This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Witter Springs, Florida, where Dr. Pete Alanson is our senior pastor. Today's sermon is part four in a series called Exodus, up from slavery, out to freedom. This message is taken from Exodus chapter 4, verse 18 through chapter 6, verse 12. Now here's Pete with today's message. If you have your Bibles, take them and turn to Exodus. We're in a study of the second book of the Bible, the book of Exodus, and we've been in it for a while. We'll be in it for a while. And so our text is really Exodus 4, 18 through 6, 12. That's a lot of verses, isn't it? Yeah, that's a lot of verses. But in this series, I'm not reading every verse. I'm giving you the spread of verses so that later you can read them on your own. Exodus, what's it about? It's a book about where Israel came from. How Israel came to be as a nation and how it came to be located in the very epicenter of human history at the very epicenter of world geography? Every day you turn on the news. Something about Israel is there. Well, in the book of Exodus, we see how they came to be. To understand Exodus, you can understand the rest of the Bible and you understand the gospel of Jesus even more as we as we study this. So that's why we're studying this book. In the book of Exodus, we see how God is an incredible planner. We see that Exodus is really God pulling off his plan. Are you guys planners? Yeah, everyone of your planners. Some of you planned to be down here in Orlando for the summer. And you didn't realize it was this hot down here. God's little example of hell right here in central Florida. It's on here. But we're all planners and we're different types of planners. Some of you are analytical planners and you know who you are. Somebody asked you to do something and you say, could you keep some feedback on that? And what you send back is like 16 pages of notes. I mean, you're so analytical. You thought it down to the last breath that it takes to accomplish the project. Some of you are bigger picture people. And when you plan, it's kind of the big picture. Hey, would you plan this event? Sure. And then you come back and they talked to you three weeks later. What are we going to do? Well, we're going to do this, this, this. We're going to have a lot of fun. It's going to be good. And that's it. That's the extent of your planning. But you're a planner. We're all planners. And we're all planners because God is a planner. And because we're made in his image, the problem with God's plans and our plans though, the real big difference between God's plans and our plans is that our plans come from fallen people in a fallen world. And the reason why they often fall through is because our plan is not in charge or not in step with God's plan. And so today, we're going to talk about God's plan and the title of the sermon, God's plan, not ours. And I need to start with a fairy tale. Let me tell you a fairy tale. You ready? Here we go. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat in front of the pond in a verdant garden in front of that unpolluted, metto near her castle. The frog jumped up into her lap and spoke. He said, elegant lady, I was once, I was once a prince, a handsome prince, but the wicked which turned me into a frog if you would but kiss me on the lips. I will turn once again into that dapper, young, beautiful, handsome prince and then we together will move into young castle and live with my mother. Whereby, you can bear my children, cook my meals, take care of my clothes and be ever so grateful that I have allowed you to do that. That night on a meal of lightly sauteed frog legs seasoned in white wine and onion cream sauce. She chuckled to herself and said, I don't think so, I don't think so. Guys, it's a different day, isn't it? We've talked about being 90s kind of guys, you've got to be 21st century kind of guys, it's different day. But we all make plans, we guys make plans, we ladies, you make plans, we all make plans and the problem is our plans will always work out. Because again, we're following people in a following world and we got to make sure that our plans are in sync with God's plans. That's how we gain success in this world. Now last week, I had three points to my sermon, you remember them? I'd love to put somebody on the spot, particularly one of my elders but I love them too much, I won't do that. The first thing, remember Moses at the Burning Bush, what we talked about last week, Moses at the Burning Bush. And there he is and we saw God's unchangeable heart, God's unchanging heart. And what is his heart? We saw at the Burning Bush that God is powerful and almighty and there's a bush on fire but it's not consumed. God is almighty, God's talking to him, he's spirit. And yet, what comes out? I want to save my people. With all of his power, God's unchanging plan, his unchanging heart is to help people, not to hurt us. And then his unthinkable plan, after he got to the whole end of the conversation with Moses, his unthinkable plan was by the way, Moses, you're going to work through you. You're going to help me deliver these guys. And Moses is how old at this point? Do you remember? Yeah, he's 80 and he's saying, listen, I'm ready for the widescreen in retirement man. The unthinkable plan is that God loves to use his people to accomplish his plan in the world and then we saw God's ultimate triumph. That was the sermon last week. You're getting two for one really today here. The third point was God's ultimate triumph and God's ultimate triumph is this. How many times did Moses say God picks somebody else? Do you remember? How many times? Five. Good. Some people remember it. They're the spiritual ones. Five times he said God picks somebody else and God said, and God triumphed. Moses did