God paints a picture of the Promised land because he's
trying to see, have I found a man or a woman that looks at the
blessing not as the byproducts of their relationship with me,
but as me themselves? All right, last week we were
talking out of Psalm 32 and I, we're talking about Moses and
how Moses was an intercessor and Moses cried out on behalf of
Israel. And there's this disturbing
passage. And I, I stand by that
disturbing passage in Exodus 32. It ends out on a high note.
It's a good, but it's, it's, it should cause us all the pause.
We've got to be so careful. We don't just read over
Scripture. We're familiar with the story.
We don't think about what's really happening.
Moses is in the pocket of intercession.
He's up on the mountain. God's just giving them all the
law, all about the temple. And then the Lord says this to
him. Now, Moses, leave me alone.
You ever had the Lord tell you that?
That's sobering. Leave me alone, Moses, that my
anger may burn hot and then I will make it.
He said I'm going to destroy the children of Israel because of
the rebellion. There's stiff necked people.
They were down. They were having a party.
The parties used to go to before you got saved.
They were they were having this party and the Lord said my anger
burns hot and then I will make a great nation out of you.
And we talked about how that that phrase, you know, leave me
alone. How disturbing that is for Moses
to hear yet. But Moses did not move, which is
a really intriguing thing, This this man of God, the leader of
Israel. God tells him to leave them
alone, and Moses stays put. Was it a disobedience?
No, it was out of revelation. Moses knew God, there was
intimacy with God so that he could interpret what God was
really saying. And rather than hearing it's
inevitable Israel will be destroyed, he saw an invitation
to intercede on their behalf. And he thought, oh, you need to
be alone for your anger to burn. And he dug his heels in and he
said, Lord. And he began to remind the Lord.
And we were talking out of that passage in Isaiah.
I want to say it's chapter 44, but it says bring me into
remembrance. Debate or argue with me.
He's inviting them. Hey, contend with me so that I
can bring you into your inheritance and all that you
promised. I promised you.
And so there's a place in God that God invites us to remind
him of his past promises and argue with him in the present.
Literally get in an argument with God based upon the
principles of his word so that we can see breakthrough in the
future. This thing is much more
relational than you and I often think of.
And so Moses understood this is not an inevitability.
It was an invitation. And so he dug his heels in and
he cried out and God spared the nation of Israel.
It's an amazing passage. And so, God, let's read it.
Look at Chapter 22. Look, look at verse 30.
The next day Moses said to the people you have sent.
So Moses hears this on the mountain.
God relents, he comes down the mountain.
Now it says that Moses anger burned hot because Moses is the
go between. He is a priest of of the most
high God. He functions in that role that
before God. He pleads the case of the
people. He said God have mercy on them.
But then when he comes down to the people, he speaks for God
and he picks up God's heart and he sees why God's anger was
burning hot. And he, he breaks the stone
tablets and, and, and 3000 of the people die.
And then he says this the next day Moses said to the people,
you have sinned a great sin. And now, now I will go up to the
Lord. Perhaps there's a chance he
says, I can make atonement for your sins.
So Moses returned to the Lord. Alas, the people have sinned a
great sin. They have made for themselves
gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive
their sin, forgive their sin. But if not, please blot me out
of your book that you have written.
That is an astounding thing to say.
There's only one other guy other than Jesus in Scripture that
prayed a prayer like that, and that was the apostle Paul.
The apostle Paul prayed for Israel and said God, He said I
would allow my soul to be damned to see God's chosen people
reinstated and reconciled to him.
It's an amazing thing. That's why Paul could say on the
with all confidence, he said Israel will be saved and we
before this thing called human history wraps up.
It's going to happen because God will not deny the prayer of
somebody that wraps themselves around their request so firmly.
We see the same with Moses and God.
God tells him, he says whoever has sinned against me, I will
blot out of my book. But now you go lead the people
to the place which I have spoken to you.
God said, OK, I'm going to let you go in.
Behold, my Angel shall go before you.
Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin
upon them. Then the Lord sent a plague on
the people because of the calf and the one that Aaron had made.
