What is something spiritual that we can do that most people won't argue about in a day and age when sometimes we're afraid to speak up? How can we speak up and share our lives in a positive way, as God's word teaches us? I want to read from God's word today and read you how Moses spoke up for God and what came of that testimony today. We read in Exodus 18.
“Now Jethro, the priest of Midian and father-in-law of Moses, heard of everything God had done for Moses and for his people Israel, and how the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt. After Moses had sent away his wife Zipporah, his father-in-law Jethro received her and her two sons. One son was named Gershom, for Moses said, "I have become an alien in a foreign land"; and the other was named Eliezer, for he said, "My father's God was my helper; he saved me from the sword of Pharaoh." Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, together with Moses' sons and wife, came to him in the desert, where he was camped near the mountain of God. Jethro had sent word to him, "I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons." So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him. They greeted each other and then went into the tent. Moses told his father-in-law about everything the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel's sake and about all the hardships they had met along the way and how the Lord had saved them. Jethro was delighted to hear about all the good things the Lord had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians. He said, "Praise be to the Lord, who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and of Pharaoh, and who rescued the people from the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly." Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law in the presence of God.”
I want you to picture the scene for a moment. Imagine here that they camp near the mountain of God below Mount Horeb, as it's called, or Mount Sinai is the other name for it. God has just provided water from the rock for them. Here before these majestic rocks that rise into the sky before them, towering over them, they pitch tents on this plane below the mountain. You must remember it was at this mountain that Moses encountered God in that burning bush and where Moses met with God at the very foot of Mount Horeb. God said to Moses, “I want you to go to Egypt and bring my people out and tell Pharaoh to set my people free.” You know the story of how Moses doubted himself and said to God, “Who am I? I'm a nobody. I'm an 80-year-old man, what can I do?” Of course, God promised personally to go with Moses to Egypt. God says, “I will give you a sign that I have spoken to you and I will prove this to you, by the fact that I will bring you back to this very mountain with the nation here to worship God on this mountain.” In a wonderful sense, God was giving proof to Moses, that he wasn't hallucinating, that he wasn't smoking the weed, or he wasn't going through one of those coincidences that we doubt was God. It wasn't a case of Moses having a clever strategy to release the slaves from Egypt. It wasn't Moses's great leadership that did it all. No, it was God who proved that He had spoken to Moses and that He was doing everything through Moses and that He was bringing Moses back to the mountain of God.
Moses probably went from the burning bush back to his father-in-law, Jethro, and said, “You know, Father, I need to tell you that I have to go back to Egypt. I saw a burning bush.”
And you can imagine Jethro thinking, “Burning bush?”
“Well you know I have this promise from God that he will go with me.
I'm sure if you were Jethro you would have probably been pretty skeptical. A bush that doesn't burn. God sending you on a mission, as an old man. The list of reasons not to believe it are many. Yet we see Moses going.
We can imagine that Moses's wife had grown up in Jethro's home, and now Moses had been with her 40 years, so now she probably, reluctantly packs her bags and goes along with Moses. We read in the Scriptures that along the way they have this domestic argument. A real humdinger of a fight. In fact there the issue seems to have been the circumcision of the children. Like a good mother, she takes the children's side, gets upset about it. Zipporah at the end of doing what was right in God's sight, eventually says, “I've had enough of this. I'm leaving you. You are bridegroom of blood” she calls Moses. She takes the kids and goes back to mother and father-in-law, Jethro the priest of Midian. And there she is separated from Moses for months.
Several months later, after this domestic argument, things have cooled down a bit, I would imagine. And now they get a message, not a WhatsApp, or an SMS, but probably a runner goes to them and tells them, “Hey Moses is back. He's at the mountain of God.” And Jethro goes there realising, “Hey, Moses must have told the truth.” For now, behind Moses stands two and a half million Israelites. All that God had told Moses through the burning bush has come to pass and now months later here is the proof that God did speak to Moses. It wasn't his imagination. It wasn't a dream. It wasn't smoking some berries in the bush.
