Easter is about marriage; marriage is about Easter.  You’ve got the gospel, Jesus loving us, Jesus romancing us and wooing us and drawing us to himself.  Some of us here realize it; others don’t.  You’ve been brought here; you’ve been sought by the living Lord.  He has put it all on the line.  He loves you.  You matter to him.  He loves you and he loves me unconditionally.  He loves you and he loves me in spite of ourselves.  And he loved us so much that he died on the cross for our sins and rose again.

Now, when I say that—the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus—some of you who have been around the church before know what I’m talking about.  You think I just described the gospel.  You’re right.  But I only described part of the gospel.  The resurrection was the completion of the gospel process.  The gospel process, yes, is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

Also, though, we have to realize the reason for the resurrection.  Why, I ask you, did Jesus rise again?  That’s a pretty good question.  Why did the Son of God conquer death?  The reason he was able to conquer death was the simple fact that Jesus lived a perfect life.  He was holy.  He was pure.  The word holiness means to be set apart.  He was 100 percent righteous.  So when I come to a point in my life where I say I do to Jesus, what happens?  I receive Him into my life and his righteousness and his holiness is imputed into my very existence.  So when God sees me, God sees Jesus.

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You’re talking about a difference maker?  He turns into a walking disaster area and the mistake that moses made was much greater than cheating in the byron nelson classic or buying a boa constrictor behind your parents’ back.  He took the life of someone. I’m in the second segment of a series entitled, “becoming a difference maker”.  God wants all of us to become difference makers.

He wants us to make an impact, to make a trail, to make a difference in this life, and moses is one of the greatest difference makers of all times.  But today, it doesn’t look that way.  And i believe if we’re totally transparent, we can look back at our lives and see where we went through areas and maybe even right now where it looks like for all practical purposes, that guy or that girl will never become a difference maker.

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No big deal!  My parents come home.  “how are you doing, mom, dad?”  They did see me with a couple of mice but they thought, “well, that’s just ed.”  Then, though, i started feeling really guilty and after guilt, i felt fear.  “what if the snake gets out?  Oh boy, what will i do?”  Finally, i walked in with the snake, “mom, dad, i bought this boa constrictor.”  I came clean.  I told the truth about what I’d done.  It was not a pretty sight.  I was grounded, but still i felt good because i had hidden something and then i revealed it.

Today we’re going to look at a brief segment in the life of moses because moses made a major error at a crucial moment in his journey and he had the audacity, here this great difference maker, to try to cover the mistake up and it looks like, for all practical purposes, it’s over for moses.

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Well, after Lisa and I honeymooned, we came back and rented a small place in Houston, which is where we lived at the time.  And very quickly, very rapidly, romance segued into reality.  You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?  Reality.  There were bills to pay. We were both in school. There were the stresses and the pressures of working and also being married.

And some of you right now are thinking, “Wait a minute.  You mean the romance ended that quickly?  I’m going to be different.  When I get married it is going to be romance 24/7.  It is going to be love, love, love, love, love.” Well, you just get married for a couple of weeks and watch the romance erode.  It happens like that.  It just happens.  And all the married people are thinking, “Ed I feel you man.  You’re right on target.”

Marriage is not the easiest thing; it’s the hardest thing.  It’s challenging to be married. But I’m here to tell you it’s worth it.  It’s worth the work.  Now, about now some of you are saying, “Ed, did you show up at the wrong time and place?  This is Easter weekend.  We’re celebrating the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Every song we’ve done has been about the resurrection; the video, the resurrection; the paintings were about the resurrection; the drama, it’s about the resurrection.  The resurrection and marriage?  There’s like a disconnect.  It doesn’t make sense.  Where is the common thread?”

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Why do you pray? Jesus was driving at the motivation, because in this chapter, Matthew 6, we’ve been talking about it for the last several weeks, Jesus said, “When you pray…” He also says, “When you fast…” A lot of us are on a fast. We’ve redirected our food source heavenward. And he talks about when you give. Three foundations of a follower of Christ—when you pray, when you fast, when you give. Not if, but when.

When we build our lives on those spiritual disciples, great things will occur. We will receive, Jesus said, an incredible reward—knowing that we’re living right in the middle of the will of God; knowing we’re in the sweet spot of God’s success; knowing that we’re on the receiving end of the tangible and intangible favor of God. That’s what Jesus wants.

MOTIVATION

And this whole thing is about our motives. Why do we give? Why do we pray? Why do we fast? Why, why, why, why, why… Motives. Well, you’re probably thinking, I never come to God with totally pure motives! Wait a minute, Ed, you’re telling me that Jesus is telling me that I should come to him with pure motives? No. He’s not doing that, because we can never come to God with pure motives on this side of the grave. It’s impossible. Never! But just do this with me… Ahhhh… Isn’t that a relief? I’ve heard some people teach on prayer and I’m thinking, “I could never pray, because I don’t have pure motives all the time when I pray!”

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What if Mariah Carrey walked up and said I want to talk to you about singing. We’d be like, “Whoa. Mariah Carrey is here singing. This is great!” And everyone who likes music, and especially parents who have these dreams about their kid becoming some mega superstar singer, would be like, “That’s Mariah Carrey.”

Well, there was something about the way Jesus prayed that snapped the heads of the disciples. The disciples were good Jewish boys. They’d heard the prayers; they knew the score. Yet, the way Jesus prayed was so unique, so different, so attractive, that one day they said, “Jesus, teach us to pray.”

So Jesus began to talk about prayer in Matthew 6. And he slammed prayers like I prayed that day. Matthew 6:5, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.”Jesus said, “I can see right through the hype of the hypocrites.”

