Mark Burgin spoke tonight from Exodus 3 & 4, looking at the calling of Moses and how God works with who we are and what we have to do extraordinary and miraculous things. Moses was born in Egypt to Hebrew parents and was rescued from death by Pharaoh’s daughter. Brought up as a prince in Egypt, he had to flee when he murdered an Egyptian he saw ill-treating a fellow Hebrew and ended up as a shepherd. He went from riches to a reality which looked nothing like his dreams and probably felt quite useless at this point in life. Yet his encounter with God profoundly changed him.
In these chapters, we see Moses effectively listing many reasons why God could not use him. He felt inadequate to the task and may well have felt that it would have been easier if God had called him earlier in life when he had some standing in Egypt! But who you are and what you have are enough for God, for He is the one who turns the ordinary into extraordinary. Moses’s stick became a serpent when God’s power came upon it; He gave Moses many miraculous ‘proofs’ of His power and spoke to him about what would be achieved. Moses’s initial response (‘Here I am’) is the starting point for every great ministry, for what counts is not ability but availabiity. Ultimately, God told him that ‘I am who I am’ was sending him, and that had to be enough. It’s not who we are or what we have that defines us. Who God is what really matters, and He can use each one of us to do amazing things.
