Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 24 June 2012 and 12
June 2014 by Captain Michael Ramsay
Click here to read the
2012 version: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2012/06/exodus-3-4-go.html
Today is Fathers’ Day and I have certainly been blessed with three of
the greatest children for whom a father could ask. We are looking forward to
helping out at the Soapbox Derby as per The Salvation Army’s tradition here in
Swift Current. It should be 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 one day: I remember telling them that we
would have to walk home when they arrived at the corps. 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 corps 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 one year and she did a
spectacular job. Many people commented on her performance. Both Rebecca and
Sarah-Grace have won accolades for their performances. Heather too is growing
into quite a big girl. She knows she is special. 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 in the car episode. Moses, in our story today, as he
stands before God, sounds a little like a scared child and as the reader nears
the end of the pericope, he actually sounds a lot like an obnoxious child who
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, “Go…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 then He 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 – not apparently listening and still focussing on himself - 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 is going to do everything that God says God is going to do.
God will deliver Israel;[3]
God will do it but He is still angry with Moses. Actually, a few verses later,
Exodus 4:24, it says that God is more than just 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 to 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 Moses does die on the outside looking in. After a
later display of his lack of obedient faith in God, Moses earns this
consequence and maybe even more than that (cf. TSA doc. 9). 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). Instead of Moses inheriting a
dynasty like David later does, 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 does remove them from any prominence in posterity.
The priesthood descends through his brother Aaron’s line – not through Moses’
or one of 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 3:1-4:16, 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 forget that God is the one who provides for their
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 doubts God here in Exodus Chapter 3? Do we ever ignore God when He tells
us that He will do something through us? Do we ever argue instead that we can’t
possibly live up to what God wants to do? If so, then, like Moses, we probably
anger God. And if this is the case then we – like Moses - 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
only 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 are metaphorically standing
before God at a burning bush. God is asking 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 from the first time He promised
Abraham he would deliver his descendants into the Promised Land (Cf. Genesis
15:14).[5]
God waited those many, 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 a position of one who is seemingly more afraid 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 one
who is 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 can be the same with all of us here today. We are all standing before
God, like Moses at that 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 invited to help at the soapbox derby
concessions; every Saturday from now on through the summer we have an
opportunity to be at the prayer booth at Market Square, right downtown. Next
week we are going to join the Baptists in a community barbecue. The youth this
week handed out flyers to the homes in the neighbourhood in preparation for
this event. Between all these events and other things happening in our lives,
there may be some people that we are going to meet in this next month, in this
next week and in this next hour that have never met Jesus; so I encourage us to
ask anyone we don’t recognize if they attend a 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.
---
[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.
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