what God wanted him to do and became the greatest leader of all human history up to this point and even beyond to the present day. Because he said yes to God. Now with that in mind, we see that Moses is headed back and here's where we pick up the text Exodus 4, 18 through 5, 2. Then Moses went back to Jethra, his father-in-law and said to him, this is right after the burning bush, let me go back to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive. Jethra said, go and I wish you well. Now the Lord had said already, this is a recap. He had said to Moses and medium, go back to Egypt for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead. I don't know if Moses would have been so inclined to go back if he knew that there were people there to hunt him down and take his life. So Moses took his wife and his sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt and he took the staff of God in his hand. Now, verses 21 through 23, I'm going to come back to, but you need to listen to these verses real quick. I'm not going to read them again. This is a summary and I'm going to make a statement about this later for you and me. The Lord said to Moses, when you return to Egypt, see that you performed before Pharaoh, all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Then, say to Pharaoh, this is what the Lord says, Israel is my firstborn and I told you, let my son go so he may worship me, but you refuse to let him go. So I will kill your firstborn son. It's a summary of what would happen for Moses and it did. At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipura took a Flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it. Surely you were a bridegroom of blood to me, she said, so the Lord let him live. At that time, she said, bridegroom, a blood referring to circumcision. Am I going to talk about that? Yeah. Verse 27, the Lord said to Aaron, go into the desert to meet Moses, so he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him, then Moses told Aaron everything the Lord had sent him to say, and also about all the miraculous signs he had commanded him to perform. Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of Israelites, Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people and they believed and when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshipped. Chapter 5 verse 1, after Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, this is what the Lord the God of Israel says, let my people go so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert. Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not. Let's say it together, I will not let Israel go. Well, there it is. I've only got two simple points for you today and then we have communion. And the first one is God's plan is not our plan but is a better plan. God's plan is not our plan but is a better plan. As you noticed, this was not Moses' plan. This was God's plan, right? Are you with me historically? This was not God's plan to do it this way. Did Moses ever have the desire to rescue the Israelites from Egyptian bondage? Did he? I hear some yeses, I hear some noes. He did when he was how old? He was 40, he's 80 now. But when he was 40, remember what we talked about? As he went out and he saw the Israelites and he was strangely drawn to these people, they were his people. And he had the desire to save them and rescue them. What did he do though in order to rescue them? Do you remember what his action was? He killed the Egyptian who was beaten on one of the Hebrews. You see, what we like, we're like Moses. We like to plan our lives and then send it in triplicate to God and let him initial it and pass it back down. God, this is what I want you to do. We view God as the cosmic executive in the sky who has no power. He's supposed to rubber stamp everything we want him to do. See, at 40, Moses's plan was, I am going to rescue the Israelites with the strength of my fist. God said, I'm sorry, it's not the way it's going to happen. He says, you're not going to save God with the strength of your young manhood. You're going to rescue the Israelites in the frailty of old age. That's how we're going to do it, Moses. You know, Ecclesiastes 3, I love that text. There is a time for everything under heaven, a time for every event under heaven. I love that. And then in verse 8, it says there's a time for war and a time for peace. Moses said, I'm 40, it's a time for war. God said, no, it's when you're 80. See, when Moses was 40, he was going to do this with his own wisdom. And God said, no, no, no. When you're 80, you're going to rescue Israel using spiritual power and my wisdom. At 40, Moses wanted to skirt around dealing with Pharaoh. Did he know Pharaoh? Of course he did. He was raised in Pharaoh's house. He was Pharaoh's daughters adopted son. He knew Pharaoh. He'd probably bounced on Pharaoh's knee. Are you kidding? And so how does he go to solve this problem? He's going around his back. He kills the Egyptian. God says to him, now when you're 80, you're going to deal with Pharaoh face to face. You're not going to do this passive aggressive stuff behind the scenes, like a man you're going to go talk to him and confront him face to face. That's how we're going to do it. At 40, Moses wanted to deliver Israel by his own actions. At 80, God would make Moses into, you're listening, a Presbyterian. Oh no, it's absolutely right. What does he do? He goes back and he gathers together the what? The what? The elders of Israel. The word Presbyterian simply means elder. The elder, Moses started the first Presbyterian Jewish church right here. And he gets the elders into it with him and they get the people of Israel into it with him and together they go out to accomplish the mission. He was going to do it by himself when he was a young man