Moses: God's Nation Builder

Thy knee, O the bridge, and O the pilgrim, through this barren land I am weak, but thou, O heart mighty, hold me with thy powerful hand. Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.

Feed me till I want no more. Good morning. I was blessed. Our young people are not here to add their energetic voices to our singing, but I don't think it suffered a whole lot. Our older people sing very well, so I just want to bless you for that.

I'm always blessed with the singing of this congregation. It always has lots of energy, lots of enthusiasm, and I think lots of good spirit and good heart toward God. Well, I've been working on a series, or at least starting a series, called Men of Faith Who Molded the Kingdom. I gave a message on the kingdom, and then the last time I spoke on Abraham. I'd like to speak on Moses this morning, and the title of the message is God's Nation Builder. Now, God told Abraham that he would make of his family a great nation, but Abraham only saw his son and his two grandsons, and that's all the nation that he saw.

The rest of it, according to Hebrews chapter 11, was entirely by faith. You could not have built much on what you could actually see, but he saw things that other people did not see. So now we come to the person who actually established this nation and made a nation out of it, and he had quite a task.

Here was a nation of people who had been in slavery for 400 years, and it was a huge group of people. And I was thinking, as I was studying this, I remember when the African countries, who had been colonies for not nearly that long, I don't think, they just had a real problem making nations out of these colonies because people weren't used to the kind of responsibilities that a nation needs to have. And so we really have to look at Moses as a very unusual person, that he was able to take this nation, millions of people, in slavery for 400 years, and they did have their major problems, and because of that, they weren't able to relate the way they should always.

But he kept them together and managed basically to institute laws and order and a national sense of responsibility that they actually did become a nation. So it's amazing. And his whole story is amazing. Here is a superpower, Egypt, and God takes this little baby and plops him down in the middle of that. I want to talk a little bit about that civilization so that he gets all the benefit of all the world's information about whatever, and we'll talk about some of that too.

And here's this very talented young man that has this chance to have the very best training that the world had to offer, and then, of course, God took that, and he made out of that what he wanted to make out of it. No other human being has ever fulfilled so many roles.

He was a prophet. He was a legislator. He was a military leader. He was a statesman. He was a poet. He was a writer. And he was a philosopher. And you probably could add to that list. I mean, I tried to think this morning, what is it that he was not skillful in doing? I couldn't think of anything, just about anything that you would expect a man to be able to do. Moses did to a high degree of skill, even writing poetry. God told him one time in fact, I'm running ahead of my story now, that at the end of his life, he said, "Sit down and write a song, Moses. Write a song that people will sing down through the generations that will remind them of the things they need to remember."

So he was a songwriter. All right?

His name is mentioned 850 times in the Bible, 100 times in the New Testament. I didn't check. I don't know if anybody else is mentioned more than that. I doubt it. I doubt if anybody maybe it was Abraham, but I'm not even sure Abraham is mentioned that often.

This man made the most incredible choice that anybody in history has ever made, and I'm going to try to help you understand that. He was given everything the world had to offer: wealth, luxury, power, prestige. Josephus says that he was actually that Pharaoh had no son. We think it was probably Ramses. If you want to see a picture of him, Halley's Bible handbook actually has the picture of Ramses II's mummy, and you can see what the man looked like. You can look and say, "Moses saw that fella's hair just like I'm seeing it." I mean, it's just there he is.

It said that he had no children, and Josephus says that Moses actually what we sort of suspect and you often hear that Josephus gives a little bit of credibility to the fact that he was being groomed to be the next king of Egypt.

Now, the Bible gives a little bit of credence to that too because in Hebrews chapter 11, when it says, "When he was come to years," that terminology literally means when he was come to greatness. So regardless of what he was being groomed to be, he had come to greatness in Egypt.

All right? And yet, he chose to turn his back on all of it and walk away and identify himself with a group of people that that nation hated. Now, you think about it. All right? Why did he do that? Well, Hebrews chapter 11 very clearly tells us he forsook Egypt, and he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

If you sit and meditate on that, that is a remarkable statement. Here was the visible. The pyramids were there. All of this stuff was there. All the gold.

You name it. Egypt had it as far as the world was concerned: power.

And he walked away from it all for something you couldn't see.

You think about that. Now, what can we learn from this amazing man? And I hope I can do him justice. This was the longest study I ever did because there's so much about Moses. I just was scrambling for hours just to get enough together and organize it well enough that I could communicate to you what I was sensing while I was studying. So we want to look, first of all, at his training.

