Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 24 June 2012 (15 June 2014) by Captain Michael Ramsay
Click here to read 15 June 2014 version: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/06/exodus-31-416-go.html
We have just had Fathers’ Day (last weekend) and I have certainly been blessed with three of the greatest children for whom a father could ask. On Father’s Day two of my girls made me nice cards. One of them gave me this great coffee cup reading “World’s Greatest Dad” and she gave me a Mars Bar to go along with it. The two oldest girls then came and helped out at the Soapbox Derby as per The Salvation Army’s tradition here in Swift Current. We topped off the evening watching an old 1930s movie and eating homemade ice cream sundaes. It was a good day and I have good daughters.
Sometimes, however, I must admit that my children listen better than they do at other times. I can remember the other week: I remember telling them that we would have to walk home when they arrived at my office. I told them that we would have to walk home because mom couldn’t come pick us up. I told them to make sure to put their coats on because it was raining and we would be walking home. I told them not to bring too many things home from the office because we would be walking home. We then head outside and immediately one of the children asks, where’s the car?
My girls can do so much and can be at times quite confident in their abilities. Rebecca, I remember, even as a three year-old, sang this amazing impromptu solo at a talent show (or something like that) in front of maybe hundreds of people that was absolutely captivating for all who were present. Sarah-Grace played the villain in the school play just this year and she did a spectacular job. Many people have commented on her performance. And this past fall and the one previous she won a prize for her confident ability to sell chocolates for her school. My children, they can be quite confident in their abilities at times.
Moses, in our pericope today, may lack some of this confidence that my girls have at times displayed but Moses appears to listen in very much the same manner as my girls did this past week. Moses, in our story today, as he stands before God, sounds a little like a scared child and as the reader nears end of the pericope, he actually sounds a lot like an obnoxious child as he keeps refusing to just do what he’s told.[1] Here is a brief paraphrase of the text we read earlier today.
Exodus 3:8: The LORD says to Moses, “I have come down to rescue the Israelites from the hands of the Egyptians…” 3:10, “Now go, Moses, because I am sending you to Pharaoh.”
Moses: Exodus 3:11, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
Exodus 3:12: the LORD speaks. It’s not about you. “I will be with you. I have sent you…”
Exodus 3:13, Moses: “Well … suppose I go and…? If I go, who should I say sent me?”
Exodus 3:14-17, the LORD: “I am who I am! Tell them I am sending you! Go and tell them that I am the one who will deliver them.” Exodus 3:16, the LORD says: “I have watched over you…” Exodus 3:17, the LORD says: “I have promised to bring you up out of your misery…” Exodus 3:18 and so on, God says: “I will strike the Egyptians” God says, “I will perform wonders among them…” God says, “I will make the Egyptians favourably disposed to My people…” God says, “I will do it!”
Moses, Exodus 4:1: “But what if they do not believe me…”
God then provides Moses with all kinds of signs, wonders and miracles that God performs… Exodus 4:2-3:
Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
“A staff,” he replied.
The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.” Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it.
God then turns it back into a staff and then the LORD gives Moses leprosy and cures it and then He tells Moses that He, God, will do all this and more for him in front of Pharaoh. God will even turn the Nile River to blood, He says.
Then, Exodus 4:10, Moses says to God: “I can’t do that…I am slow of tongue…I can’t…. I can’t”
Exodus 4:11, the LORD, who might be getting a little ticked off at this point, I know I would be, He says: “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or who makes him mute? Who gives him sight and who makes him blind…” In essence the LORD is asking, “Who? Moses, who? Who’s the one who does all of this? I am!”, He says. Exodus 4:12, God says: “Just go! I will do the rest! I will tell you what to say. Just Go! [2]
Exodus 4:13, Moses: “No, Please send somebody else…”
By Exodus 4:14 God is getting really upset by this disobedient adult child. Exodus records that, ‘Then the LORD’s anger burned against Moses… “Get Aaron to help you; he can speak; I will help you both speak and teach you what to do.” God does it (cf. Genesis 26:3, 24; 31:3; Exodus 4:12, 15; Deuteronomy 31:23; Joshua 1:5; 3:7; Judges 6:16).
