When you’re travelling through a spiritual and emotional wasteland, which we all do at some point, it can feel as though that’s it. It’s all over. There’s no future. But it turns out that God is in that place too. It turns out that He has a plan. It turns out, that your best is yet to come!

No Future for Me

We’re starting a new series this week that I’ve called, “Your best is yet to come”. I recently interviewed Margaret Court. Now Margaret is the greatest tennis player of all time that’s ever walked the planet. Greater than Steffi Graf and Martina Navratalova and Roger Federa and Andre Agassi – Margaret has won sixty two grand slam titles. She did that between 1960 and 1975 – no one else has even come close. Now she had a profound impact on me because when her tennis career was over, she went, “Wow, now what?” She went through really difficult times but in the midst of that, God gave her this notion through His Word that her best was yet to come.

She had depression and fear and anxiety, now you wouldn’t think that of the greatest tennis player that’s ever lived. Have a listen this is what she had to say: “After I became a Christian, had four children, my life became a mess. A lot of fear came into my life. I finished up having a torn valve of the heart, depression, insomnia, I was on medication for heart trouble – they said I would be on it for the rest of my life.

I was on tablets for depression and tablets for insomnia and it was back in the early seventies that two men from Full Gospel Business Men came to me and said, “Margaret, why don’t you come and hear something on faith and so I went and I started to hear how faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, how we could grow, how important it was in what we spoke and what we heard because Jesus says in the Scriptures, in Romans 12:2:

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Isn’t that interesting, because the depression hit after she gave her life to God? You know, you think sometimes, “Well, you give your life to God, you believe in Jesus and it should all get better.” But for her, it happened after her great tennis career and after she made a commitment to Jesus Christ as her Lord and her Saviour and it was in the midst of all of that, that as she started spending time in God’s Word, she got a sense from Him that her best was yet to come. We can often get to believing in our lives that we are all washed up. We look at the cold, hard realities of life and it’s all too hard. It feels like it’s over, it feels like we have nothing to live for.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like for someone like Margaret Court who was on the top of the tennis ladder for such a long time, who won so many tennis tournaments and was interviewed and Prime Ministers and Queens and people wanted to be around Margaret Court and then, all of a sudden she finishes all of that and life becomes about having babies and changing nappies. And all of a sudden, as she said, there was fear and anxiety and depression and sickness and it must have felt that it was all over.

And that happens to us whether we’re a tennis superstar like Margaret Court or ordinary, everyday people just like you and me. “Aw, it’s all over. That’s it! God isn’t planning on anything else in my life.” You get this sense of hopelessness, life isn’t going anywhere. “There’s no future for me!” It’s something that we all go through and we’re going to take God’s Word into that place. This week and over the next three weeks in this four part series that I’ve called, “Your Best is Yet to Come”.

Let’s just quickly pray.

Father, as we begin this series today, as we begin to take your Word into a place of wilderness and difficulty in our lives, I just pray that you would really convict us, Father, that your Spirit is at work in us and that your Spirit is at work through your Word and as we accept your Word today and over the coming weeks, I pray that you would convict us, that our best is yet to come. Father, we ask that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now grab your Bible, we are going to spend some time with Moses. Now Moses was an ordinary, everyday person whom God used extraordinarily and this is not a message that says, “be like Moses” because you and I aren’t like Moses and what’s more, we never will be. God had a plan for Moses’ life just as He has a plan for mine and He has a plan for yours and those plans are different, based on who God has made us to be. Now this is a message about what God does with people like you and me. Even when we feel like we are burnt out old wrecks and it’s all over.

So grab your Bible and open it up at Exodus chapter 1. Here’s the scene: Abraham was the first man that God really spoke to, to engage His chosen people, the Israelites and Abraham had a son called Isaac, who had a son called Jacob, who had twelve sons one of whom was Joseph and Joseph, through a whole bunch of horrible things that his brothers did to him, ended up being the Prime Minister of Egypt and then all the other brothers came down during a famine and so the nation of Israel began to grow. There were twelve brothers all in all, including Joseph; they were the twelve tribes of Israel and they began to grow.

They grew so quickly and so numerously and so prolifically that Pharaoh became really scared of the fact that these Hebrew’s were going to overrun the whole of Egypt, and so he did some pretty horrible things. He decided to have all the young Hebrew baby boys drowned. They had to be thrown into the Nile River and Moses was one of those. Moses was one of these kids who were supposed to have been drowned. He wasn’t, God saved him – we’ll look at that in a moment. And he did some silly things and he ended up as a burnt out old wreck. He was “Mr – I have no future – Moses”. He was at the back of the desert, he was tending sheep, he was at the end of any career you could imagine and God had a plan for him. God was in that desert with him. Moses didn’t realise it but his best was yet to come.

God’s Mighty Deeds

Moses was one of these little babies, these Hebrews that was born and the Pharaoh’s plan was to kill all the young Hebrew boys and to stop the Hebrews from multiplying, so right from the beginning his life was under pressure. Have a listen, this is the story. It comes from Exodus chapter 2 verses 1 to 10.

Now a man from the house of Levi married a Levite woman and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months but when she couldn’t hide him for any longer she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch, then she placed the child in it and put it amongst the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood there at a distance to see what would happen to him.

Then Pharaoh’s daughter when down to the Nile to bathe and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to go and get it. She opened it and saw a baby, he was crying and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said, then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you and Pharaoh’s daughter said, “Yes, go,” and the girl went and got the babies mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me and I will pay you, so the woman took the baby and nursed him and when the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son and she named him Moses, saying, ‘I drew him out of the water.’”

So here’s God’s miraculous intervention. Pharaoh is wanting to kill all the baby Hebrew boys and God intervenes miraculously – and you know, it’s always the way. When we are in a desert and we’re in a wilderness and we’re struggling, that we can look back to the past and see the power of God’s mighty hand as He’s brought us through things to the point where we are in life at the moment. We each have stories of what God has done.

Some people know them clearly, other people need to pray, “God show me when your hand guided my life in the past, to bring me to this point.” And when we feel burnt out and hopeless and life isn’t going where we want it to be, we can look back and see His mighty works. See the clear evidence of the work that He’s begun in us that He hasn’t finished yet. When I’m struggling, when I’ve got things in my life coming against me, it is such an encouragement to me to be able to look back and see what God has done in my life.

Anyway, Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s house with incredible wealth and privilege, but in his heart, God wove a sense of justice and passion for His people, the Hebrews, who were so oppressed as slaves under Pharaoh. We read on in Exodus chapter 2.

One day after Moses had grown up; he went out to where his own people were and watched them hard at their labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people, and glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 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?”

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

When Pharaoh heard of it he tried to kill Moses but Moses fled for Pharaoh and when to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came to draw water and fill the toughs to water their father’s flock.

Some other shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. When the girls returned to their father, he asked them, “Why have you come back so early?” and they answered him, “This Egyptian guy rescued us from the shepherds and he even drew water for us and watered the flock.” “Well, where is he?” he asked his daughters, “Why did you leave him there? Invite him to have something to eat.”