And then we want to look at his transition.

And then we want to look at his traits. What kind of person was he? And then we want to look at his truth. What did he teach? And finally, we want to look at his trust or the legacy that he left.

Now, I hope this doesn't go too long, but we'll do our best here. Well, the Bible leaves us in no doubt about the man's training. It says he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

That doesn't leave us in any doubt. So what in the world was that all about? Well, we know the famous circumstances of his birth. I'm not going to spend a lot of time with the stories that you've known since you were a child. He was born to Amram and Jochebed.

They were from the family of Levi. And he was born at the time of the king's terrible decree that every Hebrew baby boy was to be thrown into the river. But the Bible says that Jochebed saw that he was a goodly child. I checked it with the Amplified, and it says he was exceedingly beautiful.

Now, I think God did that because there's something about a beautiful baby that women can't resist. His mother could not resist going to great efforts to keep him, and Pharaoh's daughter couldn't resist adopting him. There was something about that little fella that I mean, we all think all of our babies are beautiful, but there was something especially goodly, the Bible says, about Moses.

All right? I think God made him irresistible because of what needed to happen. At three months, his mother no longer could hide him, probably was making too much noise, and so she did what the king said. She threw him into the river, but she did it in a very creative way.

That's always interesting to me when I think about that. I mean, she obeyed the king. She threw him into the Nile River in a nice little basket. All right? Now, it says that the daughter of Pharaoh came walking down to the river to wash. I suspect that that was a routine.

I don't think that's stretching imagination too far to believe that they knew that that was going to happen, that that woman was going to walk to that particular place because that's where she went to wash. And so I think that's what the mother had in mind, and I think they were expecting something to happen because his sister Miriam stood far off to see what would happen.

And we all know what happened. Okay? So he's taken by his mother, paid by the palace. What a privilege. Okay? And she kept him. We don't know how long. We assume till he was weaned. And so I did a little study as to how soon children in those circumstances were weaned, and they said somewhere between three and four years. So he was with his mother for three or four years.

And you can imagine what his mother was thinking her responsibility was during that time. I think she was concerned that he would never forget what his identity was. Now, you must remember there were no written scriptures. She was not reading any Bible stories to Moses. All of this was oral. So I think you'll find she spent a lot of time talking about Abraham and Joseph and all these people, the illustrious people in their history and what they did and Noah and how God honored his faith. And I think you'll find that most of the people in that time had a tremendous store of memory from the thousand years of history that had occurred up to this time.

Not only that, but he would have learned the Hebrew language probably by that time. And that would have been very important to him. That would have been very important because if nothing else, that would have helped him remember who he was, that Hebrew language.

Well, what are some other things he learned? Did he learn the promise that God made to Abraham that these slaves would be there for 400 years, and then God would set them free? Did he count the years? Did he do what he did first, thinking, "Oh, here's the time, and I'm the person"? We don't know, but it's hard for me to believe that he did not know that aspect of their history.

So that's the Hebrew part, the Hebrew language, and probably a tremendous amount of information about the nation of his birth. On the Egyptian side, he would have learned to read the hieroglyphics. Now, only the very elitest people learned to read the hieroglyphics because it was a pictograph language. They were pictographs. They were pictures.

They weren't alphabetical letters where you could spell out the words you actually said. They were pictures of things, and there were over 1,000 pictures. So this was not a language that was easy to learn at all, but he would have learned it. All right?

Only the very capable elite people ever mastered it, and they say probably nobody ever mastered all the whole thing. All right? He would have studied the Egyptians' knowledge of science, and they were advanced beyond their time, their advanced knowledge of science, medicine, astronomy, chemistry. I'm giving you subjects that they know that the Egyptians specialized in: theology, their theology, of course; philosophy; law. He had studied their battles. The battle tactics were the most successful. He would have studied the stories of their enemies and the reason why they were enemies and what had happened. He would have studied their sculpture. He probably had some experience doing some sculpture and some music and some of the arts.

He would have studied their literature. This was not an easy course of study for him to learn all the wisdom of the Egyptians. All right? And Josephus also tells us that by the time he was 30, he had already led an Egyptian army to a smashing victory over the Ethiopians.

So he already had experience in warfare.

