In this enlightening episode of the InTouch Podcast, Charles Stanley invites us to delve into the transformative power of brokenness in our spiritual journey. As we explore the life of Moses, we discover how God uses trials and changes to cultivate spiritual maturity and Christ-like character within us. Through biblical insights and personal reflections, this episode sheds light on the true purpose of life’s challenging moments and the elegant design behind them.
Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, October 21st. Do you wonder how God chooses the people He uses? He seeks those who will listen and obey. Stay with us as we explore the purpose for brokenness.
SPEAKER 01 :
Brokenness is God’s way of dealing with the self-life, that is, that independence within us which God must deal with in order for us to become the person that God wants us to be and by brokenness we simply mean not that a person could lose their zest for living but that rather every area of that person’s life would be brought into submission to the will and purposes of God because it is His plan that you and I would be controlled not by our flesh not by our five senses of the body not by our own stubborn independent will, but rather by the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. And so God has so arranged our life that this outer man with which we relate to our environment and the inner man, our soul, our mind, will, emotion, conscience, and consciousness may be brought into submission to the Spirit who lives within us in order that our life would be an expression of the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ. That is God’s ultimate design for all of us. Now, this is the second in our series of messages on brokenness, the way to blessing. The first one, brokenness, the principle. Today, brokenness, the purpose. Why is it that God breaks us? Why is it that God shatters and chisels and sands and prunes away our life until finally we are brought into submission to Him? Why is it that God keeps on doing that when we are so rebellious sometimes and so independent in our spirit? And if you’ll turn to Exodus chapter 2, I want us to read one simple passage from which we will depart. and our message on brokenness, the purpose. And you’ll recall that Moses has grown up now from that little boy who was found in the Nile River. And verse 11 of chapter 2 says, Now it came about in those days when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their hard labors, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. And he went out the next day, and behold, two Hebrews were fighting with each other. And he said to the offender, Why are you striking your companion? But he said, Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid, and he said, Surely the matter has become known. When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down there by a well. Now, 40 years later, chapter 3, verse 1. Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. the back side of the desert and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush and he looked and behold the bush was burning with fire yet the bush was not consumed so Moses said I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight while the bush is not burned up when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look God called to him from the midst of the bush and said Moses Moses and he said here There are two primary reasons, two primary purposes for which God breaks us. The first purpose is spiritual maturity. So I want you to jot that down. In fact, I’m going to give you a number of things to jot down. The two primary purposes, so there are two primary points to this message. One of them, spiritual maturity. God breaks us in order to mature us and to make us Christ-like. Now, in the process of maturing, there are three things that are involved. First of all, change. If you’re not willing to change, you’re not going to grow in your spiritual life and mature. You can’t hold on to old ways, old ideas, old false, erroneous concepts about God, about the Holy Spirit, about the Christian life. You can’t hold on to those and grow in your Christian life. So maturing means change, but likewise maturing requires growing. That is growing toward, moving toward Christ’s likeness in your spirit, moving toward a dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ, moving toward… Allowing the Holy Spirit to govern and guide and guard your life, moving toward the position wherein your body and your soul are brought into submission to the Holy Spirit so that Jesus Christ can express His life through you. And the third element in that maturity is brokenness. First of all, there must be change. Secondly, growth. And third, brokenness. That is, God dealing with the self-life within us. That is, that spirit of independence that wants to act independently of God’s will. That spirit within us that desires to act independently of God’s will. All of us came into the world with it. All of us have to deal with it all of our lives. God is in the process of breaking that bondage. And His motive is to do so. And in doing so, He’s looking out for you and me. He has something in mind that He knows the acting of an independent spirit, independent of God, is going to be a detriment to us. Now, I want us to look at this whole question of brokenness today as far as its purpose in the life of Moses. And I want us to see for just a moment a little background in Moses’ life. Remember, Joseph… was sold by his brothers to a caravan. He went to Egypt. He was