Exodus 2:11 – And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.

Exodus 2:12 – And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

Exodus 2:13 – And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?

Exodus 2:14 – And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.

Exodus 2:15 – Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.

Hello readers, today will be a great blessing to you I hope! It’s going to be a big blog, and it’ll be a conversational style blog, but I hope you do read it all the way through and God’s word is revealed to you in your life. There’s some amazing truths here, which we need to get a handle on, and fast. Today’s text is taken from Exodus 2, Daniel 6 and Acts 7. When you want to serve God, but all you’ve made is a dead Egyptian. Well that dead Egyptian sure stopped Moses’ little attempt at serving God. Stopped him for forty long years in fact. Today we are going to be talking about the necessity of dealing with sin and disobedience in our own lives… as that will be vital in whether or not God ever calls us and equips us to answer that call to serve. What fault will people find when they examine our lives? See, before we can be used by God, things have to be right between us and God in our own lives. Those who know the story of Moses, he was born a Hebrew but raised an Egyptian, his parents hid him and taught him about his people and the God of his people. And when he came to years, the Bible says, he made an attempt at serving God, at helping and delivering the children of Israel. But the problem is, all he achieved was a dead Egyptian. He did wrong, he sinned. Moses’ first attempt at serving God and delivering Israel failed because of sin in his own life.

But to better understand what we are talking about today, in Daniel 6 we read the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Pretty famous story hey. Well the situation is that king Darius had set up his kingdom… and he put Daniel in charge over all the presidents and princes of his realm. The Bible says Daniel had an excellent spirit, that’s why Darius put him in charge. Darius noticed something about this guy that was distinct from everyone else. Darius could trust Daniel, Daniel was faithful, wise and could be counted on. Of course, we know that all this came from Daniel’s God and whose word he knew and obeyed. We better take note huh. However, there were a lot of people that hated Daniel, they didn’t like him and didn’t like being under him and they’d rather they were in charge… and so the Bible says they sought to find occasion against Daniel. What that means is, they tried finding skeletons in his closet, they tried finding sin in his life, they tried to find a reason that they could bring to king Darius to get rid of Daniel. Don’t think people aren’t looking for a reason to discredit you, to wipe you and your testimony and your God off. So often we are trying to be buddy buddy with people that will always hate us, because they hate our God.

Get Daniel out the way. That’s what they wanted to do.. and badly. They wanted him killed. So they’re trying to find fault in him, a bunch of murderers. What a double standard they had. The unrepentant sinner is always deceived about himself and a hypocrite of the first class. Well people seek to get Christ out their way as they planned to do to Daniel. This world hates Jesus Christ and his word, he’s standing in the way of them doing whatever they want to do. They hate his authority over them. Daniel had authority, and make no mistake, God’s authority is what they hate. That’s why they hate preaching. But the problem was, they just couldn’t find fault in Daniel. He was faithful in all matters, they had nothing to accuse him of. We’ll come back to this story, but what we are seeing here is that people are watching, and it’s vitally important to be right with God in our own lives if we want to serve God, and live a godly and God honoring life, and share the gospel and impact others for Christ. You want to make a difference, you want to stand apart? Well then stand apart.

What unhinged Moses’ first attempt at answering the call of God was a number of things. Firstly, one thing I’ve realized after many years which I’ve never seen before is that Moses tried serving God without knowing God. Often we make this crucial mistake. We want to serve God, but we don’t even know him ourselves. How are you going to serve him if you don’t even know who he is. Many people show they don’t have the slightest who he is. They’ve never seen his holiness, they’ve never seen his glory, they’ve never even read his word. They don’t know him… and that’s proven by their lives, their lack of fear of God, their lack of truth and Holy Spirit in their lives. It was after God met Moses at the burning bush that Moses would be called to serve the God he knew by name. You cannot serve God without knowing God. Both require being born again, and you are born again when you repent of your sin and place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation from your sin.

