Turning Failure Around

A young man from an impoverished background dreamed of a better life for himself and his family. So in his early 20s he left a hard-scrabble existence of a pioneer backwards town and moved to a town called New Salem, Illinois, where he tried to open up a grocery store. He saved everything he could, went heavily into debt to open up that grocery store. But his partner in that business venture had an alcohol problem and he ended up so far in the hole that he often referred to his condition and financial obligations as the national debt. Probably would not do that today, but at any rate he had been. So he gave up ever trying to go into business and it took him more than a decade to pay off his failed dream. When into law taught himself to practice law, then went into politics, failed at several political dreams and aspirations, succeeded in some, and then finally in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States. Many would say he was our best president. Lincoln's story of many failures that then he overcame to find success in the political arena has become the stuff of legend and he is the classic example of those who overcome failure to reach success. One of his favorite writers, in fact he was an avid Shakespeare fan and his favorite quote came from Shakespeare's Hamlet. He would often say this, there is a divinity that shapes our ends rough, hew them as we may. He deeply believed that God directed and shaped our lives regardless of the failures that we have, that God directed our lives. He came to believe that deeply about his own life and he came to believe that about the nation that he served as president. If you've ever read anything about him, you know that he felt called of God to the office that God entrusted him with. He believed that God had a purpose and a plan for him and he desperately sought God's will and God's plan in that time of being our president. He also felt that way about the nation. If you've ever read his second inaugural address from 1864, it's almost like a sermon. It is a very profound reflection on how God was at work in the civil war in ways more mysterious and profound than any human being could imagine. Well what we would have missed if he had been successful in that grocery store. God does use failure. We're looking at the life of Moses on Sunday mornings and we saw last week in our weather affected Sunday. For those of you who were here, you remember that we saw last week that Moses failed and he failed miserably. He reminds me of the quote I read one time from Fierdello LaGuardia, the mayor of the New York City in 1930s. He said, I rarely ever fail but when I do it's a but. And that's Moses. Moses I believe without question was moved by God in his heart to identify with his people Israel and to deliver them. I believe he felt that God's stirring in his heart was to deliver his people. But we go out one day to identify with them and see them in their misery. The word the Bible uses is that he watched them with grief and with pity. He saw an opportunity from the book of Acts we know what was in his heart. He saw an opportunity to make a claim and a stake and a strike for his people and he killed the Egyptian taskmaster that was brutally abusing the Israelite, the Hebrew worker. He had to kill him and hit him in the sand and then it was found out and Fero realizes he's a traitor and seeks to kill him. And where we left Moses last week he was high-telling it out of Egypt, out into the wilderness, two to three hundred miles away, going wherever he could go to the end of the earth to the most barren desert of Midian to get away from his failure. He had failed terribly. I wonder what he was thinking as he journeyed on foot those two to three hundred miles would have taken him days, weeks, maybe to get to where he ended up. I wonder if he was thinking I failed. I wonder if he was thinking I can never do what I believe God placed in my heart to do. I wonder if he was thinking it really is important that God control the timing and that we don't mess it up. I wonder if he was thinking about how hiding things will always backfire on you. I wonder if he was thinking about and wondering is leadership really more than just natural ability? I wonder what he was thinking but I'm convinced he was thinking and thinking deeply because the next time we see him as we will today in Exodus chapter 2, we see that his pattern of thinking is very different from what it was in Egypt. He's had some time to think about his failure and his attitude has changed drastically. He is learning attitudes that God seeks for all of us to learn in life and if it requires failure to lead us to those attitudes, then God will use failure in our lives to accomplish them. They are attitudes that are demonstrated in our Lord and Savior as he came to this world. But they are attitudes that must be in the heart of every believer before he or she can be genuinely and effectively used by God. So as we look at Moses today in Exodus 2 verses 15 through 22, we will see two new attitudes, two new attitudes we will see in Moses' life. Remember the thread that puts all of these messages together about Moses is the thread of becoming a servant of