A life changing event - what God can do with a failure

Sermon notes from Sunday 21 May 2017
Exodus 3 verses 1 - 10

I want us to continue with the thought of life changing events or moments.  Moments that have the potential to shake us to our very boots, to change the direction of our lives.  We thought firstly of Saul of Tarsus who stood one day and watched the young man Stephen being put to death.  He actually commissioned it, watched him being stoned to death.  I would imagine that scene never left his mind.  It changed his total perspective.  It would be very difficult to ever get that out of his mind.  He carried that with him until the day on the Damascus road and God brought him to his knees.  That is when we see him converted by the grace of God and changed by the power of God.  Here was the persecutor of the church becoming the preacher of the church.  He loved to imprison people yet he came now to set people free.  Here we now find Moses out in the desert.  A shepherd living amongst his family and loved ones.  He is out there because of his impatience and failure.  He tried to do something in his own ability.  After his failure he ran away.  When we feel we have let God down we run away and hide.  Just like Adam did in the Garden of Eden.  There was no sin there in the beginning, everything was beautiful.  Every tree was there for food but there was one tree that they were not allowed to eat.  Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they fell from grace.  When God came down into the Garden in the cool of the day what did he find?  He found them hiding.  Never allow failure to bring defeat in our lives.  Today let us see what God does with failures.  We need to learn we can do nothing in our own strength and ability.  We need God`s Holy Spirit living and dwelling and filling our lives to the uttermost.  How does God deal with a failure?

For Moses it was an unusual event.  Moses was in the wilderness.  He had been living here for 40 years and had never seen anything like this before in his life.  It was the most normal of days.  Moses was leading his flock to the brook when all of a sudden out of the routine God breaks into his life.  He used a little bush, a thorny bush.  As Moses comes alongside it he sees it is on fire but what is so strange was that it did not burn away.  Imagine the dryness of the desert but this bush did not burn away.  Under extreme heat it should have gone up in a gulf of flames and then be gone.  He was stopped for a moment just to look at it.  Verse 3 "Moses said I will now turn aside and see this great sight."  It caught his attention, it was the most unusual thing he had ever seen.  This bush was not burned away.  The day was only beginning for Moses but something else happened.  God spoke out of the midst of this bush.  "Take off your shoes for the place you are standing on is holy ground."  Moses is going to examine what is happening.  Maybe there is something in your life that is going to change the direction of your life.  Maybe you haven`t taken time to examine it.  That is what God will use to change the direction and course of your life.  A life changing moment.  Think of Jairus. The Bible describes him as a ruler in the synagogue.  He got up and read the scriptures, prayed, invited others to preach the word of God.  He had a great desire for the word of God.  He might not have been saved.  The Jews did not have a lot of time for the Lord.  Something happened in Jairus` home.  He had a daughter who was sick and the first person Jairus thought of was Jesus.  Sometimes when something unusual happens in our lives that we cannot cope with the first thing we do is pray.  Sometimes we set God aside after we come through such a time and never think of him again.  It changed Jairus` attitude.  Maybe there is something in our lives today, in our family, in our home that we have taken for granted, never stopped to wonder why.  God allows things to happen in his providence, not to question him but to follow him.  Remember Peter staying with Simon the Tanner in Acts 9.  He went up to the roof top because it was the time of prayer.  Something unusual happened up there.  As he stood there he was hungry.  He didn`t go back down to satisfy his hunger but continued in his prayer.  He fell into a trance and had a vision of a sheet being let down from heaven with all manner of unclean animals on this sheet.  The Lord said to him "rise, kill and eat."  Peter was angry and replied "not so Lord."  Peter was Jewish and they did not eat anything unclean.  While he thought on this vision God would change the course of Peter`s life.  He would go to the Gentile people to preach the gospel, those deemed as unclean by the Jewish nation.  Normally he would never go into a Gentile home.  God was sending him to Cornelius.  God was changing the course of his direction.  What about us?  Is there something happening in our lives today?  Has God allowed something into our lives that is making us question whether we have to change.

It was an unmerited event.  God was working out his purpose in Peter.  He did it too in Paul`s life as he preached to the Gentiles.  40 years previously Moses had vacated the position of living in Pharaoh`s house.  As a baby he should have been put to death under Pharaoh`s decree yet he was cherished and loved by his parents.  When they could not hide him any longer they made a basket, an ark of bulrushes and set him in it and placed the ark in the river.  Pharaoh`s daughter found him and she took him as her own son.  He was educated in all the mighty wisdom and practices and teachings of Egypt.  There came a time when he forsook all that associated himself with his own people.  For 40 years he had been placed in the palace.  God has set him down there for a reason.  Acts 7 verse 25 "for he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hands he would deliver them but they understood not."  He saw an Egyptian fighting with a Gentile and put him to death one day.  He buried him in the sand but the next day he saw 2 Gentiles fighting.  One of the men turned to Moses and asked him "are you going to put me to death like the Egyptian?"  As a result Moses ran away.  Now he is out in the wilderness and felt a failure.  God doesn`t leave us as failures.  He does something that is so unmerited.  Maybe you feel you have let God down.  God asked you to do something and you didn`t do it.  You had every intention of doing it but didn`t go through with it.  You feel a failure, have let God down.  He is the God of the second chances.  He came again just as he did with Moses.  Moses spent 40 years in Egypt learning to be something, 40 years in the wilderness learning to be a nobody and for 40 years God showed him what he can do with a nobody.  He is the God of the second chance.  Peter forsook the Lord at his death but when the Lord rose the third day he told the women to go and tell his disciples "and Peter."  He was not to be left out.  We would go to those who we would feel ought to know but God wants us to go to his own people.  Jonah forsook God and ran away from God.  God brought everything to pass just to bring him back to himself.  We are not worthy of the mercy of God.  God offers his free and full salvation today.  You don`t deserve it but he asks will you accept him.  Have you ever come to the cross of Calvary?  What are you going to do with your sins today?  The sin you were born with.  There is a place for your sin outside Jerusalem at the foot of the rugged cross where the perfect lamb of God died for our sin.  Jacob realised he merited nothing of God but God showered him with his love and mercy.  He will do something that will change the course of life for ever.  He is giving you a second chance - will you take it?  To be his child of God, to be his servant of God.

It was an unthinkable event.  Something that could not be explained.  God is using something this morning that is in your life.  After 40 years he was taking Moses from the sheepfold to go down into Egypt to do a mighty task for him.  God wants to save you, he wants to use you.  This man was 80 years of age.  Maybe he thought he was past it.  God is going to change the course of Moses` life for the next 40 years.  God will use Moses to lead the children of Isarel to the promised land.  If you were to give your life, your soul he would use it and bring many to Christ.  Many say they are too old for things of God.  God was asking something unthinkable of Moses.  He is asking the same of you too.  Maybe you never thought God will ever challenge you in that way.  He is asking you to see the unthinkable.  Moses was a shepherd tending the sheep.  In the eyes of every Egyptian a shepherd was an abomination.  God would use him and take him into Pharaoh`s house.  An abomination means to be disgusting, abhored.  God comes today and puts his finger on your life.  There is no-one else.  Surrender your all.

It was an unexpected event.