THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS #23 | THE LIFE OF MOSES #5

Pastor Christopher Choo

Lesson 3704

THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS #23

THE LIFE OF MOSES #5

THE 3 INCIDENTS THAT MADE MOSES A LEADER AMONG MEN.

At 40, Moses killed an Egyptian, tried to stop a fight among his brethren in Egypt, and intervened to stop shepherds bullying his future wife at a well in the desert of Midian.

These three  "warring" incidents were God's rapid lessons in leadership skills to Moses.

If we look at the three stories together, it seems that the lesson Moses needed to learn was the lesson of distance, of being more objective and calmer.

1. Moses began his career as a hot-head – his first act was to kill the Egyptian. 

As we have seen, this act, although perhaps morally defensible, served no real purpose; it is almost totally symbolic, as it did not bring the end of the suffering of the Israelite slaves any closer.

2. In his next act, Moses looks closer to home, towards the Jewish people themselves.

But, here, again, he is unsuccessful.

Angrily, he calls the aggressor “rasha” in Hebrew or “wicked one”.

But if we give credence to the words of the perpetrator, and believe him when he accuses Moses of wanting to kill him, Moses must have said this word "rasha" with murder in his eyes. 

Even if he succeeded in establishing who was the evil one who started the argument, he failed to do anything about it.

3. It is only in Midian, where the victims are strangers, that Moses’s actions are devoid of anger, violence, and excess emotion - the hallmarks of a more mature Moses.

Instead, he is focused on simply saving the victims - which Moses finally succeeds.

What is our lesson here?

Moses is constructing a new, more successful model for his leadership — no more emotional baggage, no more symbolic gesture of solidarity with his downtrodden brethren, or a battle to the death with “evil” — the point is to actually do some good, to succeed in improving things, to ‘save’ the situation, rather than do battle with it.

Thus he is primed to meet God Himself  - like Jacob who had to wrestle with an angel of God to know who he is in relation to God.

He will like Jacob see himself as his own greatest enemy when he beholds the mirror of God's glory in the Burning Bush incident.