On Fire for God

So we're going to take a pretty big chunk. We looked at Abraham, the first part of this message that Stephen is preaching to the council. They've made accusations against him and he doesn't bother to answer those.

He just goes right into speaking to them the truth. And so it's Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. Oh, and then we talked last time about Joseph, and Joseph was one of those individuals that the Jewish people rejected, threw him in a pit.

And then later on in Joseph's life, it was the will of God for Joseph to be their deliverer. He was the one who provided in famine, the food for Jacob and the rest of Joseph's brethren. And so Stephen here in this message is giving a history, starting with Abraham, going to Joseph.

Today we're going to look at Moses, and then next time we'll close out the sermon with David. Now Moses takes up most of the sermon. So it's from verse 19 all the way down to verse 43.

And I'm going to try to just cover all of it in a general way today. But I want to do a little bit of reviewing here. I want to show you the main thrust of this sermon.

And that is this, that God has been trying to speak to the nation, clear back from Abraham's day all the way up to the present time. And the nation in large part has not heard. Their ears have been uncircumcised and their hearts are uncircumcised and they have not heard.

And God has been trying to lead them, trying to deliver them in trouble. But they have not been listening. They've been rejecting all those whom he has sent to them.

And we go back here, and I want to just do a little review here in Acts. I didn't read this passage last time. But here in Acts chapter 7, they had rejected Joseph.

Remember last week they threw him in the pit. And now Joseph is going to turn around and be their deliverer. In Acts 7 and verse 11 it says, Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt and Canaan and great affliction, and our fathers found no sustenance.

But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first. And at the second time Joseph was made known to his brethren, and Joseph's kindred was made known unto Pharaoh. Then sent Joseph and called his father Jacob to him and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls.

So Jacob went down into Egypt and died, he and our fathers. So that Joseph that was rejected by the Israelites then turns around and is the deliverer of the Israelites. And this is the pattern of this message.

Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and David. God has been sending to you his deliverers, his messengers, and you have not heard them. And not only that, you have persecuted them and you have cast them out.

And so today we're going to look at Moses. And I'm going to jump ahead just to show you this again. In Acts chapter 7 in verse number 20, it says, In which time Moses was born, and when it was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father's house three months, and when he was cast out.

Here's the first casting out. Moses was a man who was rejected many times. Even as a baby, he was cast out.

Pharaoh's daughter took him up and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in word and deed. And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel, and seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him and avenged him that was oppressed and smote the Egyptian.

For he supposed his brethren, the Jewish Hebrews, would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them, but they understood not. They didn't see. And here's what happened.

Verse 26, And the next day he showed himself unto them as they strove, and would have set them at once again, saying, Sirs, you are brethren. Why do you wrong one another? But he that did his neighbor wrong thrust him away. Notice his word, cast him out, thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday? Then fled Moses at that saying.

So here God is sending Moses to the Israelites. He's wanting to deliver them, but they're rejecting all those that he sends. Look down to verse number 37.

Here they are in the wilderness. This is that Moses would send unto the children of Israel, a prophet. Shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me? Whom shall you hear? This is he that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spoke to him in the Mount Sinai and with our fathers who received the lively oracles forgiven to us, to whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them.

Notice again, thrust him away, thrust him out, and in their hearts turned back into Egypt, saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us, for as for this Moses which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we want not what is become of him. So this whole sermon is God's way of showing the Israelites again, how that he is seeking to send messengers. He is seeking to send deliverers to the nation.

And each time he sends them, they are rejected and not heard. And now the Lord Jesus has been sent to them and they did not hear him and they did the same thing. They rejected him.

He is despised and rejected of men. They cast him out and lo and behold, they don't realize it, but he also is going to be or wants to be their deliverer and to minister to them and to deliver them from bondage and to give them as Joseph food for their soul. And so this is the message.

And again, I thought about it as I've been meditating on this sermon. God has a special heart this morning for the underdog. And you see this throughout the Bible.

God has a special place for those who are the underdog, those who are maybe in difficult straight. I think of the adopted one. You know, Moses was adopted.

He was taken out of his home and adopted into a new home. Joseph was cast out of his home. And from a young age, he was in a new home.

And some of you who maybe have been adopted, God has a special place in his heart for you. And I see these amazing individuals who God raised up. Moses, tremendous to use.

He was an adopted young man. And I see a Joseph cast out. Daniel cast out from his home, from his people.

