“Moses At Mount Sinai”

Exodus 24:1-2, 12-18；Deuteronomy 9:9,25-29

By Rev.Szu-Hsing Mao ;  Translated by Evelyn Lee

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     Moses was a mythical, legendary person. From early childhood to the age of forty, he learned and absorbed all the Egyptian knowledge and culture in the palace of Pharaoh. He had all the ability to talk and perform. His intelligence was way above the average person. He also was full of intellectual reasoning and understanding that he had all the confidence in himself. He was very sure of his bright future.

     At age forty, one day he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. He killed the Egyptian and had to flee from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian where he became a shepherd. All he had learned in the grand palace of Egypt had become totally useless and wasteful. From then on his pride diminished and he had less confidence in himself.

     After another forty years, when Our Lord, Jehovah called him in the wilderness of Midian and wanted to send him to the Pharaoh. Moses said to the Lord, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” (Exodus 4:10) He was a person of few words, so quiet that he needed his brother, Aaron to speak for him, it was as if Aaron was his mouth. In actuality it was Moses who spoke God’s words. The moment Moses realized his total uselessness and weakness was the beginning of the turning point where God wanted to utilize Moses. When all his knowledge, ability and confidence were all crushed, he could then became the servant of God. This transformation passage was amazing and astonishing. It was God that Moses needed to rely on and not rely on the Egyptian learning and know-how. It was not the miraculous experience at Midian but the meeting of God Himself.

     A person whom God reveals to and discloses to is the person who is completely disabled and incapable such as David, Jeremiah, Isaiah…….etc. They all felt they did not possess anything and their talent was at the zero point. A successful Christian must posses such a feeling of complete powerlessness and forceless ness.  He/she must have the feeling of nothingness and incapable of anything. The person then become strengthened by God’s presence, only at such a moment, God world utilize him/her.

      In the life of Moses if there was any accomplishment and successful story for us to admire and learn, I think that was when Moses saw himself as “incapable weak person”. Because of his realization of “incapable weakness”, Moses went up to Mount Sinai to face the almighty and powerful God who called him and empowered him.