The following is a recording of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information, visit gpts.edu. Let me invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Acts 7. We'll begin reading in verse 17. As, as you're turning there I just want to say a couple things to lead into reading. One thing that I'll say first is, is I'm blessed and privileged to serve a wonderful church. And one of the things that's wonderful about fellowship Presbyterian Church is. It is a normal group of folks, and it's a spectrum. There are one or two with PhDs, and there are some that probably have high school certificates, and then there's everything in between. So it's a spectrum. The congregation, I would say, is more theologically minded and more reformed than most, and yet it would not be an academic congregation, it would not be a seminary congregation. And a second thing that I'll say is, as I prepare to preach God's word each week, I find sermon preparation devotional. I hope you do too. I hope you don't fall into that thinking that sermon prep is dry. It shouldn't be. I find it very devotional. And I'll admit that And everybody says, keep having your own quiet time and your devotional prep. But sometimes those overlap for me. Sometimes I find myself in my devotional time, opening up what I know I'm going to be preaching that coming Sunday. And I spend some time there. But here's one of the things. Because I say we're a pretty normal church, and I find sermon preparation devotional, sometimes I can't always develop all the applications at Fellowship Presbyterian that I have the opportunity to develop here, because it's a different group of folks. And again, we all know that the exegesis doesn't change. Unpacking and understanding and interpreting a passage of scripture, that's pretty fixed. But the range of applications is going to change if we're in one culture versus another or applying it to one group of people versus another. And of course, what we're looking at in Acts chapter 7, this group's very familiar. This is Stephen's defense before the Sanhedrin. And Stephen has been accused of blasphemy against Moses and against God. They've even, in a very snarky way, if I can use that word. Back in the end of chapter 6, they've said, we've heard him say that this Nazarene Jesus will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us. This Nazarene. I mean, that's even a backhanded comment. That's not just a statement of a location. That is to say that Jesus is low class. What was it? Bunyan was called a tinker by those who disdained him. And so Stephen is defending himself before the Sanhedrin, showing that he's not really guilty of what they say. And in fact, he's not contradicting Moses at all. Moses pointed forward to Christ. And so we read, beginning in verse 17 of Acts chapter 7, but as the time of the promise was approaching, which God assured to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt. until there arose another king over Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph. It was he who took shrewd advantage of our race and mistreated our fathers so that they would expose their infants and they would not survive. It was at this time that Moses was born, and he was lovely in the sight of God, and he was nurtured three months in his father's home. And after he had been set outside, Pharaoh's daughter took him away and nurtured him as her own son. Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds. And when he was approaching the age of 40, it entered his mind to visit his brethren, the sons of Israel. And when he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he defended him and took vengeance for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptian. And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. On the following day, he appeared to them as they were fighting together, and he tried to reconcile them in peace, saying, men, you are brethren. Why do you injure one another? But the one who was injuring his neighbor pushed him away, saying, who made you a ruler and a judge over us? You do not mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday, do you? At this remark, Moses fled and became an alien in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. After 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning thorn bush. When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight. And as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord. I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Moses shook with fear and would not venture to look. But the Lord said to him, take off the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groans, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they disowned, saying, who made you a ruler and a judge, is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the thorn bush. This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for 40 years. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we do pray now that you would lay open our hearts to behold wonderful things in your word, that you would nourish our souls, that you would lift our eyes to Christ and conform us to his image, that you would use us for the advance of his kingdom. Through him we pray, amen. Amen. Please be seated. So again, what Stephen is doing, he's been accused of blaspheming God, of blaspheming Moses, and he goes back to show over and over again in his defense before the Sanhedrin, he is not blaspheming at all. In fact, he's consistent with those that are being venerated by the Jews. And so, think for a moment as we start to wade into this passage. Who do you expect is going to be used to lead greatly? Who do you expect is going to be used to accomplish great things? Now, there are a lot of great things we could say about Moses. In fact, Stephen notes them. But those are not all that God uses. And in fact, you