God still does everything that God says God is going to do. God delivers Israel;[3] He does it but He is angry with Moses. Actually, a few verses later, Exodus 4:24, it says that God is more than a little upset with Moses. God, it records, is even going to kill Moses but Moses’ wife – who isn’t even an Israelite – she knows how satisfy the LORD and she saves her husband life and/or possibly even her own son’s life.
Now Moses ultimately, we know, does wind up forfeiting his right to enter the Promised Land and he does die on the outside looking in. After a later display of his lack of faith in God, Moses earns this consequence and maybe even more than that. The Biblical story cares a lot about one’s descendants and we don’t know much about what happened to Moses’ sons at all (1 Chronicles 23:14). God may have even effectively ended Moses’ family line (Numbers 3:1, 27:21 but cf. 1 Chronicles 23:14; see also Midrash Tanchuma, Pinchas 11).[4] At any rate, God certainly removes them from any prominence in posterity. The priesthood descends through Aaron’s line – not through Moses’ or his sons. The next political leader is Joshua, not one of Moses’ sons. Moses dies on the outside of the Promised Land looking in and in our pericope today, Exodus 3:1-4:31, Moses angers God through his lack of faith and faithfulness and he really is blessed simply to escape with his life.
How about us? Jesus asks the same thing, in essence, of us that He asks here of Moses. Just like God, from the bush, asks Moses to point His people to the salvation that He has provided for them from slavery, if we flip in our Bibles to Matthew 28:18-20, you will notice that Jesus asks us to do the very same sort of thing. Jesus asks us to point everyone to eternal salvation. Jesus says, Matthew 28:19-20a: “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you….”
Just like with Moses, God wants to bless us as instruments of His salvation. Do we ever think of reasons why we can’t do that? Do we ever relentlessly question God –ignoring His repeated responses- like Moses does in Exodus Chapter 3? Do we ever doubt God in our ignorance like it appears that Moses is doubting God here in Exodus Chapter 3? Do we ever ignore God when He is telling us that He will do something through us? Do we ever argue instead that we can’t possibly live up to what God wants us to do? If so, then, like Moses, we have probably angered God. And if this is the case then we will be blessed to simply escape with our lives.
God has asked each and every one of us to point people to the salvation that is available for everyone through Christ Jesus, our Lord (Matthew 28:18-20; cf. TSA docs 6, 10,11). Do we do that or do we argue with God -refusing to lead others to salvation- as if it is us that need to die for their sins? Do we ever, like Moses, offer to God and ourselves a litany of excuses and reasons why we can’t obey Him in pointing everyone we meet to salvation? Do we ever, like Moses, come up with lame excuses as to why we can’t obey God’s great commission? Do we ever, like Moses, say that we are not good enough speakers to lead people to salvation? Do we ever, like Moses say, “What if they don’t believe us?” Do we ever, like Moses say, “Who am I that I should be the one to do it?” Do we ever like Moses say, “Please God, send someone else?” Do we ever decline the opportunity; do we ever decline the command and do we ever decline the commission to lead people to the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ?
I have told the story before of a friend of mine who was a car salesman. He felt the prompting of the Lord to lead a friend to Christ - as I believe each of us will who serve the Lord. He felt that the LORD was telling him to tell an employee or a co-worker about the Lord. He felt that he was supposed to point someone to salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord. He knew that the Lord was commissioning him to share the gospel. He didn’t do it. The very next day -I believe- he found out that his employee, his co-worker, his friend had died.
Today, all of us here worshipping the Lord together are like Moses standing before God at that burning bush. God has asked us to point others to His salvation. The question is, will we do it?
