To Encourage You

Exodus 4:10-12 “But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

Moses was such a reluctant servant of God.  Such an insecure ambassador.  Though God spoke to him miraculously from a burning bush when He commanded Moses to go speak His Word to Pharaoh and set the nation of Israel free, Moses balked over and over again. First, his response, in so many words, was “Who am I to do such a thing?  I’m not qualified (Exodus 3:11).”  God answered Moses with “But I will be with you (Exodus 3:12).”  But then Moses raised further objections.  One was that he wouldn’t know enough, for he wouldn’t know how to answer the questions of the Israelites who questioned him about his mission (Exodus 3:13).  Next, he said “They won’t believe me.  They won’t believe me when I tell them that God appeared to me (Exodus 4:3).”  Finally, in the verses above, He said, “I am not eloquent . . . I am slow of speech and tongue.”  To each of these objections, God patiently assured him that He would be with him. He told him that, if necessary, He would even do great miracles so that both Israel and Pharaoh would listen. 

So, are there any lessons for you and me in all of this?  Well, like Moses, if we are believers, we know that God has told us to “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15).”  How many of us, though, like Moses, hesitate to actually do this?  How many of us balk because we have the same excuses Moses had?  We may think, “Who in the world am I to do something like that?  I’m just me?” Or, we may think that we don’t know enough.  Whenever people to whom we speak start asking questions, we won’t have all the answers.  Then we might think, “Even if I preach the gospel, who’s going to believe it?” And finally, how many of us think “I don’t speak so well.  I stumble over my words.  I’m not skilled to talk about spiritual things.” 

How interesting that just as God told Moses, so Jesus told us immediately after His command to preach the gospel to everyone, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).” We can be sure that if the omnipotent Son of God is truly with us, just as God the omnipotent Father was with Moses, He has the ability to overcome our limitations even if it takes miracles that no one can question to demonstrate it.  You see, in God’s plan, He chose to work through a very human servant, Moses, with all his inadequacies, to bring the miraculous deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt.  So, God, in His great plan to save the world, has chosen to work through each and every believer, in spite of their weaknesses, to bring the message of salvation to every person in this world who is a slave to sin.  That’s just the way it is, in spite of our objections, and in spite of our limitations, for surely, we all have them.  In God’s great plan, He has chosen to let His light shine “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  And “we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. . . so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:6-11).”  You see, just as Moses was an ambassador for God, “we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us (2 Corinthians 5:20a.”  May God help us to speak His message and implore the world “on behalf of Christ, (to) be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20b),” no matter our inadequacies and fears, for surely God is with us in the task He has given us, even to the end of the age.  In all of this, it is God, not us, that receives the glory, and isn’t that what any believer truly wants?