Page 1 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor

Via video, we’re going to meet a young man this morning that’s quite remarkable. He has all the reasons in the world to make excuses for why he can’t do certain things, but his mother taught him early on never to make excuses, that he could do whatever God called him to do. His name is Ben Underwood. Watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_k8Wgor1FE

That’s a great story because he made no excuses for himself, and you’ve got to give a lot of credit to his mother because boy, she did not shelter him. She put him out there and said, “Son, you can do anything you set your mind to.” He rose to it. He didn’t make any excuses.

Now I don’t show that because we’re all like him. In fact, I’m showing it for the opposite reason. Too often, we though able bodied and having all of our senses, make excuses why we can’t do what God calls us to do, what he would will for us to do. So this morning, I want to preach a message entitled, “There’s no excuse for excuses.” There’s no excuse for excuses. And I want to base it out of the life of Moses. So if you’ll open your , please, to Exodus Chapter 3, we’re going to begin there. In fact, we’re going to Chapters 3 and 4. So keep your bible open. I’m only going to read two verses, and I would like you in the honor of God’s word to please stand. I’ll read these two verses, but then we’ll make our way through the two chapters over the course of the next few moments.

God’s word says, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, “May it be as you have spoken, my Lord.” Is that what he said? No, that’s not what he said. Moses said to God, “Sir, yes sir.” Is that what it says? No. Moses said, “Your wish is my command.” No. He could have even used Chik-Fil-A’s response when you go through the line, you know, when you order your food. What do they always say at Chik-Fil-A? My pleasure. Moses doesn’t say any of those things. When God says, “Moses, I want you to go and rescue my people from Egypt,” here is what Moses said.”

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children out of Egypt?” Now begins Moses’ argument with God in which he offers up four excuses as to why he can’t obey. I want to think with you on this theme. There’s no excuse for excuses. Let’s pray. God, we thank you that you call us, that you empower us beyond the calling. There’s no reason we can’t do and become all that you will for us to do and be. And so I pray that this morning, you would dash to pieces any excuse that we’re offering up so that we can be found obedient, and I pray it in Jesus’ name, amen. This morning, we’re going to take a journey with Moses, and it’s a journey on the road to obedience. But it’s a long road that Moses walks to get to obedience, and it begins with what I’m going to call orders from the Lord.

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Moses Page 2 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor

Orders from the Lord. You see, when Jesus comes to live in your heart, he doesn’t just come to be resident. He comes to be president. He doesn’t come to take sides. He comes to take over. He is Lord, and he has every right to have expectations of us and to issue orders to us, his servants. And so he does in the case of Moses. He has an order that he’s going to give Moses, and you see it here again in Verse 10. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. Now there are a couple of things that come to mind when you read this order that Moses received. The first thing is, as I read it, the enormity of this task. Now you think about it. Here is Moses. On the backside of the desert. All he has is a staff in his hand, no army, no munitions, no air force, no marines. Yet he is told to go into the most powerful figure on the planet and take from him his two million-member slave force. This is an enormous order that the Lord is giving you.

You almost can excuse Moses for offering up excuses because this is intimidating, to say the least. It’s an enormous task. I’ve watched with amusement, you might say, as God across the scriptures gives enormous tasks to his people. I think of Gideon in the . Many of you will remember that bible character. He was from the least of the tribes in Israel. He was the least in his clan in that least of all the tribes. Yet, God comes to him and says, “Gideon, I want you to liberate my people,” and he takes a force of 300 and goes against tens of thousands, and ultimately is given the victory. It was an enormous task.

You think about little David, the shepherd boy, going up against Goliath, that behemoth of a fellow, and all of the Philistine army behind him, and with the slingshot and some stones, Gideon by God’s grace wins the day. It’s an enormous task. I’ve thought about the disciples in the New Testament. There was an occasion where Jesus was teaching, and the people love to hear Jesus teach. Jesus was not a boring bible teacher, and God forbid that we who teach the bible be boring. There’s nothing that I abhor more and pray that God would help me not to be boring, but instead to be like Jesus. They love to hear Jesus teach.

