This week, I found out about an anxiety disorder I had never heard of before. The disorder is called “Imposter Syndrome.” It’s when someone looks at a new job or position and they are overwhelmed with the feeling that they are unqualified or unprepared for it. They’ve got this little voice in their head that’s playing the same song on a continuous loop:
• “I have no clue what I’m doing and everyone is going to realize it.
• I don’t deserve to be here.
• I only got the job because my uncle recommended me and I interview well.
• I feel like a fraud.”
Sound familiar? It isn’t just when you have a new job. It can happen when you start college. You’re there on a scholarship and you’re afraid it was only because your high school was so easy. Or what about the first night home from the hospital after you’ve had your first baby? Is there anyone anywhere that drives away from the hospital going “Yeah… We’ve got this?” No! You look at the nurse after she wheels mom out to the curb and starts to go back inside and say, “Wait… YOUR’RE NOT COMING WITH US?”
If you’ve ever felt this, you aren’t alone. According to the International Journal of Behavioral Science, 70% of people have had these feelings at some point in their lives.
I heard about a guy who went to the doctor and said, “I have imposter syndrome.” And the doctor said, “Nope. I think you’re faking it.”
Lots of websites talk about how to overcome imposter syndrome. They include tips like,
Embrace positivity!
You just have to believe in yourself!
Keep a record of your successes and achievements!
All of that is good stuff, but none of that is God stuff. And so this morning I’d like us to spend some time looking at the first person in history to struggle with imposter syndrome—Moses. And I want us to pay attention to how he overcame it.
If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 3 [Read to verse 10]
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray:
[Prayer, be seated]
A little background. Moses’ life had three stages, each lasting about forty years. For the first forty he lived in Pharaoh’s household as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter.
Exodus 2:11 tells us that when he had grown up he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and so he killed him and buried him in the sand. When he realized he’d been found out, he fled to Midian and spent the next 40 years as a shepherd.
Then God calls him to lead the people out of bondage in Egypt. It will take him the last forty years of his life to do it.
So as Tony Evans put it, Moses was a somebody who became a nobody to prove God can use anybody to impact everybody.
But things don’t start off very well, do they? Imagine the scene from Moses’ point of view. He’s basically been a fugitive for the past forty years. His people have been in slavery for four hundred years. Then God speaks to him from a burning bush. Pay attention to all the pronouns in this passage:
• “I have seen their affliction… and [I] have heard their cry” (v. 7)
• “I know their sufferings” (v. 7)
• “I have come down to deliver them” (v. 8)
• “[and I will] bring them up out of that land” (v. 8)
• “the cry of the people has come to Me” (v. 9)
• “I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.”
Up to this point, Moses is saying, “Yes! Get ‘em, God! Sic ‘em!” I’ll bet Moses can’t wait to watch God open up a can of whup ‘em on those Egyptians.
But then in verse 10, God makes one more statement of what He is going to do: I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
Wait, what?
All this time Moses is getting pumped about how God is going to work, only to have everything come crashing down when he realizes God’s plan is to work through Moses.
Then, Moses asks God five questions:
Question 1: Who am I? (Ex. 3:11-12)
Moses may have thought to himself, “God, if you were going to use me, why didn’t you do this forty years ago, when I was a prince of Egypt? Why now, when I’m a fugitive octogenarian?”
God’s answer is not “Moses, you’re awesome! Moses, you can do it!” God doesn’t give Moses a self-esteem pep talk. He simply says, “I will be with you. And here’s how you know that I have sent you. When you’ve brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship Me on this mountain.”
Talk about delayed gratification! Moses will not worship God on that mountain again until he receives the law in Exodus 20. After the ten plagues. After the Red Sea. After manna and quail and water from the rock. When all is said and done, Moses will look back and realize God was with him the whole time.
We may not have the assurance that God is with us until after we begin to obey Him. But when we do obey Him, we begin to realize that who we are doesn’t matter at all. Who God is makes all the difference in the world.
So Moses doesn’t get anywhere with that question, so he moves on to Question 2:
Question 2: Who are You? (Ex. 3:13-15)
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
Keep in mind that by the time God sent Moses as the deliverer for His people, they had been in Egypt for 400 years. So they were thoroughly familiar with all the Egyptian gods and goddesses. So they may very well have said, “which God?” Was it Hapi the god of the Nile? Heqet the goddess of fertility, who was always portrayed with the head of a frog?
Nepri was the god of grain and crops. There was the sun God, Ra. Meshkenet, who was thought to preside over every childbirth. So which God, Moses?
Answer: In verse 13, God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
Well, that’s kind of vague. What does that mean, I am who I am? It means that God doesn’t identify himself as the god of any one thing. He identifies himself as the God of All Things. And he’s gonna prove it by sending ten plagues that show his superiority over every one of the false Gods of the Egyptians. You worship the river? I’m gonna turn it into blood. You worship a frog goddess? I’m gonna send you so many frogs that Pharaoh will beg you to beg Me to get rid of them. You have a god of the grain? I’ve got locusts. You have a sun. God? I have three days of darkness so thick it can be felt. You have a goddess of childbirth? I have a destroying angel who will kill every firstborn child.
I am the God of your fathers.The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” Exodus 3:13-15
He is the sovereign God. He is the living God. And he is a personal God. He wants to make Himself known by his name!
