Chapters 3 and 4 of Exodus tell the story of Moses' call to serve God. Nowhere else does the Bible describe God's call to a man, or his struggle with it, so fully. It is as though we are here given the basic model, so to speak, of all such experiences. Many times more we shall be told of God's call to a man - to Gideon, to Jeremiah, to Isaiah, to Paul, to mention a few. None of them will be told in such detail. It is as though, once the prototype experience has been expounded fully, later experiences can be referred back to it, and need only an emphasis here and there to show where each man's chief difficulty lay, or where the main thrust of God's call pointed. So we do well to ponder it for a better understanding of God's call to each of us, for each of us receives his or her own call to discipleship.
We look first at three features of God's call, and then at the four difficulties Moses had with it.
Moses' question "What is Your Name?" really means, "Who are You?"
God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" Later He says, "This is My Name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations."
Exodus 3:7-8a - The Lord said, "I have seen the affliction of my people ... I have heard their cry ... I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver."
"In all their affliction He was Himself afflicted; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old." That is how, in after years, Isaiah reflected on it (63:9).
And what is true of God in His relation to Israel is true of Him (since He knows no change) in His relation to humanity as a whole. As Campbell Morgan has so finely said, "In the moment when man sinned against God, God gathered into his own heart of love all the issue of that sin." ("The Bible and the Cross", Oliphants, p. 34) In all the affliction wherewith humanity is afflicted by reason of its sin, in every place, in every age until the end of time, He is Himself afflicted.
That is what we see revealed in Jesus Christ. The sighing of the children of Israel by reason of their bondage is absorbed into the sighing of the Son of God when He took our condition to Himself. Twice we read of it. When they brought the deaf mute to Him, He looked up to Heaven and sighed (Mark 7:34); and when the Pharisees disputed with Him, challenging Him, He sighed deeply in His Spirit. (Mark 8:11) "In those two Gospel incidents," wrote F. B. Meyer, "the Lord saw specimens of the whole vast sea of pain and sin that rolls round the world." ("Exodus Vol I" Morgan & Scott, p. 50)
Those are the two causes - always - of His sighing: human suffering and human unbelief. Though He knows He will banish sin and suffering from the world, yet while it lasts it sits heavy upon His tender, holy heart - as it weighs upon His Father's heart, for in this also it is true that "he who sees the Son sees the Father." The whole accumulated sum of sorrow and of evil in the world wreaks havoc in the heart of God and it is a burden that He alone can sustain - a burden He alone, by the awesome toil of His own redeeming endeavours, can so sustain as finally to lift it from us.
And always, always, His call to us to serve Him issues forth out of the passion to redeem that throbs in His heart. From the call to feed His lambs to the call to suffer for His sake, it is a call always to be sharers with Him in His passion to redeem. "When we bear one another's burdens, we fulfil the law of His life, to which He is perpetually subject," to quote F. B. Meyer again.
Five statements - six - are made about God in connection with our human situation as it is reflected in these chapters which are perpetually true: God hears, God remembers, God sees, God knows, God comes down to deliver ... and, "Come, I will send you," He says.
That is why He calls us - not for our sake alone, but for the sake of those to whom He sends us, for the love He bears them.
That brings us to the third thing.
"Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring forth my people ..."
Always, when God acts to redeem He calls into service a human hand. "There was a man sent from God" has been a consistent feature of salvation history from its beginning to its end.
"When He summoned a famine on the land, He
had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph." (Psalm l05:16)
"The Lord sought Him a man to rule," the man David. (I Samuel
13:4)
"There was a man sent from God whose name was John." (John
1:6)
Even that part of God's redeeming work which is uniquely His own, so it can be wrought only in secret and in a holy mystery, is wrought by the hand of the Man Christ Jesus. "When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, to redeem ..." (Galatians 4:4)
God will not have it that we be spectators merely of the process by which He saves us. The means by which He achieves that end are all of a piece with the end itself, which is a sharing together in all the blessings of His reign ... and who but the forgiven can rightly bring good tidings of forgiving love? No sooner has God touched a person's life with redeeming love than He says, "Come I will send you ..." Think not to escape His call, for it is all of a piece with the blessing He gives, and the blessedness we seek.
Yet still it is true, for us as it was for Moses, that when we hear the call of God we shrink from it. So now we must turn our attention to those difficulties which we always have with the call of God and which are dealt with in these chapters.
There are four difficulties Moses had, all typical of our own:
1. He lacked confidence in his own
adequacy.