We brush over these as new covenant people and we don't
deal with these types of verses because through the new covenant
we, we tend to forget that that side of God's nature, that God
is just, he is holy and he hates sin because of what it does to
people. And so God's anger was burning
because there were these this next generation coming up and
the people who should have known better in sausage miracles had
sinned so greatly against him. But God had an intercessor in
the place of Moses. And so once Moses stood in God's
presence, said God, if you don't, if you don't allow them
to live, then then blot my name out.
And the Lord's relented. And then we go into verse 33.
The Lord said to Moses, depart, go up from here, you and the
people whom you are brought out of the land of Egypt to the land
which I swore to Aram, Isaac and Jacob saying to your offspring,
I will give it. So the Lord is saying, I'm going
to I'm going to make good on my promise.
I will send an Angel before you and he we will drive out the
Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, parasites, the Hivites, the
Jebusites and all the other sites.
Verse 3 go up to a land of flowing with milk and honey.
But I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way,
for you are a stiff necked people.
Sobering. Now I want to I want to point
something out to you. God says to them.
Verse 3, Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey.
God paints this picture and reminds them, look at what I'm
offering you, this lush land flowing with milk and honey.
And by the way, I'm not going with you, I'm going to send an
Angel. And I would propose to you that
God was baiting Moses and He would have made good on his
word. He would have, He would have
allowed Moses to lead the people into the promised land without
his presence. They could have went in for with
an Angel. They could have got the presents
of the blessing PRESENTS without the presence.
I'm not even going to try that one.
He without God's presence. But Moses, he, he's unwilling to
go. So listen to what it says here.
When the people heard the disastrous word, they mourned
and no one put on his ornaments. We don't have time to get into
all this, but so look at verse 7.
I'd encourage you to go and and read this under look at verse 7.
Now Moses used to no, I'm sorry, verse 12, verse 12, Moses said
to the people or to the Lord rather.
So Moses has gone. The word is disastrous.
They take all their ornaments off their jewelry and and it
says from horrible. They're they're not wearing that
stuff because they're in a grief.
They realize the cost of their sin and they're they're grieved.
And so now Moses goes back into the presence of the Lord in
verse 12. And this is the interchange that
we want to look at this morning. Moses said the Lord, see, you
have said to me, bring this people up, but you've not let me
know whom you will send with me. You've said I know you by name.
Moses is pleading a case again. He's back in the pocket and he's
pleading with the Lord. He's arguing with the Lord.
He's he's entering into a debate.
He's reminding the Lord just like that verse in Isaiah we
talked about, it's an amazing thing and we can't just scoot by
this stuff. There's there's an invitation
from God for us to contend with him on these matters, but when
we have a shallow relationship with God, we easily pull out of
the pocket of intercession. Well, I guess it's God's will.
I guess this is my circumstance rather than carrying the heart
of these situations and bringing them before the Lord.
Last week when we were talking about this whole thing of God
saying I'm going to destroy Israel, we're talking about how
Moses understood that that was an expression of intention but
not an expression of desire. And those are two separate
things. There are times where, as a good
parent will at time fully intend and even follow through on
something they do not want to do.
And they'll tell their children this is what's going to happen.
And it's not because it's a desire that they've been
cultivating within their heart. It's an intention because they
know they can't do what they really want to do because the
behavior of that child has canceled out that possibility.
And they know I can't give them all I want to give them.
I can't do all that I want to do.
So they withhold and they they speak an intention, but not a
desire. And Moses, because of his
relationship with God, he discerned that that's an
expression of intention. God is going to kill this entire
nation. So Moses digs his heels and it
says, God, please, please, is there any way around this thing?
Will you withhold your hand? He reminds of Lord, what are
the, what are the pagans that you, they were delivered from in
Egypt? What about the Pagan nations who
serve other gods that we're coming into?
What are they going to think that you, you rescued them to
kill them? Lord, what about what you said
to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? He's reminding God of his
promises and his principles. And in interacting with God, he
secures the deliverance in the salvation of an entire nation.
It's amazing. And so now he's back in God's
presence. And God said, I won't kill him,
but I ain't going with you into the promised land.
