Failing Forward (Week 1) - When Other Fail You - Audio
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We're starting a new series today, as Tony mentioned, failing forward the life of Moses. And it's near and dear to Tony Sartre. It's near and dear to my heart because unlike a lot of you, I have noticed that I am not a perfect person. Not only do I make mistakes, but I often let people down. I've done things and been the person who has just tripped all over himself. And the kind of the theme for this series-- and really, it's throughout the whole Bible, but it's especially the case in the life of Moses-- is that God doesn't work in spite of us. He doesn't work in spite of failures. God works through failure. There is no way that God is just sitting there being like, oh, you made a mistake. Let me just press the reset button and fix everything. That's not how God operates. And today, we're going to start out not by looking at ourselves. We're going to be looking at others. And I have a picture here of Rembrandt's vision of Moses. Moses is generally considered to be one of the heroes of the Bible. He's like this awesome leader. He did all these amazing things. If you don't know the story, one of the things that he's most famous for is leading the Israelite people out of slavery and Egypt into or close to the Promised Land. So he's this great, amazing figure. What I love about this painting is that if you look at his face in this painting, he does not look like a really great leader. In fact, you might notice he looks like he's about to cry. And he's holding above his head the 10 commandments. This is going to be the foundation of Israel's law. It's going to have a profound effect on all of human history at this point. The 10 commandments, the law of Israel is the basis for most of the morality that you get at least in Western civilization. And because of the missionary movement throughout the world. So he's holding in his hands right now the 10 statements that are going to define human civilization. And he's depressed. We're not going to get to this part of the story yet, not today. But I will tell you this. The title of this painting is The Breaking of the Tablets. Moses, throughout his life, is not the hero maybe that you thought he was. He's a failure again and again and again.
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Coast Bible Church, PastorTom Bennett, San Juan Capistrano, CA, www.coastbible.org