Now the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead.” So Moses took his wife and his sons and mounted them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. Moses also took the staff of God in his hand. And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ’Thus says the Lord, “Israel is My son, My first-born. So I said to you, ‘Let My son go, that he may serve Me’; but you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your first-born.” ’ ”
Now it came about at the lodging-place on the way that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah (the daughter of Jethro the Midianite. Moses had married her when he fled to Midian) took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and threw it at Moses’ feet, and she said, “You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me.” So He let him alone. At that time she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood”—because of the circumcision. Now the Lord said to Aaron, “Go to meet Moses in the wilderness.” Exodus 4:19–27a.
The story goes on, but we call your attention to just one incident here for a reason. God had determined that He was going to judge the Egyptians. He said, “Let Israel, My first-born son, go,” and because they refused, eventually the first-born sons of all Egypt were to die. This was the judgment that would be required. “Go and tell them!” He said. But that night the ramifications of this announcement came to Moses, because God met Moses and sought to kill him.
This was His intent and purpose, and we can speculate from now on whether or not God would have killed him. Actually, the only answer can be if Moses had not conformed to God’s will for his family, he would have died. This became a responsibility of Moses. It was one thing for him to go down and preach judgment to Egypt (just like it is one thing for us to speak about the judgments that are coming upon the earth and upon Babylon), but the judgments begin at the house of the Lord.
And so it began with Moses, right with God’s servant, with His leader. God came against Moses himself and sought to kill him. You may not understand the thinking behind what God was doing, but Moses knew the Word of God; he was of the tribe of Levi. Though he had been raised in the Egyptian court as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, he had made his decision; he had identified himself with the people of God long since. However, it seemed like things became lax after forty years as a fugitive. “What difference does it make? I tried hard to be a good leader.” I can hear him thinking this. “I did my best to be what God wanted me to be. What difference does it make? I rose up and put forth my best effort, and then I’m labeled as a murderer because of that Egyptian who died. Now I’m a fugitive.”
Now God says, “Those who sought your life, Moses, are gone.” Moses is still a most reluctant man. The arrogant young general of Egypt’s land, the prince-elect if he chose to be so, has disappeared someplace in the wilderness. Nothing of the arrogance is left now but a man called by God Himself, the meekest man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3). This man is very humble and very meek, but there is also something taken out of him. It is a good thing to be humble, but it is a terrible thing to be beat down to the point of not caring whether you do the will of God or not, or not being concerned to measure up fully to what He wants you to be.
This walk with God is that way. God has laid before me a lot of grace and mercy, and I’ve been able to move along and say, “Thank You, Lord; I’m nothing, but You are sustaining me.” But while this is not legalism or personal discipline as much as the grace of God, yet that grace is demanding that we be perfect and entire and wanting nothing (James 1:4). When people lose out in this walk, they do not lose out because there is no reality in it; they lose out because they will not face the level of reality that God wants them to face—how perfect He wants them to be. This becomes the disturbing factor. Have you sometimes felt like giving up, not because God was not in it, but because you felt your own inadequacy and didn’t know how to rise to what God really demanded of you? Then you became extremely discouraged because of what you should be, yet it was all available in the Lord.
God met Moses at the lodging place on the way and sought to kill him. His wife—remember, she was not a Jewish girl but a Midianite—was probably a fine little girl. (Later on, the Midianites were extremely hostile. In Gideon’s time, Midianites were sweeping over the land (Judges 6 and 7), yet at this particular point, apparently they had no contact with each other for hundreds of years so they were not hostile toward the Jews. Anyhow, all the Jews were down in Egypt as slaves.) So Moses married a Midianite named Zipporah, meaning a bird; Moses had defended her and her sisters when the herdsmen were driving them away from the water (Exodus 2:16, 17). After that, Moses stayed on with the family. You may call Moses a meek man, but remember as just one man, single-handedly, he was able to drive off all those shepherds.
