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“And
seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was
oppressed, and smote the Egyptian: for he supposed his brethren would have
understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood
not.” (Acts 7:24-25)
I have been reading F. B. Meyer,
John Piper, A. W. Tozer, Charles Spurgeon, and other comments regarding
humility. Taking some of what one said and some of what another said,
mixing it with my own, I have come up with the following thoughts.
Moses was a man who learned
humility. We sometimes make the mistake of attributing to men in the Bible
extraordinary qualities of courage, and strength of body or soul. To do so
is to miss the whole point of the reiterated teaching of Scripture. I
think, for example, that Samson probably looked more like Woody Allen than
Arnold Swartzawhozit. Wouldn’t that bring more glory to God and less to the
appearance of a man? These men were not different from ordinary men, except
in their faith, which is the capacity of the human heart for God. Four
times in Hebrews chapter eleven his faith is cited as the secret of all that
Moses did for his people.
Faith is that capacity for God,
which appropriates Him to its uttermost limit, and becomes the channel
through which He passes forth to bless mankind. The believer is the
God-filled, the God-moved, the God-possessed man; and the work that he
produces in the world is not his, but God’s through him.
Even as a child, according to
Josephus, passers-by stood still to look at Moses’ beauty. Laborers would
stop working to steal a glance at him. Among the seven million people of
Egypt in that day, Moses was destined to be truly great. People would bow
the knee to him as he rode forth into the streets. He was educated in all
of the arts of the Egyptians, learning to read and write the mysterious
hieroglyph, learning mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and music. Stephen
said, “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians.” (Acts 7:22)
Moses was a statesman and a
soldier. Stephen tells us that he was “mighty in
words and in deeds.” Josephus says that while he was still in
his early manhood the Ethiopians invaded Egypt and threatened Memphis.
Moses was entrusted with the command of the royal troops. He surprised and
defeated the enemy, captured their principal city, Meroe, and returned to
Egypt laden with the spoils of victory.
Years flew by until he was forty,
but amidst it all, he never lost the thought of that God to whom his mother
had taught him to pray. He couldn’t get rid of the knowledge that he was to
deliver his people from slavery. With nothing to gain and all to lose, after
thoughtful examination, he descended from the footsteps of the loftiest
throne in the world, “by faith Moses, when he was
come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.”
(Hebrews 11:24)
But, like so many of us who want to
serve God, he attempted it in his own strength. “And
seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was
oppressed, and smote the Egyptian: for he supposed his brethren would have
understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood
not.” (Acts 7:24-25)
There was a great deal for Moses to
learn. In days to come he would learn the ways of the Lord. “He
made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.”
(Psalm 103:7) But now he is full of his own ways. In days to come
he will be a hand, nerved, and used and empowered by God Himself. “Thou
leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”
(Psalm 77:20) But now he is acting in his own self-energy – rash,
impetuous, headstrong, girding himself and walking as he perceives. In days
to come he will be the meekest (most humble) and least obtrusive of men,
conscious to a fault of his own weakness, and at every step looking up for
guidance and help; but now he is leaning wholly on his own understanding
and, without counsel of God, he tries to secure the emancipation of his
people by the assertion of his will and his might.
This is the making of a saint in
him; but it will take many a long year of lonely waiting and trial before
this strong and self-reliant nature could be broken down, shaped into a
vessel meet for the Master’s use and prepared for every good work. God’s
servants must be specially fitted for the service they are to render. That
special adaptation is not natural to any of us, and can only come after
years of deep and searching discipline.
“He went
out unto his brethren.” Human sympathy will not serve God. It
serves itself. It was a chivalrous act. He meant well. It showed the
strength of the emotions pent up within him; but, after all, the mere
impulse of pity would never have been strong enough to bear him through the
weary years of the desert march. We must distinguish between passion and
principle, between impulse and settled purpose. Missionary enthusiasm is
not the loftiest motive for Christian service, and it certainly is not the
most permanent. After a little while it dies down. When we become the
channels through which the unebbing torrent of Divine pity is flowing, we
have secured a principle of action that will bear us through disappointment,
failure and ingratitude. The way in which men treat us will make no
difference to us, because all is done for Him.
