So our message for today is titled, who Me Lord. It’s interesting. You can have a lot of fun with that phrase if you move the commas around, but I didn’t wanna teach you an English lesson today. I really want to consider the question that God posed to Moses. Check that, that Moses posed to God when he said, who me Lord, it’s okay. I’ve only given this sermon three times, so you know I’ll get it right eventually. But have you ever felt like God is calling you into an area that he couldn’t possibly use you because of your limitations? Right. For me, it was always public speaking. I can remember the first sermon I ever gave 13 years ago. It was so bad that the worship leader had to get up afterwards and tell everybody there that they should be kind to me and remember that it was my first time. I don’t think I’ve ever stood in front of a group of people where my face was more red or I produced more sweat, and still even today is something that I’m quite knowledgeable about every time I get up here. But for maybe you, it, it’s, it’s that you feel like you’re too young for God to use you, or maybe you feel like you’re too old or maybe you battle with issues of anxiety or carry the weight of past failures. Or maybe you just feel inferior to the idea that a perfect sovereign God could possibly need you. If so, I have good news for you this morning. You’re in good company because one of the greatest leaders from scripture ever was in the same boat. Now I wanna take you back for just a moment to last week when we talked about Moses, pastor Todd led us through the. A passage where Moses was encountering God in a burning bush. And that seems just completely laughable to us today, right? But there was a bush that was on fire, he was burning. And in it, God speaks to Moses and he gives him this most incredible calling imaginable. God wants Moses to march into Pharaoh’s palace and demand the release of 2 million Hebrew slaves. This really is an opportunity of a lifetime, right? There’s a chance here for him to be part of the greatest rescue mission in history, a brazen attempt to liberate a nation. But Moses’ response, I can’t do that, Lord. I’m not good with words. Now, the text might suggest that Moses could have had a speech impediment. Scholars debate what it was exactly that he suffered from others. Think that maybe he had a difficulty with vocabulary or pronunciation. Maybe he had a thick southern accent and he struggled pronouncing a word called strength. I look at Ashley ’cause she gives me a hard time. But one Bible scholar even claims that Moses was simply just making excuses. He was politely trying to decline what God was calling him to. Well, today I hope that we can all discover together that our weaknesses do not disqualify us from God’s service. In fact, they become the very means in which God brings about his mission of salvation to the world. Explain his strength most clearly. Join me as we read from Exodus chapter four, verses 10 through 17, 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 that I am slow of speech and of tongue. Then the Lord said to him, well, who has made man’s mouth?

Who makes him mute or deaf or seen or blind? Is it not I the Lord? No. Therefore, go and I will be with your mouth and teach what you shall speak. But he said, oh my Lord, please send someone else. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite. I know that he speaks well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you and when he sees you, he will be glad. In his heart, you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people and he shall be your mouth and you shall be his God to him and taking your hand. This staff. With which you shall do the signs. This is the word of the Lord. Join me as we pray. Father, we thank you so much for the time to come together and to devour your word, Lord, and I pray that you will use it as an encouragement to all of us who struggle with places and times which you call us to walk in faith. To not hide behind the weakness of our limitations, but to be an encouragement so that you receive all the glory, Lord, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Well, our first point to look at this morning is that God calls the weak. It’s interesting that we look at our weaknesses a little different than what God does. You see, Moses saw that his speech difficulty dis difficulty, such as I’m having right now. It was a disqualification that God saw it simply as an opportunity. I want you to notice right quick how God responds to Moses’ request to not be the one. God doesn’t dismiss Moses. He doesn’t dismiss his concern. He doesn’t minimize his struggle. Instead, God goes right to reminding Moses a fundamental truth with one question. Who gave human beings their mouths. Now, this isn’t God being insensitive to Moses’ issues. This is God declaring his sovereignty over every aspect of our lives, including the things that we see as limitating. God is essentially saying, Moses, I know exactly who you are. I know every bit about you. I know every bit of your weaknesses and your strengths. I’m calling you anyway. Think about it. If God wanted the most elegant speaker in Egypt, he could have simply chosen someone else, but he didn’t. He chose Moses speech impediment, difficulty, limitations, and all. But it begs the question, why? Why would God call someone who doesn’t speak clearly to March into Moses or to the Ferris Palace? And demand that he listened to him. Well, it’s quite simply because God’s power is displayed most clearly through our weaknesses, not our strengths. You see, God’s calling includes whatever our limitations currently are at that time. The Apostle Paul writes about this in one Corinthians two, one where he says, when I came to you brothers. Did I not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God not using lofty speech and wisdom? The important thing to remember about Paul was he was the Pharisee of Pharisee self-proclaimed, right? He had dual citizenship.