And they were there by the thousands. In fact, there were 5,000 men. They didn’t even count the women and children, so there must have been many, many thousands. And the day wore on, yet still they lingered to hear him teach. And the disciples began to be alarmed. They said, “Lord, this is a remote region. There’s no McDonalds nearby. There’s no Outback. What are we going to do?” Jesus said, “You give them to eat.” Here are the apostles, there’s no bakery nearby, no grocery store, and yet he gives them an enormous task. Feed my sheep.

And so the Lord gives an enormous task, and I’m going to hasten to say we’re not the exception. We have been given by God an enormous task. Here it is in Jesus’ own words. “Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations.” Here’s the way we say it at Istrouma. Here’s our mission statement. We glorify God by making disciples of all the nations. Then that is a huge – that is an enormous task that the Lord has laid upon us,

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Moses Page 3 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor and it would be hopeless were it not for the second thing I want to say about these orders, and that is with the order came empowerment for the task.

God is going to empower Moses to do the very thing he’s calling him to do. There’s an old saying. God’s commandments are his enablements. God’s commands are his enablements. That is if he commands you to do something, you know he is going to empower you to do that very thing he commanded. And so it was with Moses. If you read the verses that lead up to this command, in them, beginning of Verse 7 of Chapter 3, God says, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I’ve heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.” We looked at this last week.

Before God says, “Moses, you go,” he says, “I have come,” and we have the Lord resident in us, empowering us to do the things he’s commanding us to do, to live a holy life, to be forgiving, to be a witness. Things that we find impossible. In him, we’re empowered to do. There’s a commercial that maybe you’ve seen that I like very much. It’s a commercial for Hyundai motors, and I want you to watch this. There’s a little lesson I want you to pick up.

I like that. Touch, tackle. I got my team with me. I am ready. And for Moses, Moses is told, “Go rescue my people from Israel.” This would be way too great a responsibility, way too great a task for Moses in his own flesh, in his own resources, but Jesus said, “I have come down to deliver my people. I am the power that will make this possible,” and so there is empowerment for the task. So we have then these orders given. The second thing that we see in this story is the objections that Moses raises against the Lord. And he is going to begin to make excuses about why he can’t do what God has just told him to do.

This we see in the very next verse, Verse 11. Look at Chapter 3, Verse 11. But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you. This shall be the sign for you that I have sent you when you have brought the people out of Egypt. You shall serve God on this mountain.” So here is what we see. Moses begins to argue with the Lord and offer up these objections, these excuses. And I’m going to mention three. The first of them is what I’m going to call the identity excuse. God said, “Moses, you go and you do this,” and Moses’ immediate response is, “Who am I?” Moses is saying, “I’m not equal to this. I’m not capable of this. Who am I?” And I love God’s answer when he says, “Who am I?” God isn’t going to just dialogue about who Moses is, what capabilities he has, what preparation he has, what a great guy he is.

No. When he says, “Who am I,” the answer is, “I will be with you.” Here I want to put it into a caption. The real issue isn’t who am I. The real issue is with whom am I. I’m going to say it again. Listen to this. The real issue isn’t who am I. The real issue is with whom am I. Moses, you go and do this. Who am I, Lord? God says, “It doesn’t matter who you are. I will be with you. I am going to give you, as we said, I’m going to give www.istrouma.org Page 3 of 11

Moses Page 4 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor you the power to do this.” And so Moses makes a discovery. In fact, somebody has said you can divide Moses’ life into three periods, and they’re 40 years each. The first 40 years, Moses was a somebody. He was the prince of Egypt.

The second 40 years, he was a nobody. He lived on the backside of the desert, shepherding these sheep in a desert, unseen, unnoticed by anyone. So he’s a somebody, then he’s a nobody, and then the last 40 years, we’re about to enter into that period now via this story. He becomes a somebody who discovers what God can do with a nobody that is surrendered to him. Moses was a somebody who discovered what God can do with a nobody when that no one is surrendered to him. And what God really wants for us is that we would take what we are and just surrender it to him. You say, “I’m a nobody. Who am I? What’s my identity? Upon what basis?” And God says, “It is that I can do through you end up with you what I will to do.” And so there’s this identity excuse, who am I. This week, I had a special privilege. I was invited by one of our church members to go to his club to play golf, and this is a very nice club.

