The Kingdom Agenda – Delegated Authority

Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash

Exodus 6:28 – 7:5 28 And it came to pass, on the day the LORD spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, 29 that the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “I am the LORD. Speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you.”30 But Moses said before the LORD, “Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh heed me?”

​7:1 1 So the LORD said to Moses: “See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. 2 You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron your brother shall tell Pharaoh to send the children of Israel out of his land. 3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. 4 But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My armies and My people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. 5 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them.”

I have three questions for you today:

1) Why are you here?  1a)  How did you get here?

2) What are you supposed to do? – 2a) What is your mandate, agenda, stated purpose? 

3) What authority or power are you operating under?

I believe that right now around the world we are seeing another power shift spiritually speaking.  We can see it manifested in the realm of the natural world, (especially in politics), but God is definitely doing a new thing.  When things are shifting many of us see chaos, but if you know your bible history you know can be positive and look UP, knowing that your redemption is near. (See Luke 21:28). We have seen many shifts like this before in God’s Word.

The good news is that nothing, I repeat nothing, takes our God by surprise.  The reason we can say without hesitation that this too shall pass is that God’s will, will eventually be done.  Then God will do something else, something new.  We like to call this transition a ‘shift’. 

The only real question for all of us today is whether or not we will agree to shift with God, or whether we will fall by the wayside while others step up to the world’s challenges.   Let’s look at how Moses came to believe that he could actually challenge Pharaoh, the rich and powerful ‘god’ of his day, and how the same true and Living God can move you from enslavement to authority in your life and time.

What God told Moses in Exo. 7:1 has always puzzled me, but today in light of the Kingdom of God, I can finally understand it fully.

Exo. 7:1 NKJV “ So the LORD said to Moses: “See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet”.

God didn’t say that he was going to make a GOD out of Moses.  He said that He would make MOSES a ‘GOD’ to Pharaoh.  To put it simply, God recognized that Moses feared Pharaoh because of his stature, and his authority.  So God assured Moses that He was giving Moses the delegated authority of the Most High in order to deal with Pharaoh and the situation he placed God’s people in.  This construct could be a bible study series in itself.  Too many of us in the church are still trying to make ourselves ‘fit’ into the scheme of things instead of walking in God’s authority.  The results of this are what we see in the world every day.

An example of this is our ‘two-party system’ of ‘non-government’ here in the USA.  The reason that God’s will in not done in America, (and on Earth for that matter), is that from the beginning the church has tried to align itself with a party, (either one of them), and their agendas instead of taking and using the authority that was given to us by God Himself. 

The cornerstone of politics is compromise.  If you want to get something done you also have to willing to give something up in return.  But when you take authority you can stick to your guns and simply speak for God. This is what God told Moses to do; ‘Speak for me.  Represent Me, and I will do the rest’.

The US Constitution is an incredible document that is probably the best that could be done.  However, if you read it you will understand that from the beginning the founding fathers had some ideas that were not very godly. (Enslavement of a race of people, and stealing land being two of them).   So today far too many of us in the church have concluded that the best we can do is to align itself with liberals, conservatives or somebody, who of course have their own agendas to look after. I believe that the agenda of the church becomes high-jacked because of this.  It is high time that the real church stands up and start declaring; ‘We are not here to ‘take sides’.  We are here to ‘take over’ with the delegated authority of Our God’!

How did this start and how is it going now?   Good questions to ask yourself these days.  Let’s consider the 3 questions I posed at the start of this sermon.

1) Why are you here?  How did you get here?  –  Originally the children of Israel went to Egypt to because of famine. They returned after finding that Joseph had landed on his feet in spectacular fashion. (He had everything they needed.  Food, shelter, etc). The brothers needed food and God had orchestrated that Joseph was ‘Lord of the Food’ in Egypt.  This was part of God’s agenda.

God wants people to be cared for and He raises up people to see that  His will is done.  Exo. 1: 8-14 tells us that there was a shift in leadership in Egypt, and the new pharaoh did not care for the Children of Israel.  For one reason, they had this anointing on them for greatness and multiplication, (God does that).  The new Pharaoh was afraid of them, and declared that their lives should be made miserable because of it.  So Israel becomes enslaved, but this was not GOD’s will as much as it was the will of Pharaoh.  I think this point is lost on us many times. Because of this God raised Moses up with a passion once more, to look after His people. 

Moses ended up in the palace, but it wasn’t because that was Pharaoh’s desire.  Remember Pharaoh wanted all the male children of the Israel executed at birth, but marvel at the way God had Moses raised as an Egyptian, right in the house of Pharaoh.  How did you get here?  Why are you here?

Moses has to run from the luxury of being a son of pharaoh because he kills an Egyptian who was treating an Israelite poorly.  They should make a movie about this.

This leads me to the next questions we should ask ourselves about delegated authority.

What are you supposed to do? – What is your mandate, agenda, stated purpose?   Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61:1-3  in the Temple one day and He gave us His agenda; declaring the Year of the Lord’s favor, and taking care of those who need help.  Isn’t it interesting that Moses, Isaiah, the Lord Jesus, and so many others had the same agenda?  So when people talk about the Kingdom, I also listen closely to see if their message is the same as God’s.

God delegates authority to those who are willing to accept His agenda and run with it.  You don’t have to be perfect.  All you need is room in your heart to accept His passion and allow it to become your own.   This is what happened to Moses.  Even at his worse he could still be used by God.  If the goal of the kingdom was to have power to change laws, and to be rich, then Moses would have stayed in Pharaoh’s house because he had all that.  Instead God moves him to real purpose that is to save people, and to prepare them for destiny.  What is your goal in life?

The final question is whose power are you working under?  When you are working on God’s behalf he will always empower you to do things you would never be able to do alone.  In the beginning, God told Adam to take authority in the Earth and gave him an anointing to do it.  In the book of Acts Jesus gave His disciples even more authority than they had before to take charge in the earth. 

This is the same thing that happened when He authorized Moses.  God told him that in the eyes of Pharaoh he would be ‘god’.  He told the church that we shall receive power after the Holy Ghost comes upon us.  This is more than power to walk and talk right.  This is delegated authority to cause seismic shifts in the world we live in.

The point of this message is to help us to understand that God is depending on us to carry out His agenda even today.  He has equipped us, and enabled us.  The only thing that can weaken us is the same thing that almost crippled Moses.  That is, a fear that those in authority will not listen to what we have to say, and may even attempt to make our lives miserable if we dare step out of line.  Today we call it cancel culture, and it is directed at any one regardless of political affiliations.  Moses could not lead God’s people out of the slavery of Egypt until he conquered that fear.  Once he did that he became arguably the best leader of all time, (next to Jesus Christ Himself of course).

Start walking in destiny.  Become a ‘Moses’ in your own situations.  Recognize that God has empowered you to fulfill His agenda on earth.  He called you, and you answered.  Now start leading.

Hebrews 13:5-6 5 Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” 6 So we may boldly say: “The LORD is my helper;  I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”

The next time disaster, chaos, war, famine, hardships, terrorism, hunger, sickness, disease, poverty,  happen maybe we should ask different questions.  The question is not where is GOD in all this?  (He was there all the time).  The question should be; ‘Where is the Moses that God delegated authority to?’

After today’s devotion hopefully our prayer will be, ‘Lord let it be me’.