Greetings again my Brethren. Last month we looked at how God drained Moses of his self-sufficiency and now he finds himself a nobody. What a wonderful place in God to be a nobody. We start in God and think we are a somebody, but when God gets through with us (if God is successful) we learn we really are a nobody. This too was the case with Moses. After 40 years in the desert (what I like to call the wilderness) changed Moses from a “somebody” into a “nobody.” After being raised and educated in the courts of Pharaoh in all manners of knowledge and warfare, Moses said unto the LORD, “10 O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. 11 And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.” (Exodus 4:10-12) The wilderness in God has the ability to take things out of us and quiet our mouth to know when to speak and when not to speak if we allow God to work in our lives. All of Moses self-strength was drained and he was a new creation created by the hand of God to do the will of the Father. The hot rocks of the desert was his school desk and the lizards, scorpions, and snakes where his classmates, forged in the furnace of God’s plan for his life Moses was stripped, reduced to raw usefulness where God could put his trust in him to be the Godly leader of His children out of the 430 years of bondage they suffered under the mighty hand of Pharaoh’s taskmasters. Did you know God does math? Oh no? Well in God 1 + 0 = 1. Yes this equations is true every first grader knows this, but in God this equation is only true if the “0” wants to be the “0.” Now do not think we are the “1” we are not God is the “1” we are the “0.” And the better “0” we can be the better “1” God can be. We are the “0,” the nobody. Too many times we want to be the “1” in charge of things, people following us, we making the big decisions, well that is not the way God works. If God allows us to make a decision that has impact on our ministry we better take heed and make it after much contemplation and prayers. But too many times we are quick to make decisions about spiritual things based on humanism factors. Why I have a Masters degree in business administration I know what I am doing, oh yeah? God’s ways are not our ways.
Remember the chicken. Just because it looks like a chicken, sounds like a chicken, walks like a chicken, and even smells like a chicken take heed in God it may be a duck. This why God must reduce us of our self-strength so that He can teach us to think like Him and understand how He operates. If God cannot do this (unteach us) then He cannot use us we disqualify ourselves for service. Moses was untaught and now he could handle the unorthodox ways of God. Who would believe by just lifting a staff into the air the Red Sea would split wide open? Who would believe by just throwing a bush into bitter water it (and the people) would be made sweet. If God cannot retrain our thinking my friend He cannot use us. Moses allowed the LORD to reduce Him and for his obedience Moses was given the task of delivering his people from the Egyptian bondage and make way for the lineage of the birth of Christ to flow through, but the greatest thing Moses earned from his obedience was to be able to stand before God while on earth, hear a Holy God speak to him, and hold stones that a Holy God physically wrote on. In the Book of Acts when Stephen was reminding the Jewish people (before they stoned him) of the exodus story and how the death of Jesus Christ neatly fits into it we read, “And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.” (Acts 7:30) Back in August I said Moses’ life can be divided into three 40 year periods his: palace life, wilderness life, service life. This verse notes at the end of his second 40 years (at age 80) he stood before a Holy God. Please (most people miss this thought) notice the words “when the forty years were expired.” Moses finished (Moses was reduced) his second training period right on time to receive his audience so that God could now reveal Himself personally and the One who is sending him on his next and last 40 year period of his life leading the Children of Israel.
Did you know God has a time for us to get worked on in the wilderness and no begging, service, good works, or praying is going to get us out. The only thing that will get us out of the wilderness is learning the lessons God has for us, if not we like the Children of Israel will wander around bumping our heads on school desk and other things God has arranged to put in our way.
Next month we will learn how God must be able to reveal Himself to us so that we will buy into God’s preparation for our lives. Can you hear Him now?