He was so kind of to invite me. And so I drove up to the gate, and this is a gated community. You can’t even get in. Right? There’s a guard there. So I drive up, and he wants to know who I am. I give him my driver’s license. Jeff Ginn. Hey, I’m the pastor of Istrouma Baptist Church, you know? Hey, I’m somebody, let me in. I almost sound like Uncle Psy when I say, “Hey, hey.” It just hit me. But it doesn’t impress him. “It don’t impress me much,” he said. And so he said, “At whose invitation have you come?”

I said, “Well, Brian invited me.” He said, “Oh,” and up with the gate and in I drove. Because it wasn’t who I am. It’s with whom am I. And I drove up to this very nice clubhouse. I was ushered into a restaurant, sat down at a table. The waiter came over. He greeted me, he shook my hand. He said, “Mr. Ginyal, what would you like? Anything on the menu, it’s yours.” And man, I had a delicious breakfast and didn’t pay a penny for it. It was all on the tab, and just – then I got out, the golf cart, man, I drove all over that course, hit my balls, sprayed them everywhere. Had a great time, didn’t pay a penny. Now how did I get in, and how did I enjoy all those privileges? Is it because o who I am? No, it was because of with whom I was.

It was the one who invited me. And Moses, the issue isn’t who is Moses. The real issue is who is the Lord. If you want to talk about identity, Moses says, “Who am I?” God says, “Here is who I am.” He said, “You tell them I am that I am sent you.” God is identifying himself. And listen, I want to say it to you this way. God is the North Star. You get your orientation. You get your sense of identity in relationship to him. He’s the prime meridian; every hour is determined in relationship to him. He’s Greenwich. Greenwich. Is that it? You all don’t know either. It’s okay. But I’m telling you, he is the prime point of all existence. I am that I am. I am the eternal one. All that I have been, I am now, and all that I am now, I will forever be. I am that I am. I exist because of no one. Before all that was, is. I am. Right? Moses. It doesn’t matter who you are. What matters is who I am, and you take your identity from me.

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Moses Page 5 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor

So he is the timeless one. I am that I am. But I like this, too. In that same passage, he says, “Tell them I am that I am sent you. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and .” And you know what he does there? He comes out of eternity, into time. He is timeless, and he is timely. In fact in Jesus, the timeless one became time bound. He was incarnate. The eternal one became temporal, and for that time, he lived here among us, and the holy one came here. The transcendent became imminent. That is who he is. So our identity is wrapped up in him. We are his creation. He has endowed us with gifts, and we are able because he is able. And so he just shoots right through that identity excuse.

And if you want to understand who God is, look at Jesus. Look at Jesus. Seven times over in the gospel of John, Jesus takes up that name, I am that I am, and he claims it as his own. It’s what’s called, in theological jargon, the tetragramaton. The four letters here in Hebrew, YWHW. We sometimes speak it as [pronounces it like Ya-way]. There are no vowels in the Hebrew. It’s unknown how that is spoken, and devout Jews to today will never speak that name for fear that they would take it in vain. It’s the holy name of God. I am that I am. Yet Jesus takes it, and he says, “I am the door. I am the bread of life. I am the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. I am the true vine. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The Jews understood what he was saying.

They understood what it meant to take that name as his. And they said, “What, are you greater than Abraham?” Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am. And Abraham rejoiced to see my day.” Jesus is that timeless one. Come in time to redeem us. He did it in Moses’ day. I have come down to deliver. And he’s done it in our day as well. He is the one from whom we derive our own identity. We have him, and thus we need not fear. So don’t use the identity excuse. Who am I? With whom are you? There’s a pastor whose name is John Ortberg. Very well known. He’s a great writer. He tells about an occasion when he was in Newport News, California, and they were walking there along the beachfront, and there was a series of restaurants.