3:11 - "Who am I," he asked, "that I should go?"
2. He lacked confidence in God's adequacy.
3:13 - "Who are You?" he asked (which is what the question
meant, "What is Your Name?")
3. He lacked confidence in his own acceptance.
4:1 - "They will not believe me," he protested.
4. He lacked confidence in his ability - or better, his
suitability
4:10 - "I am not eloquent," he protested.
1. The crisis of confidence in his own adequacy
Moses, when God called him, was a broken man, already old. Small wonder he was no longer brash, as he had been in young manhood.
But it was by God's ordaining that Moses had suffered humiliation and defeat. God had to teach him, as He must teach all whom He calls to serve Him, that by human strength alone shall no-one prevail. God dare not entrust His power to a person until that person is humbled so as to obey with meekness. Only in weakness, leaning upon God, can any be strong. It lies in God's firm purpose for us that we be led into some crisis of self-confidence in which we come to an end of ourselves and a true beginning of Him. (And may the Church of God be spared the ministry of men and women who will not bear to be broken.)
It is a familiar theme of evangelical faith that we must be broken before we can be of service. And it is a true one. It is "the broken and contrite spirit which God does not despise." You will never meet a person of mature faith and true vision and real fruitfulness whom God has not humbled. But it is only half the truth - a half truth which can lead the person of evangelical faith into a deadly snare. That snare is to suppose that true piety consists in for ever pleading one's own unworthiness to such a degree that we never throw ourselves with energy and enthusiasm into any task ... as though to be helpless and ineffectual were God's final intention for us. That is a lie ... a lie the devil must chuckle to see believed. What better strategy than to paralyse the people of God with what they suppose to be a true faith? It was a trap into which Moses very nearly fell; and it took a frightening taste of God's anger to jolt him out of it, as we shall see.
God does not bring us low simply to keep us under, but so that He may raise us up in a new and a right spirit. Once we know where our real strength lies - not in ourselves but in Him - He would have us be strong. If His first word to us is, "Without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5), it is so that He can say, when He has appointed us our task, "The Lord has chosen you; now be strong, and do it." (I Chronicles 28:10)
See now how God answers Moses.
Moses protests, "But who am I that I should go ... an old, failed, broken man?" And God does not argue that with him. He does not say, "Nonsense Moses, you're the very man for the job. You have too low an opinion of yourself altogether. Your self esteem needs building up." God does not say that. What He does say is, "Admitted! ... but I will be with you. A mere man, a failed man, a broken man even, you may be; but I will be with you!"
One broken man ... and God is mightier than an army. The story is told of the violinist Pagannini that a sophisticated Paris audience once aggravated him by a total lack of enthusiasm for his playing. Stung to the quick, he deliberately broke first one string on his violin, then a second, then a third, so that he had only one string left. Then he hissed to his astonished audience, "One string ... and Pagannini!" and brought them to their feet with his virtuosity.
One man ... and God!
Let us get it out of our heads that the important thing in our lives is what we are going to do for God. The only thing we should have eyes for is what God is going to do. His are the mighty works that will be done.
That, surely, is the meaning of the sign God gives Moses to end his lack of confidence in his own adequacy. It is a strange sort of sign (3:12): "This shall be the sign for you that I have sent you: when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain." What sort of a sign was that? It demonstrated nothing, in that moment. What was there in it to see? All it did was bid Moses wait and watch to see what God would do.
And that is the whole point! Moses is to have eyes, not for his own inadequacy, but for God's adequacy. He is to take his eyes off himself altogether and have eyes only for God. When God has kept His promise, Moses will know. It is the only remedy for our inadequacy there will ever be. Like Peter in the waves we are to look up!
This sign must be kept in mind when we reach ch. 17, for it is the key to our understanding of the incident at Rephidim; that is where the promise was fulfilled, the sign completed, the whole nation gathered at last to the same spot where God met His servant first, at the foot of Horeb where this conversation took place.
Now the answer to Moses' first difficulty is the occasion of his second, and that was:
2. The crisis of confidence in God's adequacy
The question "What is Your Name," really means, "Who are You? How can I be sure of you?" And God's answer to that is that until he ventures obedience, he will never know. "I am what I will turn out to be for you."
"When the thing is done," God tells him, "and you stand again in this place, not alone as you are today, but surrounded by the whole multitude of my redeemed people, then you will know that it is I, Yahweh your God, who has been with you and has done all these things."
