Faces - 6 - Moses

We are continuing our series called “Faces” where we are looking at different characters from the Bible and seeing what we can learn from them. We have already looked at Daniel, Samson, Job and Ruth. Today we are going to look at Moses.

One of the key things that we are going to learn from Moses today is about perseverance, that being keeping going even when you can’t see the outcome you want happening.

To get us started we are going to play a game creating our own never ending story…

As many of you will know, Moses was a very important person from the Old Testament, ultimately leading his people the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into the new land that God had promised them. There is a lot of detail in the Bible about Moses, so today we are going to be focusing on certain parts of his life.

However, Moses’ life started with a very humble beginning. His parents were slaves in Egypt, and to make things worse, the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh had passed a law saying that all Jewish baby boys must be killed. So as a result of this Moses’s mum broke the law and kept him a secret. Until one day she hatched a plan to try and keep him safe, which we can read in Exodus 2 : 1 - 10.

Here we see a desperate situation being turned into a fantastic opportunity. God used Moses’s mothers make-shift raft and turned it into a vessel that carried him into the next part of God’s great plan for his life, being found and adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter and growing up in the Pharaoh’s palace.

Throughout Moses’s life he travelled across the region, as we can see on this map. Some of these journeys were to follow God and lead his people, and others were to flee from his mistakes. However, through all of his life both when he was following God and doing great things, and when he was making mistakes God protected him.

One thing that Moses can definitely teach is perseverance. Moses was instructed by God to demand that he let his people (that being the Israelites) go and release them from slavery in Egypt.

Moses (although very reluctantly) went to Pharaoh and demanded that his people were released from their slave duties for three days so that they could go and worship God, Exodus 5 : 1 – 9.

However, as we see in the passage we just read, Pharaoh rather than accepting Moses’s command and releasing them he decides to ramp up the pressure on the Israelites and imposes a far more demanding work schedule on the people. A move that you can imagine would make Moses a very unpopular person and must have been a big blow to his confidence.

Can you think of any times when you have had a situation like this, where you have summoned all of your bravery and enthusiasm to do something and then it all seemed to go wrong?

How did you react when this happened?

Moses didn’t let this setback stop him. Afterwards he turns to God and asks him why he let this happen, why God had allowed Pharaoh to make the situation even worse. God then re-affirms his promises, that he will bring Israel out of slavery in Egypt and tells him to go and try again.

We then see in the next chapters of Exodus that there ten rounds of back and forth. Each time God tells Moses what he intends to do if the Pharaoh refuses Moses demand to leave. Then Moses goes to Pharaoh, demands that his people are set free and issues the threat. Then Pharaoh refusing Moses’s demand and God carrying out the threat against Egypt.

These are known as the plagues of Egypt, starting with the water of the River Nile being turned to blood, then colossal infestations of frogs, lice and flies. Then an epidemic of livestock disease, then widespread boils. Then devastating hail storms, then an infestation of locusts, then of darkness over the country and then finally the death of every firstborn Egyptian.

Continuing to believe that God would keep to his word through all of these cycles of rejection must have been tough. For Moses to continue going back to the Pharaoh’s palace over and over again after what must have seemed like a growing list of failed efforts must have difficult for him.

He must have been tempted after the flies, the boils of the locusts to give up and resign himself to the fact that Pharaoh was never going to change his mind. However, Moses trusted God enough to keep on listening to him and keep on trying.

Then finally Moses persistence paid off, Pharaoh finally changed his mind and told them to leave, as we see in Exodus 12 : 31 - 41.

It had been a long wait but after 430 years, and 10 horrendous plagues Israel were finally being given the green light to escape from Egypt and escape from slavery.

This is a moment that wouldn’t have come if Moses hadn’t kept going despite how seemingly fruitless his efforts appeared.

Following Moses success in leading the Israelites out of Egypt Moses, through God’s power went on to do many great things can you remember any of his significant moments?

We should feel encouraged that whatever we are doing now, no matter how small or insignificant it may feel God can use it as part of this plan.

Moses teaches us that God can do great things in our life, however these will be done in God’s time which is quite often different from our own. He teaches us the importance of patience and not giving up. Let’s pray.

Lord God

We thank you for Moses and what we have learnt from him today.

We pray that you will help us to be more like him, listening to what you have to say to us and giving us the confidence and patience to carry on until the job is done, no matter how distant this might seem.

Amen