Well, here we have Moses. The Bible says it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. That’s pretty good yeah? At forty years of age, here is Moses, who’s grown up an Egyptian, but he’d never outgrown the seed of God’s word that’d be sown early in his life. Well Moses wanted to do something godly and good, he wanted to identify with his true people the Hebrews and help deliver Israel. The problem was, he was an Egyptian. You’d have thought that was an asset, he had the inside running on being the next ruler of Egypt. But that was a problem here, because how are you going to deliver anyone as an Egyptian? You cannot be of this world and serve God. Moses had power as an Egyptian… he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians… you’d think with his training and wisdom and power he’d be able to get it done yeah? Hardly. One day he sees an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, and he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. To our fleshly understanding we’d think yeah Moses did the right thing. You’re not going to get out of anything by doing wrong. Moses tried the Egyptian style of deliverance, but our deliverance we need comes differently. We need spiritual deliverance. What Moses did was wrong. He knew it was wrong because he had to cover it up. He looked left and right, he thought nobody had seen him. But the Hebrews had seen him. The word was about to get out.

You see, what stopped Moses from serving God was sin in his own life. And that will stop us as well. But God still wants to and will us, if he could only use a perfect person, there’d be noone he could use right. We all sin. That’s not a justification or an excuse, but fact. So what really stopped Moses was what he did with his sin. HE tried covering his sin up. Rather than dealing with it God’s way, he tried hiding it. When our sins aren’t dealt with at the cross of Jesus Christ… that’s really going to unhinge our ministry isn’t it. You’re not going to reach anyone or help deliver anyone or be used by and serve God when you’re managing your sins, rather than owning up to them, owning what and who you truly are, dropping the sham and pretence and bluster that really only fools us and noone else… and getting honest with ourselves, others and most importantly, God.

Moses wasn’t going to deliver anybody on this attempt, the deliverance wasn’t going to come through him killing everyone, but through the power of God delivering them. Through knowing God and obeying God. We aren’t delivered through Egyptian means. Worldly methods aren’t God’s methods. The Egyptian method is murder, but God’s method is him delivering and us obeying his word. The Jews were looking for national deliverance when Jesus came, not for spiritual deliverance that Jesus had come to provide, and which was our chiefest need. Jesus didn’t come to start an insurrection against the Romans. Our biggest need is our sin problem being dealt with, and Moses through sin wasn’t going to deliver anyone from their sin. That’s why churches and Christianity are failing, they’re trying to serve God and deliver people by disobeying God. We have to do things God’s way. You could kill all the heathens on the planet, but the problem is still there, because sin is in us. The old world was wiped out, but sin was on the ark in Noah and his sons. And sin didn’t take long to take over again. The problem is sin. Sin and how Moses dealt with it is what cost Moses his attempt at doing right.

What will stop you from witnessing and getting the call from God and answering the call and having the power to live it… it’ll be the sin and disobedience in your life. You’ve covered it up in the Egyptian sand. It’s not dealt with by God, you’ve handled it. It’s so like us aye. Rather than confession, rather than humility and honesty, we excuse, justify, blame, hide, conceal. Heaven forbid we call it for what it is. And when you handle your sin… it’s always a mess. Us handling sin ourselves just means our sin isn’t handled! And it’s not as secret as you think. 1 Timothy 5:24 – Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after. But be sure that that area of disobedience, that area of compromise, that part of your life that is not submitted to God’s word and has not been resolved through confession of sin and washed with the blood of the Lamb… that’s going to get you. You’ll be powerless as Moses was in his ministry.

Back in the story of Daniel, and these guys who were on his case, they went over his life with a fine tooth comb… and could find nothing. Would that be the same of us? It’s pretty horrible to even think about it. I’m sure none of us would love our life and all it’s sins and secrets and pretence and wallpaper exposed and laid bare… it’d be pretty revealing aye. How would our lives stand up to intense scrutiny, to everything that we think is secret, which we’ve handled, if they were all brought out into the light? The truth is, we all have sin, and horrible sin in our hearts and lives. We are sinners. See the first step is rather than pretending you’re perfect, it’s having sin dealt with. It’s when you’ve owned up, it’s when you’ve made it right… you no longer need to be sweeping sand over that Egyptian corpse of a life you’ve produced. Rather than trying to hide it, honesty is the best policy. Our conscience is a lot clearer when instead of hiding and excusing and rationalizing, we are honest and deal with what we have done.