And so just to encourage some of you today here who maybe are on the low end, you know, oh, you're adopted or your life is full of trauma and difficulty. God has a special heart for you. And I want to read what Paul said to the church at Corinth here.

He says this in chapter one. He says, for you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many pharaohs, not many wise, noble of this world. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.

And God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and the base things of the world and the things which are despised. You know, Joseph was despised. Moses despised.

Jesus is despised and rejected of men. If you're despised here this morning by men, you're in a good place. You're an underdog.

And God has a special place. He chose these people. God has chosen them, those which are not to bring to naught the things that are.

And here's why. And we'll get to this at the end of the message that no flesh should glory in his presence. That according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

You think about the Lord. You know, he's there in heaven. He says, you know, I want to bring glory to my name.

And if I go down there and get somebody noble, get somebody mighty, they're going to take all the glory from it. I'm going to get someone who is despised and rejected, someone who is an underdog, someone who is very, you know, in a very low place. Because when they do it, I'll get the glory, the honor.

So he finds a Joseph cast into a pit, rejected. I'll use that guy. He finds a Moses cast out and rejected.

I'll use him. And he finds a Jesus who is also cast out and despised of men. And so if you're in that position, thank God.

Hey, you're on the right track to being, having a special place in God's heart. Well, I want to do a little review and then we're going to read down through this and just discuss this briefly. But last week, last time we learned why the Jews rejected them.

And here's the main thrust of the message. I want to reiterate it because we face the same issues. They, the Hebrew people, had uncircumcised hearts.

Uncircumcised hearts. And at the end of this message here in Acts chapter 7, Stephen says it in verse 51. You stiff neck and uncircumcised in hearts and ears.

You do always resist the Holy Ghost as your fathers did. So do you. You're uncircumcised.

Now, if you look in your hearts here this morning, all of us, we either have circumcised hearts or our hearts are uncircumcised. Hearts that God has cut away the foreskin of this world and a love and affection for this world. And he has removed us from that into a love and affection for him, the Lord Jesus Christ.

You have a circumcised heart. And when the day you were converted, truly converted, your heart was circumcised. Your heart was circumcised away from this world towards the Lord Jesus Christ.

There was an operation. And yet these people's hearts were uncircumcised. Because their heart was uncircumcised, their ears could not hear.

They could not understand his way and his purposes. Well, they were circumcised in the flesh. And we talked about that last week.

And this is so important because it's religion. Circumcised in the flesh. And boy, they boasted in that circumcision.

It's an outward thing. And they talked about how they were circumcised in the flesh. They gloried in it.

They made it their priority. But God was interested in the heart. The circumcision of the heart.

So the Lord says in the book of John, they worship me with their lips. Something you can see. You can see my lips this morning.

But their heart, you can't see my heart. It's far from me. So again, this is the importance of looking at our hearts.

What's really going on in our hearts? We can always play lip service. We can always worship God outwardly. We can always show a form.

But it's not what the Lord desires from us. He desires that we worship him from the heart. Well, there's many things I'd like to share here.

But I think we'll just go ahead and move on. We're going to see at the end of the message here, something that we as humans do. We tend to turn away from our worship of God, walking with God, living by faith.

We turn to men. We turn to men. We make men idols.

And we're going to see this. Moses becomes basically, in a sense, an idol to the people. And we read this in the book of Samuel a few weeks ago.

You know, Samuel was trying to get the people to follow God and to let God reign in their life. But the people did not want that. They wanted a king like the rest of the nations.

They wanted to be able to touch someone and see someone. Give us a man that we can touch and see to lead us. The Lord says, Samuel, don't worry about it.

They've not rejected you. They're rejecting me. They don't want me to reign over them.

And you know, God's heart is for you to get up in the morning and say, Lord, I want you to reign. I want to walk with God. I want to walk with you.

And I want to hear your voice. And I want to meditate upon your word. I want to praise you.

I want to thank you today. And I want to live by faith today. And I want you to guide me today.

And the Lord loves to take your day and just walk with you. And you have him as your Lord and your ruler. But you know, so many of us don't like that.

Oh, I heard. And we'd rather just say, I want to join the church, put some men up here. We'll make some rules and stuff.

And we'll just fit in and go along and be Christian. Forget this walking with God stuff. Forget this having to live by faith and searching the scriptures and praying and seeking God and walking with him day by day and listening to his voice.

