LIFE LESSONS
PEOPLE OF THE EXODUS: MOSES
DR. JIM DIXON
HEBREWS 11:23-28
JANUARY 12, 2003
The first five books of the Bible are called the Pentateuch. This word Pentateuch means, “five scrolls or five books. “They are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Jewish people refer to these five books as the Torah, which means “the law.” They also refer to these five books as the Five Books of Moses, for Moses was the lawgiver. Four of the five books of the Pentateuch, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, these four books focus primarily on the life of Moses, the teaching and the words of Moses. It is not possible for us, in one Sunday, to deal adequately with the life of a man so great, but this morning we seek three life lessons from the life of Moses. The first lesson is this: God calls us into ministry. God calls you into ministry.
The call of God upon Moses, the God of call into ministry for Moses is recorded in Exodus, chapters 3 and 4. The call of God. to Moses was awesome. It was also humorous. God appeared to Moses in the theophany, a physical manifestation, as He appeared to him through a burning bush that was not consumed. God said to Moses, “Take the shoes from your feet for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground. “God said, “I have seen the affliction of My people. I have heard their cries. I feel their sorrow. I feel their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians. Come and I will send you to Pharaoh and you will lead My people, the children of Israel out of Egypt. “Moses said, “Who am I? What am I that I should go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?” God said to Moses, “I will be with you.” Moses said, “Who shall I tell them has sent me? What is your name?” God said, “I Am that I Am. Say to the people, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’ Say to the people, ‘Yahweh, Jehovah, 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 shall be remembered through all generations.’”
Moses said, “The Pharaoh will not listen to me.” God said, “I will stretch forth My hand and smite the land of Egypt. I will turn the Nile to blood if necessary.” Moses said, “The people will not listen to me.” God said, “What is that in your hand?” Moses said, “It’s my walking stick.” God said, “Cast it to the ground,” and so, he did. The walking stick became a serpent. God said, “Take hold of its tail.” Moses did, and it changed back into a walking stick. God said, “Place your hand in your robe,” and Moses did. When he drew it out, it was leprous, white as snow. God said, “Put your hand back in your robe,” and so, he did. When he took it out again, it was now normal. God said, “Through such signs, the people will listen to you.” Moses said, “I’m not eloquent of speech. My mouth is uncircumcised. I speak slowly. My tongue is cumbersome.” God said, “Who made your mouth? I will anoint your words.” Moses said, “Oh Lord, send some other guy.” God’s anger was kindled. God said to Moses, “Your brother Aaron is eloquent. I will give him to you as your mouthpiece and you will speak through him. I will anoint his mouth, and I will anoint your mouth. You will be to him as God, and he shall be your prophet.”
And so, the conversation went. God must have thought recruitment to ministry is certainly not easy. The Church of Jesus Christ has realized this for 2,000 years. Recruitment into ministry is not easy, but God calls each of you into ministry, each of you who take the name of Jesus Christ, each of you who call yourself Christian. God calls you into ministry as surely as He called Moses, so now He calls you. As surely as He called Tom and Becky, and we commissioned them this morning, so He calls you. As surely as He’s called these short-term mission teams, God also calls you. He calls you into ministry. He wants you to take short-term mission trips. He wants you to go into the Sunday school and work here in this church. He wants you to go into the inner city and work with the poor. He wants you to be an inner-city tutor. He calls us into ministry. Jesus calls you into ministry. Jesus says, “You have not chosen Me. I have chosen you, and I have appointed you to go and bear much fruit.” Jesus said, “Behold, the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Pray, therefore, the Lord of the Harvest to send more laborers into His field.” He wants to send you.
In World War II, American and allied soldiers entered a small village in Germany. They came into the village square. There had been a statue there, but it had been hidden by artillery fire. The statue was toppled from its pedestal, and it broke in many pieces. It had been a statue of Jesus Christ. The American soldiers and the allied soldiers as well and some of the people in the village joined together in putting the statue back together. Some of them were Christians. Some of them were not, but they all joined in and they found glue that would work and would be sufficient for the cause. They began to put back together this statue of Christ. When they had completed it and it was back on its pedestal and standing in the middle of City Square, they noticed that its hands were missing. The hands had just been pulverized and shattered by the fire. And so, there stood a statue of Christ with no hands.
The American soldiers went to sleep that night there in the village. The next morning, as they got up, it’s a fact of history that a cardboard sign had been placed at the base of that statue. Some villagers had written on that cardboard sign, “I have no hands but your hands.” Is that not true? Christ needs your hands. He wants to hold little children in our Sunday school, in the classroom, but He has no hands but your hands. He wants to hold inner city children who are in need of His love and who need help with their academics and their schoolwork, who one day want to compete for the dignity of a job. Christ wants to hold them and help them, but He says, “I have no hands but your hands.”
