Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Encouragement From Others


[Okay, it's the last day of September, and the blog roll is empty for the month. I'll take a stab at filling it with this.]


The study of Moses in BSF is turning out to be quite enlightening. Aside from a few minor interpretation issues in the ministry's notes, we've been presented with several worthwhile application challenges.

I thought that I'd share are four of them from this week's study.

We can look at the life of Moses and see our own. If we examine his characteristics and life events, as revealed by him and the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and interpretations of his life and actions in the New Testatment, mainly Acts 7 and Hebrews 11, we can measure our own successes and shortcomings. And joy comes in when we are alert to how God is orchestrating events in our lives, as he did in Moses'.

For example, Jesus tells us in John 15:5, "apart from me you can do nothing." If you look at Moses, he failed in a whole lot before he convicted himself to God. What did he accomplish (what fruit did he bear) in his life before he met God and accepted his assignment? Josephus says a bunch about Moses' triumphs, but all of them are secular.

When he went on his own volition to be the great emancipator, he killed an Egyptian. The very next day, he was rejected by his countrymen. What did he do then? He ran away to save his life. Spiritually, he had failed. The Israelites didn't see him as "judge and ruler." They didn't see him as their deliverer. So, he went away and became "an alien in a foreign land," a stranger to the Midianites, to his Hebrews, to his Egyptians, and even to himself.

Moses discovered that he was capable of murder, and we can be similarly as culpable if we go our own way instead of God's. This isn't the only example of someone good in the Bible who did something terribly wrong. Who would have thought that David was capable of adultery and murder to cover it up? Do we think that we are better equipped or holier than men like these? I doubt it. The learning point is this: if we do not stay close to God and wait on him, we can become capable of doing the most heinous things that any one else has ever done.

Moses probably thought that he was doing the right thing when he took on the task master who was beating a Hebrew. Did Moses set out to kill him? The Bible doesn't say. It just says "Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand." (Ex 2:12) Conclusion? It sure sounds like murder. Point here is that no matter how noble our desires or how lofty our objectives, it is crucial that we use God's methods to accomplish them, not our own, not the world's.

Using Moses as an example, we can see that God will work in us to overcome our failures and work through us in His time, in the place of His choosing. It was 40 years and lots of preparation time before God used Moses. But He used him for one of the greatest events in human history.

So, even if we have stains from our mistakes, the ones we keep to ourselves and for our own personal self-regret, we can be encouraged by the life and trials of Moses (and others) and be ready when called on to do something small.


Who knows what that small thing might turn into?

IBG / JF