Forget that stuff. Let's just make it simple. Give us some men.

Let them lead us. And we'll just follow them. And we'll have a system.

That's exactly what the Jews were. And that's where men, most of us, will fall into. We'll fall into that system.

And you'll get some words in the Bible that have this word men in it. I'll just give you some of them. A men pleaser.

Instead of a God pleaser. The fear of man to the fear of God. The traditions of men, the commandments and doctrines of men, men, men, men, men, men, men.

Instead of man. And so it's a moving away from, God, you walk with me and you reign, to a, let's let men take over. That was the warning Peter gave to leaders like myself and others not to be a lord over God's character.

There's only one Lord, and that's who wants to lord you and lead your life. So let's look here at this story, and there's a few lessons I'd like to bring out. I'm going to read down through this story and just comment on Stephen's sermon here, and maybe learn some lessons for us from the life of Moses.

Heavenly Father, we pray as we read this, Lord, that you'll fill our hearts and minds and may our hearts truly be circumcised, that we love the word of God and we love to consume it and to meditate upon it and that it feed our souls. So Lord, may we not fall into idolatry and into the worshiping of men, that which we can see with our eyes. May we live by faith and serve the invisible God and all trusting in that which we cannot see.

So Lord, bless us this morning. I pray for those who are not with us, that you would also minister grace to each one of them in their hearts. In Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, let's just walk down through here, and starting in verse number 17, it says, But when the time of the promise drew nigh, now Jacob and his sons had gone down to Egypt to get corn, and now they're living in Egypt with Joseph. But verse 17 says, But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt. We're in Acts chapter 7 verse 17, the time of the promise drew nigh.

What's that talking about? Look back here to verse number, let's go back here to verse number 6 of Acts 7. And God spake on this wise to Abraham that his seed should sojourn in a strange land and that they should bring them into bondage and entreat them evil for a hundred years. And the nations to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, sayeth God, talking about Egypt, and after that they shall come forth and they shall serve me in this place, talking about the land of promise. So God told Abraham, Abraham, your seed is going to inherit this land.

And I'm going to tell you ahead of time, your seed is going to go down into Egypt and they're going to be held in bondage for 400 years. And after that 400 years, I'm going to bring them out of that bondage and I'm going to bring them into this land, this land of Canaan, what I had on the map two weeks ago or a week last week, I'm going to give them that land. So that's the promise that he's talking about here in verse 17.

But when the time, verse 17, of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt till another king arose, which knew not Joseph. Evidently this Pharaoh had passed away or another Pharaoh was put in his place, but he wasn't a friend of Joseph. Joseph had good relationships with the first Pharaoh.

Now this Pharaoh was not a friend of Joseph and the people of God, the Hebrews. And so it says in verse 19, the same dealt subtly with our kindred and evil and treated our fathers so that they cast out their young children to the end that they might not live. So here you have this individual, this Pharaoh saying, these people are getting too big.

They're becoming a threat to me and to our nation. So what we're going to do is we're going to have all the male children that are born are going to be, their lives are going to be taken. And so, you know, the whole story there.

And verse 20 says this, in which time Moses was born and was exceeding fair and nourished up in his father's house three months. And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up and nourished him for her own. So Moses is in a sense, an adopted young man, he's a displaced individual.

And it doesn't seem here that adoption hinders God in any way. Praise God for that. Thinking about my little boys and others of you who have adopted children or are adopted.

Moses is right there with you. And here God chooses this Moses who is living in a different home, not living with his natural parents and does an amazing work in his life. Verse 22, and Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in word and in deed.

He probably went to the best schools. He was an eloquent individual. Later on, after 40 years, he decides he can't speak anymore, but he was mighty in word and in deed.

It says in verse 23, and when he was full 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. Now, I don't know how this all worked, but Moses evidently was told by Pharaoh and his wife that you're a Hebrew and probably was told about the bull rushes and how we got you and, you know, the whole nine yards. So Moses in his heart realizes that he's with those people over there in this certain part of Egypt.

And he has that in his heart. Maybe he studied the people of God as he grows up and he tries to understand. Certainly, he seems to have faith in his heart, but he knew he was a Jew.

So he's older now. And so he gets in his heart. Probably God put it in his heart to go and visit his brethren, the children of Israel.

And they were, remember, in the plague. They were in a different kind of part. And only the plague still on the Egyptians did fall over there.

