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Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and this is day two of our look through the book of
Exodus, week one. That means we're in Exodus chapter two. And I want to begin
today by reading for you the beginning of Exodus chapter two, verses one to ten.

"Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant
and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for
three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket
for him and coated it with tar and pitch.

And she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the
Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then
Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were
walking along the riverbank.

She saw the basket among the reeds, and she sent her slave girl to get it. She
opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him.

'This is one of the Hebrew babies,' she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's
daughter, 'Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?
' 'Yes, go,' she answered.

And the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her,
'Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you. ' So the woman took
the baby and nursed him.

When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her
son. She named him Moses, saying, 'I drew him out of the water. ' These verses
are a story of faith, and they're also a principle of what it takes to be set
free.

In fact, there's really two principles that we see in this story. First of all,
to be set free in this chapter. The first is in these verses, and that is to be
set free, someone must trust God.

That's where it begins. If there's something that God wants to set you free
from, you may have been struggling for a long time, someone has to trust God.
And here's the interesting thing, it may not even be you at the beginning.

Eventually, you're going to need to trust God as well. You will need to trust
him as well. But at the beginning, it may not be you.

It may be someone praying for you. Moses was going to be used to set the people
free. It was his mother who had faith at the beginning.

He was a baby. He was not even able to have faith. He wasn't even able to place
himself where God could use him in this kind of way.

But because she trusted God, God did a great work. I wonder who's trusting God
for you. I wonder who's praying for you, asking God to work in your life.

You may not even know. You need to trust God, but you also need to realize there
are other people trusting God. To be set free, that's where it begins.

Someone must trust God. But then quickly, there comes another truth. Because
Moses, he grows up in Pharaoh's house, he comes to a point where he's a man and
he recognizes that he is an Israelite, and he looks out and he sees the slavery
of his people.

And he has to decide, how are these people going to be set free? And he
immediately learns a lesson. To be set free, I have to realize I cannot do this
on my own power.

Here we see, in these verses we're going to look at in just a moment, Moses's
life at the time of his greatest mistake. And it may be that you and I will
learn more about how to break free in our lives from this mistake that Moses
made than from all of his successes. When Moses first tried to break free, he
used all the wrong methods, all the wrong directions.

And we're going to learn along with him in Exodus chapter 2 verses 11 to 25.
We're going to see three confrontations Moses has in this passage, and out of
each of them comes some valuable insights about what simply will not work to set
you free. Three things that will not work.

It is a lesson on some of the things that may have the strength to do a little
thing in your life, but they fool you. They cannot do the big things in your
life, the lasting things in your life. I cannot do this on my own power.

What does that mean? Three things that will never set you free. First of all, we
learn from Moses, your emotions can't set you free.

We learn this from his confrontation with the taskmaster, one of those who was
holding the Israelites in slavery, verses 11 and 12. One day after Moses had
grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their
hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people, glancing
this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hit him in the
sand.

Moses got mad at the problem. He got emotionally involved to the utmost. He
cared, no doubt about it.

He gave his all even to the point of going over the line and murdering this
taskmaster who was beating his countrymen. It's a lesson to you and I that
emotions, as valuable as emotions can be, they are not strong enough to break
you free for several reasons. Number one, they don't last.

Emotions offer short-term solutions, but long-term weakness. Moses would need
more than emotions to carry him through this. F.

B. Meyer said in his classic book, The Life of Moses, "The mere impulse of pity
would never have been enough to bear him through the weary years of the desert
march. " Moses needed more than an immediate emotion, an immediate adrenaline
rush.

They don't last, so you stop depending on your emotional surges to get you
through every problem because if you do that, it's not going to last. Emotions
don't last. They're not reliable.

Jim Dobson, a long time ago, wrote a book entitled Emotions, Can You Trust Them?
I might be able to save you reading the book. I mean, in one word, no, no, you
cannot trust them.

Oh, they're valuable. I love to have good emotions and sometimes I'm informed of
what's going on in my life by bad emotions, but I can't trust them. Emotions
will make you run when you should stay and they will tempt you to stay when you
should run.

They aren't reliable. They don't last. They're often out of step.

That's the third thing about emotions. They're out of step with God's timing.
God wanted to use Moses to set the people free, but not this way, not this way.

One blow struck when the time is right is worth a thousand struck in premature
eagerness. So instead of emotions, we need the truth. When trying to break free,
I need an alternative to emotions and truth is the key to being set free, living
the principles of God's Word rather than the feelings of your heart.