And Moses begins to talk to the Lord again.
But listen how he reasons with the Lord.
He said, Lord, you've, you said to me, I know you by name.
Now I'm going to be honest with you.
I don't know what that means because we know God's
omniscient. He knows all our names.
So why would Moses bring that up?
He's talking about some special relationship that he has with
God that there's something about.
I know you by name. He said, God, you told me that
we're, we are personally acquainted.
And Lord, you told me I have found favor with you and God, if
I found favor with you, he begins to leverage the
relationship he has with God for the sake of the people.
And I want to propose to you this morning that God has
invited all of us into that process.
But not all of us have equal favor with God.
We don't all walk in the same level of favor, but we can.
There's an invitation. We all have equal access through
the blood of Christ. You see, as believers in the
born again experience, we've been given favor.
The word here, favor is hen. They say if you speak Hebrew,
you never have to clear your throat.
You just talk and it does it for you.
Hen. It's HEN, but it's, it's
pronounced hen. It's it's grace and favor and
even popularity. So Moses is saying, God, you
told me I was popular in heaven. You told me, Lord, that I have
found favor. I have grace from you and he's
leveraging that and he's, he's saying, God, you're telling me
there's something special about our relationship that I'm going
to leverage for everybody else. You say, well, pastor, I I think
you might be stretching that and saying, well, not everybody has
equal favor. If God were to tell Moses, you
have favor with me and we all have equal favor to be a
nonsensical statement. Be like saying Moses, you're a
human, you're a human being. So I'm going to Ant he wouldn't
refer to that. He says to Mary, you who are
highly favored, so there is a deposit of grace in the form of
favor. When we get saved, every one of
us, we come in, it's by grace and we have favor with God and
we can come boldly before the throne of grace.
That's favor, That's grace, and that's a wonderful thing.
But there's levels of favor and most people park it there.
They are satisfied to have the grace of salvation and the favor
of salvation. I'm in Christ, I'm going to
heaven. That's favor and they get stuck
right there. You remember when God called
Abram when he was still Abraham and not Abraham?
Genesis chapter 12, what he says to him, He said Abram, he said
get up and leave the place you are.
And I'm going to bring you to a place I've not yet told you
about and I will bless you so you can be a blessing.
The first one, I'm going to bless you.
But the blessing on your life is to be leveraged for the nations
of the earth. The the initial grace on you is
to be used as leverage so other people can enter into the grace
you have. That is what a priest does.
And the fact is you and I. First, Peter says that you and I
are a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a Kingdom of
priests. We are meant to be go betweens.
We receive grace just like Abraham.
We receive blessing so we can be a blessing.
And here's the danger. God was baiting Moses.
He said Moses, I'm going to send you into a land.
And he mentions again, he paints this attractive picture flowing
with milk and honey. It's yours.
You've broke through an intercession.
I'm going to answer your initial prayer.
I won't kill them. I'm going to let you lead them
in. Oh, by the way, I'm not going
just like the first time he says, Moses, I'm going to kill
that entire nation and I will make a great nation out of you.
And there was a an opportunity to Moses to step in and make his
name great. He could have forsaken the
people and said, wow, this is this is pretty heady stuff.
This is amazing. It'll be the nation of MO.
They're going to bear my name, and down through history,
everybody's going to Remember Me as the father of the nation.
But Moses says, no, it's not about me being a blessing.
I'm a blessing to or to being blessed.
It's for me to be a blessing. And he refuses that invitation.
And he presses in and he takes the favor on him.
And rather than absorbing it, he stretches it over the children
of Israel. And he said, Lord, if I have
found favor, Lord, please spare them.
And so again in the next interchange, he said, Lord, if I
have found favor with you, Lord, you told me you know me by name.
Lord, you told me I've found favor.
If that is true, the Lord go with us.
Lord, here, let's read exactly what he says Here.
Let me read you this, this, this found favor here.
If I can find it real quick here, it's an interesting phrase
found the Hebrew word found means to come to, to attain or
to arrive at. And again, there are levels of
favor. See God's no respecter of
persons. It's very clear in Scripture,
but he is a respecter of hard attitude and not everybody walks
in equal favor. If we did, it would be nonsense
for him to say to Mary, you are highly favored.