What was the name of that town? Did I remember? Where the Hebrews live. So he goes and visits. Let's keep reading here.

Verse 24. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him and avenged him that was oppressed and smoked the Egyptian, for he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them. But they understood not.

Now, there's a lot of things here that we don't think of, you know, and we read a story like that. How many of you have ever murdered a man? Raise your hand. Maybe you're too ashamed to raise your hand.

You have a few murderers here. Have you actually murdered? Oh, you're talking about your abortion. Here's a man who murdered someone with his hand.

And most of us would probably say, well, that guy's done. His ministry is shoddy. And God's never going to use him.

But here's a man who actually took his hands and killed someone, shed blood. And God's going to deal with him. But how many of you would want to murder as a pastor? What would you think if I was a murderer? No, most of us would say, enough, you're done for your ministry with the Lord.

But here the Lord actually is taking a murderer like Moses and he is going to use it. He's going to judge him for 40 years. We're going to see that here in just a minute.

Moses is going to flee for 40 years. But then God is going to use an adopted individual who is a murderer. And I don't think this murder obviously was in any way justified.

It probably got upset, got in a fight. Moses probably was a bigger individual. And and smote this Egyptian.

But notice what it says here in verse 25. For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them. But they understood not.

The Jewish people in that day, much like it is today, they don't understand. They don't see the truth. And they couldn't see what God was doing, his purposes, and there was a reason.

It's getting back to this uncircumcised heart. You know, a lot of people sit and they listen to preaching, they listen to the word of God, but they don't understand. And they go on with life, life the same, day by day by day, nothing changes in their life.

They sit in church for 10, 15, 20 years. They're the same person and they're the same person because the word of God does not get to the place where they understand. And I'd like you to turn with me a very familiar passage here in Matthew chapter 13.

And Jesus explains this very principle. And an uncircumcised heart can be found right here in Matthew chapter 13. And I'm going to jump down to the middle of this parable.

But this is a parable of the seed and the sower. In Matthew 13, verse 22, it says, He also that receives seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word. And the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and he becomes unfruitful.

He doesn't have any fruit in his life. His life never changes. You know, people sit in church and you say, you know, Brother Jerry, what do you see changing in this individual or that individual? And, you know, can we say that our life is being fruitful? Our life is actually changing and we're growing and the word of God is having an effect upon.

Well, because of the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things, the word of God is unfruitful. It doesn't profit them. And then in verse 23, but he that receives seed into the good ground, that's a circumcised heart.

It's he that hears the word and understands it. In other words, it has an impact on him. Which also bears fruit and brings forth some a hundredfold, some 60 and some 30.

You know, when a plant bears fruit, it changes. Hey, look at that cornstalk. The next day, hey, there's ears growing there.

The next day, there's tassels on the ears. The next day, the stalk is growing. You see change.

You know, when something is growing, it's changing. So uncircumcised hearts never change. They may be religious, they sit in church services, they go to church every Sunday, but their uncircumcised heart never changes.

And they simply hear the word and they go on the same as they've always been. So. The Hebrews did not understand.

And a lot of people today are not understanding the truth because it's not changing their life. Too many things to do. I got too many affections, I'm doing this project over here and there's some money I'm making over here and there's all these cares I deal with.

And so the word of God just doesn't change. So that's a real challenge for us here in the church today. Are you being changed? I mean, if I look at the word of the Lord and as I go through the Bible, is it changing me? And I'm hoping by the time we get to the end of the book of Acts, I can say, OK, we're going to spend this Sunday and I want you to get up and I want you to say, how has the word of God, the whole book of Acts, changed your life? One by one.

Changed this way, this way, this way, this way, this way, this way, this way, this way. And if you get to the end of the book of Acts and all that we hear and you say, I don't really know if it's changed, don't blame the preacher. You might want to look inside your heart.

Say, well. I don't have a circumcised heart. And my heart needs some real work.

Because I'm not changing. Well, let's keep reading here in verse 26. And the next day he showed himself unto them as they strove and would have sent them at once again, saying, Sirs, your brethren, why do you wrong one another? But he that did his neighbor wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Will thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday? Now, Moses sees something that he doesn't like, and that is his brethren striving together.

You are wronging one another. And this is a big thing for me. I don't like strife, never have liked strife.

And God doesn't like strife. Moses says, why do you people strive with each other? You are wronging one another. And I know we probably don't get each other like they did, around the neck and fight and tussle with each other.