He was a member both of the Hebrew nation and the Roman nation. He was very, very well educated and essentially very articulate. If you wanna question how well Paul could have spoken, just read the book of Romans. Sometimes it challenges most law books today. Paul could have went in there with any type of speech he wanted to. Yet Paul knew that God’s message was most powerful when it was not competing with human impressiveness. And Paul even protested to God about his own issues and God taught him this. When Paul went to God and he said, you’ve gotta remove this thorn from my side. It’s causing a weakness for me. God says, no, no, no, no. My grace is sufficient for you because my power is made perfect in your weakness. So stop waiting for your weaknesses to disappear before you decide to serve God. He wants to use you exactly as you are, not as you think you should be. Recognize that your limitations might be exactly what God has in mind to use. It’s interesting when you think about that. If you happen to be a person who struggles with anxiety, say, well, that might actually help you connect with others who are anxious. Maybe you’ve suffered financial difficulties. Think of the ways you could minister to those who also are facing poverty. Consider maybe you’ve been through a divorce. Don’t see it as an embarrassment, but a life experience which can help you relate to others the power of reconciling of Jesus Christ on the cross, and always remember that God’s calling comes with his equipping. He promised even in that passage, we just read from Exodus that he will speak with you and help you with what to say. ’cause in God, he always provides what we need. It’s interesting if you look at this passage, it’s one of the few times in scripture where we find that God gets angry at one of his called servants. But why did God get angry? Why did God respond to Moses with anger? It says, scripture says it was kindled against. Well, it wasn’t because Moses had a speech impediment. God wasn’t suddenly embarrassed because he forgot and called Moses and got embarrassed that he had called the wrong guy. No, God got mad at Moses because Moses was letting his fear override his faith in God’s provision. Moses had moved from an honest concern. I struggle with speaking and instead. Had begun to refuse God’s calling when he said, please send someone else. There’s a difference between acknowledging our weaknesses and using them as excuses to decline the calling that God places in our lives because God has some truly creative solutions. I wanna look at this for just a, a moment. God responds to Moses continued resistance, not by removing his inability to speak correctly. Nor does he replace Moses. He doesn’t say, oh, okay, I’m sorry. We’ll move along. I’ll get somebody else. No, God comes along and he provides Moses with a partner named Aaron. He provided Moses with exactly what he needed to succeed and this, this is often how we see God at work in our lives. He rarely removes the thorn that’s in our side. No, he actually gives us the grace to deal with it, to carry them to work with them. He doesn’t always heal our diseases. Sometimes he provides doctors and nurses, care partners, communities, people who we can minister to and through and can minister to us. I’m reminded several years ago of a church that I was serving with gentlemen there had cancer, and if you’ve ever had cancer or you know anybody that’s had cancer, you know, the chemotherapy can be quite intensive. The gentleman was looking for a ride to his therapy sessions. One, one day I was free, so I gave him a ride and we got there.

As he began his therapy, he sat back in the chair, relaxed, and I noticed that everybody the walked by he would initiate a conversation with. He was bragging about the fact that his pastor had brought him to his therapy or his church family was so kind and loving, and how this had only increased his faith in Jesus, this tragedy of having cancer. And so I called the nurse and I said, Hey, is he always like this? You know, I was a little egotistical. I was thinking maybe he was showing off for me because I’m the pastor. I’m there with him, right? He’s trying to act like the good Christian. The nurse looked at him and she kind of chuckled. She goes, no, he’s normally far worse than this. God doesn’t always give us the skills we lack. Sometimes he gives us the teammates. To compliment our weaknesses. Paul goes on to talk about this in one Corinthians 12, verses 21 and 22. He says this, he says, the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet. I have no need of you. On the contrary heart to the body that seemed to be weaker or indispensable, we cannot let our fear. Masquerade as humility. Sometimes we hide in spiritual language. The ways that God are calling is calling us, but yet we’re really only hiding in fear and we cannot let that hold us back from what God is calling us to do. Think about the person who’s hiding back, anxious to stand behind a pulpit and share the message of Jesus Christ with you or with others. That was me so long for so many years, I could have stopped. I embraced it, not to brag about it, and I’m not sitting here, I was telling this earlier and to the other congregation or to the other services, and it seemed like everybody up afterwards came and wanted to gimme encouragement. That’s not why I share this story, guys. I share this story as a real life example of how God can work through even someone who doesn’t speak well like me, because this story is very personal to me. See, early on as I was considering a call in the seminary. I heard a professor give a, wasn’t, it wasn’t a sermon, it was more of a talk in a school classroom on this passage, and he said, if he ever doubt that God is calling you to serve others. Look at the story of Moses, the man with the speech impediment who walked into the palace of the Pharaoh and demanded the release of 2 million slaves. Don’t get caught up in spiritual language of saying, I’m not good enough. I’m not qualified enough. No, God has already factored that into it. When he called you instead, look for God’s creative provisions. He might not give you what you think you need, but he’ll give you exactly what you need at the time you need it, and be willing to work in partnership. God often accomplishes his purposes through teams. I’m gonna date myself here a little bit. I’m gonna ask a question. How many of you remember the Lone Ranger? Anybody? Yeah. Okay. I’m not, not dating myself too badly then. All right. Well, even the lone Ranger had Tonto, right? Jesus called 12 disciples, not one. God calls us to work in concert with one another. We work as a team together. God’s calling does not call us to an isolation. Our weakness does not disqualify us or put us by ourselves. No. He drives us through our weaknesses to that community of fellowship, all that so that God would get the glory. He tells Moses in verse 17, take in your hand this staff with which you shall do the signs. Staff. It’s a, it’s a simple tool. This shepherd staff, it’s just a piece of wood. You know, we, we walk around with cell phones in our pockets now that are rival the computers of the sixties that sent man to the moon, and yet God gives Moses a wooden stick through which he would perform miracles. He would turn water into blood seas, would part rocks, would gush forth with water all through this ordinary piece of wood in the hands of a man who said, well, I can’t speak well, but why this approach?