Moses agreed to stay with the man who gave his daughter Zipporah, to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son and Moses named him Gershom, saying ‘I have become an alien in a foreign land’. During that long period, the king of Egypt died and the Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out and their cry for help, because of their slavery, went up to God and God heard their groaning and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob, so God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

Moses went from being a Hebrew baby on death row, to being like a son in Pharaoh’s palace, to being on the run for murder, to being in Midian in the middle of no where and even, amidst adversity, Moses trait shone out. God gave him a heart like that, he sees in justice being done to these young women at the well and he stands up for them. He sees one of his own Hebrew people being beaten and he stands up for them. It’s something that God put in him and it’s the same with you and me.

There are things that we love to do; there are things that we are passionate about. For me its story telling, now hang onto that. We are going to look at that in a lot more detail next week on the program. But here’s Moses who’s been through this roller-coaster ride, up and down, and up and down – he’s in the middle of no where, from Pharaoh’s palace to herding some lousy sheep in the back and beyond. That’s the way life goes sometimes, like God takes us out of the game and puts us on a shelf somewhere and we’re hidden away and we think it’s all over, but it’s not. A good bottle of wine matures and ages in a dark cool cellar; a caterpillar becomes a butterfly hidden in the cocoon; a baby grows in its mother’s womb, hidden away from the rest of the world because God does His greatest works in the dark. God does His greatest works when we’re in the desert; in the wilderness; in those places where it feels like it’s all over.

Now Moses spent years wandering around this land. He knew it like the back of his hand and later, as we will see in the next few weeks, he was to bring the whole of the nation of Israel out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and pass back through this land that he knew backwards and they spent another forth years in this wilderness on the Exodus. God was getting him ready – his heart, his head, his skills, his abilities, his knowledge, and when we are in that place in the wilderness like Moses was, we think it’s all over – we think God’s given up on us, but that’s not it. God is doing stuff in that wilderness that we can’t imagine and what’s more, God is out there in that wilderness with us and when we least expect it, He comes along and says, “Now, I have a plan for you.”

The Back of Beyond

Let’s look at God’s plan because I truly believe that your best is yet to come. Moses’ story is really not a story about Moses at all – it’s about how God works. Sometimes we come to the Bible with the wrong questions. We think, “how can I be more like Moses?” and the answer is, we can’t. God didn’t make us to be like Moses. He made us to be us – me to be me and you to be you. The right questions look more like this: What does this story tell me about God? What’s God saying to me today about who He is and what His will for my life is and how I can respond to be the best ‘me’ that I can be? Moses story is actually God’s story and no more do we see that, when God shows up out the back of beyond to talk to Moses.

Let’s have a look, it comes from Exodus chapter 3 verses 1 to 12.

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian and he led the flock out to the far side of the desert, literally out beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire within a bush and Moses saw that, though the bush was on fire, it didn’t burn up. So Moses thought, ‘I’ll go over and see this strange sight – why the bush doesn’t burn up.’

When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from the bush and said: “Moses, Moses,” and Moses said: “Here I am.” “Don’t come any closer,” God said, “take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

And God said: “I am the God of your father; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” At this Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look on God. And the Lord said: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt – I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I am concerned about their suffering, so I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey – the home of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites.

And now the cry of Israel has reached me and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them so now, go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt and God said: “I will be with you and this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt you will worship me on this mountain.”

It’s a profound passage of Scripture. Verse 1 of chapter 3 says that Moses was out there beyond the wilderness – at the back of beyond – in the middle of no where in a foreign land. And that’s how is feels in the wilderness as far as the eye can see, all there is, is desert and not a single soul to nurture us, to encourage us, to hold us. Moses must of felt forgotten, on the shelf, past his use-by date, and then God shows up.

You see, Moses didn’t realise it, but God was in that place, God was out in the desert with Moses. You know something? God is always out in the desert, with us, even when we don’t realise it. You might say, “Well, Berni, that’s great for Moses. You know, he had the whole burning bush thing, he had an angel of the Lord, the voice of God spoke to him, that’s great but I don’t have any of that in my life. It’s just not going to happen to me, come on!”

And my question to you is really blunt and it’s this: so why do you think that God went to all the trouble to put you and me together in this place today? Why is it do you think that God spoke to me specifically and said, “Berni, I want you to do this teaching from my Word about what I did with Moses.”

Today, we are hearing the Word of God and today I would encourage you to still your heart and you will hear His voice and not mine. For better or for worse, today this program, His Word is your burning bush. I truly believe that God is speaking into your life today and as we look at the story of Moses and the plan God had for Moses to be one of the greatest leaders of His people in all of history, I truly believe God is saying, “Your best is yet to come.”

Look at how He did it with Moses; look at verse 7 – the language that He uses where He says: “Look, I’ve indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt, I’ve heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I’m concerned about their suffering, so I have come to rescue them.” God is speaking right into what we see was in Moses heart, way back, early, when he killed that Egyptian. Why did he kill him? Moses killed that Egyptian because he was abusing one of God’s people, the Hebrews. And when Moses went to the well and he saw these male shepherds giving the girls a hard time, Moses stood up for them. Why? Because God had given him a sense of justice.

So this language in verse 7 is music to Moses heart. It’s what God made Moses to be and to feel. It’s the passion He put in Moses heart. Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s house. Who does God go to get to talk to Pharaoh? Moses. He knows the ropes.

God says, “I want to rescue my people,” who does God get to go and do that? The man in whom that call lives and then He says, “You’re going to come back this way, the sign that I am with you, is that you will come back to this mountain and you will worship me. This is the land that you have been herding sheep in for the last few decades. This is the land that you know like the back of your hand. This is the land I’ve prepared you in for forty years in exile, when you bring my people out of Egypt.”

That’s how God does it! All the time softening and mellowing Moses heart, teaching and training him, getting him ready out in the wilderness. Do you get it? God is up to something good in your wilderness and mine. No, we can’t always see it, we can’t always feel it, but that why God sent us His Word today, “Your best is yet to come!”

Now, if you have a look at verse 11, Moses was a bit apprehensive; he had fear and he had apprehension. When God drags us out of our desert, all of a sudden we go: “Oh, um, not like that God”, and that’s natural and we’ll look at that next week on the program. But today, in this place, in whatever desert or wilderness you might be walking through today, God is speaking to us through this story. God will take a burnt out old wreck from the back of the wilderness; He’ll show up and say, “your best is yet to come”.

“I’ve given you some things, I’ve taught you some things, I made you certain things, now, now is my time – your best is yet to come.” That’s God’s Word I truly believe today. When we’re in the wilderness and we want to give up, all we need do is go to Exodus 1, 2 and 3 and just have a read of Moses story. God is a God who trains us and grows us and builds us and refines us through fire and all of a sudden He shows up one day and says, “You, your best is yet to come!”

Every now and then, God comes along and whispers something into your heart – a plan, a dream, a future and when He does that, it can be just a bit unsettling. Not just for you and me, but even for people like … Moses.

A Reluctant Leader

It’s great to be with you again today. We’re in the second program of a series that I’ve called, “Your Best is Yet to Come”. It’s easy to get to a point in our lives and feel as though we were all washed up.” There’s no future. God couldn’t possibly do anything with me.” It’s a pretty common occurrence and it happens to all of us at some point but no matter who we are and what mistakes we have made in the past, how hopeless our lives seem right here and now  however boring, however mundane life is, God is bigger than all of those things and He has a plan for our lives.