The Bible says he was mighty in words and deeds after it says he was learning all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Some people who want to put down higher education would like to read that he was mighty in words and deeds, but I'm sorry, he was learning all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but no, it says he was learning all the wisdom of the Egyptians and as if that was part of an explanation as to who he was.

What we read about him, especially this extra biblical literature, is that he apparently was a person of rare charm and charisma, able to sway people and be a leader. But he chose to leave it all. Now, think about that.

He might have thought this. In fact, he probably did. I'm using my imagination now. How can I show ingratitude to my Egyptian mother who rescued me from the river and treated me with the utmost love and favor for 40 years? Now, think about that.

How can I be a traitor to this nation that has given me everything they have to give?

And besides, if I become the Pharaoh, then I can do this. I can free these people. I believe God providentially placed me here so I could become the king and do this important deed that needs to be done.

And besides, if I identify with those people, that's only going to get me in a peck of trouble, and I won't be able to accomplish anything. And it actually happened.

It says he identified by faith with those people, not fearing the wrath of the king.

And you know what happened? And he had to flee.

He wasn't finished with his education. Somebody has said Moses spent 40 years thinking he was a somebody. Then he spent 40 years learning he was a nobody. And then he spent 40 years demonstrating what God can do with a nobody.

His life is divided into those three epochs: the time before he left Egypt, the time in the desert, and then what happened after that. I'll read that again. Moses spent 40 years thinking he was a somebody, 40 years learning he was a nobody, and 40 years demonstrating what God can do with a nobody.

Well, that's his training. Let's talk about the transition. He was a failure as a deliverer. That's what happened. Churchill said this. If you ever read the story of Churchill, he had more failures than he ever had successes. And this is what he said about it. He said success is to be able to move from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

So if you meet failure, Moses met failure.

And somehow he wasn't completely out of the picture. He was almost. Well, he fled, of course, to the land of Midian, and he did become a deliverer to seven women who were having trouble at a well with some shepherds.

They were the daughters of Jethro, who was to become his father-in-law. And what I take out of that, so he was willing to go from being this big dream to just being a servant to seven women. That blesses me.

God honors people who are faithful in little things. And right away, we see that in Moses. So what was he learning? Well, he learned to be a shepherd. I wrote down three things that a shepherd learns that is very necessary if he's going to lead people. Number one, I don't know anything about sheep. I'm only taking what I read.

They cannot be driven. They have to be led. That's an important lesson to learn. That same way with people. They have to be led. If you decide to drive them, I mean, you can see what kind of success you might have, but you will experience a certain amount of failure. The second thing he learned about sheep is you have to feed them.

You have to be sensitive to their needs. You have to watch them carefully to see where the needs are and learn how to meet those needs.

And number three, you have to protect them. You have to put your own life on the line to protect those weak sheep. Who knows what kind of enemies they might have? They might be animals. They might be people.

And you have to be willing to risk your own life to protect. So out there being a shepherd, he learned three things. He learned to lead, not drive. He learned to feed and be sensitive to the needs of creatures. And he learned to risk his own life and safety to protect. Now, what was he doing? Was he just taking care of sheep out there in that desert?

Well, the Jewish people have always believed that that's where he wrote the book of Genesis. But there's a problem with that. Moses was living in the 1600s, 1500s BC.

And linguists say you could not write what Moses wrote with pictographs.

How many of you have ever tried? Don't raise your hand. It's a rhetorical question. How many of you have ever tried to communicate with sign language or by trying to create pictures with somebody who was deaf? You don't get very far or someone of a different language, and you can't speak their language. I don't know if you ever went to Europe and you wanted to communicate, and you tried to do it through pictures and gestures and whatnot.

Picture language only goes so far. And the authorities on language say we know Moses did not write this. We know it was written hundreds of years later, and a whole bunch of legends got added to it. And it's not serious history and not to be believed.

So how do we solve this problem? Because you were taught in school that it was the Phoenicians that developed the alphabet. Now, with an alphabet, you could do a little bit it was sort of an ingenious invention, a little bit like movable type. You can have two dozen letters. And if you have all the sounds you need, you can create the actual words that people say. You don't have to picture anything. You can actually recreate the language. And literary critics say the only way that could have been written is by somebody who had an alphabetic language that could be written.

And they say the Phoenicians were the people to whom we must credit the alphabet. Now, the problem with that is they didn't come along until 200 years later. That date is 1050 BC. I mean, 1050 BC. We're talking about 200 years before that.

Moses was doing his writing.