As Nanci said, “He wants to touch the untouchables in India,” but He has no hands but your hands. It doesn’t matter how old you are; it doesn’t matter. God calls you into ministry. Moses was 80-years-old when he received the call of God into ministry. The first 40 years of his life, he was a Prince of Egypt. The next 40 years of his life, he was a tender, a keeper of sheep. He was 80 years old when God came to him and called him into ministry. Your age doesn’t matter; God calls you.
We know, from United States government statistics, that amongst senior citizens in America, 24 million volunteer their time in public service—24 million-6 billion hours of service contributed by senior citizens in the United States of America every year. According to a study at the University of Michigan, they found that those senior citizens who volunteer over a 10-year period have a 40% higher survival rate. It’s good for you. It’s good for you to reach out to other people. It’s healthy. God made you like this. God made me like this. We need to reach out to other people. We need to volunteer our time. We need to enter into ministry. You see, this church provides you that opportunity, and we need thousands of you to enter into ministry because God calls you.
In 1979, John and Dottie Peckham, a couple who lived in Los Angeles, California, decided to take a cruise. They went to Mexico, and they got on a cruise ship that was traveling to Hawaii, so they went from Mexico to Hawaii on a wonderful cruise ship. Somehow, in the midst of the Pacific Ocean, they became bored. Maybe it’s because there were no ports of call, no shore excursions. Maybe they just got tired of five wonderful meals a day. Maybe they got tired of playing shuffleboard or reading books by the pool. For whatever reason, they became bored and they came up with this crazy idea one day. Let’s put a note in a bottle. Let’s just write a note, put it in a bottle, throw it into the ocean and see what happens.
So, John and Dottie Peckham wrote a note, put their names, their address and an offer of reward in a bottle and threw it into the Pacific Ocean. It was just a lark. They didn’t really expect to hear from anybody. For a long time, they didn’t, but three years later, in the North China Sea, 9,000 miles away, a man named Guyahn Vonhoa, a Vietnamese refugee, reached into the North China Sea and pulled out that bottle. Three years later, 9,000 miles away, this man, Guyahn Vonhoa, pulled out the bottle. He read the note. He had just escaped from a Vietnamese concentration camp. He felt like his life was hopeless, and he had nowhere to go and no means of support. He was desperate. He pulled this bottle out of the sea as he was in a little boat. He opened it up and he read the note, and it somehow gave him hope…
He wrote the Peckhams and they wrote back. They began to correspond and they became friends. In the year 1985, the Peckhams sponsored Guyahn Vonhoa. He came over to the United States, and today he is a United States citizen. It’s a wonderful story, and yet in a sense it’s kind of a sad and tragic story, that a couple would need to put kindness into a bottle and send it halfway around the world when people are hurting all over the place right next to us. People are hurting in the chair next to you. They’re hurting in your neighborhood. They’re hurting at work. People need you in Sunday school classes. People need you in the inner city. People need you. God calls you into ministry that you would show kindness right here. God calls some of us to go to other parts of the world it is true, like Tom and Becky. Some of us He leads to go on short-term mission trips, a lot better than putting a note in a bottle. Head over to another country. We’ll train you. We’ll prepare you. You’ll be part of something that is ordained of God, and you’ll have brothers and sisters with you. He calls you. He calls us all into ministry.
We have a second life lesson from Moses. First of all, He calls us into ministry. Secondly, He gives us a new identity. God calls us into ministry, and He gives us a new identity. Now, Tutmosa or Thutmose I was Pharaoh of Egypt. He had a daughter. Her name was Hatshepsut, the daughter of Pharaoh. She married Thutmose II. When he died in 1490 BC, she declared herself Pharaoh. She became Pharaoh of all Egypt, the fourth woman to be Pharaoh of Egypt in Egyptian history. She did great things. Her stepson, Thutmose III became perhaps the greatest of Egyptian pharaohs.
You can look in Bible commentaries. Many Bible commentaries will suggest that the daughter of Pharaoh who took Moses from the Nile River was this woman Hatshepsut. She was the one who took Moses from the river. You will read that in many commentaries. Of course, if that is true, then Moses was not only the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but he was the adopted son of Pharaoh herself. But I think it not likely that Hatshepsut was the adopted mother of Moses. I think many Christian historians just want to link Moses with a famous queen. The likelihood is that Moses lived 100 to 150 years after Hatshepsut lived.