But we get each other maybe around the neck with our words, and we fight and tussle with striving with our words. But the servant of the Lord, Paul said, must not strive. Amen.

So just to remind you again, the works of the flesh, adultery, is that a bad thing? Fornication, is that a bad thing? Unclaiming, bad idolatry, bad things, witchcraft, hatred, variance, strife, whoa, that's up there pretty high. Goes on with murderers, covetous, yeah, there's some pretty heavy hitters in that list. And one of them is strife.

Strife is something that comes out of this flesh. Strife happens because I want my way or I want to exalt me. The Bible says there was a strife amongst the disciples because they were fighting who would be the greatest.

Whenever we want to be right, exalt ourselves above others, there's strife. And so strife is not a good thing. I talk about strife a lot.

As I go to these churches, try to help them, and I see people just fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting, bickering, bickering. And they think they're doing the right thing, but they're not. And churches are full of strife, it means the churches are full of flesh.

The works of the flesh. So let's get that strife out of our hearts. Well, here Moses, he murders a man.

That's an amazing thought. You know, we had a murderer in our church, a man preaching many years ago, came up to me, had been in our church for a number of years. And he told me, I want to let you know, I want to make a confession.

I murdered a man about 40 years ago. And I, oh, come on, you're kidding me, right? His name was Ralph Chapman, I think he passed away. He attended our church for a number of years.

And he said, I heard it from somebody, he said, I'll take you where I did it. Took me down here to Newark and showed me the spot. These things have changed, but it was back in the 40s.

I was a young, early 20s, young man. We got in a fight, I killed a guy. Dug him over here, I can show you where I buried him from.

We walked out in the field, here's where, somewhere around here. Moses murdered a man. Now, you don't think of that when you think of Moses, but Moses was a murderer.

It says he fled here and he fled from Pharaoh. He thought Pharaoh would be upset at him. He wasn't a real good friend of this Pharaoh, this new Pharaoh, evidently.

And, well, no, that would be, yeah, he fled from Pharaoh. It says that he was upset, Pharaoh was upset, and he fled from Pharaoh. And I think there was something else going on and he had a guilty conscience.

Look what it says here. Verse 28, wilt thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday? Then Moses fled at this saying. Oh, boy.

You know, if you go back and read the story in the Old Testament, it says Moses killed him and hid him and buried him under some sand. It's like he was trying to cover himself, like, maybe did anybody see what happened there? And he hid it and he covered up. Then the next day he comes back and someone brings the thing up again.

Hey, we saw what you did. Oh, boy, how did I get out of here? So he flees, what an evil conscience will do for you, a guilty conscience. The Bible says that the wicked flees when no man pursues, right? Why is he fleeing when no man pursues? Because he's got a guilty conscience.

But the righteous are full of life. The righteous don't have a guilty conscience. You and I, because we've been washed in the blood of Jesus and we keep our records clean, we can be bold in life.

A lot of people are very sheepish in life and very fearful because they got a lot of things in their closet, the skeleton, and they're always running and running and running and running. Moses here. He flees.

Now, notice what it says in verse number 30. And when 40 years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, an angel of the Lord and a flame of fire in a bush. Now, those 40 years are important because when 40 years were expired, do you think God was waiting for 40 years? I think he was 40 years.

Moses, you're going to be 40 years. You know, 40 years are symbolic in the Bible. 40 years is a period of judgment.

You look at the number 40 in the Bible. It's referring to judgment. I'm going to have you wander for 40 years in the wilderness because you've rejected entering the promised land.

You're going to bear your sin for 40 years in the wilderness going in a circle, right? So when Jonah went and preached to the Ninevites, he got 40 days, 40 days, God's going to judge this place. How about this? When Noah got in the boat, it rained for how many days and how many nights? 40 days and 40 nights. 40 is a time frame that God is going to judge.

And he says to Moses, Moses, you run, you're going to be 40 years. You say, was Moses free of scot-free? No, he didn't get off scot-free. God judged him.

He was 40 years in the backside of the desert. I don't know what his life is about. We don't learn a lot about his life.

He has children there. But God basically doesn't speak to him. God doesn't use him for 40 years.

You're going to see here that the Lord goes to Moses and meets with him and sets him back on the right course. After 40 years. So there's a lot of interesting ideas about 40.