You’re not going to be able to deliver anyone when you’re not even delivered yourself. That’s what’s stopped me in my own life. It’s good to have the hand of God on your life, because Moses really wanted to help. That’s great. It was in his heart to deliver Israel, he wanted to fight for them, he wanted them to be free. But we can’t help if we aren’t right with God ourselves. So often we get it all so terribly wrong.

That one sin, it killed Moses’ ministry. It put the brakes on his hopes, ideas and dreams. We can have sins in our life which we don’t think even matter to serving God and helping others. Our sins may even “assist” the cause right. It was an Egyptian right!  We disobey God thinking we are helping with best intentions and good reasons and all that but it really isn’t. But that one sin, it has a lot more impact and repercussions than we think. We think we can separate our disobedience and our sin from our service to God… but no. The Bible says to Come out from among them and be ye separate all ye that bear the vessels of the Lord. The Lord says, Be ye holy, for I am holy.

We know Moses was guilty over what he had done. He wouldn’t have tried hiding it if it wasn’t wrong. See, when we are hiding things, when we are covering up… it’s because we’ve got something to hide. It’s really quite simple no? When we are covering for things in our life, that’s a sign you’re not right with God and not walking in the light. Jesus himself said to Pilate, in secret have I said nothing. He had nothing to hide. He was guiltless of insurrection, he wasn’t undermining and scheming and plotting. His ministry was before all men to see.

There’s even another great truth in here. Moses looked left and right. He cared what someone else saw. And that’s his mistake. He cared more about what man saw, rather than what God saw. That’s different from Joseph with Potiphar’s wife, he refused because he said how can I do this thing and sin against my Lord? Instead, so often we are dictated to by other men, by people around us… not by the fear of God. If we can get away with wrong, we’d do it not caring that God sees, not caring if this honors God or not. Man I fail in just about every point. And look how Moses was full of fear… yet the Moses that later stood before Pharaoh, he was fearless. Why is that fear in Moses? Because he’s not right with God. He cares about what others think more than what God thinks. He’s actually not so mighty as you’d think, but he’d look not so mighty but was truly mighty when he returned. We often have Egyptian might which is no might at all.

These men who were after Daniel couldn’t’ find a fault. I wonder if any of us are a Daniel. Or are we more like Moses. We’ve got sin on our record which can be held against us, and that positively holds us to ransom. We need our sin dealt with. Rather than hiding it, and finding a way to explain and excuse it, and trying to frame it and sell it a certain way… we need to get under the blood. When we are right with God, the rest falls into place. But often we try serving God, we try answering the call, we may even try doing something good as Moses was assaying to do… but we’ve put all that before knowing God and being right with him in repentance and faith in his Son. Our lives are all about what others think, we’ve got stuff hidden, we’ve tried covering this and fixing that, there’s band aids and wallpaper solutions everywhere to compensate and conceal our compromise, disobedience and rebellion. And it becomes a mess. It went from Moses wanting to serve God, to him on the run. Our lives end up but a fearful retreat.

You know what’s funny, the Bible says Moses was mighty in word and deed, but it was all Egyptian. That’s all going to be useless in the service of God. So many people have their Egyptian thinking, speaking, training, and try using all that to serve God and achieve something for God. It’s just like Saul’s armor that Saul wanted David to use, but David refused. We don’t need Saul’s armor, we need the armor of God. The church today is using worldly methods to reach people and draw them into church and keep them there. And it’s a failure. You can apply this principle to many areas of life. Using your perverted Egyptian Bible trying to serve God… you’re weak and powerless because you’ve got an Egyptian sword in your hand. Egypt is always a picture of the world, and your worldly training and education and thinking and way of life… that isn’t going to get it done. Moses had to UNLEARN all his Egyptian training and wisdom, there are a lot of things we have to unlearn when we learn from God and are set straight.

