Chapter 10: From Shepherd to Saviour - The Moses Story
As we delve further into our "Garden to Garden City" series, we pick up the action in Exodus 3. Last week, we left off with the birth of Moses. We learned that God had seen the suffering of the Israelites at the hands of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. At that time, Pharaoh and the Egyptians feared that the Israelites were growing too numerous and strong, and they would soon overtake them. To prevent this, Pharaoh passed a law mandating the killing of all Hebrew babies. God saw the anguish of His people and raised up Moses to deliver them. However, Moses first had to survive the genocide. His mother concealed him in a basket and hid him among the reeds. Pharaoh's daughter discovered him and brought him to the palace, where she adopted him as a prince.
As the story progresses, we read that the Israelites continued to suffer under Pharaoh's tyranny. Moses grew up in the palace and received an excellent education at Pharaoh's expense. Despite living in Pharaoh's palace, Moses knew he was an Israelite. One day, he witnessed an Egyptian striking an Israelite slave and was so enraged that he killed the Egyptian. Moses had to flee and eventually became a shepherd in Midian. He ended up staying in Midian for an extended period of time.
The story leaves us wondering: how would God address this situation, given that He had called Moses to deliver His people? Moses appeared to have been forgotten in the middle of the desert while in hiding. How would God redeem this situation and fulfill His purposes?
Three passages provide the answer: Exodus 3:1-22, Exodus 4:1-5, and Exodus 4:10-15. The length of these passages prevents me from repeating them here, but in summary, in the first passage, God speaks to Moses through a burning bush and calls him to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Moses doubts his ability to fulfill this task, but God assures him that He will be with him and provides him with signs to prove his authority. In the second passage, Moses expresses his concern that the Israelites will not believe him, and God gives him a sign to perform to convince them. In the third passage, Moses expresses his insecurity about his ability to speak, and God promises to help him and even provides him with a speaking companion in his brother Aaron.
The participants:
First, we meet Moses on the mountain, Horeb, also known as Mt. Sinai. Here, we encounter Moses as he truly is, having been introduced as a baby boy hidden away by his mother in Exodus 1 and 2, and then raised as a prince of Egypt by the princess. What we see of Moses isn't all that impressive.
He fell from grace, going from being a prince of Egypt to a lowly shepherd, one of the most menial jobs at the time. He was a nobody living in the desert, with no power and no skills.
Secondly, we meet God. God presents Himself as active and powerful. He introduces Himself to Moses as "I AM," emphasizing His ongoing existence, and reminds Moses that He is the God of Israel's ancestors, faithful to His covenant with them. He is about to lead Israel out of Egypt, and He has chosen Moses, a disgraced leader, to accomplish this mission.
Throughout scripture, God uses the broken, the downtrodden, and the unremarkable to do remarkable things. He calls Moses out of obscurity, revealing Himself to Moses and creating a relationship with him before commissioning him with a new purpose and mission in life.
Moses has been drawn into a relationship with God, who redeems Moses in order to accomplish His rescue plan. All throughout the Bible, this is how God works. He comes to us and finds us where we are, changing our hearts and giving us faith for a purpose.
The Rescue Plan:
God calls Moses to save his people by leading them out of Egypt and into the promised land of Canaan. This was the reason for which Moses had been hidden in the reeds and given a free education at Pharaoh's expense. God had miraculously preserved Moses' life for the purpose of saving his people from slavery.
To wrestle the people from Pharoah, God sends ten plagues on Egypt to convince Pharaoh to release the Israelites. The ten plagues culminate in the death of the firstborn of everyone living in Egypt. There was only one way to escape this death: The Passover.
In the Passover, the Israelites were to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on the doorposts of their houses so that the angel of death would pass over them, sparing their firstborn. Then, they would leave Egypt and journey to the promised land, facing various challenges and obstacles along the way. All of these events led to Israel being established as a great nation. This was to fulfil the promise that God had made to Abraham, that he would bless the whole world through him, that he would make his name great, that he would make him into a great nation, and that he would give him the land of Canaan as his home.
Israel had lost their home, they were living as part of another nation, and when we read about them in Exodus, they are hardly a blessing to all the nations. All aspects of God’s promise to Abraham seem to have been lost. But God’s plans cannot be derailed. He had made a promise to Abraham, and now he was going to fulfil his promise.
The problem:
This all sounds great. God had saved Moses from the genocide Pharoah waged against the Israelite boys. He gave him a free education at Pharoah’s expense. He even gave him time to grow in humility as a shepherd in Midian. He now appeared to Moses in the burning bush as a way of meeting Moses, redeeming him, and commissioning him into God’s service. God was about to rescue his people through Moses and stay faithful to his covenant with Abraham.
I don’t know about you, but if I were Moses, I would be excited to hear this. Wouldn’t you? You can almost imagine Moses sitting there, hearing God lay out his rescue plan and saying: "Oh yes, Lord, that is great, Lord, wonderful! So, um, how is it going to happen? How are You going to do it?”
And God says to him, "Well, you’re it."
But Moses doesn’t want to go. If you read the passage, Moses makes all kinds of excuses. He said, "But I am nobody. I don't know what to say. They won't believe me. I don't speak well." But God responded by saying, "I will be with you. I will tell you what to say. They might not believe you, but they will believe me. Do you really think your inability to speak matters to me? I made your mouth, I formed your tongue. Now go."
We often focus on the things that prevent us from answering God's call and making excuses for why we can't do it. We think, "I could never do this. Someone else would be better. Have you seen my past, my sins, my selfishness, or my ineptitude?" Instead of looking to the one who sends us, we look at everything that stands in the way.
But God always saves with a purpose. He saves us not just from something but to something. He saves us from our sin and saves us to a life of worship. He saves us from our depravity and saves us to a life of purpose. He saves us from our brokenness and saves us to a life of fixing others. He saves us from our wickedness and saves us to a life of witness. He saves us from an eternity of tears and saves us to an eternity of testimony. God saves with a purpose.
But what happens when we hear this? What happens when we hear that God has a purpose in mind for us? What happens in our hearts when we hear about the work He has for us to do? I think like Moses, most of us come up with all kinds of excuses not to be sent by God.
We might pray a prayer like this: “Lord, I have to get my house in order first. Lord, I am too sinful. Once I have sorted and mastered this particular sin, then I will go. Lord, I don’t have the words. Lord, I don't have the skills. Lord, no one has ever shown me how to do this. Lord, there are others who are better at this than me.”
God calls us out of our sin and saves us for a purpose. None of our excuses should prevent us from fulfilling that purpose.
After God answers all of Moses’ objections, Moses finally says, "Please send someone else". God allowed him to take Aaron with him but said, "You are still going."
God’s rescue plan cannot be thwarted, not even by our unwillingness to be used. Moses ultimately went and told Pharoah to let Israel go, and God did deliver Israel from Egypt. But this deliverance story is part of a much greater deliverance story.
Moses leading Egypt out of the land of slavery reminds us of another Greater Moses, who would one day come to lead his people out of a land of far worse slavery. That Greater Moses also didn’t want to go through the deliverance process and prayed to God to be released from his burden. But God’s rescue plan cannot be thwarted. The Greater Moses did deliver his people by ultimately becoming the Passover lamb. But that’s a story for next time.