And as they walked past one restaurant, there had been a brawl inside. I guess it was a bar or something. The guys were fighting, and it spilled out onto the boardwalk just as they were walking by. So here are these three church staff members, and these guys spill out of the restaurant and fighting right there in front of them. So he said, “We knew we needed to do something, so we said, ‘Stop that,’ or, ‘Quit it. Stop beating him.’” He said, “They didn’t pay us any attention. They just kept right on.” He said, “Until something happened, and they looked in our direction. Their eyes got big, and they stopped hitting one another. They got up, and they began to run off.”

And Ortberg said, “Man, I thought I was pretty good. I kind of scared them off,” until he turned around, and he said when he turned around, there was this guy standing right behind them. He said he was about 6’ 6’’. He was chiseled, about two percent body fat. He was flexing his muscles, and he said, “We called him Bubba. Not to his face, but all time henceforth, we’ve referred to that guy as Bubba. They weren’t scared of us. They didn’t honor us, but Bubba made them believe. Bubba made them obey.” And Ortberg www.istrouma.org Page 5 of 11

Moses Page 6 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor said, “If I can just walk around life, and I knew I always had Bubba behind me, I wouldn’t be afraid to tackle anything. I wouldn’t be intimidated.”

Then he said, “We’ve got somebody greater than Bubba who is always with us. And we need not be intimidated. We need not fear. We don’t need to make excuses because he is with us. The timeless one, timely, meeting our needs right where we are.” So that’s the identity excuse. It holds no water. Don’t try to use it. All right, here is the second excuse. I’m going to call it the credibility excuse. If you look down in your bible now to Chapter 4, Verse 1, the scripture says – Chapter 4, Verse 1. Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will believe me or listen to my voice for they will say the Lord did not appear to you.”

He said, “This isn’t credible. If I tell them that you sent me and that you spoke to me, they’re going to blow me off. They’re not going to believe this.” Now God has just told Moses if you read the previous verses at the end of Chapter 3, he said, “Go to the people. They will believe you,” and Moses contests by saying, “They will not believe me.” God says they will, Moses says they won’t. It’s an issue of credibility. And the real issue of credibility isn’t with the children of Israel. It’s with Moses.

Does Moses believe God? He’s casting it off. He’s projecting it onto the children of Israel, but the real issue is in Moses. Moses, do you believe? And so God very graciously condescends to bolster Moses’ faith. He gives him some signs. First of all, Moses had in his hand a staff. It was the tool of his trade and just a simple, wooden staff, like so many you could have collected on the desert floor. God told him, “Throw it down, Moses.” As he obeyed and threw it down, that staff became a serpent. Then God said, “Moses, pick it up by its tail.”

Now I’m not much of a country boy, but I know one thing. If you’re going to pick up a snake, don’t pick it up by its tail because there’s another end that has teeth on it. Right? And God says, “Pick it up by its tail.” Moses reaches down and picks it up. When he does, God in grace turns it back into the staff. But now and from henceforth, never again is it referred to as the staff of Moses. It always called the staff of God, the rod of God, and with it, he opens the Red Sea. With it, he strikes the rock and water flows.

God uses that in some miraculous ways. What he does is he takes the ordinary, and he makes it extraordinary. Talking about credibility, when are people going to believe us when they see the ordinary made extraordinary? God has a way of doing this. I was so blessed this week, just an illustration. Got an e-mail from one of our oldest members here at Astruma. He’s a very frail white man, probably about 80 years of age or more, and white headed, very saintly appearing. He writes me frequently, and he’ll give me very encouraging notes, and in this particular note, he told me about something that happened last Sunday. I hope all of you were here last Sunday. When I was preaching last Sunday, I was reading this text, and I talked about how Moses rose up to defend his brothers. Right? He saw the Egyptian taskmasters beating one of the Hebrews, and he said, “These are my people. You better leave my brother alone.” www.istrouma.org Page 6 of 11

Moses Page 7 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor

And the Hebrew used the word brother. And I use that occasion to say to us all in Christ, we are brothers. It doesn’t matter if you’re Hispanic or Asian or African-American or Caucasian. We’re one. Right? You all may remember me, and I refer to the Trayvon Martin case. Well, when I was doing that, this elderly white man was standing back in the back of the sanctuary. He had an African-American man, didn’t know him, that had come in and stood right beside him. So here is this like 80-year-old white man and this 25-year-old black man standing right next to each other.

