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?”
God knew the way Moses worked; he was from a priestly family so the people would be aware that he could occasionally speak on ‘The Lord’s’ behalf.
The thing is The Lord had told him this is what I want you to do, “Tell Pharaoh king of Egypt everything I tell you.”
1) If God tells us to do something do we all do it instantly? Of course we obey with great haste. Of course we do, we never doubt, we never falter, we obey immediately, God says jump and we all call ‘halleluiah, How High?’
For the young people here and the not so young it’s just like those times when you’ve been asked to do the dishes or take out the rubbish, instant obedience ensures it is done as soon as the question is asked!
What is the normal reaction, “are you sure, what was that, I’m busy, under pressure to watch the end of the programme, I can’t hear you, I’m pretending that the world will end if I can’t just lie on the couch.” What is your reaction?
Moses was straight up, it’s happened before, ‘they wouldn’t listen so why should Pharaoh?’ Moses I believe spoke out of real concern that he would look a fool and so would God for sending him.
The interesting thing here is that God didn’t say to Moses “you want to be eloquent I will make you eloquent”. He said “See I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet”. In other words because Aaron is speaking on your behalf eloquently, this puts you in a higher position than Pharaoh; in this case, you are to appear too good to speak to Pharaoh. God needed Moses to be Moses. Sure he was a bit slow off the mark speech wise, but he had the right attributes to be the leader.
Aaron could speak well but lead? If we think about his leading what he did when he had the opportunity without Moses about was to lead the people into trouble. Remember the Golden Calf?
We see ourselves as we see ourselves, whereas God sees us as he sees us. Moses saw himself as a slow thinking shepherd, an individual who just didn’t have the right word at the right time. God saw him differently; he was exactly who God needed at that time to take the message about letting the Israelites go. Moses saw a man with faltering lips and God saw one of the most revered leaders in history.
He was exactly the right person to lead them to freedom across the desert. Interestingly not only did Pharaoh come to understand who God was and is, so did many others. It was not only Israelites, who left with Moses,”Many other peoples went up with them, as well as large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds.” (Exodus 12:38). The truth is that when Moses responded to God as he was directed, things beyond his imagining happened, freedom was achieved, God glorified and a nation restored.
1) The lesson for us all here is that God has made us all uniquely and that when we respond to him to fulfil his calling on our lives, he will do mighty things with and through us. The other thing to gain from this passage of scripture is that often we are not to work alone in his work, and in working alone we may fail.
What would have been the outcome if Moses did not have Aaron as his ‘prophet’? How would Pharaoh have responded to his faltering voice?
2) Often it is when we understand that it is as a team or other people who are working with us that completes us as individuals who can then fulfil our part of God’s mission for our lives. When we put our confidence in God and his plan things seem to just fit. The thing is too put our confidence in God!
Let me tell you about the six year old drunken chimney sweep who went on to become a great leader in our movement.
Elijah Cadman was born in Coventry, the youngest of five children of a drunkard father who died when Cadman was three years old. Aged six Cadman was unusually small and, because of his size, found work at that age climbing and cleaning chimneys for a chimney sweep. He would start work at 4 a.m. and continued climbing chimneys until he was 13, when the British Government passed a law which stopped boys from working up chimneys.
Cadman was often drunk from the age of 6, and by the time he was 17 he could "fight like a devil and drink like a fish". Aged 21 Cadman become a Christian after listening to a street preacher in Rugby whom he had planned to heckle. After his conversion Cadman spent all his spare time as a Methodist lay preacher. An illiterate, Cadman hired a boy to read the Bible to him and committed large sections of it to memory. He was aged 22 when he was taught to read and write by his young wife. In 1876 he sold his house and chimney-sweeping business and took his wife and children to London where he joined William Booth’s The Christian Mission.[1] In 1876 Cadman was appointed to the Hackney (East London) Christian Mission Station, where he visited the slums in the day and preached in the streets at night. In his later years Cadman campaigned on behalf of The Salvation Army in the West Indies, South Africa, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Scandinavia, Germany and other countries.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Cadman)
Here’s Elijah Cadman a man who responded, who put his confidence, not in himself but in God, who became one of the great preachers in the early days of the Salvation Army, he did mighty things along with others for God’s kingdom. God took Cadman just as he had taken Moses to do his work in Cadman’s own words “Come and hear Elijah Cadman, the sober sweep as he gives an account of his own drinkin’ experience. Come and hear him! Come and hear him!“ God was able to use the witness of this man to bring others into a life of freedom, from self centeredness and sin, because of who he was.
God will use us for his kingdoms sake, he will take us and shape us into what he originally intended us to be, if our voice falters or if we come from a background of regret, men and women of low or high esteem, young or old, God sees us as he sees us, where we see but a shadow of our own possibilities.
The thing is that God made us with our own particular quirks and we have all fallen short of his glory, there are consequences to that. But God didn’t see fit to leave us in that place, he sent his son to set us free from our sins. Jesus was a willing sacrifice, so that we could be in relationship with His Heavenly Father and so that God could abide with us.
’The truth will set you free’ and it still does, by putting your confidence in Jesus you can be set free, set free from your sins and set free to bring others into his kingdom.
Do you see yourself as God see’s you, probably not, do you want to realize your potential being all that you can be as you put your confidence in Him?
Where is your confidence? In the Lord or in something your lips struggle to say?