It was premature. God’s time for
deliverance of his people was not due for forty years. Moses education was
not complete either. It will take at least forty years to drain him of his
self-will and self-reliance, and make him a vessel meet for the Master’s
use. Jesus knew this timing in waiting upon Father when He said. “My
time is not yet come; but your time is always ready.” (John
7:6) Oh, for the grace to wait and watch with God, even though a horror
of great darkness fall on us, and sleep steals up into our eyes and our head
becomes thickly sown with the gray hair of age. One blow struck when the
time is fulfilled is worth a thousand struck in premature eagerness.
As Meyer wrote, “It is not for
thee, O my soul, to know the times and seasons which Father hath put in His
own power; wait thou only upon God; let thy expectation be from Him; wait at
the gates of thy Jericho for yet seven days; utter not a sound till He says,
‘Shout’: but when He gives the signal, with the glad cry of victory thou
shalt pass over the fallen wall into the city”
He found his people against his
effort. “For he supposed his brethren would have
understood how that God, by his hand, would deliver them: but they
understood not.” God’s time would not come until the heat of his
spirit had slowly evaporated in the desert air and he learned the hardest of
all lessons, that “by strength shall no man
prevail.”
We must never attribute too much of
the success of the Exodus to the natural qualities of the great leader; but
we must always remember that, like Gideon’s host, he was at first too strong
for God. God cannot give His glory to another. He dare not entrust His
power to men until they are humbled and emptied and conscious of their
helplessness. The most eminent of His saints must suffer from a thorn in
the flesh to remind him of his weakness.
“For ye
see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things
of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and
things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh
should glory in his presence.” (1 Cor. 1:26-29)
Another thing, we are told in
Exodus 2:12, “And he looked this way and that
way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid
him in the sand.” Suppose he had felt that he had known that he
had been divinely commissioned to execute judgment upon Egypt; suppose he
had known that he was doing what God was telling him to do. Would he have
cared who was looking or what was being said? It would not have been
possible. Fixing his eyes on the movement of the Divine, absorbed by one
passion of doing God’s will in God’s timing, sure that he was immortal till
his work was done, he would have been perfectly indifferent to the praise or
blame of men.
When we look this way or that to see
what other men are doing or saying, you may be quite sure that we do not
know with certainty our Master’s plan; we are in front of Him and we are
acting form the prompting of our own self-will, even though we may cover it
with a kind of religious zeal.
Moses was allowed to make his first
efforts for the emancipation of his people in the energy of his own strength
and to fail egregiously; so that he fled away to Midian, abandoning all hope
of delivering them. He spent his years in solitude and exile, until it was
with the greatest difficulty that he could be induced to undertake the
Divine commission. He was reduced to the last extreme of helpless
nothingness when the burning bush flamed in his path. Even that bush was a
symbol of utter weakness, possessed and indwelt yet unconsumed by God, Who
is a consuming fire.
God humbled Moses. He had to learn
that he could not trust his natural talents to do the work God had for him
to do. God humbled Moses and it took forty years. Surely there is no limit
to the possibilities of a life that has become the channel through which God
can pour Himself forth.
Are you willing to
die to your own strength; to forsake your own plans for God’s; to seek out
and do His will absolutely; to take up the attitude of entire and absolute
surrender to His purposes; to feed daily on the promises of God; to step out
in faith, reckoning, without emotion of any kind, on the faithfulness of
God, only fully persuaded that He will, here or hereafter, work as in the
times of old, of which Christian history has told us. For our God never
changes. He is the same in our day as He was in Moses’.
We, like Moses, must
learn humility.
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