In the Apocrypha, a series of ancient books written in the intertestamental period, in the book of Jubilees, it is said that the daughter of Pharaoh who pulled Moses from the Nile was named Thermouthis. This is an ancient tradition that was carried orally from generation. It may be true but we know little about her. There are other ancient sources that say that the daughter of Pharaoh who pulled Moses from the Nile was named Merris or Batyah, but the truth is we don’t know. We do know this though. We know that the daughter of Pharaoh who took Moses from the Nile gave him his name. It was the daughter of Pharaoh who named him, and she called him Moses from the Hebrew Massah which means, “to draw out” for she drew him out of the water. But she was not Hebrew. She was Egyptian. The name Moses also has an Egyptian etymology. This is a unique name that has a Hebrew Egyptian joint etymology.
The name Moses was common to Egyptian pharaohs. Even the name Ramses really comes from “Rahmosa” or “Rahmoses.” The Egyptian word Moses means child, “child of Rah.” This name I think reflects the conflicted identity that Moses had to deal with. Was he Jewish? Was he Egyptian? Who was he? There had to have been a great identity crisis in his life. The truth is we do not know whether Moses, in his early adult years, was even aware of the fact that he was Jewish. He may not have known that he had a sister named Miriam and that he had a brother named Aaron. We don’t know how he found out, but here is one possibility as suggested by Steven Spielberg’s animated feature called, “The Prince of Egypt.”
Perhaps you recognize the voice of Sandra Bullock in the person of Miriam. The scene, I think, shows just in a small way the struggle that Moses surely had in coming to terms with who he was, the struggle he must have experienced in coming to embrace his Jewishness. The new identity that God had for him—he was “deliverer!” He was one of the “chosen people,” and God wants you to understand if you come to Christ or if you would come to Christ, if you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, you’re given a new identity and your life takes on new meaning. You will have become a son or a daughter of God. When you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, Christ becomes your brother and his Father becomes your Father and you are a daughter of God or a son of God. You become one of the chosen people and you are called to a ministry of deliverance on this earth and given a whole new identity. As Christians, we should not think that our jobs or our careers sum up who we are. Don’t confuse your job with who you are.
I heard a joke just recently about a man in a hot air balloon who was in flight. He had planned on meeting somebody. He was late and he was lost. He descends… When he’s closer to the ground, he sees a woman in a clearing and he calls down to her. He says, “Excuse me. I’m lost. I’m supposed to meet somebody and I’m late, but I don’t even know where I am. Could you help me?” She looked at him and she said, “Well, you’re in a hot air balloon and you’re about 30 feet off the ground. You’re at approximately 40 degrees north latitude and 60 degrees west longitude.” The man said, “You must be an engineer.” She said, “How did you know?” He said, “Well, your information, while I’m sure is technically correct is of absolutely no use to me.” She smiled and she said, “Well, you must be in management.” He said, “Well, I am. How did you know?” She said, “Well, you’ve risen to a position due to a large quantity of hot air. You don’t know where you are; you don’t know where you’re going; you’ve made promises you can’t keep and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems for you!”
Of course, I think it doesn’t matter what you do but you need to approach it with a sense of humor. It’s noble to be an engineer. It’s noble to be in management, but whatever you do, approach it with a sense of humor because whatever we do is not who we are. If you belong to Jesus Christ, if you’ve embraced Him, you are a son of God, a daughter of God, one of his chosen people called to a ministry of deliverance. You have a new identity.
Finally, we have this third life lesson from Moses. We’re called into ministry, we’re given a new identity and then this, and this is most important. God empowers the meek. This is the third life lesson from Moses, and it is most important. God empowers the meek. It says in Numbers, chapter 12, verse 3, “the man Moses was very meek, more than all men on the face of the earth.” Can you imagine? The meekest man on the face of the earth. What does it mean to be meek? I think in our culture and time, some people associate meekness with weakness, but that’s not true biblically. It’s a great compliment biblically to be called meek.
You can go down to the Denver Zoo and you can see zebras there from South Africa. They are beautiful animals. They are fast and they are strong. They are in the horse family, but they are not horses. Of course, horses can be tamed; All horses can be tamed. Some are difficult to tame. Some are easy to tame, but horses can be tamed. Zebras cannot. The primary difference between a zebra and a—horse is not the stripes. It has rather to do with their nature… Zebras cannot be tamed. People in South Africa have tried. For decades and centuries, they’ve tried because they’ve seen the power of the zebra. They’ve seen its speed. They’ve wanted to harness its power in the service of man, but they cannot do it. For this reason alone, zebras are less valuable in this world than horses. Throughout human history, zebras have been less valuable to men than horses because zebras cannot be tamed.
