Called

             The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

 God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’

“This is my name forever,
    the name you shall call me
    from generation to generation.

“Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’

“The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.

“And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.” (Exodus 3:7-22)

Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. (Genesis 15:13)

I ended yesterday with the idea that for God to show up and talk to Moses meant that God wanted something. Today, we consider what He wanted. But first, a note on the timing. In Genesis 15, God told Abram that his descendants would spend four hundred years in Egypt. It wasn’t described as a punishment, but the time would include the Israelites being enslaved. So in today’s main passage, when God says He has seen he misery of the Israelites, it’s not as though God was surprised, or even that He had been ignoring them. He gave them 400 years of both good government and bad to learn about the falseness of other gods, the problems of a human king, the horrors of slavery and mistreatment of foreigners, and more. One hundred percent of the time they were in Egypt, God was preparing them.

So, at the appointed time, God called Moses. Why Moses? He may not have been the only man at the time who was well acquainted with Egyptian politics, the politics of the peoples in the area of the Synai Peninsula, and (likely) the terrain of the area. He had experience in government and leadership both of men and sheep. Twenty percent of the time the Israelites were in Egypt, God was preparing Moses.  And now, the time had come.

When God called Moses, it was to do the sort of thing Moses may have fantasized about at one point, but he was almost 80. He had responsibilities in Midian. But the point isn’t Moses, it’s God, and God makes that clear. He declares that He will be with Moses. That He is who He is, and He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not only would the Israelite elders listen to Moses, but the Egyptians would respond favorably to him. God would work everything out.

But Moses responded the same way we tend to. “I can’t do it. They won’t listen to me. I’m not good enough, etc.” God doesn’t call us to make us look good. He doesn’t call us to do what we can. In fact, He’s likely to call us in areas we’ve failed, as He called Moses to return to the land where he was wanted for murder, where he (from his own perspective) might be seen as a coward and a failure. Does that sound as familiar to your life as it does to mine? What He calls us to may not even be something we think is significant. He could call us to a job at which on one day, we meet someone and talk with them for ten minutes, and that was a purpose of the call. We can be called to something with multiple purposes.

I’ve said before that one of the things that convinces me that God is calling me to do something is my automatic response of “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Another is when I argue with God, somewhat like Moses, that I am not ______, or can’t do something.  If there are other people involved (the Israelites, the Egyptians,) I’m likely to claim that I am the worst possible choice, since the other people will find in me the reason not to do whatever is desired. And all of what Moses and I claim may be true. God may know it’s true. That doesn’t prevent Him from accomplishing His goals. In fact, all of our dis-abilities may be the reason God has called us, as I mentioned earlier.