could argue that God uses a lot of the things about Moses because of something more fundamental. Who do you look to to lead? And people talk about this in teams and companies and churches. Sometimes the thought is, let's get the celebrity. Let's get the one that everybody's heard of, that everyone wants to follow. Or sometimes we're not, maybe we're a little bit more thoughtful than that. And we say, well, let's get somebody with a track record of success. someone who's, again, let's focus it on the church now because we think so much about that, the men in this room. Let's find the person that has good training and has served in churches that have been really about the right things and that has had a track record of success there. And in fact, not only was this person really faithfully engaged in the ordinary means of grace, but during the time that he was there, engaged in the ordinary means of grace, The church grew from being 50 people to 100 people to being 300 people. And now there's the kind of guy we need. Let's get that guy. He's gifted. His gifts have been cultivated. They've been demonstrated over time. And that's not all bad. But what we see in the account of Moses is, in some ways, it's the humbled who know God and are used of God. Remember that Stephen is speaking to the Jews who are consumed with pride. Pride in their background, in their heritage, in their pedigree, pride in their performance, and in their works, and in their self-righteousness. And Stephen is subtly pointing out that not only is he consistent with Moses, but in the end, it's the humbled Moses that God uses, because it's the humbled who know and are used of God. And first, look at verses 17 through 19. We see this descent into slavery. Again, as the time of the promise was approaching, which God assured to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt. So God has promised Abraham that he is going to make a nation out of him. In fact, there are going to be nations made out of Abraham. And through Abraham, all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed. But think about this. For the first 215 years after that promise, The people of Abraham grew from 2 to 75. 215 years from two people, from Abraham and Sarah, to 75 people. The next 215 years, it grew from 75 to 650,000 fighting men. But the first 215 is pretty modest. It's the next 215 that God grows His people explosively. And of course, what Stephen goes on to point out here is that the Egyptians, rather than responding in gratitude for the service of Israel and the presence of Israel and recognition of God's favor, they have in gratitude for Joseph's service, and they attempt to exterminate the Hebrew people. And it's not even humane extermination. Basically, the way that they seek to destroy them is work them to death and force them to commit infanticide. And so through working them into the ground, we talk about Sabbath, and we noted this at fellowship this past Sunday on the Fourth Commandment, but they never had a day off. Imagine your whole life never a day of rest. And that was part of the design. Literally work them to death. And because they still have so many children, make them put their children to death. Think about how miserable a place Egypt became for the people of God. And here's the first point of application. Sometimes God makes the place of sin so miserable that we want to leave it. It is the grace of God when he weans us from our love of sin by making it horribly miserable in our lives. And remember, again, you know the Old Testament. The descent into slavery was not just a physical bondage for God's people. They adopted the gods of the Egyptians. They engaged in astrology like the Egyptians. They descended into a spiritual slavery as well. And yet God makes it miserable in order to prepare them and bring them out. Here's the point. Praise God for the miserable consequences of sin. I'm not saying that because I'm mean and harsh, but praise God for the miserable consequences of sin. Praise God when He brings people to see not only their sin, but the misery of their sin. Be careful not to try to soften the impact because you don't want to see people hurt. With your own children, be careful not to try to always soften the consequences of sin because you don't want to see them hurt by sin. Because what is more important than their immediate happiness or lack of sadness, what's more important even than their physical bodies is their eternal soul. Be careful of trying to keep people from suffering the consequences of sin. And it's very often well-intentioned. We love them. We don't want to see them suffer. But sometimes the consequences of sin are the exact thing that God uses. Down the road, as you're engaged in pastor, some of you are already engaged in pastoral ministry. Some of you are going that direction. Don't fall into this thinking that says, you know what, we have to protect people from taking the Lord's Supper unworthily, because if we don't protect them from it, something bad will happen to them. Now, I call this the don't let the kid drink the Drano thinking. Does anybody know what Drano is? Poison. Don't let a child drink the poison. Now here's the problem. Paul says, let a man examine himself. And then he explains, here's why some of you are suffering the way that you are, because you've been taking unworthily. Here's the way that you've been showing disregard and disrespect for the Lord who saved you. Disregard for those who are made in his image, who are your brothers and sisters in Christ. And here's some of the consequences. Some of you are sick and some of you have died. But Paul doesn't say, Let the leadership keep people from coming unworthily to the Lord's table, not in the sense of stopping. What he says is, let a man examine himself. Years ago, we had a man under discipline. He ended up being excommunicated, just terribly sad, self-absorbed, decadent individual. He was there one day when we had the Lord's Supper. One of the elders came to me and he said, he's here today. What do we do if he tries to take the Lord's Supper? And I said, that's on him. I wouldn't want to be him taking the Lord's Supper. In fact, he didn't take the Lord's Supper, but praise God when he sometimes brings miserable consequences to bring people to an end of themselves. Think of the prodigal son. It was when he was all alone and nobody gave to him anything. It's then that he finally recognizes that it's on him. It's his fault. It's then that he's finally moved to repentance. The second thing before we move off these verses, don't be discouraged or despair or become bitter when the unfolding of God's promises are slow. You know, sometimes they unfold slowly. 