Don’t beat Moses down and say when it comes to strength that he was not anything. Only after God had dealt with his heart was the meekness there. In his younger years he was quite a violent man by nature. Before he first came to Midian, he had murdered a man and was fleeing from detection. Now he drove off the shepherds, befriended and became a permanent part of the scene there of Jethro the Midianite. Like many a man, he started with strength, but after God dealt with him and humbled him, he came to the place of brokenness, of being crushed. It was difficult then for him to rise up to the strength in God that he should have.
God required circumcision of every Hebrew male, yet his little son had not been circumcised. Perhaps it was just as easy to listen to Zipporah and follow the custom of the Midianites. Or Moses may have kept the thing in his heart and said, “Who am I to push these things on somebody else?” until God met him and it would have meant his death. Then Zipporah came through. With a flint knife, she cut off the foreskin of her son and threw it as Moses’ feet, but not willingly. I don’t know what happened to Zipporah after that. She was never a part of the scene. She was reluctant, but at least she came through to the form of obedience. “This is what God wants, so we’ll conform to it.” And Zipporah did.
We can talk about the divine order of the Kingdom, but we had better start right at home. We must get our own lives in order. The Lord gives us days of grace, and then He says, “Now shape up.” We must shape up, or we will find God dealing with us in judgment before He deals with the rest of the world in judgment. Now is a time when we can voluntarily submit ourselves to what God is asking of us or else face the consequences in the judgment later.
All of this is only the prelude to what God really wants of us in this divine order. God has shown us what the finished product is supposed to be and what we are to be. He had revealed to us exactly what we are and how far we fall short of what He first indicated He wanted. Then He gave us the component parts to put together so that we can become what He wants.
Young people have a saying, “Get your mud together.” It means, “Get everything organized. Get with it.” The thing that God wants you to be, get with it. You see, like Acts 17:30 says, there are times of ignorance at which God winks. It’s not that He doesn’t require it of us, but He just gives us a period of time to get with it and “get our mud together,” so to speak. But the time finally comes when He puts the pressure on and says, “It is time to produce.”
Recently I went into something like this, myself. Continually I was being forced into moving on a greater level than I have. God was circumcising my heart. It seemed to be more drastic, but God was doing something that had to be done; it was long overdue. And unless I had submitted I think I would have been in great difficulty.
Every one of us will face this situation. Look at your own life and see how God is dealing with you. Don’t you think that He is demanding, “I’ve been patient and long-suffering with you, but now ‘get your mud together.’ Come on, put it all together. It is time to be what I’ve called you to be. How about producing?”
Did He call you to be a prophet? How about being a prophet? Did He call you to be a prophetess? Did He call you to be a deacon? Did He call you to be an elder? Did He call you to be a deaconess? He called you to be a servant or a handmaiden of the Lord and occupy yourself in a certain function. He has exposed you to His dealings; He has exposed you to His grace; He has shown you how to get it all together. There the human initiative really comes forth. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), but not on a human level, because God has made available in Himself everything that is necessary for you to be what He called you to be. All right, begin to produce it. Do not let the qualifications that He demands of you lie idle. Do not be negligent about the thing that He wants you to do.
Now let’s read in I Timothy 3 what God really requires of leaders. It is a trustworthy statement; if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer … (This is the same word as “bishop.”) Different translations say, “elder,” presbyter or the presbytery,” because they are taking a derivative of the same word. Presbuteros is the word for elder in the Greek so translators make it a more direct statement and call it Presbyter. Bishop means literally an overseer, technically an overseeing elder.)
An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious (that means argumentive), but gentle, uncontentious, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?); and not a new convert, lest he become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he may not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
Deacons likewise must be men of dignity, not double-tongued, or addicted to much wine or fond of sordid gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let these also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons if they are beyond reproach.
Women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. Let deacons be husbands of only one wife, and good managers of their children and their own households. (Incidentally, verse 11 says women must likewise be dignified. I think it is referring not as much to the wives of deacons as it is to deaconesses). For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a high standing and great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus. I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long; but in case I am delayed, I write so that you may know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth. I Timothy 3:1–5.
