Front page of the Egyptian times…the man murdered and a picture of Moses. They’re going after him now. The Hebrews turn their back on him. The Egyptians want to kill him. He’s fearful; he’s afraid and he turns and he does the Carl Lewis thing…he’s running. The bible says he goes to a place called Midian. You know where Midian is? Read it right there. Sinai peninsula. Desert. It’s not a place for a subdivision or a multi-family dwelling place.
You wouldn’t want to live in the desert. However, if you try to cover your sin, if you try to hide it, it always leads to a desert if you don’t deal with it. Difference makers live a focused life, difference makers look to God before they act, difference makers locate their sin and they tell the truth about their sins. “why?” You ask. You’re thinking, “ed, nice outline. But why? Why?”
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He gets scared. Look down in verse 14. Verse 14 says, “then Moses was afraid and thought, what I did must have become known.” Here’s a situation, Moses kills the Egyptian. He buries him in a shallow grave and he walks out the next day thinking, “hey, I’m above all. No one can get me,” and he sees two of his own people kind of going after it and he says, “guys, break it up. Break it up!” And one of the Hebrews looks at Moses, “hey, Moses (kind of pushes him) you’re going to kill me like you killed that Egyptian?” Fear.
They found out! Moses was thinking, “how in the world did anyone see? I looked this way and that way. How did they find out?” Here’s what I believe happened. He hastily buried this Egyptian in this very shallow grave and at night the winds began to blow, the sands shifted and I bet you that Egyptian toes began to stick out from the sand and they saw it and knew that Moses had committed murder.
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She thought I looked the part, which I sort of did, but she made a mistake. Just because I looked a certain way didn’t mean I could actually do all the events. At the end of the session, I was carrying around the skateboard in this Africa hot weather. We never saw Tony Hawk or any of the other celebrities but we did have a good time at the X-Trials.
It’s a great principle, isn’t it? A lot of people look the part and everything is a-okay on the exterior, but on the interior, the way they live their life, it doesn’t really jive.
Do you know what I am saying? The same is true spiritually. A lot of people walk by and we say, “Wow, that is an extreme Christian. I mean, they have got it together.” We think they are an extreme Christian with an extreme faith because they look the part.
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That’s why he recruited me. I was a calming force. I could pray before every game, and lead the team in prayer. It was awesome. In high school I was the star player. I scored pretty much when I wanted to. But Florida State was a different world. The two guys that played in front of me went on to play in the NBA. And as a freshman, I had a hard time even bringing the ball up court in practice they were so quick. And then, if you ever made it around one of those guys, you had three guys from 6’9 to 7’2 who could jump out of gym to throw your shot into the upper deck. So it was a rude awakening.
And I was really persecuted for my faith at Florida State. I was the only Christian on the team. 700 people lived in our dorm. Only 3 out of 700 went to church. And my teammates were like, “Man, what’s wrong with you? Why don’t you smoke the weed with us? Why don’t you do the dope with us? We have all these hooker’s on the road and you don’t even have sex with them. You don’t even have sex with Lisa. What’s wrong with you!?” Day in and day out I felt large levels of loneliness. I went through depression because it was just falling apart for me.
Yet, by God’s grace and power, he gave me the ability to remain strong. But every day before practice, I remember I’d get there early; I’d get all taped up and get my uniform on and I would go up this staircase to this little window overlooking our gym where we’d practice and I would say, “God, I give basketball. I give this whole thing to you.
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Some people who call themselves Christians produce plastic fruit. Fake fruit. You know those hypocrites; they will say one thing and do another. You look at them and think they must be producing real fruit, but when you look at the fruit you find out that it is plastic.
Others that go by the label of believers just produce a bunch of peels. They have rotten apple cores and banana peels just hanging around. They produce fruit but they don’t share it. They just consume it and they become spiritually obese.
They are like Fat Albert! Now if you are not laughing, ask your parents about Fat Albert, an incredible cartoon character by the genius of comedy, Bill Cosby. Well, don’t be a Fat Albert person of faith. The Spirit produces the fruit, share it. People are hungry. People need it. Become a Farmer’s Market believer.
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As I looked at that I was saddened because many people will miss heaven. But, also, I thanked God because I know that one day I will be spending eternity with Him. So the clouds should motivate us to be ready.
A rock. While we have a lot of rocks here in Texas, they are especially frequent over in Israel. One day Jesus talked to Simon Peter, a guy we mention a lot. Simon Peter was very human. He would fall and often mess up. Jesus was standing before a big mountain, a rocky mountain. In the area a lot of idol worship went on, specifically the worship of Pan. Jesus was talking to Simon Peter at Caessera Philippi.
He wanted Peter to indicate who he thought Jesus was. Let’s pick up the conversation. Here is what Jesus said in Matthew 16:17ff. “Blest are you Simon, son of Jonah….” Now isn’t that weird. Son of Jonah.
