Face to Face
It’s Not Over • Message 2
Bryan Jones
October 19, 2025

Prayer Points for Prayer Time:

• Pray for courage to face the past.
• Pray for boldness to step into God’s calling.
• Pray for God’s grace to cover our weaknesses.

Scripture Reading:

One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.  Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.” When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 
Exodus 2:11-15 (NIV)

A. Introduction

120

          40                                                                             40                                                           40

Trying to be somebody                                       Thinking he’s a nobody                         To knowing somebody

Last week, we spent time talking about the last 40 years, where Moses, in fact, knew somebody. He talked face-to-face with God, the scripture says, which is why we are calling this series Face to Face.. But there was an obstacle… something that almost kept him from this…

And it was a secret...

How many of you have ever had a secret?

How many of you have ever lied to your doctor about your eating habits?

How many of you have ever replied to an email or text two weeks later and said, I’m so sorry, it went to my spam folder.

Accidentally texted or copied in the person you were talking about?

How many of you have eaten a whole bag of potato chips in one sitting?

Seeing an outrageous price on something in a store and still pretending like you may buy it?

Checking the closet or under the bed to make sure there are no serial killers there?

Reading about health symptoms on the internet and convincing yourself it’s all over?

The truth is, we all have little secrets… things we try to keep from those around us…

We all have thoughts we don’t necessarily want others to know. Maybe one day you happen to look in the mirror, and your hair is working and you’re liking the outfit… and you just quickly think to yourself, God knew what He was doing when He made me.

There are just things we are glad that stay here and others that stay buried.

But the truth is, in a room of this size, I would imagine that a few of us have some secrets that we are still trying to protect and keep hidden. Things that we think keep us from the life and the love of God.

I say this a lot to our church, but your past isn’t your past if it still affects your future…

B. It’s Not Over

1.) What are you RUNNING from?
(Acts 7:18-21. C/R: Exodus 2:10-14)

For some of us, we rehearse each day, or each week, or each month, some mistake or word we said… and to make matters worse, the Bible makes it clear we have an enemy named Satan, and his name is the accuser… so what he wants you to do is keep paying over and over again for your mistakes…

But maybe God has brought you here today to start a process of freedom and healing…

As we look at Moses… I want you to see him for who he is…

If you will, during this series, take him out of the realm of Superhero and spiritual giant… and see him for who he really was…you’ll find a very real, very ordinary guy who had a secret he tried to hide from the world.

The setting for Moses takes place in Egypt… verse 7:18 gives a snapshot.

Then ‘a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.’ He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our ancestors by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die. “At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for by his family. When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 
Acts 7:18-21 (NIV)

When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
Exodus 2:10 (NIV)

Named him “found in a river”… not a great name for this guy. It would be like your mom calling you, “I breathe air.”

Being abandoned in a basket on a river is not exactly an ideal beginning for greatness. What an inauspicious, unexpected start for the life of a deliverer! In fact, one of the reasons I love Moses is that he wasn’t the typical success story.

One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
Exodus 2:11-12  (NIV)

Moses’ motives are good, but his actions aren’t. Christians can tend to do God’s work in the world's way… when you start standing up to evil… when men start standing up and women start standing up… you will make mistakes… own them…

For instance, when you're parenting… You might have the best motives, but when you start yelling or shaming your kids or spouse, that’s not the way of Jesus. Be full of truth and grace…

Moses makes a mistake… we all do… but how he deals with it is the problem… he runs from it.

He’s angry, so he kills a man. He thinks that’s the end of it. He knocks the sand from his hands and thinks no one will ever know, and life will go on.

Notice that Moses tries to cover up what he has done. Moses has this secret that he is trying to bury.

You know, if you cut through one of the great California Redwood trees and examine a cross-section of that tree, the rings inside, that you can’t see on the outside, would tell you quite a story about the life of that tree. One ring might tell you about a year of drought. Another might tell you about a year of lots of rain and growth. Another might tell you about a year it got hit by lightning, or by one of my golf balls… sorry, old man joke.

If we could cut each other open, see a cross-section, and expose the secrets of our lives, what do you think those rings would say?

• Maybe you can’t get over the hours you’ve spent drinking and numbing your pain.
• Maybe there was some unfaithfulness, and it eats away at your soul.
• Maybe people think you are happy and filled with life, but deep down you struggle with anger and self-hatred.
• Maybe you failed as a parent, maybe you were absent, and you bury all those thoughts, but they eat you alive.
• Maybe you were abused by the people who were supposed to love and protect you.
• Maybe you doubt God, but you’ve never told God, and it just sort of eats away at you.

What in your life are you hiding? What have you buried deep inside that no one could tell from the outside?

What is it in your life that you are trying to shake the dust from?