Moses did. God is a loving God and God is a patient God. God waited for Moses. God waited 400 or more years actually (Cf. Genesis 15:14).[5] God waited those many years to use Moses to point God’s people to salvation. God did not give up on Moses. Even though Moses tried God’s patience, pushing God seemingly to the limit, God persisted and God used even Moses – taking Moses from this position of a doubting coward who was seemingly afraid more of pointing people to salvation than of defying God (Matthew 10:28), to the point where Moses is remembered today as the great lawgiver whom God used to lead a whole nation out of slavery and into a life for service to the LORD (cf. also Deuteronomy 30:11-20, Judges 21:25, Ps 56:13, Proverbs 11:19, 13:14, 14:27, 18:21, Jeremiah 21:8, John 5:24, Hebrews 13:6, Romans 2:1-16, 6:13, 1 John 3:14).[6]
My friend, the car salesperson: He never forgot the lesson God taught him that day. He went on to be an evangelist, a pastor, and a preacher – probably the best preacher that I have ever heard actually. God did not give up on him (Romans 3:3,4; cf. Deuteronomy 31:6, Joshua 1:5, Hebrews 13:5). Even though he may have tried God’s patience, pushing God seemingly to the limit, God persisted and he used even my friend – taking him from this position of a doubting coward who was seemingly afraid more of pointing people to salvation than of defying God (Matthew 10:28), to the point where he is remembered today by me as great preacher whom God has used to lead many people out of slavery to sin and into a life of service to the LORD. It was in my time knowing this man that the Lord drew even me towards Officership in The Salvation Army.
It can be the same with all of us here today. We are all standing before God, like Moses at the burning bush. God is asking us to point others out of slavery to sin and towards this glorious salvation in Christ Jesus. The question for us today is will we invent excuses as to why we can’t obey God’s great commission? Will we tell our Lord that we are not good enough speakers or that we don’t know enough to lead people to salvation? Will we doubt God and ask, “What if they don’t believe us?” Will we question God saying, “Who am I that I should be the one to do it?” Will we plead, “Please God send someone else?” Or will we – like Moses eventually does – follow God in leading our friends and our family to salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord?
In just a few minutes we are going to join the Baptists in a community barbeque. Their youth and our youth handed out flyers to the homes in the neighbourhood in preparation for this event. There may be some people that we are going to meet in the next hour or so that have never met Jesus; so I encourage us to ask anyone we don’t recognize if they attend the Community Baptist Church or some other church in town. If they don’t (or even if they do), pray silently, then ask them if they know the Lord - and who knows, if they don’t yet, maybe in our obedience to God, maybe even this afternoon, maybe God will use even us to lead someone to salvation.
Let us pray.
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[1] But cf. Kathy Beach-Verhey, "Exodus 3:1-12," Interpretation 59, no. 2 (April 1, 2005):180-182. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 20,2012). 181.
[2] R. Alan Cole, Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1973 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 2), S. 74: Moses, unlike his early days in Egypt, has learnt to distrust himself so thoroughly that he will incur God’s anger (Exod. 4:14). Self-distrust is good, but only if it leads to trust in God. Otherwise it ends as spiritual paralysis, inability and unwillingness to undertake any course of action. Moses, like Elijah (1 Kgs 19), is a picture of a man who has had a ‘nervous breakdown’, and is now unwilling to work for God at all.
[3] Cf. Walter Brueggemann, The Book of Exodus, (NIB I: Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1994), 712.
[4] Cf. Rabbi Menachem Posner, Ask the Rabbi @ The Judaism Website, “Do we know anything about Moses’ descendants? Did they enter the Land of Israel with everyone else?” On-line at http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1530929/jewish/What-Happened-to-Moses-Descendants.htm (viewed 19 June 2012)
[5] Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Exodus/Exposition of Exodus/I. Divine Redemption (1:1-18:27)/B. Preparations for Deliverance (2:1-4:26)/5. Answering inadequate objections (3:11-4:17)/b. What if they ask what your name is? (3:13-22), Book Version: 4.0.2
[6] Cf. Fredrick Carlson Holmgren, "Exodus 2:11-3:15," Interpretation 56, no. 1 (January 1, 2002): 73-76. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 20, 2012), 76.
[7] Cf. Dr. Angus Patterson, "Turning the World Upside down," The Expository Times 122, no. 10 (July, 2011), 497-500. She uses the bush as an object lesson explaining how the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Christ are intertwined.
[7] Cf. Dr. Angus Patterson, "Turning the World Upside down," The Expository Times 122, no. 10 (July, 2011), 497-500. She uses the bush as an object lesson explaining how the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Christ are intertwined.
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