This indicates the very high standard for the elder, deacon, and deaconess. There is also a pretty rigid requirement for their children. There have been frequent cases when we have had brothers set aside by the Holy Spirit, and actually set in, yet they did not seem to meet all this. Before you say, “The truth is the truth, and we ought to hold fast to these qualifications,” let me explain something. We know what a person should be, and I do not think anyone has ever been put into an office unless the indication, or provision, or at least the token of this fulfillment, was present in a sufficient measure that we could say, “Yes, it’s there.” But it didn’t mean that the problems didn’t break loose again.
Probably everyone at that moment of the laying on of hands had (or soon would have) problems, which God saw there. God moves with a great deal of faith toward us. While seeing us in our unworthiness, still even beyond what is always evident, He gives us, by faith, the qualifications. I know that is true. I have watched people with many problems in their lives receive the Holy Spirit and start to preach the Word. I have seen elders, and I have seen deacons do it. I have seen the failures down the road, but I have also seen something else. Where the heart had embraced these qualifications by faith, God honored that and counted it to them for the righteousness they sought. It is not enough, though, for you to say, “God, You keep on crediting this to me for righteousness because I’m a believer,” but that faith has to give way to the reality of that qualification.
It is as if God has led us to a certain point and is saying, “All right, I’ve moved you into an office, I’ve moved you into a very essential place before My face. Now let Me take a look at you.” If you are not contending earnestly to walk in all those qualifications and you still do not embrace them by faith so that they are credited to you, God will start dealing with your heart. The righteous man falls seven times (Proverbs 24:16) but the Lord upholdeth him with His hand (Psalm 37:14). But when you are not striving against that failure and you stumble, you will find yourself in great difficulty, because the qualifications have not changed. They are not for every one else but you; they are for everyone! Everyone He calls into an office will have to measure up to those qualifications.
I suppose in some cases one might have a difficult time measuring up, but the difficulty would have to come from the truth, not a lie. It says of an elder that he must have a good reputation with those outside the church. Sometimes that is not possible when persecutions give him a bad image, but again, he has to take that as a transitional thing. Suppose a man is being tested by Satan lying about him; what is he to do? All he can do is just keep on going and show himself to be an honest man, and eventually prove it before the world. It does not mean he cannot go through many tests and trials.
The Scripture requires a man “to manage his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity.” Now if God looked upon that as being an unwavering qualification, I would have been out of the ministry at times and so would every other father in the church. At some time or another, the children get out of bounds but that is where the qualification is fulfilled—you manage your household well. Even when they have their problems, you continue to manage it with faith and you continue to deal with it until God changes it. The requirements are not just for hardheads to completely control everyone else’s life; it’s for someone who has the wisdom to keep dealing and moving upon the family until he has managed to lead his household into the things of faith.
As it was with Moses, you may be heading in to do the will of the Lord, and the Lord may stop you cold and say, “Here, Brother, don’t you understand that you have to shape up first? You have to ‘get your mud together.’ You can’t do anything else but the thing that I’ve set before you to do.”
I have the feeling that God has been very long-suffering with me, and now He is suddenly saying, “I’ve called you to be an apostle; now be one! Not only in the sense of the word, but also in the sense of the authority that should be manifest, that anything under your hand should be managed so it measures up to be what I want it to be. Lead out, son; ‘get your mud together.’ Get it all together now. This is where it is at. You do the thing you’re supposed to do.”
This is the point where we are going to stand or fall. This is where we either make it or we do not make it. We will never make it because the Word preached or the worship is wonderful. In the final analysis it is what we will be that matters. We must submit to be what God wants us to be, become His holy creation, and enter into that sonship He has set before us. That is where it is at; we must measure up to it. God has winked at the times when we were young. Just as we do with our own kids, how much more would the Heavenly Father do that. Some people spoil their little children terribly. But as the children grow older and start getting obnoxious, they soon straighten up, and say, “You get in line now. You can’t do this! This is the way you have to be!” Just as we do that with our children, so God has been very long-suffering with us. But now in this walk, He is beginning to say, “All right, now, come on, shape up!” The baby stage is over. Be the strong young sons you are supposed to be. Measure up to what God wants.
