened to the Royal Navy? Decided in the 17th and 18th century, the royal Navy had what we call press gangs. What they referred to what they were doing as impressment in the fact that they were pressing or forcing men of a certain age to serve on ships in the Royal Navy. So you're out one night at a pub, at a bar, you're having a great time and. And then a bunch of really mean, tough looking guys come in the bar and they've all got clubs, and the next thing you know, somebody hits you in the head with a club and you're unconscious, and you wake up the next day and you find yourself on a boat in the North Atlantic.
[00:05:24] That's what a press gang did. Okay? So for centuries, the Royal Navy did not ask if you wanted to serve. They told you that you were going to serve. And so they would press you, force men into serving on the ships. And it was a huge problem because the British, the Royal Navy, didn't just find guys in England, they found guys everywhere. In fact, when the Declaration of Independence was written, as we know, our 250th anniversary, birthday, I guess, is coming up this coming weekend. This Saturday is July 4th, right? 1 When. When our founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence, they published the Declaration of Independence with a list of 27 grievances. These were grievances by the colonials. This is the stuff that England has done that wronged us. This is the reason we're declaring our independence. This is the reason that we're writing the Declaration of Independence. And they published a paper with 27 colonial grievances. And one of those colonial grievances was press gangs. You are forcing us, Americans. Right? We're colonials. You're forcing us to serve our on your ships.
[00:06:33] So they were going on journeys that they didn't want to go on to. They didn't want to sail halfway around the world. They were being forced to. But all of us, having maybe not experienced a press gang, all of us have been forced to do things to go on journeys that we don't want to go on. How many of you remember either being a child or raising your kids? There is nothing worse than taking children to a grocery store. It is absolutely the worst thing. I never wanted to be at a grocery store. There's nothing kid friendly in a grocery store at all. At least in a mall, there's a couple of stores that you want to go into if you're a child. But in the grocery store, it's nothing but cheese and onions and fruit and who cares? When you're a little kid, the groceries mom would constantly force me and my sisters to go with her to the grocery store. The only thing worse as a child than being forced to go on a journey to the grocery store was being forced to go and buy clothes.
[00:07:29] I hated it. I hated when my mom would say, nope, you've grown too much, your pants are too short, whatever it is, your shirts are too small. We've got to go to the store. And I'm just going to tell you, shopping for clothes As a child in the 1980s was a really humiliating proposition. And you may say to yourself, I don't remember it being that embarrassing. And I'm going to tell you, it's because probably you didn't shop in the areas that I did. Because what we did in the 1980s is when for kids that were a little bit bigger, let's say for kids that were a little bit larger, like myself, we had our own section. Do you know what this humiliating section was called? The Husky section. That's right, the Husky section. Are you kidding me?
[00:08:12] See, kids these days, we've designed the whole world to not upset you guys. And it's a wonderful time to be a child. It's an amazing time to be a teenager. Adults in the 1980s didn't care one bit about your feelings.
[00:08:26] As a child of the 80s. My mother would walk us into a Kmart. That's right. That's how old I am. We would walk into a Kmart, and she would say, I think the Husky section is over here, Travis.
[00:08:38] And I was like, thanks, Mom. The volume was always a little too loud when she made that statement.
[00:08:43] She just wanted everybody in Kmart to know that her kid was fat. And it was like, hey, the Husky section is over here. And I had to, like, humiliating walk. The trek, the journey to the Husky section.
[00:08:57] It was awful. And that is a true story. There was a section called Husky. What was wrong with us in the 80s? All right, so here's the thing. All of us have been forced to go on journeys that we don't want to go on.
[00:09:10] This journey to Midian is a journey that Moses didn't want to go on. But it is not like the press gang or your mom forcing you to shop for Husky pants.
[00:09:21] That is not what happened here. Moses didn't want to go to Midian, but Moses was forced to go to Midian. Why? Because of his own sin and stuff and poor decision making. Moses had forced his unwanted journey to Midian because of the things that he had done.