Sometimes in my life it’s been really hard to see – when I’m tired or when I’m exhausted or when I’m dejected. It’s really hard to see sometimes but God is at work and that God has a plan and I truly believe that your best and my best are yet to come. And that’s why I have called this series, “Your best is yet to come”, God wants to set some people free today to be who He made them to be.

On our last program, we began the series looking at a fellow called Moses.

Now Moses was born in Egypt. He was born at a time when the Israel nation was in slavery in Egypt. And in fact, they were so populous – they were breeding like rabbits – that the Pharaoh, the King of Egypt was really concerned that these slaves would ultimately over-run the people of the land, the Egyptians. And so an order went out from Pharaoh that all Hebrew babies be put to death and Moses was born just about that time. So he was a Hebrew baby on death row and his mother put him in a reed basket onto the Nile River, Pharaoh’s daughter found him and Moses ended up growing up in Pharaoh’s palace.

So he went from death row, right up to living in the King’s palace until he murdered one of the Egyptians. And Pharaoh found out about it and Moses was on the run and he went way, way, way, out into the desert to a place called, Midian, in the middle of no where. And he spent decades there tending sheep.

So here is Moses, this burnt out old wreck, way out beyond the wilderness and God comes and appears to him in a burning bush and says: “Moses, go tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” And Moses says, “Me? I mean, do you know who you’re talking to here God? I am a murderer; I’ve fallen from living in the King’s palace to being some crummy shepherd out the back of beyond. Me?” And that’s often our first reaction! God shows up to Moses in the most amazing way – out the back and beyond; out beyond the wilderness and Moses says, “You can’t be possibly talking to me?”

And maybe that’s your reaction today, to this message: “Your best is yet to come”. “It couldn’t be – it’s not possible. Look at my circumstances, look at who I am, look at me. ” It’s easy to hate the place where we’re at, but when God comes along and speaks into that place and says, “I have a future for you and your best is yet to come,” we can recoil from that. I want to specifically speak into that reaction today. It’s very human but I wonder how many people miss out on what God’s doing in their lives through that very reaction.

Let’s have a look at Moses again. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it. This is a great story, open it up, it’s the second book. We are going to Exodus chapter 4 verses 1 to 17. And this is what it says:

So God has appeared to Moses in the burning bush, here is Moses’ reaction. “Moses answered, “What if they don’t believe me or they don’t listen to me or they say, “God didn’t appear to you,” and then the Lord said to him, “Moses, what’s that in your hand? “A staff,” he replied. And the Lord said, “Throw it on the ground,” and Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake and he ran from it and then the Lord said, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.”

So Moses reached out and he took hold of the snake by the tail and it turned back into a staff in his hand. “This,” said the Lord, “is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has appeared to you.” And then the Lord said, “Put your hand inside your cloak,” so Moses did that and when he took it out it was leprous, like snow. God said, “Put it back into your cloak, “so Moses put his hand back inside his cloak and when he took it out it was restored like the rest of his flesh.

Then the Lord said, ”If they don’t believe you or pay attention to the first of my signs, they may believe the second, but if they don’t believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the ground, the water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.” And Moses said to the Lord, “Oh Lord, I’ve never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant, I’m slow of speech and tongue,” and the Lord God said to him, “Who do you think gave man his mouth, who makes him deaf or mute, who gives him sight or makes him blind? Isn’t it me?” said the Lord. “Now go! I’ll help you. I’ll help you speak and I’ll teach you what to say.” But Moses said, “Oh, Lord, please send someone else to do it.”

Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and He said, “What about your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know he can speak well, he is already on his way to meet you and his heart will be glad when he sees you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth and I will help both of you speak and I’ll teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him, but take this staff in your hand so that you can perform the miraculous signs with it.”

God comes along to Moses in the desert, in the middle of the mess and Moses is a reluctant leader. Moses is reluctant about being dragged out of his comfort zone. He comes up with five excuses – we saw three of them here – “But what if they don’t listen to me, what if I’m a lousy speaker”, and the final catch all, “aw, God, please send someone else.” Here’s the mistake we make – God shows up in our desert and He says, “I’ve got a plan for you. Your best is yet to come”, and we kind of have a picture of what that might be – a luxury, or career, or wealth, or a happy family or some ideal of what perfect life looks like. And so we want that best on our terms and if we wait around for it on our terms, it’s never going to happen because God’s best for our lives only ever comes on God’s terms.

Let me say that again, it’s important. We saw it here in the story of God and Moses. God’s best for our lives only ever comes on God’s terms.

On the last program we saw where God had prepared Moses for exactly this task of going to Pharaoh and saying, “Let my people go.” I mean, Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s house, he knew the ropes. Moses had a heart for his people; the very heart that God needed in him to set them free from slavery in Egypt and he knew this desert area like the back of his hand – he’s been there for decades, tending sheep and this is the very place that God would bring the whole nation of Israel back and they would spend forty years in the desert on the exodus – their journey to the Promised Land.

God knew Moses better than Moses knew Moses. God knows us better than we know us and when God comes along with a plan, it can be challenging and scary and it’s always out of our comfort zone. Do you want God’s best? Do you want Him to lift you up and use you to bless other people and fill you with a joy about who we are and what He’s made us to be? If you want that, it has to happen on God’s terms, just like it did with Moses and it will exceed anything we can ever hope for or imagine.

Some Crummy Stick

Ok, so Moses is out in the desert, God is convincing him that he has a plan for Moses’ life. Moses is reluctant; he has all the excuses under the sun – just like us. “It couldn’t possibly be happening to me.” How often do we react that way when God is up to something good in our lives? It’s kind of very human – we want the best but we want it on our terms and it only ever happens on God’s terms. Ok, so what does God do to convince Moses that He has a plan to get him out of this desert and to use him in a powerful way? Let’s have another look at Exodus chapter 4, verses 1 to 5.

Moses answers God, “Well, what if they don’t believe me or listen to me and they say, “God never appeared to you.” Then the Lord said to him, “What’s that in your hand Moses?” “A staff”, he replied and the Lord said, “throw it on the ground”, so Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake and he ran away from it. And the Lord said, “Come on, reach out, pick it up by the tail.” So Moses reaches out and takes hold of the snake and it turns back into a staff. “This,” said God, “is so that they may believe that I sent you.”

See Moses is worried about what everybody else is going to think. “What if they don’t believe me”, instead of being worried about what God thinks and what God’s saying and what God’s doing. Does that sound familiar? And God’s response: “Moses, what’s that you’ve got in your hand?” “Well, God, it’s just a crummy staff.” I mean, what was Moses doing when God appeared to him?

Well, he was out there herding sheep. He was a shepherd and of course, being a shepherd, he had a shepherd’s staff in his hand – an every day tool of trade, boring and mundane, something that he never even gave a second thought to. And God says, “What’s that that you’ve got in your hand? Throw it on the ground,” it becomes a snake and all of a sudden God takes the mundane thing that Moses already has in his hand and He mixes it with God’s power and does something miraculous.