Now, this to me is I did quite a bit of research on this because this is intriguing to me. Flinders Petri, who was the great Egyptologist back I don't know when he was, but I think in the last century, he went to the Sinai Peninsula, and there were copper mines and turquoise mines that the Egyptians had supervised, and they sent their slaves there to work in those mines.

And he was the person who first discovered in the recesses of those mines there were inscriptions. And he found that after he was able to decipher what they were, they were a primitive alphabet developed from the hieroglyphics. They were an alphabet that used some hieroglyphic symbols. They got it down to, I think, like 22 symbols.

The Semitic people did not use any vowels. The first alphabetic languages had no vowels. So that simplified things. And this was a very rudimentary, very rough written language with a very crude alphabet that resembled the alphabet that the Phoenicians eventually were using.

So it's believed that the alphabet actually was invented by Semitic people, Hebrews, if you please, who were working the mines of Egypt. And now I'm going to read to you what Egyptologist David Rolle has to say. He says he theorized that the initial breakthrough with alphabetic writing—and this was probably a more significant breakthrough than even movable type. I mean, this was a major breakthrough in communication. He says this breakthrough may have come through Joseph during his time of power in Egypt, which was later developed by Moses, who was trying to get himself in a position where he could actually write the history of Israel.

And I'm going to quote from him now: "It took the multilingual skills of an educated Hebrew who knew the hieroglyphics to turn these simple first scratchings into a functional script capable of transmitting complex ideas and a floating narrative." And if you don't think that was necessary, read Genesis 49, where you have Jacob's poem about his people. I mean, there's no way you could have communicated that with pictures. Now, let me start here again. "It took the multilingual skills of an educated Hebrew, prince of Egypt, to turn these simple first scratchings of the hieroglyphics into functional script capable of transmitting complex ideas and a flowing narrative. The Ten Commandments and the laws of Moses were written in that language.

The prophet of Yahweh, master of both Egyptian and Mesopotamian epic literature, was not only the founding father of Judaism and Christianity but also the progenitor of the alphabet used by the Hebrews, the Canaanites, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans, and us."

Now, if that doesn't make you appreciate God and his people, I don't know what will. That was a major contribution.

All right? So here was Moses. He was a family man with a wife and two boys immersed in his literary pursuits.

Maybe he took some literature along from Egypt to read. I mean, who knows what? But it seems like Moses really was involved. He sort of used this time, other than the sheep, to keep nurturing his mental skills. It seemed like he was involving himself in literary pursuits.

A shepherd immersed in literary pursuits, learning humility in the wilderness. And suddenly, God interrupts. "It's time for another transition, Moses. We needed to transition you from Egypt to the desert to learn humility." Moses later said God led Israel into the wilderness to humble them. And my friend up there in Canada believes God leads every Christian into the wilderness to humble them. So if you're in the wilderness right now, that's what you're supposed to be learning. Well, that's what Moses was learning in the wilderness. But God suddenly interrupted.

He had his nation builder prepared. He had all the information and skills of Egypt. He had an understanding that surpassed Egypt. All those hygienic laws that Moses gave, Egypt knew nothing about. In fact, God said, "If you obey me, I won't put any of the diseases of those people. They don't have any solutions to those diseases." So Moses had transcended the wisdom of Egypt. So God had his man ready. He knew all the information of Egypt. He had understanding that surpassed Egypt. He had the heart of a shepherd, and he was teachable and humble.

And that was exactly the combination God wanted.

And he made it very clear he had not forgotten Moses or his people. So I want you to turn now to Exodus chapter 3.

God is speaking in verse 9. He says, "Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come up unto me, and I have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them." God had not forgotten these people. They were there for two reasons.

Number one, they had to wait to go into the land of Canaan until the iniquity of those nations was full. And number two, they had to learn to hate sin and idolatry. I mean, I'm not sure what all the reasons were God had them in Egypt for 400 years, but those are two things I thought of.

So let's read this. So he was very much aware. He had not forgotten Egypt, his people. He had not forgotten Moses.

"Now, come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." And Moses said unto the Lord, "Who am I? Lord, did I hear you right? I tried this one time, been there, done that.

There must be some mistake here, Lord. Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh? I know what he's like, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt." And he said, "Moses, you got it wrong. I did not tell you to deliver Israel. I'm going to deliver Israel. I'm the one that's going to do it. You heard me wrong. I will be with thee, and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee. When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain. When you finally get down here to Sinai again, that'll be the evidence that what I told you was true."