[00:09:40] How many of us do the same thing? There's journeys that we're forced to go on because of stupid decisions that we've made in the past.
[00:09:48] We do this thing, and then we have to go to Midian.
[00:09:53] So. So that's what we want to look at this morning in these. In these verses that we've already read is this. How can we think about and try to avoid journeys that are caused by our own poor decision making?
[00:10:07] Everybody in here has made this trek to Midian at one time or Another, because of what we have done ourselves, Moses makes himself. Moses is forced by his own hand to make a journey he doesn't want to make because of what he had done.
[00:10:25] Now it's going to be a little bit different. We want to look basically again, at two verses we just read, but I want to take them in little sections. I think often we kind of read these stories. We look at them, we know what's going to happen. Moses kills an Egyptian, and then he flees to Midian, and then he marries a girl in Midian. He stays there for a long time, and we kind of like do the Cliff Notes. We just kind of move through the story quickly. And I want this today, this morning, a little bit different. I want us to look at this in a little bit of sections of the verses. So turn back, if you will, to Exodus 2 and 11 where we started.
[00:10:58] Look at the first part of Exodus 2 and 11 now. It came to pass in those days when Moses was grown.
[00:11:08] It came to pass in those days when Moses was grown.
[00:11:12] Now Moses says to himself, he knows. He's Hebrew. He knows he was raised in Pharaoh's household. He knows that God has a call on his life. And so he is grown. He's an adult. I can finally make my own decisions. And he says to himself, now is the time to stand up for my Hebrew brethren. It says he saw them beating one of his brethren.
[00:11:35] When did this happen? When Moses was grown. The first thing is this. We experience setback when we decide our timing is correct. When we decide that our timing is correct, that is when the journey to Midian begins, is the moment that we decide that we know the timing better than God does. The moment that we say to ourselves, oh, I am. What does he say? When Moses was grown. When Moses was grown, how many of us, we go, oh, I'm finally where I'm supposed to be. Oh, I'm finally mature enough in my Christian walk. Oh, I've finally reached a stage where I can start doing this or I can start doing that.
[00:12:13] Did God call Moses to be the deliverer of God's people? Yes, he did. Did God call him to deliver his people in that time right then? No, he didn't. He. Moses wasn't ready yet. Moses thought he was because he was grown, but he wasn't.
[00:12:30] I want to encourage you. Wait on the Lord. Don't get in front of him. Don't run ahead of his timing. We experience the journeys to Midian when we get in front of what God is trying to do. God's Timing is not our timing. We know this. And it's frustrating. And I understand it's frustrating, but there are things that we have to learn. There's stuff we have to know. And just because we think we're ready, Moses said, I'm grown, I'm ready. Just because we think we're ready doesn't mean we are actually ready.
[00:13:01] Wait on God's timing.
[00:13:04] The journey to Midian always begins when we decide we're ready. And we don't care what God has to say about it.
[00:13:11] God, Moses said, now's the time. I'm grown. I don't have to listen. I'm ready. I can do what I want. We experience setback when we decide God's our timing is correct, we experience setback. Now look at the second part, verse 11.
[00:13:31] Moses went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren.
[00:13:42] So he sees something bad that's happening. He sees something bad that's happening.
[00:13:47] Is he righting a wrong?
[00:13:50] Yes. Is he protecting one of his Hebrew brethren?
[00:13:54] Yes. Is the man because they're in slavery, is the man probably being beaten unjustly? Yes.
[00:14:02] But what does Moses do? Instead of trying to bring calm and order to it and try to trying to explain to the Egyptian why he shouldn't do it, instead of trying to reason to him, Moses decides that his best course of action is to kill that guy.
[00:14:16] That seems like an impulsive and emotional overreaction.
[00:14:21] You understand that, right? He's. Yes, okay, he's beating this guy up. But it never says that the Egyptian was about to kill the Hebrew. It just says he was beating him.
[00:14:32] And Moses steps in and decides to murder the Egyptian.