A man who’s had a huge impact on my life, through just one simple story he told me, is called Peter Irvine, the managing director of the global Gloria Jeans Coffee Chain. I interviewed him on a program a while back and if you missed it you can see it on our website. “Living you dreams”, it’s called, on our web address: www.christianitywork.com.

Anyway, Peter Irvine relates this story of when his warehouse and head office; everything they had, burned down. Went there in the morning and the whole head office, all the coffee warehouse, everything was a smouldering ruin – that’s where his dream was! They were opening new franchise stores that week, they still had to supply the existing ones and this Scripture came to him that we just read. “Moses what is that in your hand?”

Well, Peter went, “I’ve got some coffee stores somewhere else and I’ve got relationships across the industry, above all, we’ve still got our people.” How often do you see on the news, a factory fire burns down, the people don’t have any jobs. Not a Gloria Jeans, they used what they had in their hand – it wasn’t much – it was mundane, it was people, it was relationships and they believed that God could work with that.

Now, the people were a huge asset. They had a heart for what the business was about. They built the business back bigger and stronger than it was before and Peter Irvine said that to me and let me share it with you. You have to take the “staff” that God’s put into your hand and do your bit and believe that God will do His bit.

Look at Moses – argued with God – it was a tough ask on Moses and often when God comes to meet us in the desert, it’s a tough ask on our lives. When we feel that we are burnt out, that life has passed us by, that God could never do anything with us, God comes along and says, “What are the skills and the passions and the talents and the abilities and the money and the relationships and the connections that you have in your hand. What is that that you have?”

I remember years ago being like Moses, being at the back of the desert, in a wilderness time in my life and I remember God speaking very clearly to me about the“staff” that he’d put in my hand – just this simple ability to tell a story and hold peoples attention. “Well, God, what could you ever do with that?”

I was a failure; I was broken down; I had no hopes, no dreams and He spoke very clearly, “That’s the staff in your hand.” Wasn’t what I expected so I went to Bible College, after being a Christian for just a few months? God called me and said, “Go!” so I went. And now doors have opened up and now you and I and a few hundred thousand other people in eighty countries around the world, are sitting here together over God’s Word. It’s easy when you look back.

Let me specifically encourage you today. “What, me? No, couldn’t be.” “Yes, you!” Look, what’s the thing that God put in your hand? Pick it up, start using it, and go with whatever you’ve got. And it may not look like much – Moses’ staff didn’t look like much, nor did the ability for me to tell a story, nor did the smouldering ruins that Peter Irvine was looking at when his coffee warehouse burnt down. Pick it up and start using it and see what God will do with that.

God’s Provision

You know, we can look at this story and say, well, this is a story about Moses. It’s not – it’s a story about who God is and how God operates and what God does. Moses was a human, frail man, just like you and me and God in His grace and power, comes and meets Moses out beyond that desert and He says, “Moses, I’ve got a plan for you and when you are feeling weak and frail and human, I will take the things that I have already put into your hand and I will put my anointing on them and my power on them; my miracle working power, and I will bring my plan to pass.

One of the things that happens when God comes along to bring His best in our lives is we see God and we immediately say, “I’m not worthy, I have this sense of inadequacy just like Moses.” We look at the doughnut and we see the hole in the centre, we see what’s missing and so we have all these excuses – we make a list of them; we use them as a crutch. Moses did it! Come on; let’s have another look at it.

Come with me back into the Bible and have a look at it, beginning at chapter 4 verse 10 of Exodus.

Moses said to the Lord, “Oh Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant – I am slow of speech.” And the Lord said to him, “Who do you think gave you the mouth, who do you think makes a person deaf or mute, who do you think gives them sight or makes them blind? Isn’t it me? Now, go, I will help you to speak and I will teach you what to say.” But Moses says, “Lord, please send someone else.”

Now look at God’s reaction:

Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and He said, “What about your brother Aaron, the Levite, I know he can speak. He’s already on his way to meet you, his heart will be glad to see you. You will speak to him and you’ll put words in his mouth and I will speak to both of you and I will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. But take this staff in your hands so that you can perform the miraculous signs with it.

God is never impressed with self-pity and a sense of inadequacy, because you know what? It’s not about you. It’s not about what you can do. It’s not about what I can do. It’s not about me relying on me or you relying on you. It’s about us relying on God.

Come on, look at verse 11 again.

The Lord said to him, “Who gave man his mouth, who makes him deaf or mute, isn’t it me?”

You know, God never asks us to do anything that He doesn’t equip us to do. Let me say that again. God never asks us to do anything that He doesn’t equip us to do.

But what He does do He asks us to step out into it before we know how it’s going to happen. “I don’t have the skills!” God will give you the skills. God will give you other people around you, like He said, “Look, I’ve sent your brother Aaron, he’s a good speaker. “Aw, I don’t have the money to do this”, God is no man’s debtor, God isn’t broke. “Aw, the doors aren’t open”, you think God can’t open the doors?

Whatever it is, we need to do the thing that God has called us to do, God will provide. The only thing Moses had to do here was to go and to take his staff with him – that stupid crummy stick that he had in his hand – go and God will provide the rest. Go and use the stick when I tell you to. Go and speak when I tell you to. Go and be my man in this place.

I so relate to Moses’ story because when God spoke to me and said, “Take this gift that I’ve given you – just this gift to tell a story – and step out and start producing radio programs. Well, we did in the ministry. We had no stations to take the programs, we had no funds really to produce the programs, we had no reputation and I remember thinking, “God, how can you ask me to do this? How can you possibly call me, I can’t do this? And God took the staff in my hand and then He added all the other things that I needed and I didn’t really have a sense of my own staff; I didn’t really have a sense of what I could do and through His favour and His provision and His anointing, He opened doors.

Funding was critical so many times in the life of this ministry but just as the right time a donor would send a cheque, a bequest would come through, and income would come through in the most amazing ways. Stop kidding yourself – God never asks us to do something that He doesn’t equip us to do. And the attitude I guess, that I have adopted, is I’m going to take my staff, the thing that God has put in my hand and I’m going to do the very best that I can do with that. But my best is not enough -and this is God’s ministry and only God can speak into your heart and only God can open the doors and only God can bless you and only God can provide the funding and if He doesn’t do that His ministry is not going anywhere.

And you know something He always shows up, He always does because God’s principle issue is that He should be glorified; His key desire is to see you blessed in a relationship with Him. God is passionate about you and so He uses imperfect people like me, people who don’t know everything, people who aren’t perfect and He says, “go” and take the “staff” that’s in your hand. It’s not always smooth; it’s not always easy; it’s not always convenient – we’re going to look at that on the next program.

But this is a powerful story in Exodus chapter 4. We see God, the God of power and grace, meet Moses out in the back of the wilderness and say to Moses, “You know something, Moses, I’ve got a plan and you’re my man and right now I need you to go with my plan because, Moses, your best is yet to come.”

