Desert

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We’re taking this summer to walk through the book of Exodus, which is the story of how the Hebrew people were rescued from slavery in Egypt and brought right up to the edge of the Promised Land. So God was taking them from where they were to where he wanted them to be. From here to there. And our big idea for the whole series is that God is up to something similar in every one of our lives. Wherever you are right now as a person—as a spiritual being—God has a future for you. And he wants to bring you from here to there. So as we walk through the book, we’re going to see that the story of the Israelites intersects with our lives over and over again. This is why the Bible is so timeless.

So last week we talked about the bitterness of life for the Hebrew people living in Egypt: they were forced into slavery, and the Pharaoh of Egypt had become so threatened by them that he made a law that any Hebrew boy that’s born should be drown in the Nile River. So baby Moses is born; his mother put him in basket and places the basket in the Nile river, and he winds up being rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. She names him “Moses,” which comes from a word that means “to draw out.”

And that brings us to Exodus chapter two, verse 11. So I invite you now to hear the Word of God…

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”

14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”

15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.

18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”

19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”

20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”

21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”

23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. This is the Word of the Lord.

So Moses grew into an adult. And if you looked at him, you would assume he was an Egyptian adult. He dressed like an Egyptian; he talked like an Egyptian. (I won’t say he walked like an Egyptian, because you won’t be able to get that song out of your head). And not just any Egyptian! An adopted child of Pharaoh himself. And yet, through the years, Moses never forgot where he came from. He had spent his first three or four years being raised by his own mother in a Hebrew home. And we don’t know if he kept any contact with his biological family over the years, but it says in verse 11 that when he saw the Hebrew people being mistreated, he viewed them as his own people.

So one day he was walking around some kind of a work site. And off to the side, he noticed a Hebrew man being beaten by an Egyptian leader. Probably not an unusual sight. But something rose up in Moses. A righteous anger at the injustice he was witnessing. Have you ever felt like that? You hear about a child being mistreated, or a wife being abused, and it just fills you with anger at the injustice. That’s how Moses felt. So he approached this foreman, who probably stood up at attention when he saw the son of Pharaoh approaching, right? And before he knew what was happening, Moses took his knife and slit his throat. Or killed him some other way. And then he quickly dug a hole and buried the body.

Can I tell you how not to apply this? We are not supposed to go around and randomly find mean people, and kill them. Because you’re following the example of Moses. Okay? Just in case you were thinking about doing that. This is not an endorsement of vigilante justice. What Moses did that day was not a good thing. But here’s what I think we can say: Moses was acting on a God-given passion. The anger he felt was a holy anger. In fact, in his passion and his anger, Moses was beginning to sense the calling that God had put on his life! Something in him knew that his purpose in life was to rescue his mistreated people. The problem was…he went about it all wrong.

And so the next day, Moses got up, and he was kind of excited about being the hero. And he overheard a couple of Hebrews arguing and one of them hauled off and hit the other one. So Moses stepped in and tried to break it up. And the guy said, “Who do you think you are? Are you going to kill me like you killed the Egyptian yesterday?” Apparently the word had gotten out. And sure enough, Pharaoh found out about it and realized that his adopted son had turned on him…and Moses ran for his life. So just like that, Moses went from privileged son to fugitive. And he found himself in this strange place called the desert of Midian.

Have you ever found yourself living in a desert? Here’s what I mean—let me give you four words to describe life in the desert—maybe you can relate to some of these.

First: Rejection. Moses was rejected by not only his Egyptian family, but by his own people—the very people he was trying to rescue! Have you ever felt the sting of rejection? Your husband says, “I think I’m done with you,” and he files for divorce. Your girlfriend says, “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” Your adult child decides that maybe it would be better if you don’t get together over Christmas. Your job lets you go. Rejection.

Second thing is Disappointment. Moses thought his moment had arrived! He was going to seize his destiny, and it went horribly wrong. We all know that feeling, right? You finally finished college, and got your degree, and sure—you’ve got some loans to pay back—but that’s okay, because you’re going to get a great job. And a year later, you’re waiting tables at Chili’s. And the headhunter can’t explain why better offers aren’t coming. Or maybe some other thing in life that’s turned out so different from what you expected. It’s just disappointing.

Third thing is Isolation. Moses went from the hustle and bustle of the palace to the barrenness of the wilderness. He didn’t know a single person. Ever felt like that? You go away to college, and you don’t

recognize a single face in the dorm, or the dining hall or the classrooms. You can even feel that in your own hometown—you walk around, and you just feel disconnected. Alone. It feels like a desert.

Or one more thing: Humiliation. You feel like a failure. You feel embarrassed and small and you don’t really want to talk about it…because it’s humiliating. I think that’s how Moses felt when he woke up in the morning, and remembered where he had been, and where he was now.

You ever been in that desert place? Are you there right now? Here’s what I think God wants you to know: He’s in this with you. And He can mold you and grow you in the desert in ways that aren’t possible any other time. And you say, “How could anything good possibly happen when I’m feeling rejection and disappointment and isolation and humiliation?” Let me tell you five things. From the experience of Moses, five benefits of the desert. Here we go…

Number one: Patience. Let me repeat what I said a minute ago: the passion that Moses felt—that burden to rescue his people from slavery—was a God-given burden. It was truly his calling! But he wasn’t mature enough to know what to do with it yet.