People are going to find fault in us, just let it be for doing right. Those Hebrews he thought would understand and value his help… they found fault in him for doing wrong. 1 Peter 4:15,16 – But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. See, it’s good if we suffer for righteousness’ sake, but let it not before the fact that we are so totally compromised by sin and rebellion in our own life. Don’t let people have a real cause against you. How would your life stand up to the fine tooth comb test? Most people never serve Jesus Christ because they are so woefully defeated and compromised in their own life. They’re guilty and that kills their ministry and service potential. Instead of a clean conscience and the call and power of God… they’re full of fear, caring what others think, trying to hide sin. And because they’ve got problems with God in their own life, they can’t stand for anything, they’ve gotta be nice and not offend anyone and tiptoe around everyone and everything for fear of getting exposed for their own disobedience. See, everyone loves to be on the same sinful level, so nobody rebukes nothing, nobody stands for anything, we all drag and keep each other down. Spiritually castrated and not much help to anybody.

If you really want to be used by God in your life, you’re going to have to get right with him yourself. We know all have sinned, so it’s what we’ve done with it. What we do with our sin will decide not just our service and calling of God, but our eternity. If you are not forgiven and washed and cleansed and born again… you’re not saved. Moses stuffed it all up in his own thinking, his own way, his own strength. He’d realize his Egyptian ways and means couldn’t be used in the service of God. We all need to know God and be right with God ourselves, get our sin under the blood, sort it out and resolve our sin between ourselves and others… and then we won’t need to be hiding any dead Egyptian in the sand. And we won’t be worrying about who saw it, and if someone is going to uncover that dead body and we’re busted. Skeletons in the closet… best you get them out rather than someone else drag them out on you. Don’t live your life with the look left and right mentality, if you really care about God seeing who and what you are… you won’t need to look left and right.

Look this blog, just like any blog I’ve ever done, it relates to me first. When sin and disobedience is in my life, I ain’t likely to be telling anyone else about Jesus Christ, I’m filled with fear and my life is beating a fearful cowering retreat, not standing before Pharaoh with the word of God. It’s wonderful if you have something in your heart that wants to do right and to serve and please God. But your sin and my sin has to be dealt with. And dealt with God’s way. Dealt with in truth and honesty and humility and confession of sin. No half measures. We really need to get those things we think we’ve got hidden in the sand… we need them resolved at the cross of Jesus Christ. That corpse never did come back… and what a wonderful truth is in here. Guess where it disappeared to? God dealt with it. Forty years later not a word about it. When your sin is dealt with God’s way, you don’t have to dwell on it or fear its corpse anymore.

Reader, how many corpses do you have in the sand which you try hiding, all that disobedience and departure from truth… you need to take them to Jesus Christ. You haven’t hidden them and covered them anyway. You only think you have. And your life will publish what you think you’ve hidden. It’s scary to think on “Be sure your sin will find you out”. I’d like to avoid some of my sin finding me out, I’m sure all of us do. I guess the more I grow up, the more I care less about the shame and embarrassment it brings me, but the implications it has of dishonoring the name of Jesus Christ. When we call ourselves Christians, we are doing damage to the name of Christ when we are living in rebellion. That was the worst part of David’s sin with Bathsheba, here he is the sweet Psalmist of Israel… and all Israel finds out what a dirty dog he is… and of course they are going to blaspheme God’s name because of his actions. The Bible says – For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged (1 Corinthians 11:31). It’s not about getting out of sin, it’s about the name of Christ, do you care about his name at all? Instead of waiting for Nathan to show up and all Israel know, how about we get on the front foot and make things right in the fear of the Lord.