But Moses goes on making excuses, and I really can't blame the man.

And the thing that blesses me about this is God told him upfront exactly what was going to happen. There were no surprises. He told him, he said, "When you go to Pharaoh, he's not going to listen to you. He's not going to deliver them."

It's just amazing to me how God just laid this all out to Moses. All right? But Moses is making excuses. "I'm 80 years old, Lord. I tried this once. It didn't work. I think you're the wrong person. I think you knocked on the wrong door."

And Moses said unto the Lord, "All right, so here's his first excuse or the second one, however you want to count it." And Moses said unto God, "Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and she'll say unto them, 'The God of your fathers, he has sent me unto you.' They're going to say, 'What God is this?

Who is this? What's his name?'" He's saying, "When I go there," I tried to put these in language that leaders would struggle with, "I'm not sure they won't back me in a corner with questions I can't answer." That's his first excuse. "What if they put me on the spot?

What if they say, 'Where did you get your authority?' What if they say, 'Who's the God that sent you?'" And God said, "Well, this is what you're to tell them. I am who I am." Now, I'm told that those are the characters for the Hebrew word for God, Yahweh.

"I am the only infinite, self-existent controller of everything. That's who has sent me to you."

And he tells them, he says, "When you tell them that," verse 15, "And God said moreover unto Moses, 'Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me unto you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say unto them, 'The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob appeared unto me, and I have surely visited you and seen what was done to you in Egypt. And I have said, 'I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.

And here's the promise.' And they shall hearken to thy voice." I mean, God told him exactly what was going to happen here.

"And thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, 'The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met us with us. And now let us go. We beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, and we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.' And he's upfront here again. And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go." So Moses, this isn't going to be any surprise.

"Not by a mighty no, not by a mighty hand. And I will stretch out my hand and smite Egypt with all my wonders, which I will do in the midst thereof. And after that, he will let you go." So I mean, there were no surprises here. The people are going to listen to you. Pharaoh is not going to listen to you. That's just how it's going to be.

"And I will stretch out my hand and smite Egypt with all my wonders." I read that. "And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and it shall come to pass that when you go, ye shall not go empty. Every woman shall borrow of her neighbor and her that journey so journeys in her house, jewels of silver, jewels of gold, and raiment. And ye shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters, and ye shall spoil the Egyptians."

And Moses answered and said, "But behold, they will not believe me."

Well, suppose they don't respect me.

And God says, "They'll believe you because I'm going to send you with three signs." "What's that in your hand, Moses? Throw it on the ground." And it became a snake. Now take it by the tail. It became a rod. "Moses, put your hand in your bosom."

Leprose. Put it in again.

"Well, suppose they don't believe that, Lord." "Well, I'm going to give you one more. You're to go to the Nile River and take some water and pour it out, and it'll turn into blood. And they will believe you."

So God's taking away all his excuses. Well, what's the next thing? That takes us down to verse 10 of chapter 4. "And Moses said unto the Lord, 'O my Lord, I'm not a good speaker.'" And the Lord said, "Well, I'm going to be with your mouth." And we know he became mighty in word and deed, so it actually happened. He did become mighty in word. If you read the story, Aaron does the speaking at first, but pretty soon Moses is doing the speaking. I mean, he got with it finally.

And so the Lord took away all his excuses, and so his final excuse is in verse 13. "Now, therefore, go, and I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt say." And he said, "O my Lord, send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send." In other words, choose somebody else that's more qualified.

All right. Well, Moses made the transition to being a leader. But here was another failure. Another failure. It didn't work. But God had told him that it wouldn't work. All right? So go over to chapter 6. God has to give this man some more reassurance.

I was just amazed at how the Lord and I think he does the same thing to us. I think the Lord just works with us through all our weaknesses, shows us the truth that we're supposed to believe, and helps us to work through things. I want you to notice I'm going to read down through the first eight verses, but before I go, I want you to notice what the Lord says he's going to do. He says, "I will do. I will bring. I will deliver. I will redeem. I will take. I will be. I will bring. I will give." I mean, he just is promising over and over and over and over and over and over again that he's going to be doing everything that needs to be done.

Now I'm going to read it.

"Then the Lord said unto Moses," this is after Pharaoh had reacted and put burdens on them, "Now thou shalt see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. And God spake unto Moses and said unto him, 'I am the Lord. I am Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty. But by my name Jehovah was I not known to them.'" Now, he had made a covenant.