A lot of us try to be set free by working up enough emotion to break that habit.
That works for a day, maybe a week, maybe a month, but eventually the emotion
runs out and I'm right back behind those same bars. Being guided by the hand of
God rather than the emotion of the moment, the hand of the eternal rather than
the emotion of the moment, that's what sets you free.

So Moses' mistake teaches us emotions don't set you free. A second thing it
teaches us is that human strength doesn't set you free. Our human will.

We see that in the confrontation he has with the Israelites, verses 13 and 14.
The next day, Moses went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in
the wrong, "Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?

" The man said, "Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of
killing me as you kill the Egyptian? " Then Moses was afraid and he thought,
"What I did must have become known.

" Now remember, as we read these verses, Moses was the redeemer that Israel had
been looking for. He'd come to his people, he had stood up for his people, he'd
even put his life on the line for his people in a battle with this Egyptian
taskmaster. He'd risked everything, he'd won, and now he must have felt like,
"Ah, it's time for me to set the people free.

I'm seeing these other Hebrews fighting, I'm going to be their leader now. " It
did not work. They didn't recognize his leadership.

In fact, they ridiculed his leadership and it scared him to death. It led to his
downfall in this moment. How could they respect a leader who was a murderer?

What was Moses going to do? Take on the Egyptians one by one? Kill them one by
one?

Granted, there are some days when you feel so strong, you feel like you could
take on the world and win. But if you take on the problem by yourself, the world
by yourself, you'll eventually end up like Moses, rejected, frightened,
defeated. If you're feeling that way right now, it's because human strength is
not the secret.

I don't have the strength in myself. Humans don't work. Human strength doesn't
work.

A third thing that doesn't work is escape, running away from the problem. We see
this in the confrontation that he had with Pharaoh. In verse 15, "When Pharaoh
heard of this, he tried to kill Moses.

But Moses fled from Pharaoh and he went to live in Midian, where he sat down by
a well. Faced with the threat of Pharaoh, this great redeemer did what most of
us would do when faced with a problem that seems insurmountable. He ran away.

" And you have this picture. He went out into the desert in Midian, and this
picture, he sat down by a well. He's supposed to be setting the people free.

He's supposed to be living a life of significance, but instead, out in the
desert, he's sitting by a well. He's taken the way of escape, and the way to
freedom is not the way of escape. We've all tried it.

We've all done what Moses did here. You run away, you sit down by a well. You
cannot run from your problems.

They're just too fast. But all too often, the solution that you and I try is
fleeing from the problem rather than facing the problem. And sometimes, we keep
running from here to here to here.

But the problem never seems to go away, because the problem isn't where we were.
The problem is in us. If you're ever going to break free, there has to come a
day when you make a stand.

And in Moses' life, it was where he had run to. The desert became for him a
place where he ended up when he was running. But eventually, it became a place
where God spoke to him.

Moses ran. He ran into the desert. Do you think that God gave up on him?

Do you think God said about Moses, "He had such great promise, but he ruined it
all in a moment of passion. If he just hadn't murdered that Egyptian, I'll have
to find another man now. He'll have to solve his own problems.

I'll find somebody else. " Do you think God did that? We know he didn't.

God still used Moses. God talked to Moses in the desert. He even used the time
in the desert.

The desert was a place where Moses had time to think, where he'd find the
strength to change. His life, in one sense, wasn't being wasted there. It was
being molded there.

God would teach him in the desert how he could break free. He would teach him
persistence. He was there for 40 years in that desert.

He would teach him gentleness. He took care of sheep for 40 years. Shepherds
have to be gentle, and Moses would have to be gentle with his people.

He would teach him the truth and the life of burning bush. F. B.

Meyer said that in the desert, our vision clears. The silt drops from the
current of our life. If you're in a desert right now, don't give up.

Don't call yourself a failure. Don't say you cannot because God has stuck you
out in that desert, or you even ran out into that desert. God is striving to do
miracles in your life, even now.

Even in the desert. He's trying to teach you things that will enable you to
break free and then help others to break free. No matter where you are, God is
there working to set you free.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you that there's nowhere I can run that you
will not be there. There's no time in my life when I can try to use my human
strength and find it to be greater than yours or to somehow disallow your
strength in my life.

And even though my emotions may run the range up and down, I may not know how to
feel today, but I know how you feel. You love me. And so Lord, I hang on to that
right now.

Even in the desert, I hang on to your presence. The fact that you will never
give up on me. In Jesus' name, I thank you, amen.

Tomorrow we're going to see that there's a burning bush in that desert.