{Story about calling my roommate… this guy was difficult for me to love… very cynical and critical… Marylin Manson… playing worship at will… here to play poker or get an education… Next morning, what is this world coming to…
You sure you don’t know who did it… Thinks it's a normal day, grabs coffee and a newspaper, and walks out.}

The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, "Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?" The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid and thought, "What I did must have become known."
Exodus 2:13-14 (NIV)    

Moses thinks this situation is all buried… over and forgotten. But the next day, secret sins have a way of coming up through the sand…they don’t stay buried very long.

What if your secret was played on the screen and everyone could see? I think Moses has one of these moments of hopelessness, and instead of coming clean, he tries to cover it up.

Secrets in our lives make us do childish things, lie, and try to cover them up. We are protected and guarded… The secrets that lie deep become our God. We become more concerned with them than with our relationship with the God of the universe.

If you’re running from something… God tends to do these:

Three ways God deals with our running:

• Message
• Messenger
• Mess
  
  
  2.) Do you realize God’s not DONE with you?
  (Acts 7:29. C/R: Exodus 2:22; 3:1-12)

You don’t have to run. Moses doesn’t understand this… So, instead of trusting that God can deal with this, Moses tries to take care of it… and guess what he does… He runs.

The Bible says:

When Moses heard that, realizing the word was out, he ran for his life and lived in exile over in Midian.
Acts 7:29 (MSG)

Do you know where Midian is? It’s in the middle of the desert. For Moses, it was the middle of a desert called guilt, failure, and regret. Talk about a career shift! Moses, the great Prince of Egypt, is now a failure, a murderer, a fugitive, and he’s stuck in the desert.

And when she had a son, Moses said, “I will name him Gershom, since I am a foreigner in this country.”
Exodus 2:22 (CEV)

The name Gershom means “resident alien” … that’s because Moses feels like he's lost everything.

I think he ran not only for fear of his life, but because now he feels like, I don’t belong in either place---not in Egypt, not among the Israelites. So, he runs and hides in exile…as a foreigner, which means I don’t belong. I don’t fit anywhere.

Think about it… the once prince is now feeling like a nobody.

For the first 40 years of his life, he was thinking and trying to be somebody… and for the next 40 years, he believed that he was a nobody…

But let me encourage you… God was active even when Moses wasn’t… God is active even if you aren’t. And in Hebrews 11—you know what it says… God remembers faith…

When our kids were learning to walk… when Selah was learning to walk, I guess what I did was record her… (Show Picture) and when she would fall, I would delete the videos.. I would keep the videos of her walking… I didn’t store up her failures… Like, could you imagine me going… Hey, can I show you all my daughter's falls and failures? … I wouldn’t do that, but I will gladly show you her steps and her victories…

Why is it that some Christians think God replays our mistakes and failures? Well, he doesn’t, you are the only one who is… Let me speak this over someone in Jesus' name… God remembers faith and not our failures… Satan wants you to forget your faith and focus on your failures..  In fact, in Hebrews 11.. There are three examples of Moses, and not one mentions his sin.

Why are you holding on to what God has forgiven?

You sit in this room, and because of that secret that you keep deep down inside, you feel like you don’t belong, that you don’t fit anywhere. God can't use you….

From the years 40-80, Moses worked as a shepherd, which was the job of a 10-year-old.. So, when the Hebrews would have seen this, they would have known he was running from something…

Let me take you to Bible college for a second. Can you handle it… 

                                Glorification (being with Christ forever)

                Sanctification (becoming like Christ)

Justification (forgiven by Christ)

God can never use me; I need to pay down here…. You don’t pay back…

But then something happens…

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
Exodus 3:1-5 (NIV)

Did you notice God didn’t even bring up his sin… the very thing he was paying for…

What you need to be redeemed is a face-to-face encounter with God… You need God to speak to you… not just other people…

And you know how God has spoken to you face-to-face about your past?

Feel the weight of sin… (have you wept over your sinfulness?) God isn’t just interested in your feelings… he is interested in repentance. Repentance means to turn from that “thing”…

Feel the weight of grace… I remember them no more stories.

Do you realize God's holiness is the attribute or characteristic most often said about Him? We read about His Holy name over and over again. It's who He is, and that's why you can know He’s forgiven and forgotten your failures—it's His Holiness.

And here’s what’s crazy… God doesn’t just forgive Moses' past- He gives him a future.

The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
Exodus 3:7-8 (NIV)         

And then God says in vv. 10-12,

“So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”
Exodus 3:10-12 (NIV)    

God tells Moses, I want you to go back to the place that marks the greatest failure of your life. Must be thinking, now I’m just a nobody-shepherd in the desert. I’m a fugitive. I’m a murderer.

But you know that the desert secret has a voice as well. And it says… No way, you’re stuck here…you’re not forgiven…you don’t have what it takes…you’re a failure and that’s all you’ll ever be.

But from the bush, the God of grace, hope, and power speaks to this 80-year-old desert rat and says, Moses, I’m not finished with you yet.

And Moses gives four objections to going for God… I'm only going to give you one because the other three are in the video for this week.

I have a past.

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you.”
Exodus 3:11-12a (NIV)      

Guess what God’s response is… I will be with you. It's not about you…get your eyes on me…