God. Over 25 times, Moses is referred to in the Old Testament as the servant of God, God servant. So God is shaping him to become that servant, God is molding him and making him to become that servant. And so what is God doing? What is God going to accomplish in his life? And how is he going to do it? Well, we'll find out today the first attitude that we see in Moses' life that God wants to duplicate in our lives if we would serve him is a willingness to be a servant. The first new attitude in Moses' life, a willingness to be a servant. Look with me please at verse 15 of Exodus 2. When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. Now what I see first here about Moses' willingness to become a servant, what I see first is God's grace. You really do see a picture of God's grace here in that Moses was given a second chance. God has been gracious to him and this is patterned and pictured in our Lord's life as well. Sorry I threw you a curve there. Let's go back to Philippians chapter 2. Where Jesus himself illustrates this willingness to become a servant who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Jesus himself is willing to leave all the glories of heaven to become a servant. And so if God is going to make us servants, if He's going to make us Christlike which is His goal and purpose in our lives, if He's going to make us like the Lord Jesus then He will inevitably at some point be working in your life and mind to cultivate in us the willingness to be a servant. That's what He does with Moses. God is gracious to do this with Moses and God's grace as I said is seen in giving Moses a second chance. Just think of the scene that we've just read here in Exodus 2. Here's the Prince of Egypt, wealthy, highly educated, a military genius who's already led a major military campaign at age 30 against the Ethiopian army and been rousingly successful, acclaim the hero of Egypt, the next ruler of Egypt, the pride of Egypt. And here he is on the backside of the desert watering animals and protecting some sisters at well, serving. But you look a little deeper and do you see what God is doing? You see what God's doing with Moses? He's giving him another chance. He's reaching out to a man whose dreams life shattered on the ground around him. He's reaching out to a man who had high hopes of leadership, who believed God was going to use him to deliver his people, a nation of some 2 million. And God reaches out and the first thing he allows him to do when he gets to Midian is to be a deliverer. Oh, it's not Egypt. It's not the nation of Israel. It's not 2 million people, but it's a start. And it demonstrates God's grace in his life that God has not cast him aside, that God has not thrown him away, that God has not abandoned him because of his failure. The first thing God does for this man whose great schemes and dreams are shattered, the first thing he does is to give him a job as a deliverer. Here are some women who need to be delivered from some rowdy shepherds. It's not Israel being delivered from Egyptian taskmasters, but it's the same idea. And so God in his grace gives him an opportunity to serve, to fulfill in a small part the heart dreamed that he had had. Now this is nothing that Cecil B. Demille is going to make a movie about. He would do that about Moses greater leadership later, but this is an important place for God to start in rebuilding this man's life, in teaching him what it means to be a servant. But God did not give him up on him. What an encouragement that must have been to Moses. This past year in the NFL, probably the best place kicker in the National Football League was the Minnesota Vikings Blair Wash. He hit 34 field goals the most of anyone in the NFL this past year. And was one of the reasons why the Vikings actually made it to the playoffs. But in their first game, they come up against the mighty Seattle Seahawks who had just come from last year's Super Bowl, a very strong team. But they played them well all game long. It was a defensive struggle. The score laid in the fourth quarter was Seattle 10, Minnesota 9. But Minnesota has the ball and they're driving down the field. Terry Bridgewater, their quarterback is driving them down the field but time's running out. And so they end up deep into Seattle's territory with 22 seconds left. But they are perfectly set up for the reliable kicker Blair Wash to kick an easy 27 yard field goal. In his career, he has only missed one field goal within 30 yards. So everybody knows that he's going to make this field goal. Everybody on Minnesota's team knows they're going to win the game 12 to 10. Everybody on Seattle's team knows they're going to lose this game and lose their chance to go to the Super Bowl. Everybody in the stands rooting for the Minnesota Vikings knows they're going to win the game. Every million's watching on television. No, they're going to win the game. And then this happens. Let's watch it. You have to see it. The German is the sample and the king is loaded. Wow. Go figure. Yeah. It's time to pray to the heavens, Michael. You're right. No good. Not even close. Look at these laces one more time. Jeff locked the holder. He's going to try and put it down and bingo looking right back at the