Note: Transcriptions are done by software. Errors may occur.
Saved To Serve | David Fisher
Okay, y’all ready to study the scriptures this morning? Y’all ready? Okay, good, good. Y’all, this was Easter recently for us, but in the Jewish world, Passover was on Tuesday. They usually overlap a whole lot, but because they’re done on different calendars, the Jewish Passover was on Tuesday. Most of you will know what Passover is. Some of you, you may not.
We’re going to visit about Passover a little bit more next week when we have communion, and we’re going to start having communion on the first Sunday of every month. But some of y’all probably saw that movie, The Ten Commandments, with, what was it, Charleston Heston, is that he’s the one? Moses, you know? What did he tell Pharaoh? Let my people go. That’s what I’ve always heard.
That’s what I thought. You know, that’s not all that he said to Pharaoh. We’re going to study that today, because I think there is something profound. I’ve asked several people just like y’all over this last week. I said, what is it that Moses told Pharaoh? He said, well, let my people go. And I said, what else? And they said, I don’t know.
Was there something else? Well, at the end of this message, you will be convinced that Moses was told by God to say something a whole lot more, and it has a whole lot of significance to us, and our walk, and our walk for God, and our service to God. Back when God first revealed himself to Abraham, really I guess when he made the covenant with Abraham, he had already revealed himself beforehand. But when he made the covenant with Abraham, he told them that your people, your descendants, multitude as the stars, will become strangers in a land, and they will then become afflicted for 400 years, and then I’m going to deliver them, and I’m going to take them to a land, this land that we call the promised land, the land of Canaan, where God eventually, which is the place of Israel today.
I’m going to start here in Exodus 3. We’re going to move through several things, but in Exodus 3, God tells Moses that he revealed himself in the burning bush. It was a bush out in the mountain, and God revealed himself to Moses, and he says, I’m choosing you to go deliver my people, to deliver my people, and to bring them to the promised land, and over in chapter 3, verse 12, Moses says, you sure it’s me? He goes, yeah, it’s you. He says, well, what’s the sign? He says, the sign will be that I have done this, these people have been delivered, and they will serve God on this mountain, and that starts setting the stage for all the things that Moses is about to do and about to say.
Sure enough, over in the fourth chapter of Exodus, where I’m going to kind of skip through, I’m going to mention some verses for you to write them down, and I’ve got some of them that we’re going to put on the screen, but in Exodus 4, God tells Moses exactly what it is that he wants him to go tell Pharaoh. When they start this deliverance from bondage and from affliction, where their people have been 400 years. You all understand this country has only been around for 250 years? We start to put it into historical context of how long the people of Israel were afflicted, and they were over in Egypt, 400 years.
And so God tells Moses, he says, I want you to go tell them, go tell Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, Israel is my firstborn. So I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. So Moses starts getting these instructions, and then Moses kind of starts chickening out, and said, hey, I don’t speak so good, can you get somebody else? God got kind of frustrated with Moses, in fact, he got angry.
He says, well, your brother Aaron, he’s three years older than you, and he’s going to come be your mouthpiece. He’s going to speak for you. And so Moses and Aaron teamed up, and they go to Pharaoh.
And the first encounter with Pharaoh starts in chapter 5, verse 1 of Exodus. And Moses and Aaron go in, and they tell Pharaoh, thus says the Lord God of Israel, let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. So it’s not exactly what God had told Moses, a little bit, but it’s close.
Moses started talking about, said, just let us go a three-day journey. He kind of was maybe testing the waters a little bit. They kind of told a little bit of what God told Pharaoh, but they didn’t say everything that they had been given from God.
And so they have that first encounter, as you all know from the movie, if you haven’t read it in the Bible, Pharaoh gets upset, he makes it hard, says I’m gonna make them get their own straw to make bricks, and all the people were upset at Moses and Aaron, really, really upset. But still God promised, I promise you I’m gonna take you, I’m going to deliver you from Egypt. And then we skip over to the first plague, the first plague since chapter 7, verse 16, we’ve got this verse up here.
And so once again, this is before the first plague where they touch the water, and all the water turns into blood. He says, so you’re gonna say to him, meaning Pharaoh, the Lord God of the Hebrews has sent me to you, saying let my people go, period. No, let my people go, why? That they may serve me in the wilderness.
But indeed, until now, you would not hear. So, of course, Pharaoh doesn’t hear, there’s blood, everything turns, all the water turned into blood, only for the Egyptians, not for the Israelites. And God starts setting up the distinction between the people who were the oppressors and the people he’s gonna deliver.
We see the exact same thing before the second plague, which is the one about frogs. Have this one up for Exodus 8:1. The Lord says to Moses, go to Pharaoh and say to him, thus says the Lord, let my people go, why? So that they may what? They may serve me. I’m gonna tell you, every single time God tells Moses and Aaron, and every time Moses and Aaron come to Pharaoh after that, they say this exact same phrase.