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Everything was going great, but I had to quit during the middle of my senior year. And if any of you know anything about athletics, you know, if you don’t play your senior year, at least most of it, you’re dreams are dashed. It’s history. Lights out. And a lot of schools that were talking to me backed off.
But, because I played well in some camps and I did pretty well in South Carolina, the head coach at Florida State signed me to a full scholarship. So I spent a year in Houston, graduated there from the high school and then (I can’t believe my parents did this), my parents drove 1,003 miles to Tallahassee, Florida and dropped me off in the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah.
I moved into a co-ed, privately owned dorm. The basketball players had their own rooms with maid service. This dorm had a full bar on the bottom floor with hard liquor and everything. Lisa lived in the dorm, not with me, but with some roommates. And I met some pretty crazy people down there. Florida State Basketball—Division I! I thought to myself, “This is it!”
My head coach, a really nice guy, was kind of an open guy, you might say. Our team was rated in the top 25 my freshman year and the top 14 my sophomore year. And our coach was known to recruit just incredible athletes. We had guys that should have played in North Carolina, Duke, UCLA. In fact, many of them did, but because of their criminal activity or drug abuse they were thrown out of those schools. And our coach would say, “Welcome, come to Tallahassee. We’ll take care of you. Ed will keep you calm.”
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It is important, often times, when we study scriptures when we read God’s word to stand, sometimes to kneel. If you have your Bibles turn to the Acts 20:7-9. “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep.” Please be seated.
Now this is the first instance we have of someone sleeping in church. And it is definitely not going to be the last. Eutychus, my boy Eutychus has had many successors. Sleep is funny, isn’t it, because we all sleep. We spend about a third of our lives sleeping and the fact is when we’re asleep we don’t realize that were sleeping. You don’t understand that you’re asleep until after you wake up.
For example, how many snorers do we have in the house, if you’re a snorer? Well, you have never heard yourself snoring. Thank you for your confession. You have never heard yourself snoring. Someone has told you, you snore like a chain saw. Sleep is funny. We sleep, but we don’t realize we’re asleep until we’re awake.
Some people can fall asleep anywhere. Have you known people like, I mean anywhere, even in church. They could just fall asleep taking a bath. They can fall asleep. Others have to have everything perfect, everything just right just to go to sleep. My wife has to have this noise machine that makes sounds like a wave so whenever we travel she totes the noise machine along. She has to have the noise machine for a sound sleep.
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Not sympathize. David could have killed Nathan on the spot. He had squillions of dollars. He had all of this power. He could have just sent him out like that. David, though, submitted. He received the truth, he confessed, he repented, and he began to do what God wanted him to do. Every time you come to church, every time I come to church, we’re all Nathanized, right? When we read Scripture, we’re Nathanized. And that’s why a lot of people here, especially the men here, we’re afraid to have quite time.
We’re afraid to get into the Word because we might get Nathanized. And we would rather live a life of comfort with the boys, the blaming and bunching up and being sinful sympathizers and living a lie as opposed to going, “You know what? I am going to uncover that. I am going to get out of that and I am going to move toward the people and the things that God wants me to move toward.”
What I’m talking about is the power of the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God is the first thing that Jesus does when he comes into your life and mine. The Holy Spirit is inside of us. The Holy Spirit will teach us. He will nudge us to do what is right. And those of you who are followers of Christ, you know what I’m talking about.
Let’s say you’re in an argument in marriage. Lisa and I never argue, but maybe you do. You’re in an argument and all of the sudden this voice, this Spirit hooks in with your spirit, and it says, not audibly, but you just know it, “What you’re doing right now is wrong. Confess and reconcile the relationship, ask for forgiveness.” That’s the Holy Spirit of God.
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Usually, the basic plot is this, good against evil and they butt heads during the book. It looks like evil will win out, but suddenly, right at the last, the good side prevails and they live happily ever after or they ride off into the sunset or they get married and we go, “Aah!” We’re built, we’re designed, we’re fashioned to live happily ever after. Eternity. Jesus talked about eternity throughout the New Testament. In fact, two-thirds of Christ’s teaching revolved around the after-life.
The book of Acts, the apostles, two-thirds of their messages talked about eternity. In Mark 10, a man walks up to Christ one day. He is beautifully-dressed, jewels sewn into his clothing. I call him the man who had it all, and he wants to talk to Christ though because he feels like something is beyond his grasp and if you look at this passage of Scripture, you see the theme of the conversation, eternal life. This man who had it all, as he talked to Jesus, realized he didn’t have enough because he didn’t have eternal life. In John 3, another man cruised up to Christ.
This man was a member of the Sanhedrin, one of the top religious groups of the day, a brilliant man, and I call him the man who knows it all. He talked to Jesus and what did the conversation revolve around? Eternal life. After he talked to Jesus about eternal life, this man who thought he knew it all, realized he didn’t know enough if his eternity was not secure. In Luke 23, the thief on the cross was hanging there suspended between heaven and earth.
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