Venture nothing, and we shall be sure of nothing. But venture all - in faith and obedience - and we will know. "He who wills to do my will," said Jesus, "will know whether my teaching is mine merely, or God's Who sent me." (John 7:17) Obedience is the only means by which we ever reach confidence in God. As Albert Schweitzer said, "As One unknown He comes to us, as He came to those men on the shore of the lake who knew Him not. His word to us is the same as His word to them, 'Follow me.' And He puts us to those tasks which He has for our time. He commands. And to those who obey, be they wise or simple, He reveals Himself through all that they are privileged to experience in His fellowship of peace and toil of struggle and pain, until they know, as an inexpressible secret, Who He is ..."
3. The crisis of confidence in his own acceptance.
Moses' third objection is to protest that the people God is sending him to will pay him no heed. We shall consider it more fully in the next chapter. Note now that the protest was a cover for his own fear, his own guilt, and his own unbelief.
By the three signs ...
i. of the rod turned into a serpent (a symbol of Egypt) and back again into a harmless rod ...
ii. of the leprous, guilty hand that had killed, exposed to discovery before the eyes of God, and cleansed by his forgiveness, and ...
iii. of the water of the Nile, a god to the Egyptians on whom they falsely relied for life and vigour, turned into the blood of death so as to be no threat at all ...
by these signs God met Moses' fear of the enemy, the fear born of his own guilt, and the fear that is the child of unbelief. As the old hymn says:
Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth is to know your need of Him. (Sankeys 376)
4. The crisis of confidence in his own abilities
Still Moses was not satisfied. His last excuse was to plead his lack of eloquence. "My tongue is stubborn," he says, "and my speech is slow and laboured."
Was it his tongue, or was it Moses himself who was stubborn? Was it his speech or was it his obedience that was slow and laboured?
But even if he had no ready supply of words, God was willing to meet this lack also with His patient grace. If only Moses had been more ready to trust Him, God might have added the gift of persuasive eloquence to the other gifts with which he was so generously endowed.
We must trust God to know His business when He calls us.
I think of my friend Terry Falla, whose only background was that of a farm boy and a butcher's apprentice when he answered the call of God - very hesitatingly - to train for the ministry. How was he to know (or anyone else for that matter) that he was to reveal a facility in Hebrew and Semitic languages that has made him the most brilliant scholar in that field that our Victorian Baptist denomination has had?
"Who made man's mouth," God asked of Moses. "Have not I the Lord? Go man, go - and I will be with your mouth." When God sends us out on a job, He can be trusted to supply the equipment we shall need for it.
God has listened patiently to every objection Moses has put up, and answered them all, so that he is left without a rag of excuse.
His last bid to escape responsibility is rather naughty; he throws God's words back in His face. In answer to the question about His Name, God had answered, "I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt." Now Moses says, cheekily, "O my Lord, send I pray, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send." In other words, "Since it all rests with you, O God, then You get on with it ... with anyone else but me. You've got the wrong man, Lord." That is not humility - that is downright disobedience. That is not mere self-distrust - it is unbelief.
A sober estimate of our capabilities in the light of the faith God has given us we must have; but to protest there is nothing God can do with us is a downright slur upon His Deity.
The moment a man answers the call of God by saying, "Lord, here am I - send him" ... that moment, God's anger is kindled. He would dignify us by entrusting to us genuine responsibility. And when God chooses us to serve Him, it ill behoves us to challenge the wisdom of His choice. Be strong and do it!
Notice finally that God ended this Commissioning Service by appointing Aaron to be Moses' deputy. That turned out, in the event, to be a judgment on Moses for his unwillingness; for it was Aaron who fashioned the golden calf and wrought folly in Israel, became a thorn in Moses' side and undermined his leadership.
It turned out to be a bitter way to learn to trust and obey - more bitter than it need have been. But he learned it. For never again do you hear this whining note of self-depreciation from Moses. It belonged only to the hour of decision, when he at last cast himself upon God in faith. From that hour Moses withdrew - self-doubt and all - behind God. He did not obtrude himself again, even to protest his unworthiness, save for one sorry occasion at Meribah - and that cost him Canaan!
It is a truly amazing thing that Moses was able to stamp the religion he founded, not with his own name, but with the Name of his God. Alone among the historic religions of the world, the religion of Moses is not called after its founder. Some words of John make a fitting tribute to him: "He who does what is true comes to the Light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God." (John 3:21)
Then let us also take up the task to which God calls us, and "let our light so shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify our Father Who is in Heaven." (Matthew 5:16)
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