Our lives are powerless, fearful, useless because we don’t know God ourselves and we, for all our good motives, intentions, sincerity whatever (stop kidding ourselves), we’re just making a disaster doing things our way. An Egyptian was never going to deliver Israel, and in the desert, Moses went from an Egyptian… to the man of God. He knew his God and he knew what God said. God dealt with that corpse, and he didn’t show up to Egypt years later all imprisoned with fear by that past sin. You don’t need to fear the sin that’s been washed in the blood. Moses didn’t return with his Egyptian ways and means, and wisdom and intellect and speech, he came with the authority of the word of God,  the God he knew. We need to get the Bible back central in our lives, and we need to get right with God ourselves. Our hiding doesn’t hide anything, our covering up doesn’t cover anything up. Our lives are a defeated ruin, and we are no help to anyone. If you want to serve God, you’ve got to be saved and walking in the light yourself first. 2 Timothy 2:6 – The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits. It ok that others will hate us, that’s a given, but when we are right with God, we are on the winning side and have nothing to fear. Rejoice if you are persecuted for righteousness sake! The Bible says to leap for joy. It’s much better to suffer for doing well than suffer for being a guilty sinner.

You know what’s amazing, as if the Bible hasn’t been incredible enough already. Well the Bible says Moses supposed they’d understand how that God by his hand would deliver them. He thought, hey my bros will understand I’m trying to help and they’ll want my help. Guess what? They didn’t. They were fighting each other. So many Christians and people are mauling each other… and guess what, they don’t want to be helped. It’s startling when you realize people don’t want the gospel of Jesus Christ, they don’t want your help. You’ll start serving God and answering the call and you’ll realize people don’t want your help. It can knock you out the game for good. And they have ammunition if you yourself need help. Guess what, they’ll nail you on that sin and compromise and disobedience you have in your own life. That’s why so many people flunk out, because people have got them on their own sin.

Many years later, and those people still didn’t really want his help. This time however, Moses was able to deal with it. The first time rejection made him fear and run, the next time, it didn’t affect him in the slightest. So often rejection of the gospel knocks us out the game. It’s horrible. Be sure people will be quick to go to the sin in your life to justify themselves. So when you’ve lived a life making exceptions for yourself, just small sins right, and doing things your own way, and then you expect others to understand what God’s told you and take you seriously… you’ll find out the hard way that those little things you’re doing and accommodating yourself with in your life… they’re gonna cost you the ability to help others. People aren’t much likely to put stock into what we have to say when we are in the deep end in our own lives. Look how quickly children use the parent’s sin on them to hold them to ransom. Well Moses copped a fair old dose of all that. He wanted to help, and it got chucked in his face.

Serving God isn’t about others validating us, whatever happens, we do what we do because God called us to do it. My blog for instance, it doesn’t matter if noone views it or heaps do, that doesn’t measure my success. My success is a function of whether I obeyed and honored God or not. There are many things I can’t control and that are rightfully up to God, my responsibility is what I’m doing with the truth.

Moses failed the first time, but it wasn’t game over. It’s not game over for you reader. You can make a difference and stand for God and serve him. But it’s going to take you turning side to see the burning bush. Moses turned aside, and you’re going to have to turn aside from your path that you’re on, when you’re going to walk his path finally. God gave Moses the power and ability to fulfill his purpose for his life. It’s so scary the thought of serving God… but God’s not going to ask us to do what he doesn’t enable us and give us the grace to do. But there are so many lessons to learn in here today. That covered up sin, that exception you’re making in your life, that sand you’re sweeping over the corpse of a life and ministry you’ve made… that’s going to really disable and defeat you. You’re not delivering anything and anybody as an Egyptian, and  in fact you need deliverance yourself first before delivering anyone else. Moses wanted to answer the call, he wanted to do right, but all he created was a dead Egyptian … we need to drag the corpse that we’ve created of our life to Jesus Christ. All we can make is something dead. The answer, as always, lies in the Lord Jesus Christ… he is the way, the truth and the life. Get right with God, believe the gospel, get your sins resolved and dealt with and move forward, get to know him for yourself in his word… and then the call and ability to answer and perform the call will come.

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