[00:14:35] So the next thing is this. We experience setback when we act impulsively.
[00:14:40] The journey to Midian begins when we respond impulsively and emotionally, when we get upset, when we get bent out of the frame, when we get personally offended, and we respond with deep levels of impulsiveness, deep levels of emotional.
[00:14:56] Right? You've got to learn how to regulate yourself.
[00:15:01] We as Christ followers, we as Christians, we as believers, have got to learn to be a little more even keeled.
[00:15:09] Listen to me, I'm begging you, because I've sit in a lot of counseling sessions and I'm just telling you we are not approaching life with the level of maturity and calm that we need to.
[00:15:22] We are getting really, really bent out of the frame. We are responding with deep levels of emotional. This Moses, we can't deny what happened here. Okay? We Say, well, Moses was trying to defend or be or help or whatever. Moses is a murderer.
[00:15:42] He committed murder. There's no justification here for that. It's not like you understand that he, he killed this guy.
[00:15:52] We, we experience setback when we respond impulsively, when we act impulsively.
[00:15:59] You have to learn that as you're dealing with other people, the more upset everybody else in the room gets, the calmer you need to be.
[00:16:09] The calmer you need to be when somebody else starts yelling. I'm just going to tell you something because I don't know a lot, but I know a little bit about this. When somebody else starts yelling, you've got to stay calmer and calmer. If you meet their anger and their impulsiveness, their volume level, if you meet their volume level, and then it just goes like that.
[00:16:33] Somebody has got to act like an adult.
[00:16:36] You probably will never work for my father, but if you do, I have set in meetings years ago when I used to work for dad at Global Servants. I have sat in meetings where he is talking to another employee about something, holding them accountable, telling them they need to change. Whatever it is. It's a moment of conflict. It's a moment. It's not a fun place to be. And I have watched other people get upset, more and more upset. And this is what my dad does, That they get more and more irritated, more and more impulsive, more and more emotional. And I've watched my father sit on the couch like this, just sitting in his office.
[00:17:22] I'm just going to tell you something. If you ever do work for my dad and you're having a conversation with him and he does this, you're about to get fired.
[00:17:32] I'm sorry. That's true story that.
[00:17:35] But I learned from him, in moments of serious conflict, somebody has got to stay calm. I don't. I'm not saying I get it right all the time, but there has to be a way in which we ask God to give us discernment, give us peace, give us the fruit of the spirit that we're supposed to be operating in so that we don't react with huge levels of anger when the other person does.
[00:18:00] I'm not saying you can't be mad.
[00:18:03] I get mad, I get frustrated, I get upset. I'm not saying any of that. I do. But when everybody else is getting crazy, right? Isn't it that the point from Rudyard Kipling, when everybody else is losing their heads, can you keep yours when everybody else is going insane, there has to be somebody in the Story that stays calm. How would the story have been different if Moses had tried to stay calm and reason with the Egyptian and tell him and talk to him?
[00:18:30] You can't just go around murdering people.
[00:18:33] We experience setback. The journey to Midian begins when we act impulsively, acting impulsively in our own timing. And you see this. Moses is getting closer and closer to a journey he doesn't want to go on. All right, now look at the beginning of verse 12.
[00:18:51] So he looked this way, Moses. So he looked this way, that way. And when he saw no one.
[00:19:01] It's fascinating. I think we look at that and we just read over it. But I want you to understand sort of the visual of this. He sees this Egyptian beating up this Hebrew and he looks, right, looks like an old timey movie villain, right? Looking to make sure nobody's paying attention. And he sees no one.
[00:19:23] Where should he have looked?
[00:19:27] Up, up.
[00:19:29] He's looking the wrong way. He's looking around to see if anybody's seeing him. He is caring about what's happening here instead of his relationship with God. He cares about the horizontal and not the vertical. We experience setback when we obsess about what others think.
