ATTN: In light of the testimonies you’ve heard from these young people, I wanted to simply focus on God’s calling on our lives. Many of you in here know a definite calling on your life from God and you are each striving to be faithful to your calling. As we said last week, your calling might be being a stay-at-home mom, a nurse, an army captain, a special education helper – wherever God has placed you to contribute to bring glory unto God’s name. If you do not know our calling yet, then you’d do well to seek God to reveal to you His calling on your life. So, today, I want to look at a snippet of Moses’s life and calling and see how God used him to accomplish His purpose. I’m hoping to encourage you to continue serving the Lord in your calling.

Now, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the story of Moses and how he was called, but I’ve never seen this until a couple months ago in my devotional time. I may have missed this because it’s not in the book of Exodus where we’d expect to find it but in the book of Acts through the story that Stephen told before he was martyred….

BACKGROUND:  As you know, Moses was the Israel’s savior, extracting them from the grips of Pharaoh and leading them through the wilderness into the promised land that took 40 years! And Moses’s first encounter with God at the burning bush happened when he was living in the desert and he was 80 years old! By then, he had been living in the desert for 40 years because he had fled at age 40 the palace which he grew up in as a prince of Egypt because he had killed an Egyptian and he was afraid. That you and I knew. But, what was new to me was that Moses had in mind to save his people from their misery while he was still a prince of Egypt before he left the palace at age 40. Acts 7:23 – 25 [23] “When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. [24] And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. [25] He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand.

            So, Moses at age 40, while still living in the palace of Pharaoh as the adopted prince of Egypt thought, “You know, maybe the reason why God put me here is so that I can use my clout to free my own countrymen” And so, he acted on it and gave it a try. He took the initial step toward saving his own people by rescuing a Israelite slave from an Egyptian master. But what happens next?  [26] And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other?’ [27] But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? [28] Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ [29] At this retort Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.

What happened? Things didn’t go like he thought it would. He thought he was put in that position to save his people from slavery. But when he acted, a colossal failure! His own people, one of whom he just rescued, didn’t accept him as their leader! That is not what he expected! So, burned by this, he flees to the desert. “Well, so much for trying to do God’s will. I’m never doing that again!” And he stays dormant in the desert for 40 years! But 40 years later, God calls him back to do what he originally thought of doing – saving his people from slavery. Why? Why would God wait that long? What is going on?

There are four lessons we can learn from the calling of Moses:

Lesson 1: God usually sends a peasant to do a prince’s job.

Lesson 2: God’s timing is always too late according to our timetable.

Lesson 3: God starts working just when we have given up.

Lesson 4: God’s way is always to lead to Christ and not to us.

Now, let me explain where these lessons are coming from:

Lesson 1: God usually sends a peasant to do a prince’s job.

God wouldn’t use Moses when he was still the prince of Egypt. But it’s when Moses is humbled and became nothing – a shepherd in the desert – that God calls him to do a prince’s job! This always seems to be God’s way. God, time and time again, uses lowly things to accomplish something great. He does not send a prince to do a prince’s job, but rather He waits until that prince becomes a peasant to use him.

Lesson 2: God’s timing is always too late according to our timetable

You have to wonder about God’s efficiency! Wouldn’t it have been better if God used Moses while he was still relatively young (40 years old vs 80) and still had connection to the palace? He probably knew a lot of the officials and it’s possible that they liked and trusted Moses enough that an insurrection might have ensued.  But that wouldn’t do. Moses would get the glory. Instead, God allows Moses to flee and let him stay dormant in the desert for not 4 months, not 4 years, but for 40 long years! It’s possible that God was waiting for everyone that Moses knew in the palace to pass so that Moses had no connection. So that in this way, everyone would know that it was God who did it. God is almost always too late according to our timetable. He waits too long. But it is just right in retrospect to give maximum glory to God.

Lesson 3: God starts working just when we have given up.

When Moses was trying to save his people initially, he failed miserably. And only when he had long given up on the idea (he was in the desert for 40 years!), God started to act through him. God will wait until we throw up our hands and say, “I can’t do this, God! I give up!” And He still wait another decade or two before coming through! (I have too many examples of this in the Bible…)

Lesson 4: God’s way is always to lead to Christ and not to us. 

Ultimately, this story is not about Moses but about Jesus. Jesus didn’t come as the king of glory to save mankind, but as a carpenter! And when He died, it was too late (in our minds). All the disciples gave up on the idea of Him ever saving them and their nation when He died. See how Jesus’ story mirrors Moses’s? But rather, it is Moses’s story prefiguring Jesus’ story like a herald would go before the king to announce the king’s coming!

Can you see applications from these lessons? Let’s go through one by one:

1. God usually sends a peasant to do a prince’s job.

APP: If you feel like a peasant and not a king, that’s a good thing! You sense God is calling you to a certain task, you see a certain need: maybe helping with Sunday school, or working with the youth or a particular ministry that is not there yet but you think is needed, but as you are thinking about it, you feel so inadequate. You can’t possibly do that because you are just not equipped for it. Well, that’s what I call the Moses syndrome. He kept on telling God that he got the wrong person for the job! But he was precisely the right person for the job and one evidence is that he thought he was the wrong person. Time and time again in the Bible, God does not follow the wisdom of the world. Whom we think is the right person, God vetoes and picks someone totally different so that in the end God would get the glory for making it happen. You feel overwhelmed? You feel inadequate? You feel you can’t? Good! You are the right person!

2. God’s timing is always too late according to our timetable.

APP: Do you feel that life has passed you by? Your childhood dream has turned into a cruel reality and you hardly remember what you felt to be God’s promises to you? You thought your life was going to be so much more than what it is now? You are frankly disappointed, not only in yourself but also in God. God made Moses wait 40 years for his vision to be realized. God made Abraham wait 25 years for his dream of a son to be realized. Isaac, the promised son through whom many offspring would come was 40 when he had his first girlfriend! God’s timing is not your timing. He is looooong suffering. Persevere! Stick around! We are thinking in terms of months. He’s thinking in terms of decades!

3. God starts working just when we have given up

APP: Know that all that happens in this life is not all that will ever happen. There is far more to come after this life. Have you ever considered that your work would see fruit only after you die? I mean, physically die? You and I may never see the fruit of our labor until after we die. That does bring up a sobering question, doesn’t it? What are some things we are investing in that could possibly bring glory to God after we die? If we are living only for this world, for this generation, for this life time only, then it’s a meaningless life. If all the fruit you are working for can only be seen in this world, then all the reward you would ever get in this life is all there is.

4. God’s way is always to lead to Christ and not to us.

APP: Connect everything you are doing to Christ. If you can’t, then it’s not God’s way. Why? Because this world exists to make much of Christ. Deliberately make connections between your circumstances and Christ. See how God is leading you closer to Christ. Ultiamtely this world exists to reveal Christ and your life also exists to know and love Christ. Don’t waste a pain or failure or suffering because they are often the tools God uses to bring us closer to and to be more like Christ.