What’s their reward? To be seen by men. That’s it? That’s it. To be seen by men. Wow, that’s something else. When I prayed that prayer, my first prayer, that Morning Prayer, I wasn’t really thinking about God. I was thinking about others. I was wondering, “How do I sound, how do I look before others? I want to be seen by men.” And I got my reward didn’t I? Ha ha! In full.

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And I was thinking, “I’m doing it! This is great! I’m spurring the horse to the barn. I’m almost done.” “Hallowed be thy name…” “Hallowed be thy name…” And then I just froze. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even read. I totally choked! It was horrendous! People began to stumble. And I just said, “For thine is the kingdom of glory, uh…Amen.” And I closed my Bible.

And people then began to laugh like, “Ha, ha! He’ll never make it.” I walked off the platform and found some open seat on the front pew and I sat down. And for some reason my mother was sitting on the front row, which she never does,  and she leaned over to me while everyone was laughing and she said, “Ed, your voice sounded real good.”

Only a mother could find something good in that terrible, terrible prayer. You know Jesus talked about the type of prayer like I prayed. He did, he talked about it in Matthew chapter 6. If Tiger Woods walked in here and said, “Hey, I want to teach you guys about playing golf.” Every man and woman, boy and girl who’s into the great game of golf would lean in. “It’s Tiger!”

If Peyton Manning walked out and said, “Okay, I want to show you guys how to throw a foot ball,” every frustrated All-American here would look to him. You know, all guys are frustrated All-Americans. Guys think, “I could play in the NFL. If I hadn’t hurt my knee I’d be in the NFL.” No you wouldn’t. But you tell your girlfriend or your wife that. But we would all lean in and we would want to watch Peyton Manning demonstrate how to throw a ball. That would be phenomenal wouldn’t it?

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So what we cover, ultimately God will uncover.  Have you noticed that? I have dealt with so many situations, so many people in my life here over the last decade, and they have played the cover up game and they have projected one thing, but in reality they were another.  And I have known intuitively, I have known scripturally, after a while, the truth will come out. After a while, Scripture says, “Our sins will find us out.”  And when the reveal happens, so often it’s not a pretty thing.

It’s time to be authentic and real. Because what we cover, God will uncover; yet, the last part of verse 13 says what we uncover, God covers.  Now how sweet is that? That is totally off the charts. “But whoever confesses—” What does the word confess mean? The word confession means to agree with.

When I’m confessing my sin, my shortcomings, my fatal and futile attempts at changing, I am just telling the truth before God.  When I confess my sins to God, God is not like, “Oh, Ed. I didn’t know that.  I didn’t know you committed that moral turnover.  I didn’t know you thought those thoughts.  I didn’t know you said those hurtful words.  I didn’t know—” No, you’re not going to surprise God.  He knows.

There’s no such thing as a secret meeting.  There’s no such thing as a cover up or a clandestine operation. God sees it all.  And here is where men really struggle—a lot of you autonomous alpha males in the house “Man, I—man, I just am who I am.  You know, I am just that way.  And, you know, my fate, my relationship with God is a personal and private thing.”

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So we don’t serve some sequestered savior.  We don’t serve some detached deity.  We serve a God who is with us and Jesus is with us, so we can be with him. The manger is interesting.  The manger is mysterious, it’s magnetic.  It pulls us in every year. And for 2,000 years people have been drawn to the manger.  We’ve been drawn to the stairs and we look at the Christ child and we rethink our lives.

And some of us wonder, “Well, was Jesus who he said he was?” But whatever you believe about Jesus, you know, let’s just put the cards on the table. Whatever you feel about him, he has split history—his birth did. And he split it in two parts—B.C and A.D.—in two camps. And if the truth were known all of this in this crowd, we are split into two camps.  Some of us are in the “God with us” camp.  Christ is in our lives.  The gospel has attached itself to our souls.

Others of here are in another camp.  We’re in the “God at a distance” camp.  We keep Christ at bay.  We keep his involvement and activity and love away from us.  We have a vested interest in keeping the kid in the crib, because if he crawled out of the crib and performed perfectly and died sacrificially and rose bodily, I mean, whoa!  Those implications are pretty huge. Now some of you are thinking, “Okay Ed, I remember when I was in the ‘God at a distance’ camp and I remember what it was trying to do life away from the presence of God.  I remember that.”

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There are a lot of things in the Bible that I just don’t understand.  I just don’t know.  But when all the dust settles, and we get to heaven, I’ll tell you one thing that all of us as believers will be able to say about God.  And here it is, “God, you are fair.  You are awesome.  You are holy.  You are fair.” God is going to be fair.  So many people when you talk about Jesus being the only way say, “Well, wait a minute, Ed, what about the people who have never heard?  What about this group or that group?”

Romans, chapter one, answers that question.  Again, we have got to trust God on this matter.  We know that God is fair.  We know that God loves everybody.  We have got to trust him.  We also believe, though, that we get to God through Jesus Christ.  That’s why we have the desire as believers to share with others.  That’s why you have it and that’s why I have it.  God is going to take care of business his way.  It’s the sovereignty of God.  It’s really where the sovereignty of God and the free will of man meet.  That’s a mystery that I don’t really understand.  Yet, we have got to trust God.

There are several books in our bookstore that I would love for you to check out.  If you will just go to the bookstore and talk to anyone who works in there and say, “You know what?  I am having an issue.  I’m kind of struggling about this whole question thing, about what happens to people who have not heard or this or that.”

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