[00:19:47] He's caring about what other people think. This has become. Our culture has shifted on this. This is a fascinating thing that our culture has done in the last couple of years or decades. With the onset and the onslaught of social media, everybody, nobody even cares what they're doing anymore, whether from a moral standpoint. I don't believe that a bunch of these people that are spouting the slogans that they're spouting actually believe the thing that they're saying.
[00:20:14] It's just that they believe that everybody will like them more if they hold up the right placard.
[00:20:20] I don't believe they actually believe it. I don't believe they can't explain it.
[00:20:25] They can't explain what they believe. They cannot give actual explanation to what they are. What are they doing? They're spending their whole life doing this.
[00:20:34] Is everybody going to like me? Is everybody going to cheer for me? Is everybody going to applaud for me? I want the accolades. I want everybody to love me in the same way. What Moses was doing was he was looking around to make sure that nobody see him doing the wrong thing. And that's what we struggle with, right? Because our culture has gone totally and completely insane.
[00:20:54] And we as the church, we as the bride of Christ, have to hold the line when it comes to truth, when it comes to the real, true Truth. We have to hold the line when it comes to things like sin and when it comes to all of that stuff. And the problem is, if we, the church, begin to look around and try and see whether everybody else likes us or not, we will lose the mandate that Jesus has called us, has called us to.
[00:21:20] We.
[00:21:21] We are not looking this way or that way. Who cares what they think? Our only responsibility is to look upward. Our only responsibility is, what is our Heavenly Father saying to us? What is he telling us to do? Where is he telling us to go?
[00:21:35] That is what we have got to do. We've got to get back in touch with it, the world around us.
[00:21:42] Here's the thing.
[00:21:44] We don't.
[00:21:46] It's scary.
[00:21:48] I understand it's scary.
[00:21:50] We don't want to say this thing or, you know, promote this thing that everybody. Nobody likes to be booed.
[00:22:01] Nobody likes to be booed.
[00:22:05] I'm not asking you to do this, by the way. Please don't.
[00:22:08] But if I'm just preaching on a Sunday morning and somebody's like, boo, that would be awful.
[00:22:16] That would be humiliating.
[00:22:19] At my last church, a guy fell asleep and snored so loud the whole church could hear him. That was pretty terrible. I'm gonna be honest with you.
[00:22:27] That's a pretty bad one. If you're gonna sleep, go out in the lobby, man. I can't deal with that. You know what I'm saying?
[00:22:33] So, like, he fell asleep and snored so loud I could hear him on the platform. And I was like, somebody wake Stanley up, please.
[00:22:42] That's a true story, by the way. Totally fell asleep.
[00:22:46] All right? As bad as that was, imagine if somebody was just like, boo. Boo. This guy's terrible. This guy's awful. Boo.
[00:22:56] I don't want to do that.
[00:22:58] I don't want to do that, man. I'd be calling security. Get this guy out of here.
[00:23:03] Right, right.
[00:23:05] But I understand it.
[00:23:08] So we say, this is what God has told us.
[00:23:11] And people react in anger, in rage, right? They react furious with us. They say, are you telling me that this thing is a sin?
[00:23:21] That's your moment.
[00:23:23] I'm telling you that's your moment.
[00:23:25] You can either go this and this and go, you know what? It's probably not that big of a deal.
[00:23:31] God probably doesn't really care about that.
[00:23:34] Or they say to you, are you telling me this is a sin? And you can go, yes, it is. I love you and God loves you, but this is a sin. And we, in order for us, we talk all the time in Order for us to change the culture, we have got to stop looking this way and that way. We have to stay focused on our heavenly Father.
[00:23:56] So the road to Midian continues when we care what others think about us, whether that we cannot play for the accolades and the applause, but we also cannot be dissuaded by the booze. You understand? We have to stay focused on our heavenly father. If we're looking around, making sure everybody's cheering for us, we miss the point. And if we.
[00:24:19] If we walk back from what we know is true truth because we're worried that people will boo and jeer us, we also miss what we're supposed to be doing, right?
[00:24:30] We experience setback when we obsess about what others think.
[00:24:34] Look at the next little section. 12 and B.
