Moses: A Man of Selfless Dedication

by Charles R. Swindoll

Efficiency increases as we relinquish

Earlier in this book, I mentioned God’s Wilderness, the large, pictorial volume my sister gave me. It features several pictorial pages of Sinai. One photo of the southernmost area of the Sinai range carries the following caption: “The awe-inspiring granite peaks at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula seem to form a gigantic fist of God proclaiming: ‘Here! Here!’ The ever-changing, ever-deepening colours of the mountains in this part of Sinai invest this indescribably beautiful region with an aura of sanctity, and one can well believe that here God appeared to Moses.” And then the book adds, “Israeli scholars, who explored the Peninsula in the brief period of Israeli occupation, came to experience a holiness pervading Sinai’s mountains, and they believe that it was in this region that the Israelites encamped when the Law was given.”1

Be willing to obey

Basing their opinions on Cecile B. DeMille’s classic movie The Ten Commandments, many people assume that Moses climbed that mountain once, got everything, then came back down with the stone tablets tucked under his arm. A careful study of Exodus, however, shows he actually made seven trips. He climbed up and down, up and down, up and down—a very busy man. And he took care of these matters before he ever had his forty-day vigil in God’s presence to receive God’s handwritten Word.

2. Be sensitive to listen

3. Consecrate your hearts

Show a deep respect for God’s presence

One man expressed his reverence like this: “The heaviest obligation upon the Christian church is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished the noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past.”

The writer of Hebrews says, “So terrible was the sight, that Moses said, ‘I am full of fear and trembling’” (Hebrews 12:21).

This is the first time in all of history that God wrote down His Word. Until the time of Moses, the written Word of God did not exist. But now, here it was. And to think, you and I possess those written words! What an awesome and majestic thought. How we take that privilege for granted.

Back before the collapse of the atheistic Soviet Union, my friend John Van Diest represented the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association at the Moscow Book Fair. The authorities had granted them reluctant permission to hand out a limited number of Russian language New Testaments, and long lines of people waited in line to receive a copy. When the supplies were exhausted, one desperately disappointed man asked if he might have one of the empty boxes that had once held those Testaments. “But there’s nothing in there!” John protested. “The Bibles are all gone!” With tears glistening in his eyes, the man replied, “Then I at least want the box.” The Bible was so precious to this man that he treasured the cardboard box that had held the Scriptures. May

meet regularly with God, you need a place.

You need to be prepared.

To hear from God, you need the Scriptures.

To remember what God says, you need a journal.

Shadow of the Almighty.

Any large group of people who wants to walk with God always seems to attract a smaller group who lacks any such desire. Scripture calls this latter group, “the rabble.” You know what the Hebrew word for “rabble” means? It means “riffraff.” God really knows how to tag a certain group, doesn’t He? You might call these folks “the carnal corral.”

Dr. Howard Hendricks used to say, “Those good old times are what created these bad new times that we’re having these days.”

the greater the dreams God may give you, the more persistent will be the rabble who puts them down.

May I give you a tip? (No extra charge for this insight.) As soon as a group gets large enough, the rabble will show up. As that Bible class you teach increases in size, sooner or later you’ll get the rabble. You go to a Bible school, a seminary, a Christian college, you’ll find the rabble there. You visit a church of any size, you will find the rabble. You start a church, it’s only a matter of time. It’s true of groups in the church, Sunday school classes, choirs. No matter what, when you get a large enough group together, you will find the rabble.

An exhausted Elijah once muttered similar words beneath a scrawny tree in the wilderness. Jonah said the same thing under a withered vine outside the walls of Nineveh. Both were ready to quit; both asked the Lord for a quick death. But the Lord refused to take the life of Elijah or Jonah, and He wasn’t about to take Moses’ life, either. But He did take care of the problem.

Again Moses had been trying to do too much, so the Lord spread out his work load. You can read it for yourself in Numbers 11:16-25. God took care of his need. But as soon as that peril exited stage right, another one emerged stage left. Right on the heels of the first came the second. That’s how it is when we determine to walk with God. The perils can come one after the other.

An old poem warns of this danger: Sometime when you’re feeling important, Sometime when your ego’s way up; Sometime when you take it for granted that you are the prize-winning “pup”; Sometime when you feel that your absence would leave an unfillable hole, Just follow these simple instructions, And see how it humbles your soul. Take a bucket, fill it with water, Put your hand in it up to your wrist. Now pull it out fast and the hole that remains Is the measure of how you’ll be missed. You may splash all you like as you enter, And stir up the water galore, But stop and you’ll find in a minute,

It’s right back where it was before.1

You can almost hear the audience go silent as the text declares, “And the LORD heard it.” Uh-oh! That’s not a comforting thought. In every slander there is a gossiper and a gossipee. And between the two is the Lord. Before the gossipee ever hears the comment, the Lord has already intercepted what was said.

Numbers 12 reminds us how God protects a godly person. You don’t have to run your own defense; God runs the defense for you. Let me assure you, you will be misrepresented. You will be misunderstood. But when that happens, don’t try to cover all the slanderous things said against you. Let God be your defense.

Here is a warning every one of us needs to heed: Be exceedingly careful about what you say regarding the private business of God’s people. If you do not know the facts and you are troubled about appearances, talk to the individual one-on-one, or better still, say nothing at all.