40 days, 40 nights, 40 years. But Moses' sin has an adverse effect, not only on himself. He is 40 years on the backside of the desert, but he also has an adverse effect on other people.

And I know God works things out according to his sovereign will. But had Moses not done this, had Moses not murdered this Egyptian, there's a good chance that Moses would have delivered the people 40 years earlier. I know it's the will of God and I know it was God's purpose.

But God is sending Moses into the situation in Egypt so he could deliver them. And now Moses kills a man and he flees for 40 years. And maybe God's thinking, OK, Moses, I'm going to have to judge you for the next 40 years before you can come back and deliver.

So sometimes my sin affects more than just me, it affects other people and other people. These Israelites have to spend 40 more years in bondage because of Moses' sin. And I know many of our lives have been really upended because of other people and their sin.

And maybe even we have upended people's lives because of our own sin. But a lesson for us is this, our sin has effects on other people. Amen.

And it does affect other people. Moses, you know, your sin, you can run and hide, but it's going to affect other people. Well, Moses here is 40 years in hiding, having fled Egypt, but praise the Lord, after 40 years, God finds him.

Look at verse 30. And when 40 years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush. When Moses saw it, he wandered at the sight.

And as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now, there's no indication that Moses ever heard the voice of God for those 40 years. It was a barren time in his life.

And a lot of people go through those barren times because God is judging and chastening them because of issues that they're not willing to address and be honest and come forward with. So sometimes we have dry periods, maybe a year, four years, ten years of dry spiritual life because God is trying to deal with. See, I don't hear the voice of God like I used to.

But didn't Moses indeed? As Moses was running, hiding. So after 40 years of this, finally God speaks to him. And he sees a fiery bush.

And I shared a little bit about that this morning in the children's lesson. That fire is the presence of God. And God came down in a bush and the fire burned it but didn't consume it.

And that's the kind of fire we need. A little fire in the church. We don't need to set a bonfire up here to get a little fire in the church.

We need some people who have a heart and passion for the Lord. We need some people who don't need outside motivation. Amen.

We need some people who are motivated from within. We need some people who are on their knees. We need some people who are seeking God and in his word.

And that word and his spirit is causing a fire to burn in them. And so that when people get around you, you get a little heat. Isn't it nice to get around people who have some fire? Especially in this cold world.

We live in a very Christian cold world. And so be a person who has some fire in you. And it's not a manufactured fire like Brother Eli was sharing this morning.

It's something that is God is in you and you can't help but doing this. You know, you get up in the morning and your passion and your desire is to serve him. Do his will.

What kind of fire do we need? Have these people say, that church is on fire. I'm not talking about the building. No.

There's some of these people there that, man, you can just tell there's a fire in there. You get about 10 or 15 of those people burning like that. It gets to be a hot place.

And I had some volunteers here this morning. That's all volunteers. Now, do you have a fire in you? Or do you need someone to push you? Come on.

Come on. Come on. Come on.

I'm not going to meddle now. But if you have a fire in you, you ought to be here at half hour before church time. Let's go.

This is important. And again, amen for that. You know, when you do a job, you don't show up a half hour late.

Because you have a fire to make the money and you want to have a good reputation as a businessman. And, boy, you're burning within you to get it done and get it done right. And then you just show up whenever on time you want.

Tell us what your fire is. Now I'm meddling. But let's have fire.

The right kind of fire. Well, the bush. The burning bush.

Verse 33. Then said the Lord to him, put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground. I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning.

And I have come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt, this Moses whom they refused. Now here's the lesson that Stephen is trying to get out.

This Moses whom they refused, saying, who made thee a ruler and a judge? The same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel. Can I get someone to get me a glass of water? The same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush. So this one, they rejected and said, no, no, you're not going to be our ruler.

You're not going to be our judge. Moses, God then turned around and made him their ruler and their deliverer. Of course, if you're in Israelite and you're listening to this, you know these stories well.

You've been taught them as a child. Oh, yeah, that's right. Our people rejected Moses.

Then God turned around and made him our deliverer. Oh, you mean to tell me that we rejected the Son of God and we are doing just like they? Thank you. And Jesus is our deliverer.

Yeah, is that what I'm trying to tell you? You're not hearing. Your fathers didn't hear because of their uncircumcised hearts and you're not hearing either. You're not sensitive to the voice of God.

You don't know what he's trying to do. Yeah, Moses, he showed miracles in Egypt and strong hand. You just saw Jesus for three years, an incredible miracle, even more than Moses.