We would be the worst hypocrites in the world if we had such a glorious word, such perfect divine order preached and taught to us, and would back off and refuse to follow it through. But the following it through will be hard. I don’t know if I have the stomach for it or not. Do you feel the the same about yourself? I have been watching what God has been doing with me, saying “Here, shape up now—this is what you’re supposed to do.” I don’t like the idea. I would like to have more friends than I will have. I don’t have many friends anyway, and I’d like to keep them! I don’t want to start pushing, start shoving. But I know I must do it, and I am the one I must start on.
The Lord reminded me of a word that He had given me recently when I was on a fast. All of a sudden it hit me, “I got a word I’m not walking in; I’m not obedient to that word!” I felt my heart smite me in repentance. It was a simple little thing He told me to do, yet I had not done it. I wonder how many of us God is dealing with. Perhaps He is saying, “Come on, you are My children. I have given you enough of the truth—now just straighten up and be what I have called you to be.” I know it cannot be done in the flesh but God has given us all the component parts—just like a present you give your child. It is all together in one little box about twelve by six inches. You say, “How can it be?” You keep taking it apart and trying to put it together. Part “a” is screwed to part “b” and part “b” then is connected to part “c” in conjunction with “x”. Be sure that “x” is on top … etc. So simple that a child can put it together! When finally you get it all together, you have this great thing covering the whole room, yet it came in such a tiny box.
Have you ever gone to buy a baby bed? When you have it in your car, “Here’s the baby bed.”
“A baby bed in there?”
You don’t realize that the bed is all torn apart. It is a good thing that a pregnancy lasts nine months as it takes about that long to get the bed put together. Do you understand? It has all been delivered to you. That is exactly what the Lord is doing to us.
You say, “Now, this is going to be wonderful!”
He says, “I will deliver you from futility. You will loose all creation from futility. You will be my sons. This is the way out of it.”
“Oh, isn’t it marvelous? We’ll rejoice in it!” But here is where the payoff comes—when the Lord delivers the package, it is only a few words of grace. It is up to you to start putting it together, “getting all your mud together.” So you start doing it, and then you say, “It is about time now! Time to get the baby bed ready because the baby is coming.” Now is the time to get ready, because you are going to have to be what God spoke. You are not apprentices any longer, you are going to be His servants and His handmaidens who are doing His will. To everything He told us to be, we will say, “Yes, I’m going to be that. I will not draw back from it. In no way will I fail in it.”
That is what this message is all about. It is not such a fine inspirational sermon but if you think about it, you’ll lose a little sleep—it will keep bothering you; it will disturb you. Have you been called to be a prophet? Come on, get with it, we need you! And I don’t mean just a part-time prophet, now and then. Measure up. Are you called to be an elder? Are you called to be a deacon? Regardless of what it is, you know God has given you a calling. Don’t you think you had better get with it? You cannot let anything distract you, there must be wholehearted attention to it.
Discouragement may come where the Lord has chosen you for some special relationship, some position in the Body. You go along, and the acid test comes. You may want to be close to me, and feel God has raised you up to be an intercessor. Poor you! Do you want to be a partaker of this battle? Let’s see how you stand up. Let’s see how you react when day after day your feet are blistered in hell. Let’s see how you walk then. Will you draw back, or will you say, “Yes, I’m going to walk in that?” You say, “Yes, I’m called.” All right, let’s see.
Many are called but few are chosen. Matthew 22:14. Right there is the line of demarcation—this separates the men from the boys. This is where we say, “Yes, Lord, I see it, I’m going to be what you have called me to be,” and you begin to appropriate and believe for the very thing God called you to be. If you make some mistakes, well, who doesn’t? That is not the issue, but to come into the thing that God has said with all your heart is the issue.