kicker. And I'm telling you psychologically sometimes that can get a kicker. But there's no way to practice making it three foot put Chris Collins worth of go on to say there's no way to practice in those kind of intense dramatic situations. How to kick an easy field goal is coach blasted him the media blasted him. The whole city of Minneapolis was upset with him blaming him for the loss. He had miserably failed at the most critical point. Except for a first grade class in a Minneapolis school. There were a bunch of first graders that felt sorry for Blair wash. And amidst all the criticism on social media. Some little six year olds decided to do a letter writing campaign to Blair wash. And as one of the little girls in that class said, alley Edwards Blair was really sad and we wanted to make him feel better. One of her classmates wrote this, dear Blair wash. I think you should keep trying. Don't give up. We still love you. Get better by practicing. Little six year old Tyler doffin feel the whole page of words for wash. He said among the things he said, dear Blair, I feel bad for you. Don't give up. You're still number one. Practice more so that you can get better at kicking. You're so good at kicking. Don't give up. Keep trying. We still love you. That act of grace and kindness by those little children captured his heart. So he set aside his plans to fly home the next day and stayed and visited that classroom. And after he made that visit to the classroom, he said it was very touching to me. A lot of the cards were very pretty and creative. I will cherish them forever. Isn't it so often that we adults do not understand grace, but six year olds do? We don't understand forgiveness. We don't understand moving beyond failure, but six year olds often have a better grasp of that than we do. I'll tell you who has the best grasp of it at all and that's God. God in his grace looks upon our failure and says, I know you are shattered. Your dreams, your plans, your hopes, your efforts. They're all done in your mind. Hey, I still got something for you to do. That may not be as big as what you dreamed, but let's start here. Let's start with a few women at a well. I'm going to give you the chance to deliver them. You see, God doesn't give up on us. He is so gracious, but it would require a response by Moses to see this through. To understand and accept God's grace and act in response to it, it would require Moses doing what he could. So Moses' response was simply doing what he could. I love what the old commentator Matthew Henry says about this. He says, speaking of Moses, he loved to be doing justice and appearing in the defense of such as he saw injured, which every man ought to do as far as it is in the power of his hand to do it. He loved to be doing good wherever the providence of God casts us. We should desire and endeavor to be useful. And this next statement has become a classic quote from Matthew Henry. And when we cannot do the good we would, we must be ready to do the good we can. And he that is faithful in a little shall be entrusted with more. Maybe you've had big dreams. Maybe you've had big plans. My question for you right now today is what are you doing now with what God's put before you? You say, well, I've great plans to be a teacher someday. I want to teach maybe on a university level. Maybe I want to train people to go into ministry. Are you willing to take that children's Bible fellowship that you've been asked to help with? Or are you just going to wait, sit around, dream for the future? When we cannot do what we would, we can still do what we can. Oh, I'd like to lead a ministry. Are you willing to visit homebound people first and get to learn the heart of hurting people before you lead something? I want to be a missionary and we hope to see many folks in this church with that goal and that aspiration. I want to be a missionary. That would be great. But what are you doing right now? Are you looking for any neighbors to witness to? Are you cultivating any relationships with international students that are three colleges in this area? Are you leading an evangelistic Bible study in your home? Are you doing anything now? You see, true servants will do what's available. True servants will do what needs to be done. True servants will do what they can do even if they cannot yet do what they're dreaming about doing in the future. So if you can't do what you would do, do what you can do. Find some way to plug in and be involved. God sometimes uses even our failures and our setbacks to cultivate that spirit in us because we are at the bottom. Sometimes in our failure, it's the best time for us to recognize I was all about my big dreams and maybe I need to just start by doing what God's put right in front of me. So God through failure in Moses' life is cultivating in him by his grace the opportunity to still fulfill that dream of delivering on a much smaller scale. Yes, but we're going to start here, Moses and we're going to start building your character again. A willingness to be a servant. There's another attitude in Moses' life that we see in this passage and that is a willingness to be obscure. A willingness to be obscure in the middle of nowhere with seemingly