See, Moses is out the back of the wilderness; he’s a burnt out old wreck; he thinks that there is nobody there but God is out in the wilderness, God is always out in the wilderness and He comes to us at the most amazing times and He says, “Your best is yet to come, I have a plan.” What ever God’s plan is for your life it’s a plan for good, it’s a plan to bless you, it’s a plan to give you hope, it’s a plan to use you in His great plan to bless other people and at the same time, to bless you.

Let me ask you, what is it that you have in your hand, what is your“staff”? Will you use it? Because your best is yet to come!

Sometimes in life it seems as though God is sending us mixed signals. On the one hand, He’s done some mighty things and He promises so much more. But on the other, these trials always seem to come your way. What exactly is He playing at?

Free At Last

It is great to be with you again today in this the third message in a series that I’ve called, “Your Best is Yet to Come”. The phrase “your best is yet to come” is a phrase that kind of belongs to Margaret Court. Now, that name may or may not be familiar to you, but Margaret Court is the greatest tennis player that has ever lived. Between 1960 and 1975 she won 62 Grand Slam titles, that’s enormous no one else has ever come close to that, and in the era of superstar syndrome we forget that superstars started as nobody’s.

Margaret began her life as a child in a country town in Australia, she had a really tough upbringing and she went through some real up’s and down’s in her career. All through it she had a sense from God that, that somehow her best was yet to come.

Even after her tennis career was over and she wasn’t in the limelight anymore and she was bringing up kids she went through some especially difficult times. Difficult because it was just tough, now we don’t expect that, we don’t expect a superstar, someone who is the most successful tennis player that’s ever walked the planet to go though difficult times. But it was especially during that time after she finished her tennis career, in a time where she discovered Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour, that she had those difficult times and she just felt God saying to her that her best was yet to come.

Which is really amazing, I mean here we have the most successful tennis player of all time finishes her career and she senses that God is a God who is saying, “your best is yet to come”. And here’s what I’ve discovered, that our best, whatever that is, whether we’re tennis player or whether we’re people who work in technology, or whether we’re academic or we’re not it doesn’t matter. Whatever our best is, it often happens amidst the great trials and uncertainties of life and those trials are things that we all go through. It’s amazing how many of the letters that we get in response to these programs talk about the difficulties that people are going through.

And so today’s message is called, “The Trials that Always Seem to Come”.

Its kind of this, for me it’s a paradox, it’s a tension, on the one hand God does want to bring out our best and God is about bringing out our best, but so often it happens in the face of trials and failures and you open up God’s word. You see it in the lives of so many people whether its Abraham, whether its Moses, whether its David, whether its one of the prophets, whether its Jesus – His best came out on the cross, His best for us, and it was such a great trial, to the world it looked like a failure.

I was spending some time with a college from Bangladesh recently, and Bangladesh is an incredibly poor country, 144 million people in a very small space – incredibly crowded, poor. It has floods, it has storms; and this man is doing the Lord’s work in a city of around about 1 million people, a place where there are less than 50 Christians in the whole city.

We were sharing this time together in India recently and the man had a little sparkle in his eyes, he was well dressed, he was pleasant, he was happy, he was committed. We talked about the funding of his ministry and I said, “Well how do you fund your ministry?” And he said, “Well, you know, we make some blankets and we try and sell them and mostly we eat rice but often there’s not enough food to put on the table so we go hungry.”

How could this man have such a countenance of peace despite his difficult circumstances? Now I think we have a natural tendency to whinge and complain and to tell people how bad things are and it seems that the more we have the more prone we are to that.

Over the last few weeks on the program, we’re been looking at the story of Moses because Moses was a man who at the age of 80 was a burnt out old wreck in the back of the desert. He was a failure, he was a murderer but God was in that place and despite all of Moses’ excuses, all of his complaints God was there to tell him, “Moses, your best is yet to come.”

Last week we saw how God took Moses and Moses couldn’t believe that God could possibly use him, and he said to Moses, “What’s that in your hand?” And Moses said, “It’s my staff.” And God did some miracles through that shepherd’s staff, He turned it into a snake, he turned it back into a staff, He turned the Nile into blood, He parted the Red Sea with that staff.

Today, we’re going to look at some of the trials that came Moses’ way, the trials that always seem to come. Because when God shows up and says, “I’ve got a plan for your life”.

There’s one thing for certain, there are going to be days where it sure doesn’t feel like it. If you look around at other people they all seem to be successful and other ones are praising them and those people are doing well, and we can often feel, “They’re all successful, their life’s going well.” But we’re in this fire storm of opposition and failure and … what do you know? When we’re on God’s journey it’s not always going to be plane sailing, in fact, the opposite is true. Jesus promises that in this world we will have tribulations; we’ll have pressures we’ll feel like the life is being squeezed out of us.

Let’s pick up Moses’ story, it’s a story when God has sent Moses to tell Pharaoh to let His people go and Pharaoh doesn’t what to let the people go out of slavery so God sends 10 plagues and finally Pharaoh lets Israel go out of Egypt. For centuries they’ve been in slavery and finally they’re free, finally they’re out, it must have been an incredible feeling that sense of liberation. Let’s have a read its Exodus chapter 13 beginning at verse 17, if you have a Bible grab it.

When Pharaoh let the people go God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter, but God said “If they face war they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God lead the people round by the desert road towards the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear and oath, he said, “God will surely come to your aid and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.”

After leaving Succoth they camped at Etham on the edge of the desert, by day the Lord went ahead of them, a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light so they could travel by day or by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.

It’s often the way, we set out on God’s journey and we have this sense of His presence really powerfully, really strongly, this great sense of freedom and jubilation it must have been what Israel felt when they left Egypt. But notice what it says in verses 17 and 18. God could have taken them the short route, straight to the Promised Land through the Philistine country, only 11 days walk actually, but he knew that they weren’t ready for the Promised Land; they weren’t ready for the battles with the Philistines.

For God said, “If they face war they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So instead of taking the short way God took them the long way. And the short way to you and me always looks easier, but God knew they weren’t ready to fight the Philistines and then all the other nations that they’d have to fight to get into the Promised Land.

No God had a different plan, God had a wilderness experience, and we’ll see shortly that He took them deliberately into an impossible situation, the Red Sea crossing with Pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit. Why did God do that?

Mixed Signals

It is such a delight to be able to be with you today because God is up to something good. Even amidst our trials, even amidst our temptations, the temptation to pull over and stop, the temptation to give up, I just really want to share with you now the amazing part of Gods plan. He not only uses difficult situations and circumstances but He sometimes even deliberately sets them up to build us up into a place of faith and trust that we never imagined possible. Let’s continue on the story of Moses beginning in Exodus chapter 14 verses 1 to 9, this is what it says:

Then the Lord said to Moses, tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp at Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, the are to encamp by the sea directly opposite Baal Zephon. Pharaoh will think the Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion hemmed in by the desert and I will harden Pharaohs heart and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. So the Israelites did this.

When the kind of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their mind about them and said, “What have we done? We’ve let the Israelites go and we’ve lost our slaves.” So he had his chariots made ready and he took his army with him, he took 600 of the best chariots along with all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over them all.

The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, King of Egypt so that he pursued the Israelites who were marching out boldly. The Egyptians, all Pharaoh’s chariots and horses and horsemen and troops pursued the Israelites and over took them as they camped by the sea opposite Baal Zephon.

