Last week we started a study on what the Bible says about work. We noticed that the very first two chapters of the Bible introduces God as a worker. God worked six days creating everything, then God rested on the seventh day setting up a divine pattern for a work week for us. When God made man and woman, He created us in His image and likeness and part of our expression of this image is in our working and resting in the rhythm of the divine example.
But then sin came and the curse that caused frustration in our labors. We heard from Solomon in Ecclesiastes that work is good, but then you die! Vanity! What do you get for all your labors and work? You get to leave it to someone else! And, Solomon says, “Who knows if he will be wise or a fool! Yet someone else gets to have everything you poured your heart and soul into! No fair!”
I don’t know about you, but Solomon seems a bit negative to me. Solomon was the wise king who refused himself no pleasure, but for all his adventures and workings Solomon still had to die; it all had to come to an end. That seems to have bummed Solomon out. Eccls 3:9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
God gets to labor and enjoy His works forever! That is partly why men revere God. Solomon’s frustration is that he can’t do that. He doesn’t have that kind of control over things he works for, so he says, “It is all vanity! Striving after the wind!”
Last week that’s sort of where we left off. I told you the story of Sam Walton and closed out with a glance at the work of God through Jesus and our invitation to come be a fellow-worker with God in Christ.
This week let’s take a brief look at one of the great fellow workers with God in the Old Testament. He is not alone, but he did rise high above his peers. Moses. What an amazing leader of God’s people. Moses left the palaces of Egypt, then the world’s most powerful nation, and ran away to the desert region of Midian, in the northwest of present day Saudia Arabia. Hebrews 11 tells us 24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. 26 He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. 27 By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.
Moses grew up in royalty. He received the best education and had the good life before him.
Stop right there. Think about that. How many people work hard to attain what Moses got by providence? He’s got it all! Moses had at his fingertips everything Solomon had, but Moses gave it all up. Was that a rash decision? What would you say to someone who gave up a high paying position and left home and family behind to do mission work for the Lord in some far away place? Would you want that for your kids?
Moses was born for God’s purpose. He was a Hebrew, not an Egyptian. God had plans for Moses that would make his name stand out throughout human history thereafter. It all involved a work that Moses was called to do. Just imagine if Moses had ignored his Hebrew heritage when he saw that slave driver beating one of the Hebrew slaves. Had Moses not done the hard things, had he not given up his royal life, his life would almost certainly have disappeared from human history. We wouldn’t know anything about Moses today. God would have fulfilled His purposes through someone else, but Moses would have missed the very work that stamped his name into immortality.
Praise God, Moses became a fellow worker with God. In doing so, Moses became more and more like God. Also, in doing so Moses became more and more dependent on God and did more and more difficult things.
His life started out in danger. Pharaoh had decreed that all the baby Hebrew boys be thrown into the Nile River. But Moses mother hid him at first, and then put him in a water proof basket and then in the Nile where he floated right where Pharaoh’s daughter found him and took him as her own. What a coincidence! The basket didn’t float into a crocodiles nest, or simply out into the deep blue sea, but right where he could be seen and found by just the right person. Note that it wasn’t an Egyptian man that found Moses. He probably would have tossed Moses into the Nile. It wasn’t another Hebrew slave that found Moses. They might have done the same. It was an Egyptian woman who found Moses. And not just any Egyptian woman, a very powerful and influential Egyptian woman. Pharaoh’s own daughter! Women usually love babies. Give a baby to a guy and he might do ok, but most of us guys know what to do when a baby cries. You give it to a woman if you can. Right, brothers?
So, anyway, Moses get’s delivered from certain death commanded by Pharaoh, and Moses deliverer is none other than Pharaoh’s own daughter. Does anyone else find that ironic? Not only that, but as soon as Pharaoh’s daughter showed compassion for him, Moses’ sister came up and offered to get the baby a nurse. Pharaoh’s daughter agreed and Moses gets to be raised by his own mother, who get’s paid out of the coffers of Pharaoh for raising him! Could it get any better than this?
For the next 40 years Moses has the life of royalty living as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Then it all changed in one big event. Moses sees an Egyptian slave driver beating one of the Israelite slaves and it just flew all over Moses. He looked this way and that and didn’t see anyone else watching he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. The next day Moses came out and saw two Israelites fighting one another.
Exodus 2:13 tells us:
He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian…
Think of it! Moses had it all in Egypt, gave it all up to rescue a fellow Hebrew who was being beaten by a slave driver, ended up in Midian where he got married, had two sons, and spent the next 40 years of his life following after sheep. It was hot hard work. Moses was now learning the ways of the desert. His training in Egypt was one thing, this was quite another. The first 40 years were in the Palace, the next 40 years were in the desert. Moses life has gone from royalty to exile. But as far as we can tell, Moses has adjusted well to this major change in his life. Then comes the grand finale. It’s time for Moses to face the most challenging yet most important part of his life. God has prepared Moses for just this work! Now God will call Moses and give Moses a job that will take him through the rest of his life.
The hardest work Moses ever had to do was this final work of faith. In it Moses lost everything else and gained God. He had to give up his shepherding of Jethro’s flock and become the shepherd of God’s flock. He also gained the name of the ultimate Old Testament leader of God’s people: the man through whom God gave the great covenant to Israel. Moses received the oracles of God in the Ten Commandments and the Law. Through Moses, God delivered His people from slavery and established Israel as a nation. Through Moses God instructed Israel to build and set up the very tent of God where God dwelled among His people.
God called Moses. Moses didn’t answer with an immediate obedient and confident, “Yes!” Moses was reluctant and very aware of his own inabilities and limitations. Moses didn’t want to do what God called him to do. He resisted. But then Moses obeyed.
I think that is an important part of the story for us. Do you want to answer God’s call on your life? How many of us struggle to let go of our own self-centered world views to answer God’s call? What is God’s call on your life? What job does God have for you?
Don’t expect it to be a fulfilling, “wow, I can’t believe how much fun this is” kind of experience. It wasn’t for Moses. It wasn’t for Jesus. It likely isn’t for you and me either.
God calls us to a work of faith. Moses would never have obeyed God unless he had faith. The longer Moses worked for God, the greater and deeper Moses’ faith in God grew. The Moses at the bush grew in amazing ways in the days that followed. So will you and I if we join with God in the works of faith that He calls us to.
God will break us down and make us new. He will show us His glory and put His glory in us and on us and cause it to shine through us.
The bush is still burning. And God is still calling and commissioning servants to become fellow workers and deliver His people from bondage. It is the greatest life you can live. It may be the hardest life you can live. But you will never regret it.
