Moses Stayed - 05
Even when God was ready to cut bait.
Moses humility was unparalleled. Humility is an important quality if you intend to stay in a church community. We are told in Numbers 12:3, “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.” God made him this way over time.
In brief, Moses began as a babe in a basket who got drawn out of the river in Egypt. He was reared in the house of Pharaoh. He was thoroughly educated. He was given authority in the king’s household. He had to flee the land after he killed an Egyptian who was abusing one of Moses’s Hebrew kinsmen. He then spent 40 years in Midian before God called him to return to Egypt to lead His people.
God and God’s people were vitally important to Moses. And once God brought him back to them, Moses became the consummate stayer. He stuck to them like glue.
Moses even appealed to God, when on Sinai, that He would not bring disaster upon the congregation and wipe them out at the foot of the mountain. God wanted to destroy them for brazen idolatry but Moses interceded for them.1
He does this more than once in the wilderness as well. He prays to God not to continue to burn in His anger against the people when they complained about their misfortunes (Numbers 11:1-3). He asks God to pardon the people for their fearful unwillingness to enter into the Promised Land (Numbers 14).
It would have been easier for Moses to start over, to start fresh. He could have just wandered off with his wife and children and God. But he was committed. He determined to shepherd God’s people. He had been trained for it in Midian and in all of his life.2
A humble person has learned not exalt himself in order to be noticed and praised by others. He does not put himself ahead of others. However, neither does he bother much with what people think of him. A humble person starts by being humble before God. Humility is to want what God wants. It is accepting His will submissively.3
Moses could have avoided the multiple abuses done to him, over time, by his brother and sister and various others within the congregation; abuses by people who should’ve known better.
Aaron and Miriam and others accused him of pride, the very flaw that was not in him.
In Numbers 12:1-2, we find Moses’s brother and sister turned against him. “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, ‘Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?’ And the LORD heard it.”
Later on, Korah, Dathan and Abiram gathered together a large group to oppose him. We read in Numbers 16:2-3, “…they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, ‘You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?’”
If ever there was a time to leave, to cut bait, and to be justified in your decision, you’d think Moses had that right. But he stayed. If there was ever a person who could have claimed a right to leave a sinful congregation in order to properly sustain his own holiness, Moses was the guy.4 But he stayed.
Exodus 32:7-14.
Exodus 3:1.
I did a five-part sermon series on Moses confrontation with Miriam and Aaron. It is called The Humblest Man on Earth. You can find it here: https://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?sourceonly=true&currSection=sermonssource&keyword=altocrc&subsetcat=series&subsetitem=Moses+the+Humble
To be holy is to be set apart by God. There was no one, prior to Jesus (with the possible exception of John the Baptist) quite like Moses. We read in Exodus 33:11, “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”