And the elderly man had held out his bible so that they could read it together. That’s a beautiful picture. Isn’t it? Black and white, reading together the scripture. And when I was making those comments, the elderly member turned to the young man and said, “You’re my brother.” And the young man looked back at him and said, “You’re my brother.” I tell you, I wish I could have captured that on camera just so that we all could drink in that moment.

Now I don’t usually like you to talk when I’m preaching, but if you look at each other and you say, “You’re my brother. You’re my brother,” just crossing generational lines, ethnic lines, socioeconomic lines, just saying, “We’re one in Christ,” you know what that was? That was the ordinary made extraordinary. That’s when we’re credible. Didn’t Jesus say, “By this shall all men know that you’re my disciples?” When you have love one for another, and our God is so good, he takes the ordinary, and he makes it extraordinary. There’s another miracle God gives him to build his faith. He said, “Moses, put your hand in your cloak.” Moses put his hand in his cloak.

When he drew it out, it was leprous. Now I don’t know if you know anything about leprosy. It as the bane of ancient cultures, and it was the most feared disease of all because it eats away your flesh until your limbs fall off, and eventually death ensues. When he pulled it out and looked at it, he was terrified. Then he inserted it again under his cloak, and by God’s grace, that hand came out clean, like a new baby’s skin. It’s a picture of sick being made whole. Disease being made well. And of course, leprosy in the bible is a picture of our sin. When are we credible when we recognize that we are sinners?

And we have, as it were, spiritual leprosy, and we’ve been eaten away by it and diseased, yet God in grace, he makes us whole. God makes us credible when they see the transformation in our lives. And then the third sign, he said, “Pour out water from the Nile River. Pour it out on the ground.” When he did it, it would turn to blood. You see, for the Egyptians, the Nile represented life. You know that that region of the world is desert, but there’s a great delta created by the Nile River. That’s their source of drinking water, and the crops thrive because of the water. It is life. Yet God will say, “Moses, life isn’t found in whatever natural resources you have, any personal resources you have. It’s in the blood. It’s in the sacrifice that will be made for you and for all men. It is in Jesus.”

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Moses Page 8 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor

And we know these things that credibility comes when we’ve been transformed by the blood of Christ made well and submitted and useable by God. So that brings me now to the third and last excuse. What I want to call the ability excuse. Now this is in Chapter 4, Verse 10. But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I the Lord?” Now remember, God has told Moses to go and bring his people out of Egypt. That’s the command. His objection is I’m not able. I don’t speak well. Right?

He’s offering up an excuse. And a lot of us are like that. You know, we might say, “I’m too young,” or we might say, to the contrary, “I’m too old. I’ve never been to seminary. I’m not educated. I don’t know the bible. I don’t know what I would say. I don’t have enough money,” and on and on go the excuses. Moses’ case, he said, “I don’t speak well,” but God said, “Who makes man’s mouth? Is it not I, the Lord?” In other words, Moses, if I tell you to go do it, I will enable you to do it. I created you, and I will empower you. There’s no excuse. And a lot of us make excuses. There’s a man in our church that I admire very much, and some of you are going to know his name.

His name is Oliver. Oliver Dickerson. Oliver is a great fellow if you’ve ever met him. He’s probably in his 70s now, I would guess. He was a marine as a young man, and I think he still carries a lot of that commitment, Semper Fi, in him. Well, Oliver has been a deacon in our church and a Sunday school teacher for a lot of years. Of all things, he teaches fifth grade Sunday school boys. Now I don’t want to offend any of our boys here today, but I’m just going to tell you if you teach fifth grade Sunday school boys, you deserve a special crown in heaven. Right? You’re right up there with the apostles and fifth grade Sunday school teachers for boys. And Oliver loves those boys.

In fact, I’m just curious, any of you boys in here had Mr. Oliver as your ABF teacher? Really? All right, we’ve got grown men in here that Mr. Oliver was their teacher, and he’s still teaching today. Mr. Oliver could probably offer up some pretty good excuses for not going to teach his class. If you’ve ever seen him, he’s a big fellow. And I don’t know what happened, but over the years, he has some kind of a malady that caused his feet to kind of curl inward, and he got to where he actually walked like instead of on the sole of his foot on the side of his foot, on his ankle even. And it just got so severe, and it became more and more complex and complicated that they just had to amputate his foot.