[00:24:37] He looks this way, he looks that way. He sees no one. What does he do? Moses killed the Egyptian.
[00:24:45] Moses killed the Egyptian.
[00:24:47] Next thing is this. We experience setback when we work in our own strength.
[00:24:53] It doesn't say that Moses prayed and God killed the Egyptian. Doesn't say that Moses, that God struck the Egyptian down. It doesn't say that God gave the Egyptian leprosy and he dropped dead. It says Moses killed the Egyptian. Just in the same way that we cannot bring it to pass in our own timing, we also cannot put our hands on it.
[00:25:13] You've got to trust God, that he can make a way where there seems to be no way.
[00:25:17] Did Moses think that he could deliver two and a half million people out of slavery by killing one Egyptian?
[00:25:24] He did it in his own power. He did it in his own strength. He moved in his own way. He wasn't willing to trust that God could provide. He wasn't willing to trust that God could bring about the miracle. He wasn't willing to trust that God could part the Red Sea.
[00:25:38] Right? He wasn't willing to trust that God could turn the Nile river into blood, or that he could bring locusts, or that all those other things that God eventually did.
[00:25:47] Moses tried to put his hands on it. I'm begging you, don't put your hands on it. Don't do it in your own strength and your own power. All you're going to end up doing is killing folks. We cannot put our own hands on it.
[00:26:01] So you see this journey to Midian, this place where he doesn't want to be, it just continues and continues and continues.
[00:26:09] He decided his timing was right. He acts impulsively. He's obsessed with what others think. He works in his own strength. And look at the final part of verse 12 and hid him in the sand.
[00:26:25] And hid him in the sand.
[00:26:28] The final thing is this. We experience setback when we try to cover our sin.
[00:26:34] We experience setback when we try to cover our sin. Everybody in here is going to sin. Everybody in here is going to make mistakes.
[00:26:41] Between right now, this moment, and whenever it is that God calls you home, you are going to commit some sin.
[00:26:48] I promise you. You're going to do some terrible things. This many human beings in a room, we are capable of some awful stuff. I got news for you. We are capable of some terrible things. We're going to do some awful stuff. Between now and whenever God calls us, all of us will sin.
[00:27:07] So if we can acknowledge that and be cognizant of that, then when that happens, we can run to the feet of Jesus and ask for forgiveness. If we will confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us of all unrighteousness, Right? The only way that you don't get in on the forgiveness is if you bury the body in the sand.
[00:27:31] Do you see that? Moses refused to take ownership of what he had done. He refused to confess. He refused to ask for forgiveness. He dug a hole in the sand, pushed the Egyptian's body in, covered it up, and said, nobody will ever know.
[00:27:47] We experience setback when we refuse to confess our sin. You cannot keep that thing hidden forever.
[00:27:57] I think I've told this story before, but it goes back to my lack of impulse control that I've mentioned previously in previous messages.
[00:28:07] I was an energetic and rambunctious little kid that had a lot of ideas and thoughts and energy.
[00:28:16] And my poor parents were constantly having to deal with the ramifications of that.
[00:28:23] When we bought a house, when I was in the sixth grade, we bought a house, had a huge basement. It was unfinished basement, so it was just concrete down there and it was wide open, just a couple of pillars. And so I loved it. Down. I'd go down there and run around. I'd ride my bike in the basement because it was, you know, it was just flat and concrete. There's all kinds of fun stuff.
[00:28:45] And the guy who sold the house to my parents had a huge old timey. It looked like an old west safe. He had a big old safe, stood up on big legs. And it was in the corner.
[00:28:57] And I asked my dad after we moved in, I said, what's going on with this safe? And my dad says to me, in the way that you say stuff to kids to brush them off kind of thing, he said, oh, the guy That I bought it from left it here.
[00:29:09] I said, awesome, this safe belongs to us.
[00:29:14] The last guy left it here. And I became obsessed with finding out what was inside that safe.