Well, why greet that if if it's just a generic phrase that we
all enjoy and we don't? There are people who walk in
greater favor with God, greater grace upon their life.
But the greater grace on your life is intended to extend to
other people. And every time we walk in the
grace of God, anytime that there's a blessing, there is a
temptation to only embrace the first stage.
I am blessed and we forget about being a blessing.
God paints a picture of the promised land because he's
trying to see, have I found a man or a woman that looks at the
blessing not as the byproducts of their relationship with me,
but as me themselves? And so God is looking for people
who will recognize the greatest blessing is him.
When you are invited into a relationship with him, that is
the blessing. And, and we are so easily
distracted and God is looking throughout the earth.
Can I find the people who are captured by me?
And then when they're captured by me, they're not pulled away
of the blessing by the blessing of being in relationship to me.
Because it's inevitable. When you get into relationship
with God, all of a sudden your life begins to work better.
You're not spending money on stupid stuff.
You're not, you're not drinking your paycheck away, you're not
spending it on Internet porn and all this crazy stuff.
All of a sudden the bondages in your life get broken and now all
of a sudden there's margin in your life and you're like, this
is a blessing. And the danger for every
believer is that we get distracted by the land flowing
with milk and honey and we forget that we've lost his
presence. And God is looking for a people
like Moses. Let's say, God, if you're not
going with us, we don't want to go.
Lord, all of those external things are not, that's not what
we want. God told this frightening thing
to Moses and Moses reiterated to the nation of Israel.
He said when you enter the promised land and you forget
about me and the prosperity, he's, he's in the context.
It's when you enter the prosperity of the promised land
and you forget me almost as if it's an inevitability, but I'm
telling you it's not. I pray this all the time to the
Lord. We're we were over at Julia
Kritsky's father's house last night.
His I love the guy. He his his understood your your
grandparents, your grandmother and grandfather were both in a
Nazi prison camp for five years. Then they were delivered.
His his dad ended up getting saved and planting underground
churches in Russia, in Ukraine. The KGB was after him.
Amazing story. But we were talking about how in
that abject poverty and under oppression, the church thrived.
But then often when people move to the prosperity of the West,
all of a sudden they become apathetic.
And it just breaks my heart. And I've I found myself praying
this again and again. God, Lord, the prosperity of the
West is not too great for you. You are great enough to capture
our attention so that we can resist the enticement of
prosperity. Does God have to impoverish to
keep us connected to Him, or is He great enough to capture our
heart so that we can resist the enticements?
Can God find a people that when they come into blessing because
of their relationship with them, they're not distracted by the
blessing? They recognize those blessings,
whatever they are. All of a sudden our families
begin to work, the dysfunctional relationships become functional
financially, we got margin. All of a sudden we're a better
worker. We start making more money, all
the blessings, but we wreck, we continue to recognize all of
this is merely A byproduct. The main thing is the main
thing, God, the best thing about serving you is you, Lord.
And, and I find myself praying again and again and I, I, I feel
embarrassed. It seems like a crime.
It seems, it almost seems sinful.
But I pray this and I say, God, you know my weakness.
God, win me all over again. Lord, reveal yourself to me
again. Lord, you know how easily
distracted I am that you bless me.
And pretty soon I'm down the rabbit trail playing with the
toys and forgetting about the one who gave them to me.
And it seems tragic that we even need to talk like that, that we
would be distracted from the things He gives us.
And suddenly we think that's the blessing.
That's not the blessing. The blessing is Him.
And furthermore, once we break into the blessing and we have
relationship with them, the whole purpose of this, the only
reason you and I are still here is so that we can be those who
represent Him to the nations of the earth.
But the, the strategy of the enemy and so many believers, we
park it at that first level of favor, it's favors for
salvation. By grace, we are saved.
And we, we began to enjoy the blessings.
And pretty soon we're so caught up in these blessings, we've
forgotten about him. We're still going to heaven, but
we're not concerned with taking anyone with us.
