Exodus 3:11 - Homiletics

Fitness of Moses to be God's instrument in delivering Israel.

The fitness of Moses to be Israel's deliverer will appear if we consider, first, What were the qualities which the part of deliverer required; secondly, how far they were united in him; and thirdly, what reasons there are for believing that, at the time, they were not united to the same extent in any other person.

1 . NECESSARY QUALITIES OF THE DELIVERER . As having to deal, in the first instance, with a great king and his court, it was necessary that the Deliverer should be familiar with the habits of the court, should be able to assume its manners, speak its language, and not unwittingly infringe its etiquette. Not being set merely to petition, but to require—to prefer demands—it was requisite that he should feel himself, socially, on a par with the monarch, so as not to be timid or abashed before him, but able without difficulty to assert himself, to use freedom of speech, to talk as prince with prince, and not as mere courtier with monarch. Again, as having to meet and baffle Egyptian priests, and further, to be not only the Deliverer, but the Teacher and Educator of his nation, it was to the last degree necessary that he should be "learned in all the wisdom" of the time; that he should have had as good an education as any other man of the day; be able to foil the priests with their own weapons; and, after delivering his people out of bondage, be capable of elevating them, instructing them, advancing them from a rabble of slaves into an orderly, self-sufficient, fairly-enlightened, if not highly-civilised, nation. Once more: a moral fitness was necessary. The Deliverer needed to have high aspirations, a bold spirit, fervent zeal, and yet to have all these under control; to be calm, quiet, serf-contained, imperturbable in danger, persevering, prompt, considerate. Moreover, he needed to be a religious man. Anyone not upheld by high religious principle, anyone not possessed of deep and true faith, would have fallen away in some of the trials through which the nation had to pass; would have desisted, or murmured, or "lusted after evil things" ( 1 Corinthians 10:6 ), or waxed proud and wanton, or grown weary of seemingly interminable wanderings, and settled down in Arabia or even returned to Egypt.

2 . MOSES ' POSSESSION OF THESE QUALITIES . Moses was familiar with the customs of the Egyptian court, having been brought up in the household of a princess, and been himself a courtier until he was nearly forty years of age. Though he had subsequently spent forty years in the desert, this would not unfit him; since, in the first place, Egyptian manners and customs were unchanging; and secondly, life in the desert is at no time a bad school of manners. Arabian shepherds are not like European ones. As much politeness is often seen in the tent of a Bedouin as in the drawingroom of an empress. Moses probably thought that his forty years of seclusion rendered him less suited for the atmosphere of a court, but he was probably mistaken. What he may have lost in polish he gained in simplicity, directness, and general force of character. Moses,, again, could speak with the Pharaoh almost as an equal, since as the adopted son of a princess he had born accounted a prince, and may even, before his flight, have met Menephthah in the royal palace on terms of social equality. On the education and "wisdom" of Moses we have already descanted, and it will scarcely be questioned that in these respects he was eminently fitted for the part assigned to him by Providence. His character, too, as chastened and ripened in Midian, made him exceptionally fit. Audacity, high aspirations, strong sympathies, a burning zeal, had shown themselves in the conduct that led to his exile. These had been disciplined and brought under control by the influences of desert life, which had made him calm, self-contained, patient, persevering, considerate, without quenching his zeal or taming his high spirit. And of his religious principle there is no question. If he angered God once by "speaking unadvisedly" ( Psalms 106:33 ; Numbers 20:10 ), this does but show that he was human, and therefore not perfect. Apart from this one occasion his conduct as leader of the people is, as nearly as possible, blameless. And his piety is everywhere conspicuous.

3 . NO ONE BUT MOSES POSSESSED THE NECESSARY QUALITIES . With the limited knowledge that we possess, the negative is incapable of positive proof. But, so far as our historical knowledge goes, there is no one who can be named as possessing any one of the necessary qualities in a higher degree than Moses, much less as uniting them all. No Hebrew but Moses had had, so far as we know, the advantages of education and position enjoyed by Moses. No Egyptian would have been trusted by the Hebrew nation and accepted as their leader. No one who was neither Egyptian nor Hebrew would have had any weight with either people. Thus Moses was the one and only possible deliverer, exactly fitted by Providence for the position which it was intended he should take: raised up, saved, educated, trained by God to be his instrument in delivering his people, and so exactly fitted for the purpose.