215 years from 2 to 75, I mean, that's kind of like, we'd almost sort of expect that if we had decent sized families. But then, It's the next 215 that you really see God working in ways that he had not before. Don't be frustrated. Don't be too discouraged when God's promises seem slow in coming. But then the next thing that we see It's not just that there's God finally bringing them to a miserable place before he brings them out, but we see the rise of an heir apparent in verses 20 through 29. Now, the reason I say heir apparent is because there are a lot of reasons to believe this is going to be the one who really, as a prominent figure, is going to lead God's people. It's said in verse 20, Stephen says, it was at this time that Moses was born, and he was lovely in the sight of God, and was nurtured three months in his father's household. Down in verse 22, he was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds. Moses has been educated in the literature, the philosophy, probably the astronomy, the arts, the sciences. And notice, he has distinguished himself in them. He is a man mighty in deeds or in word and in deeds. The Hellenistic Jews in the time of Christ, they wanted to credit Moses as being the father of literature and philosophy, the arts, the science, mathematics. And of course, there was a little bit of Moses worship going on there. The pyramids were built centuries before the time of Moses. I think they had math. The golden age of Egypt, some have said, was around 1560 to 1080. So Moses is coming along in the beginning of the golden age of Egypt. He is being educated in the literature and the philosophy and the arts and the sciences of the Egyptians. I mean, he really is a total package. As impressive as Charlton Heston looked in the Ten Commandments, I'm dating myself a little on that, Moses in some ways would have been more impressive. And yet, he presumed that he would lead a revolution in his own strength, and he was rejected by those he presumed to save. And he fled Domitian for 40 years. So the point in verses 20 through 29 is beware of the heir apparent thinking. Or to flesh it out a little bit more, there is great danger in great abilities and great success. If you have a lot of abilities and a lot of gifts, and they have been well cultivated, and you have been successful in those things, there are real dangers. You want some examples? David. good-looking, men around him who love him, leads Israel to military prominence, has a commander. And we can have our mixed feelings about Joab, but he can be trusted to go out and do the bidding of David in leading the army. And so David is lounging around the palace at the time of the year when kings go out to war. He wasn't doing that when Saul was chasing him around the mountain. But when he becomes established and successful and secure is when he lets down his guard. A lot of people forget that Uriah, wait, I'm drawing a blank. Uriah, yes, of Uriah, was one of his mighty men. It was one of his 30 closest friends. He murdered his own friend to take his friend's wife. You would have never thought that of David, a man after God's own heart, he's described. And yet, look how he falls. Uzziah leads Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah, to a resurgence of national prosperity and military dominance in the region. And then he decides that he should be able to offer incense in the temple. And he is enraged that anyone would tell him that he can't. And of course, we know how that ends. He dies in isolation as a leper, Hezekiah. We see him leading great renewal and revival in Israel. We see the reestablishment of the Passover. We see him delivered from the invasion of Sennacherib. We see him given an extension of life. And then what happens? When the envoys from the most dominant empire of the day come to visit, He becomes proud, and he forgets the Lord, and he wants to show the Babylonians how he fits in. You're a great empire, but look at all my wealth. And so we see the effects of that letter. Scripture is full of them. In fact, you really almost can't look at anybody in the scripture that you don't see the danger of great abilities and great success. And so we need to be careful never to trust in our own resources to do the work of the kingdom by the power of our own hand. And let's be one of our elders says on a regular basis, you know, he says one of the things that alarms me is how often we Christians want to latch on to celebrities. And, of course, in our circles, the celebrity is not going to be Brad Pitt or somebody like that, but the celebrity might be the R.C. Sproul, or the Jay Gresham Machen, or the Thornwell, or the Dabney, or whoever the popular figures in our circles are today. If we have them, there's a danger in leaders relying on our ability to connect or persuade or move people through charisma and charm or brilliant argument. We can begin to rely on our study and our intellect and our preparation. Beware ever thinking that you're the heir apparent. Beware the cult of