[00:29:20] I read all the time. And so I thought there was going to be gold in that safe or Indian artifacts or old maps or pirates treasure. I had no idea what was in that safe, but I was obsessed with it. I would go down there for hours at a time and turn the dial on that safe to see if I could safecrack it, and I never could.
[00:29:43] One day I said to myself, I know what I'll do. Because the safe had two things on the front of it had a dial, and then it had a big handle, and you turned it and would pull it open. So you did the dial and got it open and then took the handle and pulled it. And so I said, I know what I'll do. Obviously, this is an obvious solution to this safe.
[00:30:04] I will take an ax and I will chop that handle off of the front of that safe. And I said, I thought it operated like a doorknob. In my sixth grade mind, this made perfect sense. I just want to say I thought it operated like a doorknob. And so I thought you just. You take off the front of the doorknob and the other part falls out, right, because it's not connected to anything. I thought the same thing was true of this safe handle. So I took an ax. One day my parents left, probably to go preach at a marriage conference or something.
[00:30:36] I hope they weren't teaching on how to raise your children. So I took that ax, and a friend of mine was over, and he said to me, are you sure about this? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. And we chopped. It took us. I don't even know how long, but we chopped that handle off of that safe to turn it, to pull it open. We chopped it right off, and it just sheared off, and the inside didn't fall off at all. And we poked at it, and it was just a piece of metal still. Obviously it was. You wouldn't make a safe that worked like a doorknob, but it seemed to make sense. I just cut that thing off and it was just sheared off.
[00:31:18] And I was like, oh, that didn't work. And my friend was like, boy, that didn't work at all. And I was like, well, okay.
[00:31:25] So I took it.
[00:31:29] I always saved things when I was a little kid because of, again, my oddness and how my brain worked. So I Was always saving things when I was a little kid. So I took that handle that I had cut off and I put it in my closet and I saved it as a little token.
[00:31:44] My mom was cleaning my room or doing something in my room weeks later and found it, took it to my dad, and they were like, what is this? They called me in and Dad's like, what is this?
[00:31:55] And I said, it's the handle off of that safe downstairs. And he goes, what?
[00:32:00] I was like, it's the handle off of the safe. The safe that the guy left. He goes, whoa, what did you do? I said, I took an axe and I cut it off.
[00:32:09] He was like, what is wrong with you? Which was sort of what he asked me all the time until I was about 25 years old. He was like, what is wrong with you? And I said, dad, it's okay. The guy left the safe here. It's ours. He said, no, he left it here to come back and get it. He's got stuff in the safe.
[00:32:30] I was like, oh, you're in a lot of trouble.
[00:32:35] It's like, that guy's going to be really upset with you, right?
[00:32:40] My dad had to call the guy and tell him that his idiot kid had chopped off the handle to the front because you can't get in because you can't turn it anymore. I chopped it off anyway. There was nothing in it that was important.
[00:32:52] And I don't even know what happened after that because I was a kid and, you know, and I got in a lot of trouble.
[00:32:58] I don't even know what happened.
[00:32:59] Somebody told me last week, they said, but what happened on your hike in Canyonlands? And I was like, well, obviously we didn't die. We're here.
[00:33:07] I was like, so I feel like I have to finish my stories now. I got in a huge amount of trouble.
[00:33:14] I have no idea what happened to that safe. It's totally gone out of my memory. I guess the guy came and picked it up because he didn't want me to chop at it anymore. I have no clue.
[00:33:23] All that to say.
[00:33:25] Listen to me. You cannot bury bodies in the sand and expect to inherit the promises of God.
[00:33:32] You cannot do stuff. We're all going to do stuff. Knowing that we're all going to sin, knowing that we're all going to make mistakes, knowing that we're going to have setbacks, knowing that we're going to do stupid things. If we are clear on that, then when we do those things, we can freely and quickly come before the throne of Jesus and ask for forgiveness.
[00:33:56] It's not that we are expected to be perfect. It is that we are expected to constantly being.
[00:34:02] To constantly access the forgiveness of God that is readily available.