We're all caught up in the blessings and God, God is
looking for people. And I believe he was baiting no
Moses and saying, Moses, listen, I'm going to give you a land.
I want to remind you it's flowing with milk and honey.
You're going to move into homes you didn't build, garden gardens
you didn't have to plant. It's going to be awesome.
Moses. Oh, but by the way, I forgot to
mention, I'm not going with you. And God found a man in Moses.
That's it. God, if you're not going, we're
not going. I cannot move into my future
without you. And when God found that, he
found the man through which he could lead.
And I'm telling you that the nature of our relationship,
every one of us are called to be an influence.
Every one of us. We are a Kingdom of priests.
This is not just for leaders. In fact, we're all called the
leadership, we're all called some form, some fashion to be
those who grow up into that state where our lives become a
blessing and we've got to guard against and we've got to pray
against and we've got to begin to bring our hearts before the
Lord continuously say, God, forgive me, I am such, I'm so
easily distracted, Lord, please, Lord.
And Moses says that. He says, please Lord, come with
us, Lord. He's crying out to God.
He's looking for a people who would use their favor.
Moses had found favor with God and now was leveraging his
personal favor for the nation's sake.
He was using what the Lord had told him about himself.
And you know, he said, God, you said this about me, you said
this about me. If that's true, the Lord do this
and God wants to bless you, but He wants to use that blessing
and you to take it back to him. Everything that you've developed
in your relationship with God, and then you use that to move
him. Lord, if I found any favor, the
Lord, I'm asking you, extend it to others.
I stand in the gap for those who have not yet found favor.
I stand in the gap for those whose minds are so darkened or
their bodies are so broken, they're so consumed with their
own brokenness that they don't have the capacity to give you
their attention and their affection.
And Lord, I'm here before them, before you for them.
And Moses takes the favor on his life, and he begins to extend it
over. Here's the sobering thing that
positions of leadership are meant to be entry points for the
blessing of God upon others. And the whole thing we call the
call of God is actually God giving you grace, and you
cultivate that in a relationship with Him.
And because of the call on your life, God will give you things
you don't deserve. Revelation, wisdom, gifts of the
Spirit, even finances. He'll give you things.
It's not that you've earned it. It's the grace of God being
released to you. But He expects you to leverage
it for others. And we as mature, immature
little children end up just playing with the toys and
hoarding them. And it's we were meant to be a
conduit, not a reservoir that just keeps the hold of the
blessings. And God has to look for another.
And So what, what Moses did is Moses would come before the Lord
and say, God, if I found favor with you, Lord, if, if I found
any kind of if, if I, if my life garners your attention, then
Lord, I'm asking you, I'm standing and I'm leveraging
that. Lord, would you visit them?
And God would answer him again and again.
Your life is supposed to be lived for others.
Intercession is more than a prayer life.
Moses lived in an intercessory life.
He lived his life for other people and in so doing emulated
and expressed the life of God. God is by nature sacrificial,
for God so loved He gave His only begotten Son.
You know that the the only two things that God could give us
that He couldn't replace where His Son and His Spirit, because
they were uncreated. The Father gave the uncreated
Son and the uncreated Spirit and He gave us both of them at great
expense. And when we are emulate, when we
become like him, we begin to live our lives for other people.
And everything that we crossover into in our in our relationship
with God is actually leveraged for the life of other people.
And if we're not seeing it that way, we're stuck in this selfish
immaturity that we're just absorbing blessings and we end
up getting distracted from the real blessing, which is him.
And I believe God baited no Moses twice He said, I'll make a
great nation out of you. No, Lord, I don't want any of
it. I don't need my name.
Great. I need you to save these people
you've entrusted me with. Then he said, OK, I'm going to
let you lead him in and I'm going to give you the promise
on, but I'm not going with you. And Moses is digging his heel.
And no, Lord, if you don't go with us, I don't want to go up
from here. God is looking for people who
value His presence above all else.
And then once we break into favor, we keep our eyes fixed on
Him. We keep crying on God.