celebrity, whether that celebrity is you or someone else. If you find yourself down the road one day surrounded by only people who tell you how great you are, you need to bring in some other friends. You need some people who will look at you and say, brother, I love you, but that is a bad idea. I regularly will actually call up men in our own denomination that I know tend to be on different sides of an issue for me and I'll go Okay, here's what I'm thinking. Now push back. You got my permission. I'm not going to think you're rude, but here's good. I'm going to make my argument. I want you to tell me what's wrong about it. That doesn't mean that I changed my mind about my argument. But I never want to be simply surrounded by those who tell me that I'm always right, because at least I got enough sense to know I'm not. So beware the heir apparent thinking. But then finally, in verses 30 through 36, there's a reminder of how God makes one truly useful. The first 40 years of Moses's life, roughly, he has grown up, and he has become mighty in word and deed. And he has begun to presume that God's going to use him as the heir apparent. Notice what happens then in the second 40 years. God sends him into the wilderness to tend sheep. Imagine. I mean, what kind of things would be going through your mind? that evil Pharaoh that was going to come after me, and so I had to flee here. And I had so much promise and so much opportunity. It's been taken away by people that don't love the Lord, and so they want to destroy me. I mean, he could have descended into that bitterness. You know that he had to think. I mean, 40 years, this thought had to go through the mind of Moses as he looks at the sheep. And I don't know if any of you grew up in farming communities or you know anything about sheep, they are stupid and they are helpless. And as a friend of mine who did sheep herding for a while, he said, I thought cattle were stupid. And then I took care of sheep. And he said, sheep will try to find a way to die. I mean, it's that bad. And yet God sends him to tend sheep. And you have to think the thoughts gone through Moses' mind. I think I'm overqualified. I think I could do something more than this. And I'm guessing it didn't take 40 years for that thought to go through his mind. And yet God keeps him in the wilderness for 40 years, tending sheep. And it's finally in the last 40 years of his life, that God calls Moses and sends him back to Egypt and uses him for the deliverance of his people. But you know, that is like from age 80 to 120. All the promise all the opportunities, all the power and prestige of years one to 40, all the years of isolation and obscurity and insignificance in years 40 to 80. And now finally he calls him out, and he uses him. finally to deliver his people. And look at verse 34, all of the I's. Now, it's very clear that God is making it about him and not Moses. I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groans, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. But God says, I've seen my people. I've come. I will. Moses, this is going to be about me. You look at me, but you do what I tell you, and I'll use you to bring glory to me. Of course, Moses, we know this in our circles, Moses is a type of Christ, right? He points to Christ in so many ways. We talk about Christ as prophet, priest, and king. God or Moses brought the word of God to God's people. He interceded on behalf of God's people. He led and shepherded God's people. And so in all of those ways, Moses points forward to Christ. And again, going all the way back to the book of Genesis, even as we see the Proto-Evangelion in Genesis 3, Moses all along is pointing forward to Christ. Moses was never simply giving God's people a list of rules and checkboxes by which they could prove themselves to be righteous, which is the way the Pharisees thought. Moses was giving them, again, this is what I love about This group is the threefold use of the law. The law is ceremonial, civil, and moral. And so the ceremonial law all pointed forward to Christ. The civil law governed God's people in justice and righteousness. The moral law shows the character of God and how we walk in a way that we reflect his character. Well, all of those things Moses gave, but all of them ultimately pointing forward to Christ. And it was when he was finally humbled and humbled that God most greatly used Moses. So how will God make you useful? How does God make you and me useful? And very often, I mean, praise the Lord, they're the, what I'm gonna call the fun things, the enjoyable things, the gifts, the training, the opportunities, the successes. And one of my prayers for men in ministry often is that God will allow us to see enough successes to not become too discouraged. And it's a great blessing to see him answer that prayer so often. But how are you going to deal with your own failures and sin? I hope it's not to become isolated or to conceal or to lash out, but really to, you know, you and I, there never will be a day when we don't need to keep owning our own sin, acknowledging it when we failed, and asking people to forgive, and then seeking to move forward in obedience. God's not going to stop growing you and me in conformity to the image of Christ. In fact, I know you've learned this here, is that your own holiness, your own walk with Christ is fundamental to all the other things, is foundational to all the other things. So how will you respond to your own failures? It can be in resentment, concealment, or it can be in humility and repentance. How will you view and allow the failure and sin of others? Will you write them off? Will you never give them another chance? Will you sort of, if they're a John Mark, will you be Paul or Barnabas at the moment? seeing them as unfit ever again, or as someone who, by the grace of God, might have actually learned some