So now, he has prosthesis. But you’ve got to love him, man. He’ll go through these treatments, and very, very difficult. Very painful. But you’ll see him here on Sunday hobbling out of his car to get in there to that class. I just – I love him because there’s no excuse. His heart is so into it. And so I just want to say to us all this morning there’s no excuse for excuses. Romans Chapter 12 is a real famous passage of scripture. It’s the one that says that we’re to offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. You remember that? A lot of us know Verses 1 and 2. That’s that very famous passage. But do you know what Verse 3 says? Listen to it. Do not think of yourself www.istrouma.org Page 8 of 11

Moses Page 9 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor more highly than you ought to think. But think sober in accordance with the measure of faith God has apportioned to everyone.

Now I want to show you two errors into which we can fall as we think of ourselves. There’s one error into which you can fall. That is thinking too highly of yourself. You’re God’s gift to humanity, you speak well, you sing well, you’ve been to school, you’re capable, and I suppose there’s some people that are guilty of thinking too highly of themselves. In fact, I remember this story, it was told – I think it was Joe Namath. He was in a restaurant one time, and Joe – he was Broadway Joe. Right?

He was a famous quarterback in the NFL. And everybody always was tugging at his coattail. He was so famous and so glamorous. One day he was in a restaurant, and this little boy came over and stood by his table. Joe looked over, and there was the little boy. So Joe just grabbed a menu and scribbled his signature on the menu and handed it to the little boy. The boy looked down at it and said, “No thanks, mister. I just wanted to borrow the ketchup.” Broadway Joe, he thought the boy came to get his autograph because I’m all that. Right? Thinking more highly of himself than – the boy just wanted the ketchup.

And so maybe some of us think too highly of ourselves, and if so, the bible says, “Do not think more highly of yourself than you are.” Instead, he says, think soberly. Now a lot of us think I shouldn’t think too highly of myself and my abilities. Instead, I ought to think very lowly of myself. But you know, the bible doesn’t say that. The answer isn’t thinking lowly of yourself. In fact, the verse says, “Do not think more highly of yourself than you ought. Instead, think soberly in accordance with the measure of faith that has been apportioned to everyone.” That is he says, “Don’t think too highly. Don’t think too lowly.” Don’t think that there’s no gift in you.

Don’t think that there’s no portion of faith in you. You are God’s creation. In fact, he loves you so much, he sent his only son to die for you. You’re of great value. There is grace in you. There are gifts in you. So think soberly. Neither too high, neither too low, and don’t make excuses. Helen Keller. Many of you will know that name. She was a very famous woman, blind, mute. I don’t think she could hear. So anyways, enclosed in that dark, silent world. She had a lot of reasons to make excuses, but her life was very powerfully used, and I want you to listen to a quote from her.

What she said about her abilities. Her responsibilities. Listen to this. I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do. And I just want to echo that to all of us. You’re not everything, but you are something. You’re not the only one, but you are one. And though you can’t do all things, you can do something, and so the fact that you can’t do everything shouldn’t keep you from doing the something that you can do. Do it. Don’t make excuses. Not of your ability, not of your identity, not of your credibility. God has answers to it all. So then I come to the end.

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Moses Page 10 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor

God has answered every excuse that Moses had offered, and it leads to his obedience, and that’s where God wants us all to get. He is obedient to the Lord personally. Look at Verse 20 of Chapter 4. So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey, and he went back to the land of Egypt. Moses took the staff of God in his hand. Can you imagine a more – a more pathetic site? Here comes the deliverer of the children of Israel. He’s got his wife and son on a donkey. He’s carrying a stick, and he’s going to free them from the mightiest army in all of the known world. It would be comical were it not so instructive.