So here's the lesson that this message is trying to communicate, that God has been trying to send you rulers and judges and deliverers and you continue to reject them. Now he sent you his son who is the true ruler and the true deliverer and you kill him. So the Lord makes this Jesus, both Lord, ruler and Christ, deliverer and Savior.

So he's talked about Joseph who was rejected. He comes back to be your deliverer. He talks about Moses.

He was rejected. He's going to come back to be your deliverer. Now Christ is rejected and he is coming back to be your deliverer.

Well, let's keep reading here. Verse 37, Moses, here is a type of Christ. This is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me.

Him shall you hear, or may I say it this way, him should you hear. Yes, you should hear him. Moses way back said, listen, God's going to raise up a prophet.

I'm going to prophesy sometime in the future like me, a deliverer. He rejected me, but I'm your deliverer. He's going to raise up a prophet just like me.

Him, I'm going to encourage you to hear. So you have the story I shared a few weeks ago in the Mount of Transfiguration where Moses is there and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration with Elijah. And they're standing there and these apostles, Hebrews, are before them.

Cloud comes down, covers them all. It turns dark. Then all of a sudden they hear, this is my beloved son.

What's the next few words? Hear him. Then Moses is gone and the clouds have lifted. God is saying, this is the prophet.

Like Moses, Moses said, hear him. So hear his voice. Today if you'll hear his voice, pardon not your heart.

Verse 38, this is he that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the Mount Sinai and with our fathers who received the lively oracles to give unto us, to whom our fathers would not obey. You know, it's interesting that these people would say, oh, Moses, here's Moses. No, they don't know where his tomb is.

But we have this monument and this statue of Moses, great man. Yes, but your fathers rejected it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we wouldn't have.

Oh, yes, you would have. You're doing it right now. You're rejecting the one that Moses said would come just like me.

And he did. You know, I found that in human nature. We can think about people in the past or at a distance, great men, great women.

But when they bring them, they come right up to our face and we confront them and they speak to us and we have to deal with them. And we reject them. Well, verse 38, this is he that was in the church in the wilderness, but the angel would speak to him in the Mount Sinai with our fathers who received the lively oracles to give unto us, to whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt.

They wanted to go back to the world. Is that ever in your heart? God calls you out to walk with him. And it's kind of difficult, maybe, living by faith, you know, three days without water.

We've got to trust him. Where's our food coming from? There's no food out here. We've got to trust him.

And living by faith. So they said, let's go back to Egypt. Verse 40, saying unto Aaron, make us gods.

Now, here's something interesting. Saying unto Aaron, make us gods to go before us. For as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we want not what is become of him.

And that is what they say. This Moses that brought us out of Egypt. Who brought them out of Egypt? God brought them out.

The Bible says he brought them out with a strong and a mighty hand. But they say, no, a man, Moses. Moses brought us out of Egypt.

No, Moses didn't bring you out of Egypt. Look at verse 33. Then said the Lord to him, put off thy shoes from thy feet.

For the place without sand is his holy ground. I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people, which is in Egypt. And I have heard their groanings, and have come down to deliver them.

I am going to deliver them. I am going to be glorified in this. And Moses, you're going to be my vessel.

But human nature is this way. We tend to want to glorify what we can see and touch and feel. Moses, he delivered us.

Well, we like to worship what we can see. That's why all over the world people are making graven images. They're bowing down before animals, before stone.

Something they can touch and feel and see. And a man you can touch. You can touch for the crisps over here, for the mic.

We can feel them, touch them, hear them. We tend to, as human beings, make idols. Well, they're going to go into idolatry here.

Verse 41, it says, and they made a cat in those days. You can see that, too, and touch it and feel it. And they often sacrifice unto the idol and rejoice in the works of their own hand.

So that's human nature. When human nature turns from God and says, God, I don't want to walk with you. God, I don't want to live by faith.

I'm going to raise up a man. I'm going to raise up a group of men, and we'll follow them. We'll glorify them.

So you have a lot of man-made systems. Turning the attention away from looking unto Jesus but looking unto men. The Bible says in Hebrews 11 that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

When you walk by faith, your focus is on the unseen. God is the invisible God. And our life and our walk ought to be on focusing on the Lord.

I'm listening to the Lord. I cannot see him, but I hear him. He speaks to me through his word.