[00:34:07] The journey to Midian happens when we try to cover our sin. When we try to bury bodies in the sand and pretend like it didn't happen. I'm okay, I'm perfect. Nothing's wrong. I don't need to ask for forgiveness. I've never done anything bad.
[00:34:24] And meanwhile, we know where the bodies are buried in Moses case. Literally, the bodies are buried.
[00:34:32] So let me close with this.
[00:34:36] All my. Originally, when I was writing this message, working on it this week, my points for all of this, they all said, we experience setback. We experience setback. Right? We just looked at all those.
[00:34:52] I'd originally had it to say we experience failure.
[00:34:56] We experience failure when we decide our timing is right. We experience failure when we try to cover our sin.
[00:35:03] So I'd originally had it that way.
[00:35:05] But the more I thought about it, the more I prayed about it, the more I realized that just wasn't accurate.
[00:35:12] This is the wonderful thing about who God is.
[00:35:16] This is the magnificent thing. This is the unbelievable thing about who God is.
[00:35:22] We.
[00:35:23] There is only setbacks with God. There is never for us that moment where he can no longer use us.
[00:35:32] Do you see that? There's never that moment.
[00:35:36] What we.
[00:35:38] We never.
[00:35:39] As long as we are willing to change and to do and to. God is still calling us.
[00:35:47] I want to make it clear. I don't want to. I don't want to say the wrong thing here at the end.
[00:35:51] I want to make it clear.
[00:35:55] God always has a call for your life.
[00:35:59] Okay? There is never a moment where he is not have purpose and destiny and calling.
[00:36:08] The only way that we end our lives as a failure, quote, unquote, is if we refuse to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.
[00:36:19] If you do that, you will never ever be a failure. I want to encourage you with that. If you are a believer, if you are a Christian, if you have been saved, you will never be a failure. There is no moment where you can screw up that you. That you get away from the grace of God, that you separate yourself from what God wants to do in your life.
[00:36:45] It's only setbacks.
[00:36:47] This is great news. It's only setbacks. It's never failures.
[00:36:52] It's never failures. I changed that because I didn't want to disenfranchise people listening to this message. I want you to hear what I'm saying, no matter what you've done, no matter the sin, no matter the mistake, no matter the bodies that are buried in the sand, you are not a failure. Those are setbacks. Those are setbacks.
[00:37:18] The only way that we become, that we can fail is if we refuse to respond when the call of God comes.
[00:37:25] Now Moses travels to Midian. He meets a nice girl. They get married. He gets a job with his father in law, and, you ready for this? He spends 40 years in Midian in a place he didn't want to be, on a journey he didn't want to go because of what he himself had done.
[00:37:45] 40 years in Midian as a shepherd, and he had to think, it's over, it's finished. I have no future. I have no purpose. I have no destiny.
[00:37:56] One day he's out tending the sheep.
[00:37:59] He's an old man now. He's 80 years old.
[00:38:02] Half his life in the desert as a shepherd. God is done with Moses. It's finished.
[00:38:10] It's over. He had to think to himself, I am a failure. He wasn't. But he had to think that to himself.
[00:38:18] And then one day, he's watching the sheep, and as he climbs up into the sort of the outcroppings of a mountain called Horeb, he sees a bush that's on fire, but it's not being consumed.
[00:38:35] He says, I will turn aside and see this thing.
[00:38:39] Imagine that, a bush on fire, but not being burned up.
[00:38:43] And a voice comes out of the bush that identifies himself as God. It is God himself speaking to Moses through the burning bush. And watch what he says. Look, if you will, in Exodus, chapter three and verse seven, Exodus 3:7.
[00:39:03] And the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. For I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.
[00:39:32] Now, therefore, behold. The cry of the children of Israel has come to me.
[00:39:37] I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them.
[00:39:42] Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.
[00:39:54] See, Moses is not a failure. He is not disqualified from the purpose and destiny on his life. And neither are you.