So that when the people witnessed these incredible events, they wouldn’t marvel at how good of a speaker Moses was. They wouldn’t get caught up in the charisma of Moses’ ability to lead. They would actually know without a doubt that God was the one calling them forward. Well, God calls us to action. It’s never into a path or an action of anything that we could do on our own, because after all, if we could do it, then why is God calling us for? This is the creator of the universe, and yet he calls us into areas which we cannot accomplish on our own. Paul understood this principle. He deliberately avoided using impressive rhetoric when preaching the gospel because he wanted to make sure the people understood that it was the power of the Holy Spirit, that their faith rested in God, not in him, not in his human wisdom, not in the ability of a fancy preacher to come in and talk them into faith. He says as much in one Corinthians two, four, and five, we read this earlier, I didn’t speak in words of wisdom or eloquence, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that you would have faith in God, not Amen, which this is the entire point of any message we share with people after all the point of God, the point of his mission, and because it’s his mission and not our mission. It means that this is our message and that is that we should share salvation of Jesus Christ. Because even in the act of salvation, it is the heart of the gospel message. You see, God didn’t send Jesus as a conquering king or an impressive philosopher. Jesus didn’t come to teach us how to take over nations. Jesus didn’t come to sit on a worldly throne. No, he didn’t come to tell us how to live a better life. Now, he didn’t come to tell us how to research the best. No. He came as a humble carpenter from Nazareth who died on a cross, the most shameful execution known demand. Why? Why in this way? ’cause salvation comes not through human wisdom or strength, but through God’s power working in and through apparent weakness. I often think, what would it have been like to be part of those disciples as they walked that last week with Jesus? You know, we’ve been showing the chosen here over the summer and it’s, it’s kind of covering that part of, of Season five as that whole last week of Jesus’s walk on Earth. It’s interesting to see and imagine what it would’ve been like to be one of those disciples to not know what Sunday was gonna be about, but only see through Friday. That is through Jesus’ arrest, trial, beating death, and crucifixion because that looked like defeat, and yet it was actually God’s greatest victory ever. Sin and death for when we trust in Jesus for salvation. When we have faith to believe the promise that he is our conquering savior, we acknowledge that we can’t do enough, that we can’t be smart enough, that we can’t be moral enough, that we can’t be good enough, that we require God’s strength working in a world in a way that we often see as weakness. That is faith in a crucified savior. Paul writes about this in one Corinthians 1 25, where he says, the foolishness of God is wiser than man, and the weakness of God is stronger than man. Smartest man alive will never be as dumb as God can be. So embrace your role as a vessel, not the source. We’re the clay pots. We’re not the pot maker. Because of that, when God works through our weaknesses, people will know that it’s him at work and not you. And this is actually very helpful because this will keep us from falling into the trap. And believe me, Satan likes to set these traps of taking credit for only what God can do, and that is that we have to trust in the power of the gospel message itself because you don’t need to be perfect or impressive for God to use your testimony. To reach others. I think about all of you here this morning, and I know every one of you have a story and it’s an important story and it’s a life changing story, and I can only think and imagine that there’s somebody else out there that that will align with, that you could share your story with. That would be an encouragement to them, that would help them at the right time in the right place. You may not be the person you think you should be, but you’re the person exactly who God de designed you to be. ’cause this is the beautiful part of Moses’ story. The man who couldn’t speak well. The man who could not in his words, make a complete sentence, marched into Pharaoh’s palace, who was, by the way, the most powerful man of the world at the time. It would be as if I had the God to walk up to Putin and demand that he release Ukraine. Right. Moses who stuttered, walked into this palace and demanded the release of 2 million slaves. He delivered the 10 Commandments to the people of God, and he taught God’s law to an entire nation. His speech impediment never went away. It didn’t cancel his calling. It just became part of the fabric of God’s plan. So that when Moses spoke, people knew they weren’t hearing from some fancy leader who was embellishing upon them or taking advantage of them. They knew they were hearing from God. And when those miracles happened through his staff, no one questioned whether he was just a magician who was doing fancy tricks.