It happens again in Exodus 8:20, before the flies. Thus says the Lord my God, let my people go that they may serve me. It says it again before the fifth plague where all the livestock die in Exodus 9:1. Let my people go that they may serve me. Right before the seventh plague of hell, he says the exact same thing in Exodus 9:13. Then before the eighth plague of locusts in Exodus 10:3, he says exactly the same thing. Let my people go, why? Let my people go, why? That they may serve me. Every single time. Does it again before the ninth on August, I’m sorry, on Exodus 10, chapter 26. And that’s the plague of darkness. Every single time. They are not being set free just to be set free. They’re being set free for a purpose. And then they institute, God institutes what’s Passover. We’re gonna talk more about Passover next week. But before the last plague, God told them on the 10th day, this is now the first month of the year for the Jewish people. They’re to take a lamb, bring it into their home. It could be either a goat or it could be of a sheep. And on the 14th day, they’re to slaughter that, put blood on their doors.
And that night at midnight, the destroyer will come through the land and will kill the firstborn of every Egyptian animal or person from the top to the bottom. But God passed over the houses of the Israelites because they had the blood of the lamb on the door and they followed Passover. That’s what, y’all gonna see the parallels of Christ.
Christ is our Passover. We’re gonna get into that next week. So I don’t wanna get sidetracked. But I want you to understand that. In Exodus 12:25, God tells them, you’re gonna do this. You’re gonna do this every year because this is your service to me. Your service to me. Sure enough, the destroyer comes. And I want you to look, if you have your Bible open, to Exodus 12, verses 31 and 32.
I don’t have that on a slide. And so after the firstborn is killed, after the firstborn is killed, in the nighttime, Moses, or Pharaoh sins for Moses and sins for Aaron and says, come here. And they get up and they rise and they come to Pharaoh and he says, you go and serve the Lord as you have said.
I don’t remember that in the movie. Do you? He says, I want you to go. I don’t want you to go serve the Lord as you’ve said. And they took all the people, hundreds of thousands of people, all left just as God had promised 430 years before. You think God doesn’t have a plan? God doesn’t have a purpose? Read the scriptures. Because these things happen over centuries.
They happen over centuries. Y’all have heard the greatest commandment where Jesus is being asked, what’s the greatest commandment? Y’all can repeat it back to me. You shall what? You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and soul and mind, and some verses say in your strength.
Right? Where does that come from? It wasn’t something that Jesus just thought up when he’s having a teaching with somebody. He’s quoting from Deuteronomy. He’s quoting from the law. Of course, he’s the author of all the law, so he knows it. And so that was given, that command was given to Moses back in Deuteronomy. But there’s one command that I just, I’m going to just be honest with you, I’ve just skipped over.
And it’s almost the exact same command. But I want you to see what else is in, what God is speaking to his people after they’re about to enter the promised land. Because Deuteronomy is a speech that Moses is giving to the people right before, after they’ve gone through 40 years of the wilderness, and now they’re about to go into the promised land.
We put that slide up there for Deuteronomy 10, verses 12 and 13. And so this is Moses speaking. This is Moses speaking to them.
He says, it’s really the caption in my paragraph says, the essence of the law. This is what the whole law was intended to be. And now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him.
To serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Y’all catch that? And to serve the Lord your God. Not just love the Lord your God, but to follow the Lord your God, and to serve the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul.
And to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes which I command you today. For why? For your good. The commandments of God are not meant to be burdensome.
They’re not meant to deprive us. They’re all meant to be for our good, for our welfare, for our good, so that things will go well with us. But it’s not that, you know, we live in a world where the term love is, I love my wife and I love hamburgers.
I love my wife a whole lot more than hamburgers, but we use the same word. I love this. I love that. And it’s, I’m going to tell you, the love that God, and so sometimes when people think about it, I love the Lord. I love God. Yeah, I love him. Man, I’m not following him. That’s something different. And I love him.
I love him. I’m going to tell you the commandment, the essence of the law is not just to think fondly about God. The essence of the law is not to think just good things about God, but it is also if we’re going to love, we do it through service.
We’ve got a ministry here called Serve Love. You cannot love someone without serving someone. You know that? You don’t love just because it’s in your mind. You love because of what you do. And what we do is we serve. We serve God. It is action. We love God. We follow God. We serve God. Not just a little bit. Not on our spare time. It says love and follow and to serve. Put that back up there, verse 12. And to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all of your soul.
I was talking with our elders here recently and I asked because this is part of our responsibility. What is one of the issues in our church that we see as a weakness or something that needs to improve the spiritual condition of our people? And one of the words that came back is we have a participation problem. I want you all to let that sink in.