wonderful lessons. And let me bring it all to a head by saying this. You have the potential to be greatly used of the Lord if you're humble. But if you're proud, I don't care how gifted you are or whatever else, it will turn into a train wreck. And again, the sad thing is so many of the train wrecks were men or are men that are immensely gifted. I mean, they're just sort of, they walk into a room and they own the room and I call them groupie gatherers. Everybody wants to follow them. And that's not sin, but it makes it awfully easy to go down a road that we shouldn't go. So what will that look like for you and me in, I'm gonna call it first 40, middle 40, and last 40 years of life. Now you're sitting there thinking, I'm not making it to 120. Okay, let's modernize it. Average lifespan now is 78. So why don't we break it into 26s? Age zero, birth to 26. That's kind of the young Moses era. We're learning a lot of things. We're beginning to recognize that we have certain gifts. We're experiencing some successes. And you can argue that is, in some ways, the least fruitful time. Let me just get a little more pointed. For a number of you, you're in that 0 to 26 zone. You've come to seminary, and in the church that you were in that sent you, you were a big deal. because you're gifted and geared in a way that most people are not. You may be the only person that that church has ever sent to seminary, and people adored you, and people make a lot of you. Don't let that go to your head. Don't be like Moses, who looked one way and then the other, and then smoked the Egyptian. Some of you are or you will soon be in what I'm going to call the 26 to 52 zone. The 26 to 52 zone is where you're learning hard lessons, but you're not seeing a lot of immediate results. This is what often happens with pastors in the first church or the first part of the second church. So let me be very pointed. The first church that I went to it was great opportunity, it was a wonderful place to be a number of people really love the Lord, but it was a little country church. And you just weren't going to see much change over the years in that small country church. Now, I learned a lot of great lessons. I had to do everything. I was vacation Bible school coordinator. That is the worst idea in the modern history of the church to have me be the vacation Bible school coordinator. And yet I did it because somebody we felt at the time somebody needed to do it. I had to do everything from print bulletins to answer phones to, you know, we didn't even have a diaconate. So a lot of what the elders were involved in was diaconal ministry. You did everything. It was a great opportunity because I learned a little bit about everything. And I made some mistakes and had to go back to some people and apologize. And here's the thing, usually if you'll just own it and say, hey, I messed up, that's all on me. Don't rationalize. Don't justify. Don't explain why somebody else's sin caused your sin. And it was really understandable because of the way that they behaved in the first place. Don't do that. Just say, hey, I really blew this. This is on me. I'm sorry. Will you forgive me? You'll never get in trouble for that. And almost always, people will forgive you. And then what I'm going to call the first part of the second church. which is very often what happens for men is they serve for a period of time in one place, and then they have an opportunity to go serve in a place where they might feel like long-term they're a better fit, there are more opportunities. But in the early days of that second place, often there are a lot of struggles. I don't even know if he remembers it. Joey Piper sat, Dr. Piper sat with me eating barbecue and talked me off a ledge about 15, 20 years ago. I've been 22 years at Fellowship. So very often, the things that we're laboring and praying and hoping to see, they're a long time coming. Don't get discouraged in that 26 to 52 zone. And don't be surprised if when you actually become most useful is in that 52 and over zone. I'm 56, so I love this zone. But honestly, it's a time we don't necessarily have the same vinegar in the tank we had when we were 27. But there's more experience, and hopefully there's more wisdom, and there's more maturity, and sometimes more credibility, and more opportunities. And so that's a wonderful time. But very often it's a wonderful time because we've also learned some humility along the way as we've been prepared and equipped. And so praise God when he takes us through all those different times. Praise God when he brings us or others to see the real horror and the misery of sin. Praise God for the opportunities and the training and the growth, but also for the times when he leads us through slow seasons or hard seasons as he's preparing us for that which is to come. Because it's the humbled who have learned to follow God and are used of him. Let's pray together. Oh, Father, thank you for your word. Thank you again, Father, that you are at work in your people and through your people. And so, Father, we do pray that you would grow us in your grace. Lord, bless and use this time of training, but also give us grace, Lord, to see what we may not yet know. Lord, give us grace to press on faithfully without bitterness or discouragement when you are taking us through seasons when there's a lot of sowing and there's a lot of plowing, but there's not yet been a lot of sprout or fruit. And Father, remind us that even if we see limited fruit in this life, that there is a glorious, a glorious, overly abundant, eternal fruit that we will experience in the age to come. And Lord, use us and guide us in all these things to the glory and praise of Your name, Father. Through Christ we pray. Amen. Thank you for tuning in to this production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information, please visit GPTS.edu.