and now he's going to do it with the church of the Old Testament. I'm so glad Paris Hilton's out of prison, aren't you? It's been a heck of a week for me. When I was a communication major, I learned that some people are newsworthy simply for being famous. Subsequently, I've learned that some people are famous just for being famous even though they haven't done anything of merit. And you see, our culture loves youth and sets aside the wives and the older population. And I'm only a little bitter about that. I want you to know. But we got to talk. Moses is better at 80 than he was at 40. He was more humble. He had an open mind. He was still learning. He was obedient. Even though he was still a little hard headache, he was better at 80 than he was at 40. Because he was a tool in God's hand. And this tool would be used by God in an absolutely amazing way. Look at, here's what John Maxwell says. And I like this. He says, God develops leaders in a crock pot, not a microwave. You and I want to be instantly what he puts us in a crock pot and he develops us. Now, there is good leadership lessons to be learned from Moses here, the laws of navigation, plan ahead, predetermine your course of action, lay out your goals, adjust your priorities, notify key personnel, allow a time for acceptance, head into action, expect problems, always point to your successes, daily review your progress. Is that good? Yeah, that's good. That's all very good stuff. Follow it. I do every one of these every week. I'm a perfect leader. No, this is good stuff. I wish I did it perfectly like this. But here's the deal. I want you to be successful. But you will only be successful if your plan coincides with God's plan. Because his plan is the plan that will be sustained. And his plan is always better. Always. I got to tell you that there is a parallel here and there's only one parallel between Moses and me. 20 years ago, I had a vision for church. We came here to start a church. And the vision included, we're going to reach kids, we're going to reach youth. We want to be an evangelistic church in this community. We want to worship God in a celebrative way. We want to develop leaders. We want to reach men and women. We want to have a men's ministry. We want to have a preschool. We want to have a sports ministry. We're just finishing the last part of that. But not one step or detail in that big vision went the way I thought it would go. Not one step. It was harder, slower, costlier than I could ever imagine. And if I had said, God, give me the summary of how it's going to go. He would have said this. He would have said, Son, you don't want to know. You just do not want to know. The details, the timing and the actual accomplishment of it are all of God. Every aspect, you may be in sync with God on the big issues of your plan for your life. And his plan for your life. And that's great. But I'll tell you the details and how it works out are going to be different. Pat Morley says this, because God loves you. Life doesn't work out as you plan it. But better. Let me give you a couple of scriptures. I love this. This Job 42, God is the ultimate. See, we are disciples, not the ciders. We're disciples, not the ciders. God decides the plan. Job 42, I know that you can do all things. Know what? No plan of yours. It doesn't say will be thwarted. It says can be thwarted. God is the ultimate planner. And his plans get done. He cannot be stopped. He is a force of one. I say a 25 one, oh Lord, you are my God. I will exalt you and praise your name for imperfect faithfulness. You've done marvelous things. Things planned. How long? Long and long ago. Does prayer work? Absolutely. Should we pray? Absolutely. Should we pray about our plan? Absolutely. The problem, though, that a lot of times our plans don't work out with God's plan because God's plan has been planned a long time ago. And our plans are new. And whose plan has got to sync with whose plan? Our plans got to sync with his. That's why a lot of our stuff is so new and fresh. And he ties us in to an eternal plan. Jeremiah 29-11. I know the plans I have for you to clear is the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not the harm you plans to give you hope in the future. God has got all the contingencies of your life planned out. All the details and then Romans 12-1-2. God's plan is good and acceptable and perfect. I want you to be successful and have success, but you got to go with God's plan. Amen. Lead your families. But lead your families with God's plan. Not your own plan. Amen. Follow God's plan and you will. And where do you find that in the scriptures? And his plan is the only one that will stand. Now, remember I told you verses 21-23. God gives Moses the summary of what's going to happen to him in Israel or Egypt when he goes back there. Remember that? He didn't go to happen for you. Don't read this and say, Oh, good. God gave Moses the summary of the whole thing that's going to happen. It's going to go down to the killing of the firstborn of Pharaoh. Oh, good. I can expect that from God. No. Don't read the history of the Bible as if every one of the historical enactments of the Bible are going to be normative for your life. In fact, my experience is God doesn't tell me the details. He didn't even give me a blueprint. He might give me the big idea, but Jesus says abide with me. Walk with me. Stay with me. So he says to you, if you're planning to him, he'll give you the big plan, but don't expect all the details. It's really, really important that you get that. And if you get that, you'll be more content. Because our discontent is directly tied to the fulfillment of our plans. Our contentment is directly tied to the fulfillment of his second point. God's plan is not our plan, but it's a better plan. God plan is not smooth, but involves conflict. Now, I love this. Now, this is so important. Here's a myth. In the Christian community, it's a myth, and it comes from hell's marketing department. All right. You ready? Here's the myth. The myth is this. If you're doing God's will, everything's going to be smooth. If you're doing God's will, everything is going to go. It's going to work out. We're going to build this building. Money's going to come in. No, I'm about running out my heart attack. 