Moses Didn’t Pursue Greatness

In the first eighty years of his life, Moses comes across as two completely different men. And it’s important for us to understand which version of Moses, God chose to use.

When Moses was forty years old, he believed he was supposed to deliver his people from their bondage in Egypt. He was bold, confident, and ready to make a difference. So, Moses jumped into action! Although he had good intentions, he operated in his own strength and understanding, and his actions resulted in him having to flee from Pharaoh, and he became an exile in the wilderness.¹

Forty years later, when God himself shows up and tells Moses he is going to send him to bring his people out of Egypt, Moses feels totally inadequate, makes excuses as to why he can’t do this, and finally asks God to please send someone else.²

When Moses was self-sufficient and raring to go, God didn’t use him. Instead, he made him wait forty years; forty very uneventful years in the middle of nowhere, doing pretty much nothing. When God finally called him, he had lost all his ambition and didn’t want to go. God used the man who didn’t want to go.

But Moses did go, and he was used by God to confront the ruler of the most powerful nation on earth, deliver God’s people from captivity, establish God’s laws and commandments for these people, and in the process work many amazing miracles. All of this didn’t come about because Moses was bold, dynamic, or ambitious. It came about because he was humble, obedient, and dependent on God. He simply did what God told him to do.

Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth. (Numbers 12:3 NASB)

Above all that Moses experienced, I believe the most wonderful aspect of his life was his relationship with the Lord. When God spoke to others, he used visions and dreams, but God called Moses his friend and spoke to him face to face.³

Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. (Exodus 33:11 ESV)

Lord, help us to treasure our relationship with you, to be attentive and obedient to your leading, and to define greatness as you define greatness.

Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:4 ESV)

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Footnotes:

1. Acts 7:17-29
2. Exodus 3:1-22 – 4:1-13
3. Numbers 12:6-8 ESV And he said, “Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the LORD make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the LORD.