purchased by a certain man and became a servant in Potiphar’s household, falsely accused by his wife, placed in the prison, stayed there for some time. God gave the butler and the baker in prison a dream. Joseph interpreted the dream. one day he was in prison the next day he’s the prime minister of all of Egypt and save them from destruction because of seven years of famine well during that time and before it happened he sent for his family and so those seventy people came down into Egypt and therefore they were saved from the famine and that was the beginning of a family in Egypt that grew into something close to two and a half to three millions of people And now the Bible says, after Joseph died, a Pharaoh rose who did not know Joseph, and therefore they placed the Hebrew children into bondage, and therefore they became slaves. They were the slaves of Egyptians. So now Moses, of course, is born during this period of slavery. And because of the increase of the Hebrews, the law went out that every male child should be destroyed. His mother sends him down the Nile River, sends the daughter along to watch. Pharaoh’s daughter by the providential hand of God, her maiden finds little Moses in the basket. And then this Hebrew sister shows up on the scene and what ultimately happened was that Moses’ mother had the privilege of caring for him in his early years and bringing him up. Now he has grown up in the household of Pharaoh and And he sees his people being mistreated. And one day, the Bible says he goes out and he sees one of the Hebrew children being beaten by an Egyptian. And he looks both ways. He doesn’t see anybody looking. So he kills the Egyptian, buries him in the sand. The next day he comes out overseeing what’s going on, finds two Hebrews fighting each other. Didn’t know one of them saw what he had done. And so one of them brings up the murder of the Egyptian and so he becomes afraid. Pharaoh finds out about it because Pharaoh is already afraid of any kind of uprising or rebellion among the Hebrews. And so he goes after Moses to kill him. And the Bible says that Moses… fled over into Midian, and as the King James says, on the backside of the desert. That’s the way he arrived where we find him in that third chapter. Forty long years Moses spends on the backside of the desert as a shepherd. Now, what is the motivation for God’s breaking Moses? God chose Moses as the man through whom He would liberate the Hebrew children out of Egyptian bondage, through whom He would establish as a nation, and through whom He would ultimately send the Messiah. So God chose Moses for this tremendous task. Now, What was the need of being broken in the life of Moses? Here’s a man who is very skilled. He has a tremendous background. He has tremendous credentials. He has prestige and power and prominence and position, inexhaustible resources. He has been given a position by Pharaoh. He is, by God’s providential hand, the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. That is… He became hers. And now he’s grown up in all of this palatial wealth and all the resources and all that is at his fingertips. But God has chosen him to liberate them. So God must begin to work in this man’s life. And therefore, how does he work in this man’s life? He works in his life in the same way he works in your life and mine. The situation is different. The time is different. The circumstances are different. But… Here’s the important thing. The purpose is the same. In order… To prepare Moses for the task that God had for him to accomplish, God knew that he must break Moses of his dependence upon anything and every single thing in his life so that Moses would be able to stand saying that he had absolutely nothing but God Jehovah and Jehovah God only upon which to depend. For the simple reason he knew that the task that he called him for would demand that. Here’s what I want you to see. God began the process of preparing Moses for the purpose for which he called him. And the purpose, first of all, was to spiritually mature him. And in God’s eyes, spiritual maturity is not having great ability, great talent, great prominence, great prestige, great popularity, great power, great influence, great wealth. That is not spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is coming to the bitter end of ourselves where we have nothing but God to depend upon. So what did he do? Driving him over to the backside of the desert, Moses lost his family. He lost his dwelling place, the palace. He lost his people separated from him. He lost his privilege. He lost his prominence. He lost his prestige. He lost his power. He lost his pride. He lost everything. God stripped Moses of everything he had. Here he was before dressed in the finest of clothing, riding in the finest of chariots, the finest of servants. And now he’s over on the backside of the desert tending sheep. So I want you to notice how God changed Moses’ circumstances. He changed him, for example. He changed his vocation from a superintendent to a shepherd. He changed his dwelling place from a palace to a tent. His home from this big city over into the desert. He changed his attitude from haughtiness and self-confidence to humility. God changed everything about him. He changed his focus from self-centeredness to God. He changed his methods from his own ways to God’s ways. He changed the outcome from failure to success. Everything about him he changed. You say, do you mean to tell me that that’s what God has to do to everybody? Now, first of all, you’re not Pharaoh’s son, so don’t