“And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.” -Exodus 4:17
Our little congregation recently began a series of sermons on the book of Exodus, the story of the Israelites journey from 400 years of slavery in Egypt to the land that God had promised they would settle in as a people. The Lord heard the continuing cry of the (two million or more) descendants of Jacob in their misery and chose a leader to guide their fraught passage from Egypt: Moses. We know from the Exodus story that Moses had been saved from the Pharaoh’s program of infanticide by his mother, Jochebed, and the brave band of midwives delivering children for the Hebrew mothers (Exodus 1:19-20, 2:1-4). After being carefully placed in the Nile by his mother, in a tar-covered basket, the boy Moses is found by an Egyptian princess. She gives the baby back to his family to be paid caregivers until he is weened and eventually he enters the royal harem as a prince, taught in all the ways of royalty (2:5-10). Moses would have learned all things regal, including fighting and oratory skill, horsemanship and chariot driving. Still, it seems the young man has an empathetic heart for the people of his origin. The eventful second chapter of Exodus follows Moses killing an Egyptian taskmaster he observed beating a Hebrew worker. Knowing that he has incurred the wrath of the Pharoah, 40-year-old Moses flees to Midian (Sinai). He marries and becomes a shepherd for his father-in-law Jethro. That should be the end of the story, right? Ah, but God has other plans for Moses, for He has heard the cry of His people enslaved in Egypt.
Chapter 3 begins with Moses encounter a bush, while he is tending to his sheep, that is aflame, yet doesn’t burn. Hmm…everything burns, right? A dry shrub of acacia or some kind of bramble would burn briefly and become ash. This does not. In an act of theophany, God speaks through an angelic emissary to Moses and tells him to humble himself before the flame (vs. 2-6). God proceeds to tell Moses that He has heard the suffering pleas of His people for mercy and has chosen the 80-year-old to lead the nation into the next chapter of their life as a people (vs. 10). Moses, over the course of Exodus chapter 3-4, makes five (fairly lame, but completely human) excuses why he is not the man for the job. First, he questions his own worth for such a task (3:11). Next, Moses notes to God that he wouldn’t even know what to call Him when addressing the Israelites, let alone the Pharoah (3:13-19). Moses addresses God with his third excuse, stating they nobody will believe him (4:1-9). The next excuse was one in which Moses tried to portray himself as a poor speaker. Even with speech difficulty, this was a man trained to speak to royalty from the time he was a toddler (4:10-11). Finally, the most pitiful excuse arises from Moses in chapter 4, verse 13:
But he said, ‘Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.’
There are typically two ways of not doing things that are required of us. The first is avoidance. This is kind of a Starbucksy-blend with rich notes of procrastination and subtle hints of feigned indifference. At a certain age, many of us (okay, me) master this, or like to think we have. The second way is what Moses employed, the outright statement rejecting responsibility, the not-going-to-do-it posture. This is translated from the ancient, Generation X term Nah ga doit (c.1988). Moses stood before the Lord and gave five variations of “nope.” The five stages of not-going-to-do-it can be summarized as: Who, me? On whose authority? Who’s going to believe me? Who will understand me? Why can’t you get someone else?
This leads me to the question: What do you do when God calls you to do the work of going forward in faith during your time on this earth? Not even going forward in faith regarding the big things, like taking that long postponed mission trip, or funding a Child of Promise, but the everyday callings to transform the world for Christ. As a chaplain, my daily small calling is to let people know I’m bringing the care of Christ before they see the outward symbols of my profession. This means making someone feel cared about on a 10-second elevator ride, or noticing when a stranger is struggling. The practice of answering the small calls can loosen the will of the most stubborn amongst us (not to mention the tongue) for answering the larger call of sharing the love of Christ in larger ways, like discipling the new Christian with loving teaching, or volunteering in the ministry of local churches and parachurch organizations. I can attest that I avoided the call of God on my life and work for decades in order to establish what was important in the moment rather than what is important for eternity. There was deep-set FOMO (Fear of Missing Out, or alternately, Fear of Multiple Overdrafts) in me and I was hard to budge. I was afraid of missing the temporary and transient, the sparkling dragons of commerce. Answering the call to service in God’s Kingdom is a matter, for Moses, and us, of realizing that it’s not so much about us, but we live entirely by the grace of God for His service to a brokenhearted world.
Here is the kicker I’ll leave you with after having rambled a bit: Moses went. The first two words of Exodus 4:18 are “Moses went.” The Lord God gave Moses an enormous task, along with more than enough equipment and encouragement to complete the call, and Moses went. As you pray and rely on God’s Holy Bible to guide, inform and mature you through life, what is He calling you to do? How can you get off the bench and start doing? What’s stopping you? In your prayer and searching, ask a pastor or a mature Christian friend to mentor you and help you live for your calling rather than wait until life’s clock runs out. FOMO (Frequency of Moses’ Obstinance) isn’t any kind of excuse. Even he couldn’t sustain that before God.–Pastor Andy
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