Paul wrote to Titus, For this reason I left you in Crete, that you might set in order what remains, and appoint elders in every city as I directed you, namely, if any man be above reproach, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion. For the overseer (remember how they use an interchange of elder or overseer) must be above reproach as God’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict. For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach, for the sake of sordid gain. Titus 1:5–11.
Do you understand that there is an order? Paul told Titus to set the people in order. For a little while, we can smile on something, “Our brother has a problem.” No one will reject him, but the time has to come in which he has to say, “It is time now for this to be overcome. This is the time to get victory over this.”
Is there any among us who does not have some indication of this. The worst feeling we could have now would be to feel arrogant. I know God is teaching a divine order. This issue of the Lordship of Jesus and our submission to Him and to that divine order is the crux of the whole thing. I suppose everyone will have difficulty with it. But I’m going to make a statement as to where I stand. I find I want to be submissive, but submission to the perfect will of God is very difficult. You may feel like you are submissive; I hope you are. I am endeavoring by the Spirit of the Lord to be submissive, too. But I think that we ought to look at ourselves very carefully. There is a difference in what we’ve appropriated by faith and contended for, and what the Lord has imputed to us because of our faith. But now the time comes where you have to be a believer.
Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness (Romans 4:3). He could make a few mistakes as he went along; some of them were serious enough to almost cost his wife’s life. But still he had to come to the place where he could be called the father of the faithful.
You say, “Well, then, I’m going to go back to works in order that I can show my faith.” No, you are to believe and act accordingly. You are going to act according to your faith. If God has called you to become something, you are to set about to become that thing with all faith and all diligence. Believe God to become that. Whenever you fall, work on that area. This is not being legalistic in any way. Nevertheless, you can’t say, “I believe and therefore that wipes out all my failures and sins.” This appropriation of righteousness results in real bona fide righteousness in your life. The Bride was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteous acts of the saints (Revelation 19:8). It is going to be real. It will be a reality in your life.
You may have had the revelation in your heart about apostleship, and so have I. You may know what God wants for me and be praying for it. So do I. I am concerned that it must be there just the way God wants it. I know it cannot be because I do not have what it takes to be that, but I believe God will enable me to be that. I believe faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. I Thessalonians 5:14. I believe it will come to pass. I am not preaching to beat you down and to say you have a problem. This sermon was not born by thinking over your problems; this message was born by God speaking to me about mine. But what is happening to me is happening to you, too, and you would be foolish to back off and say, “God is dealing with you. Just leave me out of it.” He is dealing with all of us. We are facing the same problem together. I think that we ought earnestly to pray and contend for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3).
An old saying is “There’s so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, it ill behooves any of us to say anything about the rest of us.” That old proverb calls for tolerance—but I am calling for something besides tolerance, because I do not think tolerance is necessarily a virtue. I would say instead of being tolerant with one another, have more faith to believe for one another to measure up to what he should be. Do not be tolerant with imperfection, but be diligent in seeking after the perfection God wants. Contend for it in ourselves, to begin with, and in others. This does not mean we will be perfectionists after the flesh, but it means that we will believe the Lord is able to do a perfect work in us and bring forth exactly what He wants in our lives.
“This is a faithful word that God is speaking to us. I am so impressed with it because there is a real danger in holding the truth in unrighteousness. God has given us so much. We have a Living Word. We have a sure word from God in this hour. I have just no doubt about it. When we have such truth in our midst, it will not be the enemy who will come against us; if we hold the truth in unrighteousness, God will turn us over to the lusts of our own flesh unless we are careful. If we turn and give glory to God, if we walk in this and are faithful to the truth that God has given unto us, then God will bless us and prosper us. We will see everything that we believe for come forth. I hear this word with fear and trembling in my heart. A real repentance comes over my spirit because I know that God means business in this word.”