Now when you think about it, this is a kind of strange thing for God to do, remember over the last few weeks we’ve look at Moses’ story. God found him out the back of the desert, he dragged Moses kicking and screaming into the role that God had always planned for him, a leadership role.

Moses protests, but God says “what’s that I’ve put in your hand?” And Moses says, “Well it’s a staff,” and God does miracles through that staff in his hand, the mighty show of power of God to come along and send 10 plagues on Egypt through Moses. And then the impossible happens, Pharaoh decides to let Gods people, the Israelites go and then what happens, God shows up in a pillar of cloud and fire.

Does it get anymore powerful than that? But look; now God does something that to us seems, well, it doesn’t make sense. He tells them to turn back and encamp between Migdol and the sea, so don’t keep going ahead; turn back, at the same time he hardens Pharaoh’s heart. So God is putting the people, His people whom he’s just saved out of Pharaoh’s hands directly in the line of fire, in incredible danger. This happens directly as a result of the will of God, its premeditated and planned, we just read it there, chapter 14 verse 2 of Exodus:

Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp back there between Migdol and the sea, and at the same time I will harden Pharaoh’s heart and he will pursue them.

Now I often hear people say, “God would never put me in harms way deliberately, God would never leave me hungry or lonely, no God would never do those things, it must be the devil.” But He does it here, He does it to Israel, His ways aren’t out ways, His thoughts are not our thought. We can start to get a very narrow view of God if we just put him in a box like that.

Here He’s word specifically tells us that He did this, why? Because He knew the heart of His people, despite all of the powerful things that they’d just seen him do, they still didn’t have faith in Him, instead they focused on what they could see right then and there. Have a look at their reaction; we’ll pick it up in Exodus chapter 14 beginning at verse 10.

As Pharaoh approached the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians marching after them, they were terrified and they cried out to the Lord, they said to Moses, “Was it because there were no grave in Egypt that you brought us out into the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt, didn’t we say to you in Egypt ‘leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians?’

It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert.” And Moses answered the people, “Don’t be afraid, stand firm and you will see the deliverance of the Lord that he will bring to you this day. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again, the Lord will fight for you, you need only be still.

So God goes to all this trouble to get Moses, to empower him, to convince him, to send plagues on Pharaoh. And at the first sign of pressure, the Israelites have seen all these miracles, at the first sign of some adversity they show their true colours, they turn on Moses with the worst insult that they could have given to God, the slavery God, that you set us free from would have been better than this.

That’s a picture of you and me, that’s how we behave and that’s what so often God is trying to deal with in us. We run into adversity, we run into opposition and we fight and we struggle and we weep and we carry on, we expend so much energy, we waste so much time. There’s a message in all that, the Lord will fight for you, you need only be still.

I’ve spent so much of my life doing things in my own strength that the Lord had to teach me to rely on Him. It’s still not natural for me, but you know He is able to achieve so much more than I ever could have done in my own strength. Ministry like ours has gone from nothing to reaching people globally in less than 2 years, I had an email the other day from Cameroon in Africa, a person takes the CD’s of these programs and plays them on his bus line for goodness sake to thousands of people everyday as they ride for 3 or 4 hours in the buses.

I mean, sure there is lots of opposition, there are lots of people who laughed at as, there are lots of people who didn’t believe in what God had called us to do. Everyday we faced opposition and trials but the Lord speaks to us through those, and He doesn’t just grow me but our whole team. You know when we are going through opposition and trials I believe God’s saying to us, “your best is yet to come”.

The Night Before

We’re talking today about the trials that come when we travel the journey in life that God has laid out before us. The Israelites were in a place that God lead them to, God told them to go back and camp in a certain place, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart and it was to a point of destruction where God lead Israel. He did this after the most amazing set of miracles, when we’re traveling through that it can be so confusing, its kind of contradictory, you know we see God do these mighty miracles in our lives.

Israel saw the plagues that God sent down on Egypt and so you think, “Wow! God’s on my side.” God leads Israel out of Egypt, God sends a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire to go before them, God’s very presence and then God puts them in a place of danger, a place that draws out their fears and their doubts, that brings those things to the surface so that He can deal with them. He stretches, He stretches, He stretches and you think, “Lord I can’t take anymore”.

Oswald Chambers in his book, “The Love of God” says this, “A saint’s life is in the hands of God as a bow and arrow are in the hands of an archer.” God’s aiming at something the saint can’t see, He stretches and strains, every now and again the saint says, “I can’t stand it anymore”. But God doesn’t head, He goes on stretching until His purpose is inside, then He lets fly, all of a sudden after all the hurt, all the opposition, all the trials, just when He’s ready, just at the point where He knows He’s done the things in us that he wanted to do, then God lets the arrow fly and His glory is all around.

And that’s exactly what He did with Moses and Israel; let’s pick it up again in chapter 14 of Exodus beginning at verse 15.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on, raise the staff that you had in your hand, stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on the dry ground. I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them and I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. The Egyptians will know I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.”

Then the angel of God who had been traveling in front of Israelis army withdrew and went behind them, the pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to one side and light to the other side so that neither went near the other all night long.

Last week, we saw that God said to Moses, “Take the shepherd’s staff that I’ve put in your hand.” Everyone’s running around in a flap, everyone’s afraid, everyone can see just the armies of Egypt who are about to kill them and you know lets not give the Israelites to hard a time, my hunch is you and I would have been exactly in the same boat with them when we see this huge mighty army bearing down to destroy us. But God says:

Take the staff, Moses that you had in your hand, the thing that you had and let me use it in my divine power, go on pick the staff up, raise it up over the Red Sea and watch how I will part the waters so the Israelites can pass through.

But there was something that came before that miracle yet, where there at the night before, the miracle of parting the Red Sea, that was tomorrow, but tonight, the Egyptians were right behind the Israelites, the mighty Egyptian army against these fleeing slaves, and look at what the Lord did, look at verse 19.

The angel of God who’d been traveling in front of them withdrew and went behind, the pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other so neither went near the other all night.

Wow!

The very presence of God moved and God put Himself between Israel and Egypt, He protected His people. It must have been a long night and God was there. This is about a fathers love, not just in word but in deed, you see God’s different from any of the other Gods and idols that people worship because He is on this journey with us.

Now our journey’s take some startling turns, we face some fiery trials, but the point of this is that He is in that place with us and just at the point when it feels like things are going to overwhelm us He steps in to hold us safe. “God, why do you do these things?”

Well, this passage we jut read tells us that, verse 18:

The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.

Tomorrow God has a miracle planned, tomorrow God wants to part the Red Sea, tomorrow God wants to open the way of the impossible, something that only He can do because there’s something He never looses sight of you’re your best, my best is still to come.

God has miracles planned in our life, God wants to do things, God wants to use us, God wants to bless us and in that dark night when Egypt’s army is bearing down on us, when it looks completely impossible, Gods presence is in that place, in the fears, in the uncertainties God is doing things with us because He knows that our best is yet to come.

Glory is a funny kind of concept. We tend to imagine that God’s plans and purposes revolve around us, when all along, they’re all about His Glory. Now that may sound a little bit one-sided, until you realise that glory is a two-sided transaction.

