Sunday Sermon: Get Rid of Excuses
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Text: Exodus 4:10-17
Series: “Gearing Up for a Fantastic Fall”
You know the old saying, “If you don’t want to do something, one excuse is as good as another.” That saying applies pretty much to everything in life, including church. In fact, a minister friend of mine some years ago had the audacity to write a column for his church newsletter one week, touting what he called a special upcoming Sunday they were calling “No Excuse Sunday.”
“We’ll be pulling out all the stops for this special Sunday,” he promised. “Cots will be placed in the foyer for those who say that Sunday is their only day to sleep in. Blankets will be furnished for those who think the church is too cold and fans for those who think it’s too hot. Scorecards will be available for those who want to keep tally of the hypocrites who are present, and we’ll invite some relatives for those who see Sundays as a day to visit family.” And the coup de gras? “The Sanctuary will be decorated with both Christmas poinsettias and Easter lilies for those who have never seen the church without them.”
How that friend managed to stay at his church after that article is beyond me. But you understand his point. Nowhere else do you find more capable excuse-makers than in the church.
Evidently, according to the Scriptures, this pattern has been in place for thousands of years, dating back all the way to Moses and his days in Midian. You’ll remember how Moses got to Midian. An adopted child of privilege, Moses had seen an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave and knowing his own Hebrew roots, Moses had taken matters into his own hands, killing the Egyptian and burying his body in the sand. But when Moses learned that what he did had become common knowledge and that Pharaoh was looking for him, Moses fled to Midian, on the back side of nowhere, where he took a wife, became a shepherd of his father-in-law’s flocks, and planned on living out his days in relative peace.
And then God appeared to him in the burning bush. And on that holy ground Moses heard the call of God upon his life. “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt. Now, go!”
How did Moses respond to the call of God? Not just with one excuse, but with a litany of excuses. “Who am I that You should ask me to do such a thing?” “And who are you anyway?” “And what if they don’t believe me?” And now the excuse that is before us this morning: “I’m not qualified. I’m not eloquent. I don’t have the wisdom to convince either Pharaoh or the people.” And at this last excuse, what does the text say? “The LORD’s anger burned against Moses.” In other words, though God is indeed “merciful and gracious and slow to anger” (Ps. 86:15), there comes a point where God cannot withhold His anger any longer. “Who gave human beings their mouths? Now go; I will help you speak and teach you what to say.” What we may not pick up from our English translations is how God’s response to Moses’ reluctance is based on God’s being, not Moses’, on God’s capacity, not Moses’, and on God’s strength, not Moses’. The same revelation God gave to Moses at the burning bush (“I Am Who I Am or I Will Be Who I Will Be”) now shows up again in this story (“I will be with you; I will help you speak and teach you what to say”).
All our excuses pale in comparison to the power of God. If God’s calling upon our lives actually depended on our prowess and our ability, then we’d have good reason to wilt in the face of it. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t depend on us. It depends on God. And if God calls us to a certain task, God will equip us for it. Therefore, we have no excuse for rejecting God’s calling in our lives. In theological terms, we know this divine equipping as grace.
Normally, we equate grace with pardon, with God’s forgiveness that wipes our sin slates clean and makes it possible for us to enter into God’s presence. And certainly that’s an important aspect to grace, one that we can’t ever afford to overlook, simply because there is no other way for us to overcome our sins and enter into God’s presence, save through His marvelous, infinite, matchless grace in the cross of Jesus Christ.
But there’s another aspect to grace, one we too often overlook, and equally to our detriment. It’s the aspect of power. Yes, grace is both pardon and power, power to be able to live into the high and holy calling God has for us in Christ Jesus. This, too, is marvelous, infinite, matchless grace – the miracle of God’s resurrection power, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, raising us from our self-imposed limitations and not just doing for us what we could never do for ourselves but also doing through us what we could never do for ourselves.
I find it incredible that with all that power available to us, we prefer to stay fettered to our excuses and cut off from the joy of participating in the unfolding of God’s redemptive purposes in our world. How much we miss when we persist in doubting God’s ability to do in us and through us what God has promised to do!
John D. Rockefeller was a titan of American capitalism in the 20th century, whose financial, philanthropic, and political legacy lives on in so many of his descendants. The founder and largest shareholder of Standard Oil Company, Rockefeller’s net worth was about 3% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product in his day, and in inflation-adjusted dollars today, $423 billion. That’s a lot of capacity. And yet, as the story has it, one of his children was paralyzed with fear that one day she would find herself penniless. Imagine that. A child of a man who in his day was the richest person on the planet obsessed with the fear that she might one day not have enough. There was nothing her father couldn’t have given her.
So why as children of God do we worry that God provide what is necessary for us to accomplish what He gives us to do? Why would we even think about begging off from God’s call when God has spared nothing, not even His Only Begotten Son, to make sure that His grace will be sufficient for our every need?
Our church stands on the threshold of one of the most exciting chapters in our soon-to-be 77 years history. As God has done so much through this fellowship over that period of time, God has even greater things to accomplish through us in the days ahead. The only thing that could prevent Mountain Brook Baptist Church from realizing that good future is to fall back on any number of excuses we could come up with not to do what God has called us to do. “We’re about to go through a Senior Minister transition. Let’s wait until the new pastor comes and we get a feel for how things are going to go.” God already knows who the next Senior Minister is. And besides, as important as a Senior Minister is, that person will serve the church best when he or she equips the saints for the work of the ministry by pointing people in these pews to power of God at work through them. “We’re seeing another spike in COVID; this time an even more dangerous variant.” Yes, we are, but God is greater than every virus, and just as God guided us through the last season, so God will guide us through the present one and any seasons to come. Now is the best time for our church to stand up and move forward and give witness to our desire to trust God to lead the way. “It’s a polarizing time in our culture. People are so divided. Maybe we should wait until things settle down a bit.” The only hope any church has of coming together is through their joint commitment to God’s mercy and grace in Jesus Christ, and if we seek His Kingdom purposes, just as Jesus calls us to do, then everything else will miraculously fall into place.
The point is all our excuses pale in comparison to the power of God in our midst. So, if we want to enjoy a fantastic fall, now is the time to gear up for it by dropping all our excuses and replacing them with God’s inexhaustible grace.
So, let’s make this Sunday a “No Excuse Sunday.” And let’s make tomorrow a “No Excuse Monday” and the next day a “No Excuse Tuesday.” Let’s make every day a “No Excuse Day.” Then every day we are given will be one that is marked by amazing grace and immeasurable joy, the grace and joy that only come from being a part of the fantastically fulfilling work that God has called us to do.