Save me from my distractions, help me not to be distracted
because that one of the greatest barriers from God are the
blessings that come because of him.
In the sermon on the of the soils, there were those whose
hearts were hard. That first type of soil, it was
trodden path. Their heart was so hard.
The word of God could not penetrate the second type of
soil. If I remember right, I believe
it was the third time. The third one is that the there
was such blessing. It was the the the grew up with
the plant. It was the cares of this life,
the deceitfulness of riches and the troubles of this world.
And they conspire those three things and they choke out the
word of God. The second one was trials.
The first one was hardened heart.
We can't even receive the word. The second one trials and we we
get offended and we walk away from God.
And the third one is we get choked out by blessings.
There's a progression here. Some people never accept Jesus
because their heart is hard. There's some that come into the
faith, but because they haven't dealt with the unyielding stones
under the surface, as soon as the the the hot heat of the sun
begins to bake them, they get offended and they walk away from
God. And there's some that will
endure the trials of life and break into the blessings.
But as those weeds begin to grow, they they endured the
trials, but they can't make it through the blessings.
And then there's those who bring forth 3060 and a hundredfold
harvest because they don't get distracted by the blessings and
they understand any favor on my life, any blessing on my life is
meant to be for others. That God, you're going to, you
want to use me, You want to use my life.
And, and I'm telling you, that's what leadership is.
Leadership is US leveraging our life for the sake of other
people. We live our life before God and
anything he does in US. OK, how can I help others with
this? And that's the way to keep the
flow. You only get to keep what you
give away. But if you become a reservoir
that begins to hoard, you'll stop the blessing because you
cut yourself off from the very thing that brought it.
And there are a lot of believers that live there.
They've gotten distracted from God.
They've lost their first love. That's why we need to pray.
And again, I'm embarrassed to admit that I have to pray.
God, Lord, win my heart. God, give me a fresh revelation
of you. Lord, I got distracted from the
last one. Lord, you've been so good to me.
But now that you've been good, I've got caught up in all these
things. Lord, would you reveal yourself
again? And if we'll keep that God, God
can use our life. And that is what we're all
called to do. We're to become an access point
for God to bless other people. And let me just say this, the
scary thing about that principle, a leadership
principle, that God will choose someone, bless them to be a
blessing, and they become a conduit through which a church,
a family, a city, a nation is blessed.
The flip side works for darkness as well.
That's why we have to pray for our leaders, our president, your
pastor. We need, I need your prayers
because if I'm distracted and I did something stupid, it would
hurt a lot of people. David, as the man who was chosen
by God to be a blessing to the nation of Israel, was a
tremendous blessing. And they lived under the favor
until David sinned. He counted the fighting men and
a plague broke out. And David cried out to God,
withhold your hand. It was I who did it.
The people are suffering because what we need to understand is
positions of leadership are actually access points for the
spiritual realm. And when God grants us influence
at whatever level we have in other people's lives, it was
intended to flow blessing and we posture life.
God, Lord, I want to relate with you.
I want to know you more. Show me your ways.
And then I want to give away everything I have.
And Lord, I want to stretch anything, you, anybody that's
under my influence. Lord, I want to stretch the
blessing you've given me over them.
But if the enemy can corrupt a leader, then there's great harm
that comes through that same opening called leadership.
That's why we need to pray. Paul said pray for your leaders
and I implore you, pray for, pray for your leader.
Pray for our president, pray for all our pastors, pray for our
elders. Let's pray for those that are
have influence. Some of you have seen the the
video that came out here in the last two weeks and I'm not going
to comment on it until they're the, the, the ones that are
being addressed have an opportunity to answer for
themselves. But we need to pray.
We need to pray for our leaders because we can all start out
well and get pulled off track by distractions, get pulled off
track by we, we, we so enjoy the blessings of the initial wave of
grace called salvation that we fail to leverage it for anybody
or move into greater blessing. And Moses was the one who went
from glory to glory, favor to favor.
He, he's crying out to God. God, don't kill him.
He says, OK, I won't kill him, but I'm not going with you.
He says, please go with us. He said, OK, I'll go with you.
And then Moses said, show me your glory.
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