worry about that. But God does utilize the same principle. And God’s purpose in your life and my life is not to make us famous. It is not to make us prominent. It’s not to make us prestigious. It’s not to make us wealthy. His purpose in our life is not any of that. His purpose in your life and my life is to bring us to the position of absolute nothingness, whereby we recognize all we have of any value is God and God alone. Now, God may give you the position of being wealthy. He may give you a position of prominence in your business or whatever it might be. He may give you all of these things. But anytime any one of those things stands in the way of your totally and absolutely depending upon God and your goal of Jesus Christ being expressed through your life you can mark it down he draws a bull’s eye on that area of your dependence and he zeroes in on it because he knows any dependence upon anything is going to hinder God’s purpose for your life now I want to show you in a moment how difficult this was but God knew that he had to absolutely strip Moses of any self-dependence, any of his personal plans, any of his personal ambition, any of his personal ideas about how to liberate God’s people until he had nothing left. You say, well, why did it take him 40 years to do it? My friend, God… will break and keep on breaking until all resentment has been broken out of our life, all hostility, all anger. And you see, growing up in this family and watching his people mistreated, be mistreated as they were, I’m sure that Moses must have had some anger and hostility and self-determination. I’m going to free my people. I’m going to get it done. I will see that it happens. God had to absolutely shatter all of that. Until he was a man who had dependence upon nothing except God and God alone. Helplessly and hopelessly he faced an uncertain future knowing that the cries of his people over in Egypt were still going up and God somehow was not answering their prayers. God had to shred him of everything. 40 long years it took to weed out of Moses’ life and break out of Moses’ life, cleanse him from that anger and hostility. He had to walk in the steps of God, in harmony with God, in absolute obedience to God, or it would never have worked. You know why oftentimes God can’t accomplish in our life what he wants to accomplish? too much self. We think we have it worked out. We want to do God’s work our way. We want the plan to fit our schedule, our purposes, our goals, our dreams, and the path that we’ve set out. God sets it out, and our objective must be to follow Him. And so, therefore, He must break all threads of independence within us so that we’re willing to say, yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Over in Midian, on the backside of the desert, out there tending sheep, Moses didn’t have anything but God. Nothing but God. Now, many people are threatened by that. They don’t want to hear sermons about being broken and suffering and pain and all this because, you see, they’ve been taught it’s self-confidence, self-determination, set your goals, set your plans, go after them, don’t move, don’t budge. I understand that. The only problem with that is this. God works His greatest work in those men and women who realize how hopeless they are apart from His supernatural intervention in their life. It’s either going to be the flesh or it’s going to be the spirit. That doesn’t mean that you’re not to achieve in your business. It doesn’t mean that you’re not to build a godly family. It does not mean that you’re not to do the work that God has called you to do. But we must be careful that we do not do it based on our experience and our prestige and our resources, but rather on God. You see, God’s goal for your life and mine is, He said, He predestined that we would be conformed to the likeness of His Son. How did Jesus operate? Based on his relationship with the Father, he says, I only do the things I see my Father doing. I only say the things the Father tells me to say. Jesus was living out the divine life. And Jesus Christ living within us desires that he be able to live his life out through us. And in order to do that, every shred of self must be broken and shattered. It must be laid aside until it is God and God alone. As someone has said, a soul is converted in a moment of time, but a saint, it takes a lifetime. A saint is manufactured in a lifetime. A moment of conversion, sainthood, it takes a lifetime. He begins to prune. He begins to break. He will never break your spirit, but only your will. It is not God’s purpose to leave you lifeless and broken in your spirit so that you have nothing. within, to break your will, to revitalize your spirit so that in your spirit you have Him. Him only, but my friend, when you have God, you’ve got enough. When you have Him, you have everything. And so that is His purpose for doing so. So when you look at the life of Moses, God began to mature him by doing what? Stripping him of everything so that it was God and God only. Isn’t it amazing how a person becomes a Christian early in life, and then they begin to climb and claw and gather and gain and accumulate and assimilate and arrange and amass? as if this is the Christian life. You know what the Christian life is? It’s getting rid of this and getting rid of that and ridding ourselves of this and anything and everything that God puts his finger on until it’s just you and him.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to Brokenness, The Purpose. If you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