All About Glory

It is unreal to be with you again today, can I tell you something before we start? It is such and honour for me to be able to share this time with you it’s an incredible thing, to get into God’s word and to see how when you and I do that it changes our lives. It’s a real blessing for me, my life gets changed along the way, because you can’t help it, you spend time in God’s word and you know, somehow we grow.

I don’t know how it is for you but I need changing, I need growing and when I stand back and look at it I could never have believed that God could take the broken down old wreck that I was and do anything useful with me. We get a lot of letters, the programs now go to over 80 countries and we get so many letters and emails and responses on the website telling us how these programs are making a difference in people’s lives.

I had this email from a woman called Catherine recently, this is what she said, “I’ve been listening to your program on my local radio station for quite a while now, I’m usually on my way to normal Sunday worship service so you accompany me on my drive. It amazes me, but it shouldn’t really because there’s nothing that our God can’t do – how often your program is just what I need to hear. This hasn’t happened just once but many, many times and I thank God for you and your ministry, I find your way of presenting the gospel very gentle, its encouraging and uplifting and it soothes my spirit it gives me hope, it feeds my soul.”

Now, why am I telling you this stuff? To make myself look good? No, not that at all, in fact exactly the opposite, I’m telling you this because it is so utterly amazing that only God could be in this. Before I came to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, 11 years ago, I can confidently tell you that no one would ever have used adjectives like, gentle, encouraging and uplifting in the same sentence as my name. I tremble at what God has done and continues to do in me through His word, very gentle she writes, unbelievable!

When we get His spirit into us, when we get His word into us even though we go through incredible trials, even though we go through difficulties along the way God does things in us and changes us and that’s, I guess the point of today’s program.

Today’s program is the last in a series of 4 that I’ve called, “Your Best is Yet to Come”. Over these last three programs, we’ve been tracking along with Moses, Moses was a burnt out old wreck at the back of the desert. Moses had murder an Egyptian when he was a young man and he’d fled way, way out to the back of the desert and he was tending sheep and God shows up and says, “Moses I have a plan for you, Moses your best is yet to come.”

And he kind of drags Moses kicking and screaming into the leadership role that he had been preparing him for out in the back of the desert. And Moses says, “Look God it couldn’t possibly be me, I mean what have I got?” And God says to Moses, “Moses, what’s that in your hand?” And Moses says, “Well, it’s my shepherd’s staff.” And God does some miracles with that, he turns it into a snake, he then lets Moses do a whole bunch of miracles including parting the Red Sea through this simple wooden staff.

And it’s always the way that God has already put something in our hands, something that only we have, something that only we are gifted to do. And so often God just comes along and says, “I have a plan for your life, your best is yet to come, I’m going to use just who you are, exactly what I’ve made you, exactly the things that I’ve already given you to bless other people.”

And last week we looked at the trials and the tests that always seem to come and it’s a funny thing you know, God does something powerful in our life, in my case He called me to Him and if you could have know me before I became a Christian you would have said the last person on planet earth that would ever become a Christ follower is Berni Dymet. And so it was this enormous miracle that God would even call me to be a follower, let alone use me the way he’s using me today.

But I, like everyone else have had to travel through some real trials and real tribulations in life, and you look at that and you think, “Hang on God’s done this great miracle in me,” and I’m sure you can look back at things that God has done in your life and your think, “Wow, you know God was in that place on that day and He did this amazing thing.” But then we go into this trial we go into this difficult space, we go into this place where it’s hard and you think, “These are mixed signals”. But along the way you think, “these are mixed signals, why does God do both of these things?” “Why does He do great things in my life and then He takes me through these great trials?”

But along with the trials come the victories, along the way God is gracious, He gives us big victories and small victories and for me the most satisfying victories in my life are when I’ve been in those dark places, those incredibly tight spots and I struggle and I struggle and I thrash around and I worry and at the last minute Jesus shows up and He takes me out of that tight spot, and deep in my heart I experience His glory. And at the same time I can see how He’s taken some of the struggle and the thrashing and the worrying out of me – God’s glory is an amazing thing. What is glory?

The first time the glory appears in the Bible is in Exodus Chapter 14 verse 4, it’s a passage that we looked at last week on the program. God has just brought the Israelites out of Egypt after sending the plagues on Egypt and God is giving some instructions to Moses about how they should flee the Egyptians.

And the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth between Migdol and the sea, they are to encamp by the sea directly opposite Baal Zephon. Pharaoh will think the Israelites are wandering around in the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert, and I will harden Pharaoh’s heart and he will pursue them but I will gain glory for myself though Pharaoh and all his army and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.” So the Israelites did this.

Glory is a funny word, glory is about honour but there’s so much more in it than just honour. If you think about sport, your team wins the grand final or it wins the cup or it wins the pennant or your country’s swimmer takes the gold at the Olympics and there’s glory for whoever won that sporting event. But there’s also incredible joy and adulation for us when we see our team or our swimmer win, see glory is a two sided transaction and it’s because of the nature of God, God sets us free and we have a free will to accept Him or to reject Him, but for those who accept Him we get to experience His glory.

See, glory doesn’t mean a lot unless it’s two sided, yes God is glorious, God is wonderful but He created us to see and experience for ourselves His glory. And for me the greatest glory is when God changes me and He gives me those victories in life and in my heart I can taste His glory.

God Shows Up

We’re going to pick up today where we left off last week in the last program. Moses is this burnt out old wreck; God puts a staff in his hand and says, “Moses that’s what I’ve given you, go and use it”. God through Moses and Aaron sends all these plagues on Egypt and God sets Israel free, but He hardens Pharaohs heart and He puts Israel in this impossible situation. The situation where they’re hemmed in between the Red Sea and Egypt’s army, and there seems to be now way out, it seems certain death and certain destruction. Well how did Israel respond to that? Let’s have a look at it; if you have a Bible grab it we’re going to Exodus Chapter14 beginning at verse 10, this is what it says.

As Pharaoh approached them the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians marching after them, they were terrified and they cried out to the Lord, they said to Moses “was it because there weren’t enough graves in Egypt that you brought us into the desert to die?” “What have you done by bringing us out here in the desert?” “Didn’t we say to you in Egypt ‘leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians?’ It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians and to die there than in the desert.”

And Moses answers the people, “Don’t be afraid, stand firm and you will see the deliverance of the Lord that he will bring to you today, the Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still.

So here we are, all these miracles, they’re out in the desert where at the first point of adversity and risk and fear, how do they react? Just like you and me! How many times do you see people who have problems in their marriage and they want to tear that marriage apart because it doesn’t suit them anymore? How many times do we see trials and conflict at work or at the traffic lights or in the supermarket and all we can think about is how it affects me? So we lash out at the very people who might help us. But as we saw at the beginning of the program God had a purpose and His purpose was that His glory would be seen.

God wanted His people to know Him, to see His glory and of course that’s exactly what happened. But God needed also to deal with these people who railed against what He was trying to do in their lives. Let’s see how it turns out, Exodus Chapter 14 beginning at verse 21.