I speak to him. Who are you talking to? I don't see anybody you're talking to. I'm talking to the invisible God.

I have faith. He leads me day by day. And when I don't want that, then I start to do this.

Chris, put yourself in Jesus' arms. You rule over me. I've been in situations in my past, even in the Baptist churches, where an individual became basically a ruler.

People didn't buy a car without asking. People didn't make any decisions in life without asking this individual. It's like a cult.

Things become cult. We start looking to men and asking them for everything in life. And I'm listening to the Lord.

Walking by faith. So they want to worship men. Now they want to worship a golden calf.

Moses is gone. You know, Moses delivered us out of Egypt, and now he's going up on this mountain, and we haven't seen him for 40 days. What are we going to do? Well, let's make us a cow to worship.

Can I make a cow? Yeah. They bow down before you. If you look at Romans 1, that's the progression.

You turn from God. You worship creation. You worship man.

Then you worship bees and birds and stones. And then finally God gives you over. And if you look here, he gives them over.

Verse 42, then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven. Start worshiping the stars and the sun. As it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel.

By the way, this is not a bunch of heathen. This is the people of God. The Israelites.

They rejected worshiping God and walking with God and walking by faith. And it led them down a course. Now we're going to worship men.

Never going to worship a cow. Never going to worship birds. Never going to worship the stars.

Verse 43, yea, you took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your God to refer him. Figures which you made to worship them. And I'll carry you away beyond Babylon.

God judged them. Even the birds. 400 years in Egypt.

Now they are carried away into Babylon. I think that one was, what was it? 490 years, wasn't it? 770? In captivity again. And so the Lord delivered them out of Egypt to walk with them.

To have them worship him and honor him and spend their day with him. And I want to encourage you, spend your day with the Lord. Spend your day with the Lord.

Walk with him. Get up in the morning, your first thoughts are his. You pray to him.

You read his word. You sing. You honor him.

You thank him. And listen to his voice during the day and walk with God. He's your high priest.

He's your ruler. He's your deliverer. And you know I'm supposed to be here to do what? Point you to him.

I'm supposed to be here to point you to him. You walk by faith. And you may need some counsel.

I can help you with a little bit of counsel to help you walk by faith. And so that's the heart of the Lord. You know, it's amazing.

We've got to rejoice that God who created everything wants to walk with you tomorrow, wants to walk with you today. Walk. You know, I thought it'd be, why would God want to walk with Adam and Eve in the garden? The great creator walking and talking with Adam and Eve.

Isn't it amazing to think that God actually wants to wake you up in the morning and say, let's walk together? I want to walk with you. And you say, well, I don't like that. It's hard.

I just got to get up, think about my work, all the things I got to do, the cares of this life, pursue money, and then go to church on Sunday and worship you. I'd like to do that. It would be a whole lot easier and I could live my life and do what I want and be a Christian.

Right? And that's the same heart that the Jewish people had, an uncircumcised heart. And I say that, you know, I say that because, we all have these issues. We all struggle with these issues.

And something about our hearts, we want to live our own life. We want to walk by ourselves, not walk with the Lord. So God gives them up here to worship the host of heaven.

And you'll find that man, if God gives them over, man plunges into all kinds of evil. Romans 1 says they go into homosexuality and all kinds of wickedness and ungodliness because they've turned away from walking with God and honoring him, worshiping him, and thanking him. They want to thank him.

And so this is Stephen's heart. It's being led by the spirit of God. Those I'm sending to deliver you.

You're not listening. You're not hearing. And you're persecuting and killing them.

Well, Stephen's going to find out here in a minute that he's going to be one of those. He's preaching a sermon. He rejected Moses.

He rejected Joseph. He rejected David. And just in a few minutes, he's going to reject me and stone me.

So let's make sure that we're pursuing truth and walking with the Lord. The Israelites had a lot of trappings, had a lot of religious trappings, a lot of things that they did, but it didn't amount to anything for the Lord. God's intention was to redeem you, to wash you, that you could then have fellowship with him and spend time with him.

Well, let's do that, search our hearts, and not end up in the same predicament that the Jewish people were in here in Stephen's message. We'll have one more next time on David. You know, David was rejected also.

Saul, hunting him down. Rejected his own family, some of his children. And David was an outcast.

So we'll see a little bit about David next time. All right, let's close here with a word of prayer, and then we'll open the time up for anyone who'd like to speak. Heavenly Father, thank you.