They knew the power was coming from the Almighty. And the same is true for you and me. Our perceived limitations, whether they’re physical, emotional, circumstantial, they’re not barriers to God’s continued use of your life. They’re actually exactly what God wants to use to display his strength. Think about this for a moment. Maybe you struggle with anxiety. I do. I know a lot of people that do. Right? But God wants to use that empathy. You have to comfort those who are anxious because you know what that life is like. Maybe you’ve failed in business and God wants to use your experience to help others navigate financial difficulties. Maybe you feel like you’re too old to make a difference, but God wants to use your wisdom to help another generation. Whatever your weakness, God’s invitation remains the same. Go. I will help you speak and I will teach you what to say. As the old preacher told me some years ago, a boat does no one any good sitting in a dry dock. Now there’s a chance you may feel like your sins or your failures might disqualify you from God’s love. You may even consider whether or not God’s even included you in his family. That you know, all this really doesn’t matter because you’re not even sure God’s ever even called you. But that’s exactly backwards because the gospel message is that God loves you despite your weakness and failures. Jesus came to safe sinners, not perfect people, which is good because there are no perfect people. To be part of God’s family. You only need to believe that Jesus died for you because God doesn’t wait for you to get your life together before he puts you to work. He begins working through you immediately, weakness and all because his power is made perfect in and through your weaknesses. Now, maybe you’ve been walking with Jesus a long time and you’ve kind of hit. I don’t know, stop stopping point in life where you’re a little unsure. Maybe you’ve hit those place where your weaknesses seem to be standing in front of you and you’re waiting on those to disappear before you take that step forward to serve God. Well, I wanna share this, this story with you. It’s actually a skit. Who in here reminds, remembers? Bob Newhart? Anybody remember Bob Newhart? I know that’s a little old. Ashley. You can, um, you can Google him later. Okay. Um, Bob Newhart had this skip some years ago. He plays the psychiatrist where this young lady comes into his office and has this issue. She’s afraid that she’s gonna get trapped in a box. Bob Newhart says, well, I, I, I charge $5 for one minute. It doesn’t matter how much of the minute you use, but she says, okay. You know, she tells her story real quick and he says, all right, I’ve got I, I’ve got, I got the fix for you. I, I can tell you what to do. She gets out her pad and her pen, and she gets ready to write it down, and he says, I don’t think you’ll need that. Says, really? You think I can remember it? He goes, yes. Just two words. It is fine. You’ll be able to remember it. Okay. So she puts her pad and her pen back in her purse, and she goes, okay, I’m ready. What should I do? He looks at her and he leans across the desk and he goes, stop it. Stop waiting. Stop waiting on the perfect moment, the next opportunity or the right time. Stop waiting to be someone you’re not. Stop waiting on God to paint a big sign up in the sky. God wants to use you now. Limitations and all.

Your speech impediment, your anxiety, your past failures, your lack of education. None of these disqualify you from being used by God, and I can’t imagine a greater place in the world than right here in our own backyard where God can use his power and show off through all of our weaknesses. Wouldn’t that be something to see, to take that staff that he’s given you, whether it’s your story, your gifts, your circumstances, even your struggles, especially your struggles. And trust him to do miracles through it. The only limitation that God sees is a lack of faith. And remember, God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called. And often our greatest weakness becomes the very means through which his strength is displayed most clearly. Let us pray. Good and gracious. Father, your love is unfathomable. How you love and care for us. Broken people with so many limitations. We look upon ourselves often so useless Lord, but yet you delight in that because it is in our weaknesses that you find ways to. Bring people to Jesus to work in and through them to remind us of the value we have despite what we see as limitations. So Father, I pray that you’ll open our eyes to see these weaknesses are not disqualifications, but the opportunity that you need us to walk in faith through. Give us that courage. Give us that courage to walk in faith, trusting that you’ll provide what we need to accomplish the very thing that you’ve called us. To go forth and do in Jesus’ name one.