nothing important to do. Look at verse 18. When the girls return to Ruel, their father, he asks them, why have you returned so early today? They answered an Egyptian, which by the way tells us Moses still looked the part. He looked like an Egyptian. An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock. Next verse, typical father, and where is he? Ruel asked his daughters, why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat. Moses agreed to stay with the man who gave his daughter Zappura to Moses in marriage. Zappura gave birth to a son and Moses named him Gershom, saying, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land. Now think about Moses' obscurity. He agrees to stay with this family. He is in an out of the way place on the backside of the desert in Midian. There's nothing happening in Midian. This is not Egypt. This is light years away from Egypt. He is an obscurity on the backside of the desert and he is living with an out of the way priest. Who has ever heard of Ruel, which by the way means friend of God? He evidently was a faithful priest who served the true God. But nobody has ever heard of him. Who does what kind of congregation does he have? He is out on the backside of the desert, ministering to a little bed when roving cland of shepherds. So in this desolate out of the way place, living and serving with an out of the way priest, he ends up marrying his daughter. Interesting names, Zappura. It comes from the feminine form of the word for bird. So in reality, he married Lady Bird. The first, Lady Bird. Some of you might age and older get that. Others of you go back to your history book. But the real name, the real important name is the name of his son, Gershim. He names him Gershim, which sounds like the Hebrew word for Sojourner or Alien. And he tells us why he named him that in verse 22 saying, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land. And to name his son that, with that identification, basically Moses is saying, I'm good with that. I'm okay with that. I know where I am. It's not Egypt. I know I will never be the Pharaoh. And I know I will probably, at least in his mind now, I'll never deliver my people like I thought I would. But I'm okay, being here, living here, serving here. Nobody knowing even who I am, where I come from or what I'm capable of doing. It's okay. His obscurity. When I look at what God is doing in his life, I have to ask myself the question, am I willing to be obscure? What about our willingness to be obscure? What about that? You know, the Bible uses a very apt metaphor, word picture for the church. Many of them, in fact, but one of them that is especially instructive is the body. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul uses the actual human body as an illustration of what the church is like. The family of God, the body of Christ, we are a body. And not everyone in that body can have the visible, really seemingly important roles. Not everybody can be the brain or the hand or the eye or the voice. Not everybody can be that in the body. You know, the body also needs toes. The body needs a little toe. And the body needs a toenail on that little toe. Now, look, go looking for that. That's kind of hard to find. Not now, but sometimes just look. That's a very small part, seemingly insignificant part of the body, but the body needs that. Some of us may be the little toe. Some of us may be a small capillary delivering blood to a very seemingly minor part of the body. Some of us may be cartilage that's kind of hidden back, not only under flesh, but behind the joints somewhere. You never even know what's there, what it's doing until you mess it up. Then you know. Somebody has to be a heal. We all have a part to play in the body, right? And not everybody has the significant out front role. Some of you serve in areas where you're seldom noticed, seldom seen, tragically seldom valued. But let your ministry stop. Let what you do stop and see what happens to the functioning of the body. Are we willing to do those kinds of ministries? Are we willing to be the toe, the cartilage, the capillary? Or is everybody's goal to be the eye, to be the hand? I have some heroes in ministry and they're not people who write the books that I learned from. They're not people who write commentaries. My real heroes are people who come early on Sunday morning and make coffee for their ABF. They're people who empty the trash can in their classrooms so that they can be clean for the next group using that room. They're people who gather in other parts of this building during services like this and pray as a part of the standing in the gap team for what God will do in these services. They're people who drive the van so that folks who otherwise would not be able to come to church are able to get here. They're people who visit the homebound and never talk about it. Don't announce it. They just go. Sometimes people don't even know what they're doing. The real heroes are the people who do things like that. They're the people who park the cars so that other people can more easily get into the church. They're the people who put the books on the shelves in the library, backward nobody's watching. We have a lady in this church