No, this was a time for revival and a time of family reunion for Moses to be reunited with his wife, and sons, and with his father-in-law. You can imagine that after there were hugs, kisses, and making up, the families are reunited. They sit down and Moses tells the story. Moses tells God's story, his story, history in a sense, to this priest from another religion. Remember, Jethro was a priest of Midian, who worshipped idols. Here Moses tells how God worked in the ten plagues. He tells how God freed his people from the clutches of slavery, and bondage, and how God led his people through the desert to the Red Sea. Then parted the Red Sea and they walked through on dry land. How God destroyed the army of the Egyptians and drowned them. How God led them for three months through the desert. How God had provided water from a rock to give enough to drink for two and a half million people. How every morning there was manna to gather for bread and there was quail every night, for meat in the camp. God was providing everything. It was dinner, bed, and breakfast, deluxe.
In all of the story, we see the power of a testimony to God's working, in Moses, and through Moses, and through the lives of all his people. Jethro, this passage tells us, was delighted to hear the great things that God had done. He then praises God. We likewise, praise God for every testimony of God's goodness. We delight to see that a saving knowledge comes to Jethro the priest, who turns from worshipping many gods to worshiping the one true God. You see that here it was prayer that is the key. For prayer in the battle is what breaks through and gives us the victory. We read in Ephesians 6:12 and onwards. We read that: “Our battle in prayer is not against flesh and blood but principalities, against the powers, and the rulers, of the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” We are not fighting people who do not believe. We are fighting against spiritual powers that blind people and make them deaf to the good news. Powers who keep people from worshiping the one true God and Father of all His creation.
Our weapons are prayer, on the one hand praying for people, and our other weapon is our testimony. You see we need to speak up for God, tell of His fame. We need to use our testimony to point people to Jesus. I wonder, have you ever shared what Jesus has done in your life with other people to point them to Jesus?
Let me give you one little story I came across. The story of Carrie. Carrie was a shy little teenage girl who one day was asked by a Mom to go shopping and get some groceries in the local shopping center, get some food. As she was going around the Pick ‘n Pay, or whatever it was, there she was shopping. Her Mom had asked to take her little two-year-old sister along. So she took the sister and plonked her in the little fold-down chair in the trolley, with her two little legs sticking out, and pushed this trolley around the Pick ‘n Pay getting all the groceries they needed. As they went along one aisle, Carrie noticed an elderly woman whose handbag had fallen open and all the contents of her handbag were strewn over the aisle. In the middle of the shop, Carrie got down on her knees and picked up the things and put them one-by-one back in this old lady's handbag, who was battling to bend down. As she dropped the contents in the handbag, as a teenage girl, this old lady commented. She said, “Young lady you're different. There's something different about you.”
“Most young people,” she says, “in my experience simply laughed and never helped me.” Carrie got all embarrassed and blushed a little bit. And she said, “Well, you know I’m just trying to be helpful.”
At that moment the little two-year-old sister in her trolley was kicking her feet and started singing that wonderful song” “Jesus loves me this I know.” Carrie reacted sternly, saying, “Shhhh. Keep quiet.”
This elderly lady looked at Carrie and said, “So, I hear your sister singing. Tell me something, are you a Christian?”
And Carrie again blushed an even deeper red. She said, “Well, yes! and Jesus has changed me and come into my life.”
And so the old lady said, “O, so that's the difference! You as a Christian young lady who would stop to help me and meet my needs in this crisis with my handbag strewn over this aisle.”
And she said, “Do you know something young lady? There's a friend of mine across the road from my house, who has been trying to tell me about Jesus for years. Maybe I need to start listening to her.” Carrie's testimony and her actions led to that elderly lady being far more open to what God was doing.
In the same way that Paul testified to kings and ordinary people, about what God had done in his life, God calls you and me to speak up for what God has done. Not to wait till we're in court to give testimony, but every day to give testimony in some way or another. Our weapons of dealing with this world are not to fight people physically, or to argue, or to get into a loud debate with people. But rather to pray for them and to testify to God's work in our lives and through us into the world.