Do you remember the Haiti earthquake back in 2010? Terrible disaster. And shortly afterwards, we started hearing stories of all these orphans whose parents died in the earthquake. So there was group of Christians from a church in Idaho who went down to Haiti; they found 33 orphans and loaded them into vans, and took them over the border into Dominican Republic to set up an orphanage. The problem was, they didn’t have permission or authority to take the kids. And they started finding out that lots of those kids still had family members in Haiti who were willing to care for them. And they wound up getting arrested for kidnapping. It was a disaster. So: great passion, right? It was a godly concern. But they rushed into it foolishly, and actually caused more harm than good.

When I was getting close to college graduation, I was all fired up to go change the world. God had gotten a hold of my heart in college, and I wanted to go overseas and love people in the name of Christ. I mean, I was ready to go! And I remember talking to a guy I respected, who’d been in ministry for years. And he said, “You should take a few years and go to seminary first.” And I said, “Why? There are people dying without Christ right now! There’s so much to be done—why would I waste four years?” And I’ll never forget—he said, “If you want to be in this for the long haul, four years of study and training is nothing. It’s worth the investment.” And I’m so glad I took his advice.

See, you can take a God-given passion, and you can force it prematurely. Or—like Moses—you can act on it out of emotion or anger—right?—and you won’t accomplish anything good. So Moses had to learn patience.

Do you know how long this desert time lasted for Moses? Forty years. Isn’t that crazy? You find that out in Acts chapter 7. Forty years! See, Moses didn’t realize this yet—but he was going to need superhuman patience in the years ahead. And God used this desert time to build that gift of patience. Could it be that He’s trying to teach you the same thing?

Okay—second benefit of the desert: Empathy. What Moses had was a passion to bring justice for the weak. What Moses didn’t have was any concept of what it felt like to actually be weak. And now all of a sudden, he was the outcast and the outsider. He was the one with no position and no status and no rights. So he meets these young women by the side of a well, right? And he winds up marrying one of them. And did you notice what he named his firstborn son? “Gershom.” Which means “sojourner” or “alien” or “stranger.” Moses was apparently getting the lesson.

In order for Moses to effectively lead the people he wanted to lead, he had to first empathize with their situation. He had to feel what they felt.

I recently saw an interview with a guy named Lieutenant Jack Cambria. He was the commanding officer of the NYPD hostage negotiation team for over 33 years, and he retired a few years ago. He was also one of the guys they called in to talk suicidal people down from skyscrapers and bridges. So he was an expert at connecting with people and winning the trust of people. And I want to read you what he said: “The very good negotiators, I think, are the ones with the life stories…They have to experience the emotion of love at one point in their life, to know what it means to have been hurt in love at one point in their life, to know success and perhaps most important, to know what it means to fail.” Doesn’t that make sense? If you have any hope of relating to people in hard situations, there’s no way you can do that if you’ve never been through hard situations yourself.

When you experience suffering, you will look at other suffering people differently. Have you noticed that? You’ll care. You’ll be drawn to them. That’s called empathy. And maybe God has allowed this desert time for you because he needs you to empathize with people who are walking through the same kinds of things.

Third benefit of the desert: Training. Moses had spent basically all his life in a palace. He was probably pampered and well-fed and soft. So God arranged for him to spend forty years in the outback, to toughen him up and get him ready for what was ahead.

Not only that, but Moses had spent his whole life pretty much focusing on himself, as a single person. And God arranged for him to become a husband, so he could learn how to live alongside someone else and compromise and apologize and put the toilet seat down, and all the things marriage can teach you.

God arranged for him to become a father, so he could learn to deal with whiny and demanding children, which he would really need in the days to come.

And we’ll find out in the next chapter, God arranged for him to become a shepherd, so he could learn to lead and protect and nurture and sacrifice.

And all of those things matured him and deepened him as a person. It was all part of getting him ready to use his God-given passion and actually accomplish something good with it.

One of my favorite verses is Hebrews 12:11—listen to this: No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. So think about this: instead of looking at the desert as punishment, what if we looked at it as training? And what if we believed that there’s a trainer who’s very intentionally running things? I think we’d be much more content if we viewed it that way. And I think we’d be much more optimistic about the future that we’re being trained for.

Fourth benefit of the desert: Humility. It says in the book of Numbers that Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth. Pretty amazing thing to be said about you, right? If anybody said that about me, I’d be so proud of that. But Moses wasn’t always that way.

Think about the self-image of Moses when he was a young man. When he walked out of the palace that day, and looked out on his Hebrew people. He was confident; he had a high view of his own abilities. And I think he really believed, when he killed that one Egyptian, that was just the beginning. He thought his Hebrew countrymen would view him as their knight in shining armor—someone who had the position and the power to step in and rescue them. “Oh, Moses! You’ve finally come for us! You’re our hero!”