600,000 bucks before August. Well, maybe we don't finish everything. But God's in charge. I've learned. There's going to be conflict along the way. Here's the corollary to that. If things are going badly in your life, then obviously you are not doing things according to God's will. And that is so wrong. Look at Moses. Does Moses have conflict? Are you kidding? I'm going to talk about that just a minute. But that's just silly. The first aspect of conflict comes in his own family for crying out loud. And God has just called Moses. That's a great name in it. His wife and the kids and they got on their donkey. That's about all they had. Kids and a donkey. It's like a 64 Chevy. By the way, guys, what matters is your family and not your stuff. You want to be remembered. It's not going to be your stuff. It's going to be what you allowed God to do through you. Live your life, men, particularly. This is important. Live your life in light of who's going to be crying at your funeral. It's not going to be me because I'm going to die before you. Your family will be there. May they not be crying in anguish. Maybe they be crying in sorrow because they lost the greatest figure in their life. His wife's ticked at him and the reason he's she's ticked at Moses is because Moses was as the leader of his household supposed to have his son circumcised. Now, that's not going to be a pleasure. I'm not going into details about that. They didn't teach us about that in seminary. But it was the dad's responsibility to obey God in that way and he didn't do it. Probably because he was afraid of the negative backlash from his wife and maybe even his father-in-law, Chetro. They didn't understand the Hebrew way and understand that circumcision was a sign and seal of the covenant of grace and greatly important to God in the Old Testament. Moses didn't do it so Zipura does what often happens when we guys don't do what we're supposed to do. She steps up and does the job. I'm teaching the Bible. I didn't write this and calls him a bloody bridegroom. Now, my Brit friends tell me that when you call somebody bloody anything, it's not very polite and it's not very friendly. The important principle of leadership, do the right thing, which is God's thing, no matter what the backlash. In your family, in your place of employment, do God's will. Will. Do it his way wherever. Then Moses gets to Israel and he sets up the church and he shares the vision. Notice who's doing the talking. Moses talked to Aaron and Aaron's doing the preaching to the Israelites and all the elders and there probably were a ton of them. They all come together and they're all excited. He does his miracles with the throne, the staff down and everything and all the elders are behind him, so Moses and the elders. They all go to Pharaoh and Pharaoh's stand in there and Moses, Aaron speaks. There's Moses, Charlton Heston, the stand in there and all the elders, maybe a bunch of Israelites, let my people go. Their God's firstborn, let my people go and Pharaoh says, I don't even know the name of your God, never heard of them. I don't know him. You're crazy. This is in the original Egyptian. You are absolutely crazy if you think I'm going to let you go. My people don't know how to even mow their own lawns anymore. We've got to bring people in from other countries to do that. They don't even like to build. You think I'm going to let you go? We won't get anything built around here. The bricks they built were not these kind of bricks. They were not. It was Nile mud dried in the sun with straw and they were probably, I don't know, this much, huge bricks. But the straw that was put inside the brick was kind of the rebar inside the brick to hold it together. And Pharaoh says, not only am I not going to let you go, from now on you've got to meet your quota. Get those bricks to me. And I'm not going to get you in the straw. I'm not going to deliver that to you. You've got to go and get it yourself. And so all of Moses, all of the Israelite foreman, come back to Moses and say, Moses, you know what you did? You're worse. And Moses goes running back to God and says, God, what did you do? The conflict is always a part of the accomplishment of God's will. God's plan is not smooth but involves conflict. Let me give you some applications. Number one, if anything is we're doing for God, it will involve conflict. If you are about raising money for a ministry, there's going to be conflict. If you are involved in a ministry with Christians, there will be conflict with Christians. See, this is why 5,000 ministers a month leave the ministry. They come in as pastors. They had no idea there would be conflict. And who are they fighting Christians? Mostly. Give me a peg into fight with any day. I don't know the fight with a peg in a Christian. I'm supposed to be spiritual. Most of us are not prepared for the fighting in the church. Just the idea is, and this is one of the better churches in the United States. Trust me. I've been around. You guys are wonderful. You ain't perfect. Don't join the perfect church or ruin it. But there's more conflict that we could ever imagine. And it's going to be here because this is the epicenter of geography. But we are the epicenter of God's plan in the world. So if somebody doesn't like your