that has arrived early to open up our nurseries and prepare them and has stayed late together dirty dogs. Together dirty diapers and discard them for years. Those are the heroes. Those are the heroes. God may use it times failure to break us of the strong desire for recognition, the strong desire that everybody know and value what I do. God sometimes uses failure to break us of that and to begin to develop in us like He did with Moses to begin to develop in us a selfless dedication to Him. A servant spirit that is willing to do the obscure tasks in the obscure places in ways that may never be seen or recognized. And God wants to develop that spirit in us. He may or may not use that experience to move us into more visible roles. That's not the issue. The issue is that the body cannot function without every part of it functioning faithfully. And so we need every role, every member of the body. That's what God was doing with Moses's failure. He's redeeming it. He's turning it around. He's making it count for something and that's what God wants to do with your failure. You've struggled to make it in life or to make life make any sense for you or have any direction for you and maybe you're here this morning and you're dealing with a huge failure in your life or maybe you're dealing with a series of failures and you feel like you don't have anything left to offer. My friend today God in his grace is reaching down to you saying, I haven't given up on you. I still have something for you to do. And we're not going to start with your big dream. We're going to start by something that will develop character and we'll develop Christ's likeness. Are you willing to be a servant? Are you willing to be obscure? Okay. That's where we're going to start. Ben Zobrist is one of the best baseball players in Major League Baseball. Remember the Kansas City Royal Second Basement Left Fielder. They won the World Series this year and he was one of the stars of the team and thankfully he's been signed by the Cubs. I can't wait for him to get on the Cubs. After the World Series win, he was interviewed by a Christian periodical because Ben Zobrist is an outspoken believer. And here's what he said. I want to read to you his comments about winning the World Series. He said, it's funny. I listened to those interviews after people win the Super Bowl or World Series and stuff. And sometimes I'm like, we're missing it. If we are believers and we're telling people, look, you work hard and do it as under the Lord and he's going to bless you and you're going to be successful. That's not what this life is about. He went on to say, I hear people use Philippians 4.13. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me as like their pump up bursts that's going to allow them to do things on the field they've never done before. When you really look at that passage, the Apostle Paul is saying, I can even do jail and misery and weakness through Christ who strengthens me. For me, I have to realize if that's the truth, when I fail, I need to give God glory just as much as when I succeed. If through that people can see that my hope is not in my success or failure, it's in him, then so be it. Let that be for God's glory. Wow, he's got it. He understands what we're talking about here today. Life is not about your glowing successes that everybody recognizes and honors you for. Life is about developing character. The character that God wants to develop in each of us, the very image of Christ, Christ likeness after all the Bible teaches it is God's purpose in our lives to deliver. Develop Christ likeness, conformity to the image of His Son that we be molded and shaped like the image of His Son to be like Jesus. And Jesus came as a servant willing to do the obscure, growing up and ministry and then die on a hard harsh Roman cross for our sins. You see, what God is wanting to do with our failure is not discard us and throw us away or heap further guilt on us. He's calling us to Himself and He's saying, will you allow me now to shape and mold your character as I want to do? Are you willing to be a servant? Are you willing to be a skewer? Let's start there. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this little part of the story of Moses that we often skin through when we read about his life. But it's such a critical juncture, critical turning point in his life and what we thank you for for showing us that you can graciously reach out to us even in the midst of failure. And bring us to that point where you're developing character and preparing us for what you want us to do by creating within us a willingness to be a servant and a willingness to be a skewer. Father, help us to find what there is around us to do, no matter how obscure or a little it may seem and to be a servant and serve you well. Lord, I pray for those who are here today who are struggling with failure, maybe a series of failures in their lives and they're ready to give up or maybe a real beauty of a failure and they're devastated. Oh, God, would you reach tenderly into their hearts today by your grace? And encourage them. Help them to see that you want to begin building Christ likeness in their hearts and lives in Jesus' name we pray, amen.