So the next day, when he stepped in to try to rescue the one Hebrew guy who was getting beaten up, instead of getting hailed as a hero, the guy says, “Who do you think you are?” So humbling—to realize that people don’t view you as highly as you view yourself.

Fleeing for your life from your adoptive father or adoptive grandfather—whatever you call Pharaoh—that’ll knock some of the cockiness out of you.

Marrying a foreign woman—instead of a fellow Hebrew…working as a shepherd…all of those experiences took this man who was overconfident, and humbled him. Life tends to do that to you—especially when you’re in the desert.

In the New Testament we’re given qualifications for elders in the church. And it’s extremely practical—it’s something we use as a guide every time we nominate new elders. And there’s one qualification that used to be kind of hard for me to understand. It’s in 1 Timothy 3:6—here’s what it says: He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. I used to read that and go, “Man—what does being a recent convert have to do with being conceited, let alone being under the same judgment as the devil??” So a few years ago I was teaching through 1 Timothy, and it just hit me: If you’re new to the faith, you probably don’t realize how much you will continue to fail and make mistakes and need God’s grace. You’ll think: “Hey—I’m saved—I’m changed—I’ve got my act together.” Does that make sense? So your lack of experience in the Christian life could make you a little conceited—just like Lucifer was when he got kicked out of heaven.

Like Peter—remember how self-assured Peter was? “You mess with Jesus, I’ll cut off your ear! I will never deny you, Lord!” Very self-confident. And then he completely wimps out and denies even knowing Jesus…but here’s the awesome part: Jesus forgave him. And the Peter we see after that is a very different Peter. Because he finally gets that he needs God’s grace constantly. Like oxygen. And that’s humbling.

The Moses who lived in the Egyptian palace was brash and arrogant; the Moses who walked out of the desert 40 years later was a deeply humbled man. And that needed to happen for God to use him.

Okay: one more benefit of the desert: I’m going to call it Approval. I think when Moses was growing up, there was a part of him that enjoyed the approval of his Egyptian community. Right? When he did well in his studies, he got the affirmation of his teachers and the other adults in his life. “Did you see the pyramid that Moses drew in art class today? It’s beautiful!” That felt kind of good! And as he got older, their acceptance and approval were probably more meaningful. But now his Egyptian community had rejected him. There was no more approval coming from Egypt.

And of course, there was an even bigger part of Moses that craved the approval of his Hebrew countrymen, right? He was one of them! And he was becoming convinced that he had this special part to play in helping them. And he wanted his Israelite brothers to appreciate and approve of that! But now, even the Hebrews had rejected him.

See, the desert tends to strip away things, and it forces you to ask this question: whose approval am I living for? Who am I trying to please? Am I living my life—am I basing my decisions—am I the person I am—because I’m trying to please some important people in my life? Or am I learning the freedom of living for God’s approval alone? Am I learning to play to an audience of One? Because maybe you’ve learned this: when you’re living for the approval of others, it’s exhausting. It’s slavery. But when you live for God’s approval, it’s freedom.

And honestly, this was an ongoing process for Moses. Because in this chapter you can see his earlier sources of approval being stripped away from him, right? But it’s not until the next chapter that he’s finally going to meet God. And it’s in that chapter—next week—when Moses is going to start to understand why he had to spend so much time in the desert. He was being prepared for something bigger than he ever could have dreamed.

So…what do we do with all this? Let me remind you of something we said last week: if you read the book of Exodus and you learn about Moses, that’ll be helpful. But if you allow Exodus to point you to Jesus, it’ll be transformational. See, Moses was a great man, but we were reminded today that he was far from perfect, right? He was kind of impatient; he needed to be humbled and toughened up…I mean, at the end of the day, Moses was human just like us. So don’t make him the hero.

Instead, let Moses point you to Jesus. Just think of the connections…

Just like Moses, Jesus was rejected by his own people. It say sin John chapter one that Jesus came to that which was his own, but his own people did not receive him. There was a point when his own mother and brothers thought he was mentally unstable.

Just like Moses spent time as a shepherd, Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep.”

Moses spent 40 years in the desert, being prepared for his calling, Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, being prepared for his calling.

So you can find all kinds of similarities between Moses and Jesus. You know what the big difference is? We’re going to see all through Exodus that Moses risked his life to rescue his people. But here’s the thing: Jesus gave his life to rescue his people.

Remember when Jesus hung on the cross, and he said, “I thirst”? And the people around him said, “Oh—he must need a drink.” And they put vinegar on a sponge and held it up to his lips. I am convinced that Jesus was not asking for a drink. He wasn’t talking about physical thirst. For the first time in all eternity, he was being ripped away from his Father…and he was dying of spiritual thirst. It was actually the ultimate desert! And he was willing to go through that…so that we could be rescued and forgiven and reconciled with our Creator.

So here’s the point: since Jesus was willing to walk into that ultimate desert for us, we can know that he now walks in every desert with us. In those times of rejection and disappointment and isolation and humiliation…he’s right there in the desert with us. And every time you doubt that, just look at the cross! He is fiercely committed to you. And the more you look at him, and trust in him, the more you can find joy even in the desert.