Moses: Peek-a-Boo
“Peek-a-boo, I see you!” So goes the game. A game that is played not only with babies, but is highly popular with many of us who are trying to evade God’s vision for our lives. This was the case with Moses.
A lot can be said of Moses. But, for today, we choose to focus on his obedience, albeit reluctant, to the vision God had for his life.
The Beginning
The story of Moses begins with Abraham.
Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions.
Genesis 15:13-14
Through Joseph, Israel and his family moved to Egypt, setting the stage for the enslavement of the Israelites. As God was speaking the above mirror, He already knew that Moses would be the person He would use to fulfill His words.
The vision God has for your life is bigger than you. We are but like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that has already been designed.
The Set Up
Moses was born in perilous times. Not only were the Israelites under grave enslavement, but Pharaoh gave the following order concerning them:
[…] Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
Exodus 1:22
The prevailing circumstances cannot stop the vision of God from coming to pass.
How did God respond to this order?
and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.
Exodus 2:2
God responded to the order by ensuring that Moses was born. And He used his appearance to preserve his life.
Unbeknownst to Pharaoh, his very order would bring God’s chosen deliverer into his own home. When Moses’ mother could no longer hide him, she made a basket, put him in it and placed it along the bank of the Nile. His sister stayed at a distance monitoring the basket, when “coincidentally”:
Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe[…]She saw the basket among the reeds[…] She opened it and saw the baby. He waa crying, and she felt sorry for him […] And the girl got the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.”[…] When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her sin. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
Exodus 2:5-10
God made sure that Pharaoh’s daughter saw and loved Moses. He also made sure that Moses’ formative years were spent among his people, before strategically placing him in the palace.
God’s ways are not our ways. He uses the very traps of the enemy as springboards to achieve what He desires.
The Wrong Path
God’s vision started burning in Moses’ heart. He despised the treatment his people faced in the hands of the Egyptians and decided to do something about it.
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no-one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
Exodus 2:11-12
Moses went ahead of God and took matters into his own hands. His secret act, was secret no more. Pharaoh was made aware of his act and a plot to kill Moses was hatched. In response to this, Moses fled for his life.
There is a way which seems right to a man and appears straight before him,
But its end is the way of death.
Proverbs 14:12
God’s vision is carried out God’s way, not man’s way.
A New Life
Moses fled to Midian, married Zipporah and started a family. He began tending his father’s -in-law flock and appeared to put Egypt behind him. He buried the vision that God had placed in his heart and embraced his new “normal” life.
There was just one problem with this:
During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Exodus 2:23-24
And with this, God remembered Moses.Vision was about to knock on his door once more.
God’s silence may just mean the time has not yet come. At the right time, He will speak.
God Speaks
The right time was at hand. God disrupted Moses’ life and called him to the life he was created for.
Using a burning bush, to capture Moses’attention (see Exodus 3), God spoke to Moses.
So now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
Exodus 3:11
How did Moses respond?
i) Why Me?
But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?
Exodus 3:11
ii) Who will I say sent me?
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
iii) Will they believe me?
Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you’?”
iv) I am not qualified
Moses said to the LORD, “O LORD, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
Exodus 4:10
v) No
But Moses said, ” O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”
Exodus 4:13
vi) Yes
God had an answer to every response Moses gave him. Eventually, Moses relented and aligned his will with God’s will.
Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD commanded them. Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.
Exodus 7:6-7
Do not let fear stop you from accepting God’s will. He has a response to all your fears.
God’s timing is always right. You are not too old neither are you too young to do what God placed you on this earth to do.
Your Turn
Which of Moses’ response are you using to limit yourself?
Which of his responses are you using to stray away from the path God has for you?
Scripture records the great acts Moses accomplished once he accepted God’s vision for his life.
Accepting God’s vision did not make his life easier. If anything, his life became more difficult. But he had the privilege of developing such an intimate relationship with God, that he, who lacked eloquence, had the privilege of writing the first five books of the Bible.
In addition, he alone in Scripture can boast of:
i) being entrusted with the Law
“These are the laws you are to set before them:
Exodus 21:1
ii) being entrusted with the building of the tabernacle
“Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.
Exodus 24:8
iii) talking to God face to face:
The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as man speaks with his friend […]
Exodus 33:12
iv) being buried by God Himself:
And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said. He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no-one knows where his grave is. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.
Deuteronomy 34:5-8
Just say YES. You never know where that ‘YES‘ will lead you.