Exodus 3:10-11
“Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?”
Previously, Moses thought he was ready, and he impetuously promoted himself to do the job of delivering his people. He did it without waiting for God. Before, Moses promoted himself, but in Exodus 3, he says, “God, who am I?” A change had occurred in Moses’ thought process. He not only hesitated about going, but he almost seems petrified about the prospects of going forward with God’s instructions. This is a true principle of those who have been humbled in their field of expertise.
The young and immature in mind, foolishly think, in their vanity, that their strength will allow them to sail through any problem. They are deceived by their personal ignorance, ambition and zeal. Like Moses, they foolishly “rush in where angels fear to tread”. When they come to understand, usually after years of experience, they realize how very little they know and how weak they are, when acting on their own initiatives.
It appears that Moses experienced spiritual maturity over the course of many years, after leaving Egypt to be a shepherd, in the wilderness. In those forty years, his impetuous spirit had been dissolved, and he saw the power of Egypt in its true light. He may have feared execution, imprisonment, or embarrassment by the powerful Egyptians. Do not similar thoughts cross the mind of the spiritually mature, as well? It appears that Moses more fully recognized his personal weaknesses in comparison to Egypt, and it lead him to be the meekest human to live, until Jesus Christ’s arrival in the flesh. Moses was going to do it on his own before, but God overcame his resistance. All of the testing God had put Moses through produced the right kind of faith and the right kind of conviction.
In a true disciple of Jesus Christ, the outer person may physically decayed through the trials of life, while the spiritual inner person is strengthened through the same trials. The energy of the body is spent in doing God’s will, and it is being transformed into the energy of the spirit. In scripture, we are given the picture of Moses being so energized that at the age of 120, the natural effects of age had very little impact on him.
If we submit to God’s discipline and expend ourselves, by yielding to God’s time table, in every area of our physical and spiritual life, we will develop the right kind of faith and conviction. Perhaps the biggest problem, we must overcome is our own spiritual immaturity and impetuous nature.