We have a participation problem because I think we need to understand and to learn and to know and get deep into our hearts how important it is that God calls us to serve. And we serve him by serving each other. Jesus, put up the John 12:26. Jesus is talking about the importance of service. If anyone serves me, this is right before he’s about to, very close before he’s about to be crucified. John 12:26. If anyone serves me, let them do what? Let them follow me and where I am, there my servant will be also. It means if you’re right there on the tail end following him, he’s going to be with you. But we’ve got to follow. And we’ve got to follow by serving. And we serve him. And if anyone serves him, my father will what? My father will honor him. You want good from God? Man, we’ve got to serve him. And I want to tell you, this is not a works-based salvation. It is service that becomes because we know we’ve been given grace.
Salvation comes to us as a gift from God. But it also comes with a responsibility for us to follow him and to serve him with all of our heart, with all of our mind, with all of our strength. When I was reading that this week and going back and looking at the Old Testament and thinking, we weren’t saved for our sakes.
We were saved because God wants a people to serve him. We were saved to serve. I wish you would write that down in your notes in capital letters. Just write these three words. Saved to serve. Saved to serve. That’s why he called us. That’s why he plucks us up out of the affliction. That’s why he plucks us up out of the bondage. That’s why he takes us away from the afflictions. Not just so that we’ll be relieved from those afflictions, but so that we will serve him and serve him with all of our heart and all of our mind. I want you to write it down underneath that. How will I serve? And I want you to spend some time talking to God. How will you serve him? And I want that to be the meditation of your heart this week. God, how do you want me to serve you? I want to serve. I can serve. Every single person in this room can do something for God. Every one of you. You’re qualified because he saved you. And because he saved you, he’s calling us to serve him. I’ve had people over the years tell me, quit referring to Old Testament scriptures. I’m going to tell you, I don’t listen to that kind of foolishness because it’s just wrong. You know, Paul did the same thing. Paul goes back and if you do have, I do want you to, if you have your Bible, go to 1 Corinthians 10:6-11. I didn’t have this in my notes, but the Lord brought it back to my memory this morning. 1 Corinthians 10, it’s going to be in 6-11. And you know what Paul’s talking about? He’s talking about the Old Testament. And this is the writer of most of the New Testament. He’s in here talking about the Old Testament and using the Old Testament as examples for us in the New Testament. Man, there’s a lot of wisdom.
There’s a lot of wisdom that’s in there. And he’s talking about there in verse 6, he says, now these things, he’s talking about all the experiences that the Israelites had when they were walking through the wilderness and how they were eating the manna from heaven, and they were drinking the water that’s been provided by God. And he says, now these things became our examples, our examples, that we shouldn’t lust after evil things as they also lusted, not to become idolaters, not to commit sexual adultery, not to tempt Christ as some have done it.
And many of them were destroyed by serpents and people who complained and people who were destroyed by the destroyer. Verse 11 says, now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition. Admonition, there we go. It happened for our admonition. He said, because he wants you to learn something. The wisest person doesn’t learn from their mistakes. The wise person, the most wise person learns from the mistakes of others. Okay? And if we’re going to be wise, if we’re going to be wise Christians, let’s learn from the mistakes that the Israelites made. He said that’s exactly why these things were written.
They were written for our admonition upon which the ends of the ages have come. This is a simple sermon. I know I quoted a lot of Bible verses, but I want you to leave here with a firm impression in your mind, God did not save you for anything other than to serve.
He saved you to serve, to be his people, to be his people. And if we get that deep in our hearts, this is going to be a church on fire. But I’m going to tell you, if we don’t serve and we don’t help each other and we don’t participate and we don’t do things, I’m going to tell you the fire starts dimming.
People get frustrated. People get upset. You know, after God delivered his people from Israel, I’m sorry, when God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, within days they came up to the Red Sea. Over in Exodus 14, I’m sorry, I’ve got to read this one too. So in Exodus 14, it starts in verses 11 through 12. God has just delivered the Israelites through 12 plagues. None of those plagues fell on the Israelites. It was all upon their oppressors. It was all upon the people of Egypt. And they’ve been set free. And they are now leaving on their way to the promised land. They’re on the edge of the Red Sea and they look up and they see Pharaoh coming after them.
And you know what they start doing? These people who have been saved, they start complaining. And they say, oh, why’d you bring us out here to die? Isn’t this what we told you? Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians. You understand? Within three days they’re already saying, I wish we were still worshipping, I wish we were still serving with the Egyptians.