Moses obeys. God has shot through every excuse, and Moses sees it, and he’s now ready to obey. And he does so on a personal level. In fact, you’ll have to read the rest of this story on your own. It’s an interesting chapter in the life of Moses. Moses doesn’t have everything in order in his own home. His son has not been circumcised, the eldest of them, and God calls him to account on it. And he has to circumcise that boy. In effect, get his house in order, and now that his house is in order personally, he’s able to impact the people beyond, and that’s the last thing. The peoples’ obedience. I want you to see the very last verses of Chapter 4.

It says there beginning in Verse 29, “Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all of the elders of the people of Israel. Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sign of the people. And the people believed. And when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshipped.” I love this. When we stop using excuses and we get in the game and we’re empowered by the Lord and we’re personally obedient, we’re going to impact those around us. They, too, are going to believe, and they’re going to worship.

That’s the end of it all. That’s the end game that people would come to believe in the name of the Lord and worship him. Follow him. There’s a guy, and I’ll conclude with this, that I’ve admired across the years. He was born in my home state of Arkansas, Jonesboro, Arkansas in 1953. He’s got one of the greatest stories you’ll ever hear, and I encourage you if you have some time, go to IAmSecond.org and Google David Ring, just like the ring on your finger, David Ring’s story. I’ll tell you just a little bit of his story. David was born in 1953, and he was born the last of eight children, as I remember. He was basically born still. They thought he was dead, and for like 18 minutes, he wasn’t breathing. They put him over on a table to die, in effect, he tells it.

But it ain’t over until God says it’s over, and he survived. But they came to find out that he had a severe form of cerebral palsy. And so David grew up really not able to walk and didn’t have much mobility as normal people do. He had a tremendous slur when he would speak. So of course, you can imagine all the boys and girls in school harassed him relentlessly. His one solace was his mother. In fact, his father died when he was still a boy. He died of liver cancer. He only had his mother, but he said, “My mama loved me. My mama would feed me. My mama would clothe me, and my mama would hug me.”

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Moses Page 11 of 11 July 8, 2013 “There’s No Excuse for Excuses” Jeff Ginn, Senior Pastor

He said, “Everybody else would make fun of me, but my mama, she loved me. I’m a mama’s boy.”

When he was 14 years old, his mother contracted cancer. He said, “I pray to God, please don’t take my mama. She’s the only one who loves me. God, don’t take my mama.” He said but his mother died, and he was left alone. He was orphaned. He began to be farmed out into foster homes. He said he wanted to die. He said he tried to take his own life. He despaired of life. He said, “Nobody loves me. Nobody cares about me. Everybody makes fun of me. God, you don’t love me or you wouldn’t have made me the way I am. You wouldn’t have let my mama die if you love me.” He said one night he went to church, and I suppose he didn’t go a lot. He went to church, and he heard that somebody did love him. That God loved him, and God loved him so much that God gave his only son, Jesus, to die in his place for his sins, for our sins.

David said he gave his heart to Jesus that night, gave his life to Christ to become a disciple. He said his life changed, and David felt God calling him to be a preacher. They said, “David, you can’t be a preacher. Nobody can even understand what you say. No church will ever invite you to speak.” Now this is probably 40 years later. David has spoken in thousands of churches. He speaks to about 100,000 people every year. And God has used him to bring the gospel to so many whose lives have been changed.

And basically, his message is this: What’s your excuse? I was orphaned. I have cerebral palsy. I can’t speak well, but God uses me. What’s your excuse? And I want to say to all of us here, most of us able bodied, most of us very bright, most of us very capable. We’re somebodies. We need to learn that we’re nobody without Christ. But we’ll be somebody when he gets a hold of us, surrendered to him, and when we offer up no excuses. Let’s pray.

Lord, we have no excuses today as to why we wouldn’t surrender our all to you. I pray you’d convict us where we’d been offering up lame excuses. Just shoot holes in it, Lord. Help us to come to obedience. Then to walk in the joy and fullness of life that you’ve given. I pray that for every one of us, for those who need to come to Christ, for those who need to come into the fellowship of this church, for those who may be called to preach the gospel or to be a missionary, to give their lives in vocational service. Lord, you know the calling on our lives to teach in Sunday school, to be a children’s volunteer, to work in the student ministry. Whatever it is, Lord, you’re calling us to do, help us to do it, no excuses. I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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