[00:40:03] Neither Am I? Neither is any of us. No matter the setbacks that we encounter, no matter the mistakes and the sin and the dumb stuff that we do and the bodies that we leave buried in the sand, God has not abandoned us.
[00:40:18] They are setbacks. We stay focused on him, on what he is saying, his power, his strength, his timing. We confess our sin. And what does it say?
[00:40:30] I will deliver them. I will deliver them, but I will send you to lead them out of the Egypt. Listen, you have destiny and purpose in front of you.
[00:40:43] Some of you may have been on a journey in Midian for as long as Moses was.
[00:40:49] Some of you may be sitting there right now thinking to yourself, I made this decision 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and I am still in Midian.
[00:40:59] You may have convinced yourself that you are failure. You may have convinced yourself that God has no purpose or destiny for you. And I'm telling you, in the name of Jesus, that is not right. In the name of Jesus, that is. That's wrong. In the name of Jesus, God has victory for you. He has purpose for you. He has destiny for you.
[00:41:23] You were not created to live your days out in Midian. He has made you for destiny. God wants to do something in you and through you.
[00:41:33] Everybody experiences setbacks.
[00:41:36] What we have to do when we're in Midian is listen to God when He speaks and learn from the mistakes that we've made.
[00:41:44] Now, it's the final Sunday of the month, and we're going to receive communion this morning.
[00:41:49] If the ushers will begin to prepare the elements, we're going to receive communion. But I specifically wanted to do this message on Communion Sunday because I want you to hear me on this.
[00:42:02] Communion reminds us that we are not defeated.
[00:42:07] Communion reminds us that Jesus has already won the victory. Communion reminds us that the same spirit that raised Christ Jesus from the dead lives in us.
[00:42:18] Communion reminds us that we can be victorious, that we are not simply failures.
[00:42:28] Yes, there's setbacks. Yes, we do dumb stuff. Yes, we hurt others. Yes, we cause pain.
[00:42:35] Yes, all of those things.
[00:42:38] But you are not a failure.
[00:42:40] Christ Jesus, his body broken and his bloodshed for you.
[00:42:45] So what?
[00:42:46] For what? For this. So that you might have the same victory that Jesus won on the cross for us.
[00:42:55] His body broken, his blood shed.
[00:43:01] He didn't just do that for Himself.
[00:43:05] He did that for you.
[00:43:08] We are more than conquerors. We are more than victorious. Not because of what we do, but because of Christ, Christ Jesus in us.
[00:43:17] You may be on a journey to Midian.
[00:43:19] You may have messed it up. You may have gotten it wrong. You may have caused pain. I have no idea what's happening. What I know is that your destiny is not to remain as a shepherd in Midian.
[00:43:32] Your destiny. God is calling you to something, the same way he called Moses.
[00:43:38] No matter what setbacks you've had, you are not defined by your past.
[00:43:44] God has called you to a destiny and a purpose.
[00:43:48] You are victorious.
[00:43:50] Here's what we're going to do. In just a moment, I'm going to pray. The ushers are going to pass out the elements. I want you to hold those. I'm going to come up again at the end, and we're going to receive communion together, and then we'll be done. But if you will, please hold the elements until everybody has them, and we'll receive them together. Let me pray. Lord, we thank you.
[00:44:07] We thank you, God, for your victorious power, represented through communion. We thank you for this reminder of your body broken and your bloodshed so that we are no longer defined by our sin. You took our sin on your body.
[00:44:22] And those that the sun sets free are free indeed. We receive it. We receive your victorious power. This morning. We are no longer in bondage, in exile in Midian. You have given us a destiny and a future.
[00:44:38] We receive it. In Jesus name we pray.
[00:44:42] Amen.
[00:44:44] Thank you for listening to the Travis Rutland Podcast. If you enjoyed this message and you're in the Cartersville, Georgia area, we invite you to join us at Liberty Square Church. You can also watch online and connect with us on Facebook and YouTube. We'll see you next time. Next week for another message from Travis Rutland.