Three days after they’ve been delivered, they start going back. Sorry, can’t we just go back? You know, we had plenty of food back then. It would have been so much better for us to serve the Egyptians. God delivers them through the Red Sea. Within days they need water. And what do they start doing? They start complaining. Oh, you brought us out here to die. God still delivers them. Pretty soon they start getting hungry. And what do they start doing? Oh, they start complaining. Oh, we don’t have anything to eat. Oh, it was so much better when we were in bondage, when we were back in Egypt with the leeks and the onions. Boy, it was great. We had great food. And you’ve brought us out here without anything to eat. God delivers and brings bread to them every single day. People still didn’t follow. They still disobeyed.
And some of them started committing sexual immorality. After they’ve been delivered from bondage, they start returning to a lifestyle that was not in service of God, that was not pleasing to God. And they had to spend 40 years because they didn’t believe, they didn’t trust, and they didn’t realize God had called them and saved them to serve Him.
And I don’t want us to fall into that same mistake and that same trap because the enemy is okay sometimes for you to come down and say a prayer and to start doing some church stuff, to think you’re on the journey to being fully delivered. And he just whistles and says, well, come on back and do the things. You know, it sure was a whole lot more fun when you were doing this back when you were in my house.
I’m gonna tell you, it’s a problem for Christians. And I know people that I’ve grown up with and through all of my years in church, I know there are people not only in this congregation, but in congregations all over. God has spoken to them and says, I want to deliver you from the bondage of the devil.
I want to deliver you. But the truth is it doesn’t take long before they’re just as comfortable going back to what they were doing and living a lifestyle the same way they’re as comfortable in the lifestyles that God told them to come out of, that God delivered them from the ways of the Egyptians, from the ways of Satan. And they start just playing with it and wishing for it.
And man, I sure wish I could do this. And I wish that God would let me do things that are not pleasing to them. And we just kind of start getting into a rut of, you all know what the ruts are. I don’t need to name them. If I’m not serving God, I’m falling into a rut. If I’m not serving God, I’m really going back and still serving my old taskmaster. And other people who God delivers who will go back and they just fully haven’t been saved. They don’t have the full new heart that God promised. We’re going to talk about this next week of the new covenant that God has given us.
The new promise that he gave to us was to give us a new heart. And that’s a heart to serve him with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our strength. I wish that I was coming in a way, coming and giving you a bright, sunny, sunshine message.
But I’m going to tell you, I think this is important. It is important for us to understand we have been saved to serve. And God wants to take you out of the bondage and completely free you from it. So quit taking trips back to the old land. Quit taking the trips back to the bondage maker. And let’s start setting our sights on the promised land that God has promised for you to give you a new heart, a new soul, and a new mind. With all of our strength. Amen? Amen. Dallas, you come on up. If somebody came and asked you and says, what was that sermon about today? What would you tell them? You’d pull out your notebook just like Glenn did. He says, is it going to say right here? And it says, saved to serve. That’s it. I’ll tell you, it’s important for us. I thank you all for listening. But I believe the Holy Spirit wants to see our participation in this church, our service in this church just accelerating and to go stronger and stronger and stronger. And I’m going to tell you what, we do that not so we can earn salvation. We do it for our good. Because that’s what He’s asked. If we will serve Him, we will be in better shape and better condition. We’ll be happier. It doesn’t mean every circumstance in your life is going to go exactly how you want it to go. We live in a broken, fallen world. But I’m going to tell you what, He’s going to give you the peace to get through it. And He’s going to give you the joy to overcome it.
And He’s going to give you the peace that passes all understanding. And I’m going to ask you, with all that I know to ask you, is please, please spend time in prayer with God saying, God, how do you want me to serve you? I believe it’s through the body of the church. He’s given us the body of the church for that very reason.
And we’re going to be talking about this a lot. You can serve. But not only can you serve, that’s exactly why God saved you to serve.
Y’all stand with me. Is there anybody here who has never given their life to Jesus Christ and they just know that you want God to save you and you want God to deliver you from the oppressor because you are living in bondage, you’re living in affliction, you’re living in things that are hurting your heart and hurting your soul. And you want to come today and say, I want to give it all to Jesus.
You can come yourself to the altar and you can come speak to me or one of the elders. I’m going to ask the prayer partners to go over here to this side here. I’m going to ask the elders to stand up here for those who need prayer, who need healing.
But I believe, I believe that the Spirit of God in you is going to compel you to serve. It’s going to call you to serve. And you’re going to see the need and God’s going to call you to it. Y’all join with me in prayer. Is there anybody here who wants to be baptized? Who wants to appeal for a clean conscience? Come tell me during this time and we’ll make sure that that happens today because we believe it’s important. It’s because Jesus said to do it. And if we’re going to follow Jesus, if we’re going to serve Him, we’re going to follow Him. And we’re going to follow Him everywhere He goes. And if we’re doing that, He’s going to be right there with us. Amen. Amen.