After Moses had spoken to Him, He stretched out his hand over the sea and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with the strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided and the Israelites went through the waters on the dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left, and the Egyptians pursued them and all of Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and clouded the Egyptian army and through it into confusion, he made the wheels fall off their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites; the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”

And the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen. And so Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and at day break the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it and the Lord swept them into the sea, the water flowed back and covered the chariots and the horsemen, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea not one of them survived. But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with the wall of water on their right and on their left. That day the Lord saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore.

There are so many layers of what God was doing here, God was taking them back to the promised land, the land that he had promised to Abraham, he had a heart for His people, He heard their cries from their oppression and slavery in Egypt, He grabbed Moses out of the desert, He dragged him to Pharaoh and He said, “Let my people go.” After all those miracles He takes them deliberately through this trial, God caused Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened, God takes them through this trial because He knew their hearts, He knew He needed to bring their grumbling and their unbelief to the surface and deal with that and then He showed them His glory.

Many times later throughout the old testament we see God saying to His people, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to the Promised Land, this is who I am.” And He’s saying the same thing to us now, in our trials, in our temptations, in our hurts, in our fears. “Lord why am I traveling through this place right now? Why are you doing this to me?” Because He’s dealing with the stuff in us just like He did with the Israelites and He wants to show up in glory and deliver us, He wants this two sided transaction of glory to happen in our hearts and in our presence. Can I share a story with you?

The president of the Bible College I went to is a great man of God, a man called Barry Chant. He’d been walking for 50 years or more, he is a great scholar and in the preaching class my pride rose up, you know I felt that I’d done enough preaching and I was a pretty good speaker I’d been a Christian for 5 minutes and I asked to be excused for half of the course. My pride and he said to me “No Berni I want you to stay just one more lecture.” And I stayed and he said to me “I love what you’re doing Berni but I need you to stick close to God’s word, I need you to bring people back to the Bible, back to God’s word.” And then he released me. And that letter I read out at the beginning of the program was the fruit of that trial; I hated him for doing that, I was so angry with him at that time.

You know it’s over a decade ago now but he taught me something, he taught me under the authority of God’s hand, he humbled me and God used that.

Now it’s never a lot of fun, but God disciplines those whom He loves, He leads us through trials. If you’ve got a Bible open it to Hebrews Chapter 12 verses 7 to 12, this is what it says:

Endure trials for the sake of discipline, God is treating you as children, what Child is there whom a parent doesn’t discipline, if you do not have that discipline in which all children share then you are illegitimate and not His children. Now discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time but later, later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who’ve been trained by it. Therefore, lift your drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees and make straight the paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.

In the middle of those trials when God is ready what comes next is God’s glory.

Moses Wants More

We saw earlier in the program how it turns out, God shows up in a powerful way, God has deliberately led the Israelites into this place of trial and danger and fear and He’s uncovered their unbelief, He’s uncovered the fact in them that even though they saw all these miracles happen through Moses, the plagues that came down on Egypt, their unbelief happens when they are confronted with the Egyptian army out there in the wilderness.

But let’s put ourselves back into Moses’ shoes for a moment, Moses raises the staff above the water, the Red Sea parts, the Israelites pass through, the Egyptians chase them, I love the bit where it says, “and the wheels fall off their chariots”. I think it always a bit funny, maybe I’m being unkind but you know there are the Egyptians and the water comes in on top of them and God has shown up in this powerful way, we see His glory.

But think about Moses for a minute, he was called from the back of the desert, he’s taken on this amazing journey with Pharaoh which must have been scary, I mean could you imagine going to Pharaoh who has the power of live and death over you and saying, “Listen I just saw God out in the desert and God wants me to tell you to let His people go!”

And Pharaoh scoffs at that and so through Moses and through Aaron God sends the 10 plagues on Egypt, Pharaoh does the most incredible thing and they’re out in the wilderness and all of a sudden Pharaoh’s heart is hardened by God and the army comes after them and God puts His presence between them to protect them. Then Moses sees God’s people who God has rescued turning against him and turning against God, how did that feel? I mean God shows up in this mighty way and leads them through the waters.

You’re Moses; you’re sitting down on the other side of the Red Sea, what’s going through your mind? What’s going on in your heart? You’ve just seen God’s glory. The whole of the next chapter of the book of Exodus, chapter 15, is the song of Moses and the people in response to what God did. Let’s read just a bit of it. Moses and the Israelites sang this song in praise of the Lord:

I sing praises to the Lord for His great victory; He has thrown the horses and their riders into the sea, the Lord is my strength the reason for my song because He saved me. I praise and honour the Lord, He is my God and the God of my ancestors, the Lord is His name and He is a warrior, He through the chariots and the army of Egypt’s King into the Red Sea and He drowned the best of the King’s officers. What a great victory was yours as you defeated everyone who opposed you, your fiery anger wiped them out as though they were straw.

Our Lord, no other gods compare with you, majestic and holy, fearsome and glorious, miracle worker. Oh Lord your powerful arm kept them still as a rock until the people you rescued for your very own had marched by. You will let your people settle on your chosen mountain where you built your home and your temple. Oh Lord you will rule forever!

Moses is sitting on the other side of this, this amazing sequence of events and he’s beholding God’s glory, this two sided transaction. Yes God did powerful things, yes God saved His people, yes God parted the Red Sea and put it back together again, yes God worked in Pharaohs heart but He brought a joy and a delight and a wonder and a sense of praise and worship to Moses and His people. Because God’s involved, He’s here on the journey with us, He doesn’t sit back in the air conditioned comfort of heaven and say, “well, you know they’re all on their own”. God is on the journey, God does things.

Now if you know the story this was just the beginning for Moses, Moses had a long road ahead, 40 years in this desert with a grumbling people, a people who complained and rebelled and dishonoured God and on and on it went, and at the end he himself never made it to the Promised Land. But you put it all together and you see God’s glory in it, it may not have seemed obvious in the middle of the desert on each day when it was dry, when it was hot, when the people were complaining and rebelling against his leadership, you put it together and you see how God gloriously brought the people into the promised land.

In fact even in the midst of Israel’s rebellion, now Moses was up on the mountain getting the commandments and down in the valley they were building an idol, a golden calf, and Moses comes down and the guy’s devastated, even in the middle of that Moses says to God, “Lord, show me your glory, I’ve seen so much of your glory along the way I want more, I want to see more”.

Our lives, your life, my life, are journeys over hill and dale, there are good days and there are bad days, all the way God is on that journey. He knows like with Moses our best is yet to come and here’s the crunch, its not about us it’s about His glory, about His goodness, it’s about His purposes being realised. We all travel through the trials, we see His glory, Him at work in our circumstances, in us, changing us, molding us, getting us out of difficult situations and it’s in that glory that we experience our best, like Moses.

And one day we’ll stand in His glory for all eternity, no more sickness or tears or conflicts or pain, no more trials or tests or temptations, just His glory, whether we’re 8 or 80, whether the sun’s shining today or we’re surrounded by an inking black darkness, He is in that place with us. He wants us to want more of His glory, more of Him and with all that I am I believe that today He wants me to say this to you: your best is yet to come and your best comes in the midst of God’s glory.