By any standards, Moses is one of the greatest figures of history. His achievements were simply prodigious.
Under his leadership, a motley collection of family clans serving as slave labour in ambitious building programmes were freed from the tyranny of the most powerful totalitarian state of their era, were welded into national unity, subdued a maelstrom of warring states in the Middle East, and established an independent Kingdom with a sense of national identity so intense that today, after thirty-five centuries of oppression, frustration and dispersion, it is not a wit less passionate than on the day it was born.
Moses was a Nation Maker.
At the beginning of their venture, the Israelites were an undisciplined rabble, contentious and self-willed; yet at the end of it their life was ordered, from the highest levels of religious worship down to the most mundane levels of personal hygiene by a rule of law so comprehensive, and so profoundly illuminated by moral insight, that to the end of time, the name of Moses will be honoured as humanity's greatest framer of laws.
Moses was a Law Giver.
In Egypt the Hebrews' religious life was muddled, idolatrous and riddled with superstition, lacking any consistency or inner vision; yet within the space of a single generation, Moses had impressed upon them a faith that was absolutely unique in its vision of One God ...
• sovereign in His freedom ...
• awesome in His holiness ...
• yet infinite in His mercy and compassion, and
• unchangeable in His faithfulness.
Moses was a Religion Founder.
Even today, three of the world's oldest and major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have roots in that one man's vision.
Nation-Maker, Law-Giver, Religion-Founder - there are few men who have exercised so profound and enduring an influence on the mind of man and the course of history as the man Moses. He bestrides our human story like a colossus. It might be said of his influence as it was said of his person at the end of his life - "his vision is not dimmed, nor his natural force abated." (Deuteronomy 34:7)
And yet he was described, surprisingly, with these words: "Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all the men that were on the face of the earth." (Numbers 12:3) That prepares you for the secret of his greatness. It lay, not in the service he rendered, but in the God to Whom he rendered it. None were more keenly aware of Moses' greatness than the men who wrote the Bible, yet again and again they referred to him with impressive simplicity as "the man Moses." For all his greatness he was but a man - a man whose human frailties, moreover, are frankly recorded. The secret of his huge achievements is revealed in a simple Bible phrase in the letter to the Hebrews that might stand over his life like an epitaph: "By faith." (Hebrews 11:23) It was not Moses who made history, but Moses' God. History is "His Story," and in the unfolding of it, Moses was but a man who trusted God enough to obey Him.
Chronicler, psalmist, prophet and apostle would all say to us, as Peter said to the crowds in the Jerusalem Temple, "Why are you surprised by this? Why do you gape, as though by his own power or godliness this man wrought these things? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, wrought these things by His servant Moses. His Name, through faith in His Name, made this man strong." (Acts 3:12,16)
It is true that Moses was a man possessed of considerable personal endowments who enjoyed unique advantages in his upbringing and his education, but it was not in any of these things that the secret of his strength lay. Indeed, as the story unfolds, it is seen with astonishing clarity that Moses must with a grim thoroughness be stripped of all reliance on these things before he can render effective service; in the end, nothing is left to him but the bare Word of God. To that he must cling, and to that alone, as a man in a raging sea must cling to the single outcrop of rock which is his only safety.
This happens, not once only at the beginning, but time and time again as events unfold, until the truth is firmly established - that apart from his God, Moses is nothing. Hundreds of years on, the psalmist will say, not that "Moses made known God's ways to Israel," but rather "GOD made known His Ways to Moses, His acts to the people of Israel." (Psalm 103:7)
The Bible writes history as it is not written in other books. In ordinary histories, the writers' entire horizons are filled with the deeds of men. In the Bible, the deeds of men are shrunk to small dimensions, and overarching them is seen the God "Who gives breath to the people on the earth, and spirit to those who walk in it," and Who moves above and behind and within their daily life.
In the early chapters of the book of Exodus we shall observe how this Biblical insight into life is spelled out, and seek to relate it to our own lives; for as Paul said to the Corinthians, "these things happened to the Hebrew people for their benefit, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come." (I Corinthians 10:11)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|