"The Point of Obedience"

 

            "Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD commanded them. Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83 when they spoke to Pharaoh."

            "Submit yourselves, then, to GodÉ Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up."

 

            Now we come to the point of obedience for Moses and Aaron. Moses cannot continue to cry out to God with objections and excuses. He must move ahead and do what God has given him to do, speaking the words of God to Pharaoh, and using the signs God has given to him. It is a difficult and frightening task, and he knows he will not be able to expect success, since God is hardening Pharaoh's heart. He must humble himself, obey the Lord, and get started. These verses sum up the whole first section of Exodus, from the call of Moses to his obedience.

            Do you know what it is like to feel the call of God upon your life? You read the Scripture and see some very clear words of instruction. You feel convicted that you must make some changes in your life. You pray for God's leading, and then some ministry or form of service emerges and you feel it is from the Lord. Perhaps you hear people affirming you as a teacher or leader or organizer or preacher and you feel their affirmations come from the Lord.

 What happens next? Do you feel some resistance? Do you come up with some valid reasons or excuses why this obedience cannot happen just now, but maybe later? Do you notice a kind of self-consciousness about yourself, that suddenly you are aware of your own weakness and you can think of others who are so much better suited for the task?

            Moses comes to the point of obedience. It is time for him to decide what he will do about God's call in his life. He hears clearly the assignment from the Lord.

            "I am the LORD. Tell Pharaoh King of Egypt everything I tell you."

            Moses feels resistance to God's call on his life. Peter Enns writes, "Moses seems to resist God's call because he assumes that he is playing the central role in the deliverance of the Israelites." Moses hears the call of God and assumes that he will be the hero, that it is all about him, and then he does not feel up to the task. But what is about to happen is not about Moses, it is about the Lord. John Durham writes that, "at every crucial point in the text, the presence of Moses is either forgotten or obscured by the presence of the Lord." The Exodus from Egypt is not about Moses, it's about God. Moses is not a great hero. He is one who was commanded to speak God's Word.

            So Moses becomes very self-conscious and brings up once again the old excuse about having faltering lips.  No one is quite sure what he means by that. Did he stutter? Was his Egyptian getting a little rusty after 40 years tending sheep in Midian? Did he feel he lacked the skills necessary in diplomacy? Or was it more an internal matter? Did he question his competence? Whatever it is, the pressure of God's call is making him self-conscious about a weakness he perceives. But by now the reader of Exodus is getting tired of this excuse. Moses needs to let that one rest.

            When we are feeling stress, when we face a challenge in our lives, we tend to become self-conscious. We feel our weakness, our vulnerability. We try to hide. We fear failure. In the teen years we grow in strength and ability, but we become very aware of our flaws, our imperfections; maybe in our appearance, or in how we dress or in what we say that sounds dumb. And if we continue to live in that self-conscious way, always pulling back because of our fear of what others might say or of how we might be perceived, then we miss a great deal of what life has to offer.

            This self-consciousness tends to come back to us later in life. With experience we come to perceive what we can and cannot do. We realize what we have lost from our youth, and we don't want others to see it. Men tend to comb their hair over the places where there is no longer hair. We don't like others to see our weaknesses. Sometimes that causes us to pull back, to turn down leadership opportunities, to stop serving the Lord. It is better with age to become self-aware than to remain self-conscious. To be aware of your gifts, your strengths and weaknesses, your accumulated wisdom and to be aware of your emotions, how you are feeling, is very valuable. Then you can serve and obey God in a way that is free and responsible and faithful. Remember, Moses was 80 and Aaron was 83 when they heard the call of God. Moses did not need to worry about his speech. He had within him the training, the gifts, the experience and the faith that the Lord needed to do a particular task.

            So God responds to Moses' complaint one more time. He does not answer Moses' question. He simply acts. First, God gave Aaron to Moses to talk for him. Now he says he has made Moses like God to Pharaoh. What does that mean? It means that Pharaoh will no longer dismiss Moses, tell him to get back to work, treat him as a slave. Pharaoh now listens to Moses, and Moses has access to Pharaoh. He is not blocked from seeing him. God humbles Pharaoh's heart toward Moses.

            I wonder if we become too timid around others. I wonder if we are afraid to say something to people we think are powerful, in authority or more intelligent than we are. I wonder if we need to trust God more with what we say and who we say it to, when we feel we have a word from God to speak. He may in fact be giving us access to people who need to hear his word.

            The difficult part of this of course is that God hardens Pharaoh's heart, even as Moses speaks to him. So Moses cannot expect success right away. He can only look for some erosion in Pharaoh's stubbornness. But if Moses is able to wait and remain faithful, then God will bring about his purpose. For in the release of Israel from slavery, Pharaoh must come to know the Lord. The exodus will not come about by Pharaohs kind-heartedness. It will not come about by the graciousness of the Egyptians, nor the skill of the Israelites. It will be seen that God and God alone did it. Moses will have to wait through the time of Pharaoh's hardening heart, until the mighty deeds of God are "piled up," and Pharaoh comes to know that the Lord is God.

            Then the section ends, "Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD had commanded them." Finally there are no more objections, and Moses from here on does the will of God. I think we can see how Moses humbles himself before the Lord. He quits talking about his "faltering lips." He does not try to overreach his calling. He simply speaks the word of the Lord to Pharaoh until the Israelites are finally set free at the Passover. Moses puts to rest his objections and his resistance, his self-consciousness. He enters the plan and will of God.

            Perhaps you are coming to the point of obedience to the Lord. Maybe there are some of you who have been holding back on a commitment of faith. But now you realize you are coming to an end of your objections and excuses. It is time to stop repeating yourself. The Lord is clearly calling you to believe and follow; He is calling you to make a commitment to him with your life. It is time to lay aside your arguments, your objections, and your fears. It is time for you to surrender to Jesus Christ in faith, and to receive him as Lord of your life today.

There may be some of you here today who believe, but you have been struggling with doing God's will. Your life is busy, and you are too busy to do what God tells you to do. Your life is out of balance. Maybe some of you are giving yourself ample time to do what you enjoy, but you have no time to serve the Lord. Maybe some of you are trying to do so much in your life, and your schedule is so full of events designed to get you or your family ahead in life, that you now realize you are not able to clarify your commitment to the Lord. Your commitments become murky because there are too many of them. You can no longer really say just what it is you are doing to feed the hungry or to help the poor or to teach God's word or to bear witness to Christ in your neighborhood.

            You have come to the point of obedience.

            It is written of Moses and Aaron that they did just as the Lord had commanded them. Can that also be said of you? Are you ready to make that commitment today?

            Amen.