Question 3: What if they don’t listen? (Ex. 4:1)
True story: Of all the times I have read this passage, I had never stopped to consider who Moses was talking about when he said “What if THEY don’t listen?” Was it the Israelites, or was it Pharaoh?
And I think the answer is both. Moses anticipated that Pharaoh wouldn’t believe him, and so God gave him some signs to perform— a slithering staff, a leprous hand, water turned to blood. Pharaoh was unimpressed. His magicians would reproduce two of these (see Exodus 7:8-22).
What Moses maybe didn’t anticipate was that his own people the Israelites wouldn’t listen. They did at first. In 4:31, when Moses and Aaron met with the elders prior to going to Pharaoh, they did a dress rehearsal of the signs God gave them to perform before Pharaoh. Scripture says,
31 The people believed, and when they heard that the Lord had paid attention to them and that he had seen their misery, they knelt low and worshiped.
All was well until they faced opposition. Pharaoh rejected Moses request for a three day journey into the wilderness, and then spitefully took away the straw the Hebrew slaves used to make the daily quota of bricks he required. Then, the Hebrews change their tune faster than a bad karaoke singer:
21 “May the Lord take note of you and judge,” they said to them, “because you have made us reek to Pharaoh and his officials—putting a sword in their hand to kill us!” (5:21)
This reinforces Moses' self-doubting, and he blames God for ever picking him in the first place:
22 So Moses went back to the Lord and asked, “Lord, why have you caused trouble for this people? And why did you ever send me? 23 Ever since I went in to Pharaoh to speak in your name he has caused trouble for this people, and you haven’t rescued your people at all.” (5:22-23)
In the next chapter, God again states His plan for the Israelites. Follow along in chapter 6, starting in verse 6
“Therefore tell the Israelites: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians and rescue you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians. 8 I will bring you to the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.”
But once again, the Israelites don’t listen:
9 Moses told this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their broken spirit and hard labor.
So what is the answer? God says to Moses, and to all of us, You aren’t responsible for the results. You are only responsible to be faithful to the message.
Let’s go back to Exodus 6:6-8. Remember all the “I will’s” God said to Moses at the burning bush? Well, here they are again:
• I am the Lord.
• I will bring you out and rescue you.
• I will redeem you.
• I will take you as my people.
• I will be your God.
• I will bring you to the land I promised.
• I will give it to you as a possession.
So to review: Question 1: Who am I?
Question 2: Who Are You?
Question 3: What if they won’t listen?
Question 4: What if I can’t talk? (Ex 4:10-12)
10 But Moses said to the LORD, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”
No one knows exactly what that means. Some people think Moses had some kind of speech impediment or stutter. That seems unlikely, because it’s only mentioned one other time, in 6:12, when Moses says, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, then how will Pharaoh listen to me, since I am such a poor speaker?” And we know from the rest of the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) that Moses did a whole lot of speaking.
Personally, I’m not sure if he had any kind of an impediment at all. I think he’s just getting a little desperate and he throws up a lame excuse.
And God’s answer is “Who makes mouths?” Do Moses really think God was gonna say, “Oh… you’re right. I didn’t think about that. Yeah… let me just set another bush on fire somewhere else.” You can just feel God’s patience beginning to wear thin. And He assures Moses that He will be with his mouth and teach him everything he should speak.
Listen, church: God knew what He was doing when He called you. In the KJV, Romans 11:29 says, “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” If God calls you to do something, He’s never going to be sorry He did it. And His grace is sufficient for you. That’s what He told the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9. He said My power is made perfect in your weakness.
Last Wednesday, we said goodbye to Ed Armstrong. If you knew Ed, you know that he was sometimes hard to understand. You had to really train yourself to listen. But do you imagine Ed even one time told God, “This Parkinson’s (or whatever it was) is getting the best of me. I can’t do anything for you anymore?”
Who makes mouths?
For years, this church benefitted from Greg Platt’s wisdom, even as muscular dystrophy so affected his voice that he could never speak above a whisper. Did it slow him down? I still benefit from Greg’s wisdom.
Who makes mouths? Who makes someone mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind, or cancer ridden, or with Parkinson’s or muscular dystrophy. Is it not I the Lord?” God says to Moses.
So excuse number 4 won’t hunt.
Well, finally Moses runs out of arguments. He’s got nothing. But he still doesn’t want to do it. And so he makes one final plea to God.
Question 5: Can’t you just Someone else? (Ex 4:13)
And finally, God grows angry. I’m so glad God is patient, but if I keep saying no to his command, I’m gonna make him mad. He says to go, and I say I’m too busy. He says to speak to my neighbors, and I tell him I’m too scared of being rejected. He says to pray, and I tell him it’s not my spiritual gift. He tells me to give, and I tell him times are tough, and besides, my tithe isn’t going to make much of a difference.
It is possible for God to lose his patience with us. But even in his anger, God is gracious. God basically said to Moses,
Answer: Not someone else, but someone also.
God never said we had to do it alone. All through Scripture, God sets the pattern. Aaron and Hur lifted up Moses’ hands when Joshua was fighting the Amalekites.
Gideon had 300 men. Elijah had 7000 in Israel who had not bent the knee to Baal.
Today, God gives us a church made up of a bunch of people with different gifts, talents, and abilites. (1 Corinthians 12) As Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s says, “None of us is as good as all of us.”
And even better than that, God sends us His holy Spirit:
26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Do you remember the last promise of the great commission?
And surely I am with you, even to the very end of the age.
