Dah Man Of Faltering Lips. Series

A man of faltering lips: Exodus 6:28 – 7:7

When it comes to us none of us are the same and we all have strengths, recently we did a thing with our leadership team called ‘Strengths Finder’, I found the process of working through this to be a real benefit to me and I think that the team were pretty excited to discover their own strengths, some were things they didn’t know about themselves. As we worked our way through our coaching we discovered how these strengths affected us all, the process also gave us an understanding of why some of us work the way we do.

The process that we used was developed by Gallup, yip the same bloke who has the ‘Gallup Pol’l, over a thirty year period and our research was done by Canterbury Youth Services. The whole process should help us have a better understanding of one another and help us to be a more streamlined leadership team.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be looking into a few characters of the Old Testament “Great People” of the bible to look into what it was that they did for God, not some of their strengths but weaknesses and what it was that God knew about them, how he was able to enrich their lives and others lives, despite their faults and some times because of their faults. The series will be called ‘Great Men, warts and all.’

The first person I’m going to discuss is Moses; if we start by looking at the passage Exodus 6:28-7:7. Let’s read that passage.

A bit more of a background on Moses what do we know about him?

• He was a Levite, a great grandson of Levi.

• He was raised in Pharaohs household (it is thought the pharaoh was Ramses the first), by Pharaohs daughter as he had been left floating in a basket in the reeds along the Nile River. His name actually means “I drew him out of the water.” (Exodus 2:10b)

• His own biological mother was his wet nurse

• As a young adult he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew

• He then escaped to Midian

• Married Zipporah

• He was a shepherd

• God spoke to him at Horeb out of a burning bush

• He wore sandals

• God spoke to him, telling him to tell the people, ”I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ’I AM has sent me to you’.” As evidence his staff became a snake when it was thrown on the ground, plus God gave him some other signs of proof

• He wanted to take the people of Israel into the desert for three days to worship THE LORD, Pharaoh refused the request and things got tough for the Israelites

There’s more but this is really where we join him in his journey and this is where the passage we have read finds him, Moses a man of faltering lips.

By the way what age was he at this stage? Eighty and Yip 2/3rds of his way through life.

What God had told Moses to do was to tell Pharaoh that he God the LORD was going to take the people of Israel out from under the yoke oppression of the Egyptian’s, God spells this out in Exodus chapter six; He makes it quite clear that ‘Moses’ is to go and see Pharaoh and tell him to let the Israelites go.

When Moses tells his people this they don’t listen to him, and having told them he goes back to God and says, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I speak with faltering lips.” (Exodus 6:12)

The truth was that dear old Moses while being a good bloke and a reasonable kind of a shepherd and from what we see soon in the Exodus a very great leader, wasn’t real political material. He was not fast with a comeback or a quip about the other bloke’s family. He was a slow thinker who while being a great leader didn’t have an eloquent way of speaking, words failed him at the times they should have poured forth with wisdom and wonder leaving everyone in awe of his fluid linguistic radiant repartee.

He was concerned that Pharaoh, the ruler of all Egypt was going to challenge him about why he should let the Israelites go and he ‘Moses’ that is; was going to be left with egg on his face as he said something along the lines of, “God said that’s all, and if you have any more questions it’s going to take a while for the answers to come, could you give me a minute or three Mr Pharaoh Sir?”