When an animal COULD be tamed, it was described as meek. The Hebrew word “anvah,” the Greek word “praus.” These were the words used to describe an animal that had become tame and its power could be harnessed and it was useful. God looks down on the world of humanity and He looks for meek people, people whose gifts and abilities can be harnessed and useful. He’s looking for people who would be meek before Him, your power, your abilities, your gifts under control and in His service. That’s what it means to be meek, but that’s not all it means because there’s a deeper meaning to the word anvah, the Hebrew word for meek. The deeper meaning is this. Not YOUR power in His service but HIS power in your service. We need to understand this. HIS power working through you, through your service. You become a vessel. I become a vessel for His power. You become a channel for His power. I become a channel for His power. That’s what meekness connotes, a person who is willing to be a vessel for God’s power, a channel for God’s power. Moses was the meekest man on earth. Therefore, God’s power worked through him above all others.
How was he able to part the Red Sea, bring down ten plagues upon Pharaoh in the land of Egypt? How did he bring water from the Rock of Meribah to feed a thirsty people? How did he do it? He DIDN’T do it. He was just a vessel, just a channel for the power of God to flow. This was part of his call. I want you to see one more clip from the Prince of Egypt, the call of Moses as it relates to his meekness.
Do you see where the divine call given to Moses by God was really an invitation for Moses to be a vessel through which God’s power could be revealed and released? It was an invitation. God was giving Moses an invitation to become meek, to become a vessel, a channel for the power of God on earth. Moses yielded himself. He became clay in the divine hands of the potter. He said ultimately, “Here am I. Send me. Here am I. Use me.” God invites you in the same way, to be a vessel for His power. He invites you to be a channel for his power. You don’t know. You can’t comprehend the amazing things he wants to do through you.
As we conclude, I want to tell you the story about the man named Walt. Walt lived in Philadelphia 55 years ago. He was a big man. He had size 14 shoes. He was not a good-looking guy. Most people didn’t think Walt was particularly intelligent. Some people thought maybe he was a little bit retarded. Walt only had a 6th grade education. Walt loved Christ. He knew he was called to ministry. He’d sensed the call to ministry. He knew he had a new identity in Christ, that he was indeed a child of God, and he was meek.
Walt went to his church, the Temple Baptist which, decades earlier, had established Temple University. Walt went there and he offered to be a Sunday school teacher. They turned him down. They said, “Walt, you’re really not qualified to be a Sunday school teacher.” Walt went home and his sense of call had not been shaken. He decided to start his own Sunday school class, and so, he walked the streets of Philadelphia. He found a kid playing marbles on the sidewalk. Walt didn’t know much, but he sure knew how to play marbles. He got down on his hands and knees, and he said to this kid, “Do you want to play a game of marbles?” He challenged him, and pretty soon they became friends and Walt recruiting him into his Sunday school class. Through various means, Walt recruited 13 kids into a Sunday school class. He began to tell them about Jesus. In the summertime he took them rafting on the Delaware River. He took them to the amusement park up at Willow Grove. He took them hiking in Fairmount Park along Whistlehocken Creek. On 45 miles of trails, he took them hiking. In the wintertime Walt took them sledding down the steep slopes of 6th Street and Philadelphia.
He became friends with these kids. He tried to help them with their homework, even with their math. They would say, “Walt, we don’t know what the answer is but we don’t think that’s it.” But he tried. Eventually the power of God began to work through Walt, as he was a vessel. All 13 of these kids accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. This was 55 years ago, but all 13 accepted Christ, and 11 of them have entered full-time Christian service.
One of them is Howard Hendricks, perhaps the best-known professor in the history of Dallas Theological Seminary. He has impacted thousands of lives, some of your lives. I just had lunch this past week with a man whose life has been greatly impacted by Howard Hendricks. It all began with Walt, a man who knew he was called into ministry, who knew that he had a new identity, and he knew that the power of God was released in the meek.
There’s no telling what God can do through you. If you really believe these things, that you are called into ministry and that you have a new identity, you are sons and daughters of God and that His power is available to the meek… If you really believe this, you’ll be able to teach Sunday school. You’ll be willing to go and tutor in the inner city. You’ll be willing to be a small group leader. You’ll be willing to go on a short-term mission trip. You might be willing to give your entire life to missionary service. Just remember that whatever career, God’s called you into ministry. He’s given you a new identity, and His power is available in your meekness. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.