I am appalled by what some people say about the individuals others choose to marry. One of the saints of the last generation lost his wife and after a few years of being alone, he married a woman several years his junior. Some nosey busybody came up to him and said, “The nerve! How could you have the nerve to marry somebody that much younger than you?” And in his gravelly voice he answered, “Listen, honey, I’d rather smell perfume than liniment any day.”

“Maturity is moving from a soft skin and a tough heart to a tough skin and a soft heart.”

I can promise you one thing: If your walk with Christ is consistent, all hell will break loose. But all heaven will come to your rescue! And you’ll be right in the middle of cosmic, high-stakes warfare. If you like leeks, garlic, and fish, topped off with a cup of warm water from the Nile, you’d be better off making predictable bricks in “good old Egypt.” But if you’re willing to sign on as one of the Lord’s commandos behind enemy lines, life will never be the same. You may only get a quick meal of manna while you’re dodging spears, but it will never be boring.

Anger, we are told, begins with mild irritation.

That can lead to indignation, a deeper level of intensity.

The third level is wrath,

Uncontrolled anger soon becomes fury, the fourth level.

The fifth stage is rage, the most intense level of angry expressions.

An act of disobedience stems from unbelief.

F. B. Meyer, a trustworthy commentator of Scripture from a previous generation, wrote this regarding unbelief: “It is a solemn question for all of us whether we are sufficiently accurate in our obedience. It is a repeated burden of those sad chapters of Hebrews, which tell the story of the wilderness wanderings—the cemetery chapters of the New Testament—that ‘they could not enter in because of unbelief.’ But throughout the verses the margin suggests the alternative reading of ‘disobedience’; they could not enter in because of disobedience, because, you see, disobedience and unbelief are the two sides of the same coin—a coin of the devil’s mintage. They who disobey do not believe; and they who do not believe disobey.”1 So it is that the New American Standard version renders Hebrews 3:18–19, “And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief ” (italics mine).

A public act of disobedience diminishes God’s glory.

When a man of God fades from the scene, nothing of God fades. He always has His Joshuas waiting in the wings.

So why didn’t God name Caleb as Moses’ replacement? Why Joshua? I think Numbers 11:28 reveals the likely reason for His choice. Scripture calls Joshua “the attendant of Moses from his youth.”

Charles Spurgeon habitually trained younger men at his footstool, as it were, then released them to the ministry. G. Campbell Morgan did the same. And that’s not a half-bad plan.

Numbers 27 illustrates a simple, basic principle: When a man of God dies, nothing of God dies. When a man of God is moved on to another position, nothing of God moves on. It is all too easy for a person who remains in the same position for many years, being used of God to accomplish much in his ministry to replace (almost) God in the minds of people. Then when that person is moved to another ministry or dies or fails, many of those who idolized their leader fall by the wayside. God teaches us in Numbers 27 that when He moves a man on, like Moses, and buries him on the mountain, nothing of God is buried. The Lord remains hard at work; His plans move forward, His affairs competently tended by other hands.

Historical documents and archaeological finds have shown that pornography quite likely got its start in Canaan, as did the wholesale perversion of sex. The grapevine was just as fast and devastating in those days as it is today, and Moses knew those old pagans were wicked to the core. He also knew that, in order for the people of God to be preserved from both military and spiritual defeat, they needed a strong and uncompromising leader.

On a tombstone in England, somebody saw this chiseled inscription: Sir John Strange Here lies an honest lawyer, And that is Strange.

In a Georgia cemetery: I told you I was sick!

That experience, coupled with my quiet trip to the tombstones, suddenly began to make me feel a part of the scene that unfolded on Mount Pisgah, up there where Moses died. It grips you quietly, but down deep. I think it’s wrong to approach a section of Scripture as though you’re about to complete a lesson or, for that matter, a book. God’s Book is a book of life. And with the exception of the death of His Son, the Author of Scripture never lingers long over death. I can count on both hands, with fingers left over, the number of lengthy obituaries found in the Word of God. God’s people simply die, and then a whole new dimension of life begins.

We’re really not ready to live until we’re ready to die.

I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that God not only knows our times, He knows the ends of our times. Therefore I do not live in fear when I board an airplane. I have no apprehension when I climb in the car for a long trip across the Texas panhandle, or a drive up to Oklahoma, or journey into New Mexico. I don’t even fear the Los Angeles freeways or the North Dallas Tollway. I know that in God’s plan, He has arranged the extent of my life and, in fact, the very day of my death.

Look at verse 5 once again, but this time put two phrases from that verse side by side. Read the following together: “Moses the servant of the LORD . . . the word of the LORD.” They’re near enough to each other to be taken as sort of a rhythmic movement. “The servant of the LORD, according to the word of the LORD, died.” They fit together, and that is what brought great security to his death.

That’s one of the things I love about the ministry—no two days are ever the same. I often traffic in eternal paths: birth, death, deep sickness, tragedies. I live at the cutting edge of life. Dealing with the dead is just as familiar to the man of God as making the final sale is to a salesperson, or fixing a meal is to a homemaker, or changing a set of plugs is to an auto mechanic. Pastors could run the risk of becoming callused in handling death as a business, but I must say I don’t ever remember burying anyone one-hundred-twenty years young.