So what did Jethro do? He offered sacrifices now to the living God. We don't have to make animal sacrifices any longer because Jesus Christ has come and he is the final and complete sacrifice. No further animal sacrifices are needed from anyone. All of us can rely on the one complete work of God that has been done through Jesus Christ's death on that Roman cross. If Jesus is the final and complete sacrifice we don't have to offer animals to the ancestors or do anything for any other spirit. We just need to worship the one true God based on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Jesus is now our substitute. He has stood in for us. We can now, out of gratitude make our lives a living sacrifice, where we give God our time, where we give God our talents, where we give God our treasures, where we serve God with all our being out of gratitude to him. Where we say to God by everything we say and everything we do: “Thank you, Lord, for changing me. Thank you, Lord, for working in my life and working through me, in this world, where you have placed me." We have been forgiven of our sin by the one final sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We now live our lives in gratitude as free people, like the Israelites, free from the slavery of sin, free to serve the living God. We are called then to live for Jesus in every way out of gratitude alone.
The interesting thing is that the sacrifice of Jethro led to a feast. There was eating of bread with Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel. In the same way, when we come to know Jesus Christ, He invites us to join him around his table, called the Lord's Table, at what we call communion, where we commune with our God and eat bread and drink the cup in remembrance of the broken body of Jesus and the blood of Jesus shed for you and me. Communion is the place where we gather as God's people. It's at Communion that we meet with other believers as well. It's through our testimony that they join us at Communion when God changes their lives and they begin worshiping the one true living God revealed to us in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Triune God, is one God in three persons. Never underestimate the power of testimony. Why? Because you need to use your testimony to point people to Jesus Christ.
My challenge to you every week, is to find someone with whom you perhaps have a relationship, or you are developing a relationship, or befriending them – share your testimony repeatedly. Talk to them about what God has done in your life. You might think about how it was before you knew Jesus and now how it is since Jesus has come into your life. Tell a before and after picture but always emphasize the after. What has Jesus done for you in this week, in this month, in this year, in these last two difficult years? Testify about what God has done in your life. Always pointing to Jesus, to his work in your life. For God has done this and now you need to share your journey and you need to share God's miracles with others. I want to encourage you to do this, especially if you've never done it before.
Take a piece of paper and write down all the things God has done for you lately or since you came to know him. Remember to contrast those things that were in your life, maybe loneliness, and now God has given you a new spiritual family the body of Christ. Maybe it was depression and now God has given you peace and joy. Maybe it was no friends and now he's given you new, eternal, friends. Maybe it was many different things in your life that God has changed. The dependence on substances is now replaced by a total reliance on Jesus and his Holy Spirit in you. All of that you can testify to. You can then invite them, as they trust in Jesus, to sit with you at Communion. We come to communion the first Sunday of every month. I want to encourage you this week, and every week for that matter, to look for at least one opportunity to share your testimony, to use your testimony to point people to Jesus Christ. Has Jesus done something in your life? Tell the world about it. If he hasn't, cry out to Jesus to save you and to come into your life, that you might have a testimony to tell.
Let us pray together. Our Lord Jesus thank you for what you doing in our lives and that when you come into our life, you change us. You don't just change us once off, but it's a day-by-day relationship and moment by moment you're at work in our lives. Thank you that we can look back at your goodness to us as a church. Lord helps us to share our testimony. Lord, even if you want us to record it on a little video on WhatsApp and share it with our friends, or even share it with the church. Lord helps us to share what you have done in our lives, one-on-one preferably, but to tell the world even as Paul did before kings of what you had done, and are doing for us. For some who have no testimony hear their heart cry today, Lord Jesus. Jesus save me now. Lord Jesus come into their life by your Holy Spirit. Forgive their sin. Save them and lead them to a great testimony of what you do, from this day forward in their lives. I ask this in your powerful name Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, I pray that this message has been of help to you. I pray that you can look for somebody to share the good news with just in testimony. Remember what Revelations 12:11 says that we don't fight a spiritual battle. We don't get in there with fists, knives, guns, or bombs. No, we pray, and by the word of our testimony and the blood of the lamb of God, Jesus Christ, we overcome even the evil of this world. Your testimony is very important. Maybe you think it's just a little thing that God did for you, but tell the world. Because there's somebody out there that needs to hear what God has done in you and through you into this world. So may God bless you. Live your life to the glory of Jesus. To Him be all the praise, and the honor, and the glory, and the power, now and always. Amen.