The concept of Jehovah is covenant-keeping God. He had made a covenant to Abraham, but they had not seen that covenant enacted. And he said, "They're going to see my covenant enacted, that I'm going to keep my promise to Abraham, and I'm going to do everything I told Abraham I was going to do. They're going to see that they're going to see that actually enacted. They don't know me that way, but they are going to know that by the time we're finished here.

And I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage. And I have remembered my covenant. Wherefore, say unto the children of Israel, 'I am the Lord.'" Now look at all this. "I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rid you out of their bondage. I will redeem you with a stretched-out arm and with a great judgment. I will take you to me for a people. I will be to you a God. Ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

I will bring you into the land concerning which I swear it to give unto Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. And I will give it to you for a heritage. I am the Lord. I am a covenant-keeping God. When I say what I'm going to do, like I told Abraham, these people are going to see this all fulfilled.

But by the time this is finished, they're going to know that I am a covenant-keeping God. Regardless of what they do, I keep my word."

So we know how the story is finally concluded. Egypt's firstborn died. God got through to Pharaoh very clearly that Israel is my favored people, and we're going to take the favored people of Egypt. And you will know what consequence you get by messing with my favored people.

Now, that's all of the story I want to tell. I want to talk now about this man's traits. The man was not perfect. He made some mistakes. He got angry a couple of times. But these are characteristics that God was able to use in spite of his failures or his weaknesses. He was not a perfect man by any means.

Number one is his faith. Hebrews 11:24 singles that out as the most outstanding trait of this man. It says he was faithful in all his house. I think it meant his house was the nation. Okay?

If we turn to Deuteronomy chapter 32, which is the song that he wrote, we find out that the thing he emphasizes all the time in that song is God is great. God is great. God is to be trusted.

That was Moses' outstanding trait. Somewhere he got that through his head, that God is to be trusted.

He was willing to learn. He was willing to trust God and obey despite whatever doubts he had. Somebody has noticed that the word follow appears in the Bible twice as often as the word faith. That's an interesting observation.

Follow appears in the Bible twice as often as the word faith. And Moses followed.

Number two, he was humble. The Bible says he was the meekest man on all the earth. Despite some flashes of anger, he was an humble man. And it says that when Moses and Aaron came to him and spoke against him because of his Egyptian wife, I'm not quite sure what case they were trying to make because this is what they said, "Hath the Lord spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us?"

They accused him of being proud, of being a tyrant.

What did Moses say? Nothing. A characteristic of Moses was when they railed against him, he went straight on his face to God and let God deal with it.

Might have some light to shed on our Sunday school discussion. Number two, we're looking at some qualities of humility here. God one time said, "This is a stiff-necked people. I've lost my hope and patience with them. Just stand back, Moses. I will destroy the whole nation, and I will raise up a nation even greater than them from your family."

Moses said, "No, you can't do that, God. You're trying to honor me, but you're going to dishonor yourself because everybody knows how you brought these people out of Egypt. And I'm more interested in your honor than I am in my own honor."

It takes a big man to have that attitude. It's a little bit like the Apostle Paul when they said to people out there teaching, turning your people against you there in Philippians. And he said, "It's okay. As long as the Gospel's being preached, whether it's being preached with a good attitude and good motive or a bad attitude and a bad motive, I'm just glad the Gospel's being preached. Don't worry about me."

Number three, there was a time when Moses called 70 elders, and they went out to the tabernacle, and God put some of the Spirit of Moses on them, and they all started prophesying. And then somebody came running and said, "Did you know there's two guys that stayed in the camp? You didn't ask them to come out. I mean, they weren't part of the group that you were planning to have this happen to. Their names are Eldad and Medad. And they're in the camp prophesying. That shouldn't be happening, Moses. You never called them. They shouldn't be doing what they're doing." And I want you to notice his response. Would you turn to Numbers 11:29?

I mean, these are attitudes that all leaders struggle with: rivalry, competition, somebody getting more honor than they are.

Verse 28, "And Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of the young men, answered and said, 'My Lord Moses, forbid them.' And Moses said unto him, 'Envious thou for my sake? Would God that all God's people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit on everybody?'" I love that.