new plan, hey Pete, what about this? Oh, great idea. We tried that. It failed six years ago. Listen, if there's conflict here, understand it and expect it. Because Satan wants to destroy us. If he destroys us, he destroys the kingdom, outreach. This is the very center of battle. Number two, don't look for ease. Look for impact. Don't look for ease. Look for impact. This is what I want for me. This is what I think Moses struggled with. You know, I want everything to be smooth. Don't you? Particularly to this point in my life. I've gone through the conflict. Every time a conflict comes up, I said, God, I've been through this before. Never again. He just laughs. And Jesus whispers abide with me. We have Mexico trip team that came back a couple of weeks ago. You know, and we were all praying for him worried because we didn't know where they were going to stay. They're going to stay intense out in Mexico. They're going to be, you know, you know what I understand? These guys stayed in a hacienda. Right? Can I get a witness? Yeah, it was a brand new like hacienda. You guys had, you guys had servants and jacuzzi and all kinds. I mean, you know, well, not quite, but it was just really your own bed. Did you sleep on the ground? No. It's great. God took care of them. I want ease. God wants impact. We Americans, this, okay, here's is political as I'm going to get. You listening? We Americans are so soft. I fear for the future of our country. Democrats and Republicans were soft. We Christians have got to not be soft, but be concerned. Not for ease, but for impact. That's why we're still here. To extend the kingdom to build it. Number three, notice real quick. And this is most important to Jesus is the one who has led us out of Egypt. Who has led us into the freedom that Moses had led. He is the better Moses. And as Moses was leading the Israelites into freedom, Jesus Christ has led us into spiritual freedom. So as we take communion in just a minute, we're going to be taking of the bread and the cup, which reminds us that all of our sins have been paid for by Jesus Christ. We don't have to build buildings for God. We don't have to do anything for God. He can't love us any more than he loves us right now through what Jesus has done. And he sets us free to live a life of impact. We're not going to live a life of impact so that we can get God to love us. Now he says, you're free in me. You're forgiven. Let's go do something worthwhile with your life. And I love that. Realize forth that strong leaders are necessary in the church. We've got great elders. We've got strong leaders in this church. And it's important. We're not fighting like the Israelites, elders. That Presbyterian church had a lot of struggles. And our elders are united. We squabble sometimes. But we're really close. A.W. Tozer said this. History will show that the church has prospered most when blessed with strong leaders and has suffered the greatest decline when our leaders were weak and time serving. The sheep rarely go much farther than the shepherd. I wish I were a better leader. I wish I was a better man. You deserve better. But I haven't stopped learning. And this phase that we're in is a new phase. It's a big phase. And I don't have what it takes without God. Our elders don't. But I know that with him, this, this thing is going to happen. His kingdom is going on. And people are going to come to faith in Christ because we're a part of something much bigger. And as you take of the Lord's supper right now, if you're a Christian, what I want you to do is to remember that there's nothing you can add to what Jesus has done. God's got a plan for your life. And the first part of his plan was to save you by grace. So where you have nothing to contribute. Not even faith. Catch that. And so being free. And as you take the bread, remember that you're free. Remember that you're not adding to your salvation. But remember that you've been set free for great things. What is the plan? When the bread comes around, I want you to think about this. What is the plan you have right now that is leading you to discontentment because it's not being fulfilled? What is your plan? My plan. Give that to him because you know what his plan is better than our plan. And it will win. Give him your plan. If you don't know Jesus, then I encourage you to embrace him. Don't take the elements of the Lord's supper. Take him by faith because he will give you the plan for your life that is good and the rich that will last. Jesus said when he met with his disciples, he broke the bread and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance for me. In the same way he took the cup. He said, this is the blood of the new covenant which has been offered for you. We take this now because we're his. And it is a promise that his plan for us is good. His plan is good as our elders come forward. Let's pray. Father, thank you that now we can meet before you. Lord, the Israel that sits in front of me is precious to you. You raise up leaders to care for the flock and then to lead the flock and the accomplishment of your plan and you know everyone in this room. And you know the plans that have been perfectly tailored for each one. Lord, would you unite us together as a body on the big plan of fulfilling your great commission and then on the details of the personal plan that you have for us, may we give up our small visions for our life and accept your big vision. Lord Jesus, meet us as we take of the bread and remind us that you paved the way for God's perfect plan to be realizing our plan. We give our plan to you the holy name we put. Willow Creek Church is associated with the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.willowcreekchurch.org and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.