When I read that, I get a sort of a tingling in my spine. Number four, this man is an humble man. Many people who rise to the place that he rose to as a leader are pretty possessive of that leadership. But he had the humility to delegate it. He had the humility to appoint leaders over thousands, leaders over hundreds, leaders over tens to help administrate. Now, he got advice from his father-in-law, but some people would have never taken that advice. They'd have said, "Look, I'm the one that's in charge here. I can handle this."

But no, he was willing to delegate. He was willing to let other people prophesy. He was willing for God to continue to work with his stiff-necked people rather than honor him. I mean, the attitudes here are just absolutely amazing to me.

So he was a man of faith. He was a man that was extremely humble.

And the third thing I have here is he was a seer. He was a man of vision. Hebrews 11:27 says, "He endured as seeing Him who was invisible." This man could see things nobody else could see. He could see things afar off. Second Peter says that people who go down the wrong road cannot see things afar off.

They don't have any vision. They live in the eternal present. They forget that they were washed from their sins. They can't even see in the past. And certainly, they can't see in the future. They live in the eternal present.

No, he could see things that were not visible. He saw that all of Egypt's pleasures and all of its treasures were just for a season. He saw that. That was very clear to him, that what everybody else is valuing has no relative value.

He accepted the reproach of Christ. Now, I know Paul is writing this later looking back, but I'd like to think that Moses had some concept of the Messiah. He says there was going to be a prophet coming they should listen to. So he had a concept that this was going to happen. And it seems like Moses realized there's something about leadership that it cannot really come to its final victory without suffering. He somehow understood that, that he could reject all of that in Egypt. There would be suffering. There would be misunderstanding and all of that, but it would have a glorious result.

He looked for the recompense of the reward. He understood that glory comes through suffering. When our engagement announcement went out, some people were a little surprised at the motto that we stood in front of for our engagement. This is what it said, but it was a poem by Amy Carmichael, "O Prince of Glory, who dust bring thy sons to glory through the cross?

Let us not shrink from suffering, reproach, or loss." If you see a picture of our engagement, that's what's in the background. "O Prince of Glory, who dust bring thy sons to suffering through the cross? Let us not shrink from suffering, reproach, or loss."

This man was a true prophet. He was never deceived by the lure of the present. And the Bible says that God made known His ways to Moses. The children of Israel only ever saw His acts. Moses saw the total scope of how God works.

He could see. He could make decisions in that large perspective. He never forgot the consequences of people's decisions or the history that had brought them to where they were.

It says in Deuteronomy 34 that when he died, his vision, his natural vision, was as sharp as it had ever been. And I would say that that was also true of this man's spiritual vision. It was amazingly sharp. He could see the total picture. He could tell you, "If you do this, this is what will happen. If you do this, based on what I know and what I understand about the total perspective of reality, this is what will happen." He operated as a seer. That's what prophets were originally called, people who could see, seers.

The fourth thing, he was decisive. It was a momentous decision to leave Egypt. I mean, anybody looking on would have said, "What in the world do you hope to gain? What in the world do you hope to accomplish by leaving Egypt?"

But he said, "I trust God. I trust God. I'll just walk away from it." He didn't try to compromise. He didn't take a long time to weigh his options and want to have a little bit of Egypt and a little bit of this. I mean, he made a complete break. He chose to forsake Egypt. The Bible used the word forsake. Okay?

And he always called for a wholehearted response to God. I want you to turn to a few scriptures. Would you turn to 5:29 of Deuteronomy? I'm going to bring this to a close, and I will before too long.

Deuteronomy 5:29.

He's wishing this for his people, and I don't think I'm assuming. I think he also realized that this is how he operated. "Oh, that there was such a heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children forever." Turn over to chapter 6:4. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might." I mean, he was no half-hearted, double-minded person. He was a decisive person. It was an all-or-nothing thing with him. Now, we say that. We say that Jesus is Lord of all.

He's not Lord at all. I'm not sure sometimes we really believe that. Okay? But that was Moses. He says it's got to be the whole way. If you want God to bless you, you've got to do it all. You can't be half-hearted. You can't be double-minded. Chapter 10:12.

"And now, Israel, what does the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him and to serve the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes as I command thee this day for thy good?"

That's what he believed. He also was an intercessor.

There was that time when God was going to destroy the Israelites. We already referred to that. And Moses said, "Lord, blot my name out of your book. If you're going to blot these people's name out, blot my name out." And the Lord heard him and delivered Israel. There was also another situation where it was after the golden calf. The Lord said, "I'm not going to go with this people. I'm not going along. I'll send an angel, but I'm not going to go with you."