Hebrews 11:24-27, 13, 16
(1) Moses' Training
(a) Sovereign Apprehending
We begin with himself and his training. We are not beginning with his birth. We begin where we read of him in the letter to the Hebrews - Moses in Egypt; and here we are once more met by something that has come up repeatedly in these meditations - that inborn sense of destiny. You cannot get away from it. When you are dealing with God's full purpose and when you are dealing with the work, the service, the ministry, the pioneering in relation thereto, that is always the point at which you have to begin; and it is always there - this deep-down sense of a Divine, sovereign apprehending for something.
Here is this man in Egypt. He is surrounded by all that Egypt has, and students of history know that the glory and the glamour of Egypt were no small thing in Moses' day. He was surrounded by it all. The writer here speaks of "the pleasures of Egypt." Its pleasures, its amenities, its scholarship, its education: all its privileges, right up to the very house of the king - everything was at the command and disposal of Moses. He was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:22), and he had all the "pleasures" of Egypt to his hand. That was no small thing. Do you say that was nothing to throw away? It was a mighty 'all' of this world - but this sense of destiny made it as nothing. Although enjoying it all, as far as he could enjoy it, there was a shadow over his enjoyment all the time; there was a something inside that withheld him from becoming finally content with it. There was within him a sense of restless discontent and dissatisfaction, which really was a working in him of God's unwillingness to be satisfied with anything short of His full purpose. Moses may not have been able to explain or define this strange urge, but it made him know that the 'all' of Egypt was by no means God's all, and that Egypt could never answer to this call and pull from above and beyond.
Now, that is not exaggeration, and those are not just words. That is Scripture, and that is very testing. For such as are called into the way of God's full thought, His highest and His best, it will be like that. It does not matter what there may be of popularity, worldly position, success, means and resources - everything to hand: if we are truly called according to His purpose, we shall be restless in it all, dissatisfied, and feel, "After all, is it worth it? There is something more than this." Test your hearts by that. That is no fiction; that is fact.
It may be that that fact lies behind your very reading of these words today. You could have much in this world if you like to lay yourself out for it. You could have a way in the world and its pleasures, and other things, if you really went for it. Yes, and perhaps you could get acceptance and position even in the religious world, but to you it has become second-rate. There is something in you - you may not be defining it, perhaps you could not write down what it is - but you know there is something, and unless you discover that something, arrive at that something, life will be a disappointment, for there is a mockery in everything else. If that is true in your case, it is a very hopeful thing, it is a marvelous thing: heaven has come down to lay hold of you in relation to all its meaning. Of course, if you have not got this sense, you will be pleased with all sorts of things less than that, and you will be out for them. But, mark you, if you can be like that, it is a very terrible indictment, for it means that somehow, where you are concerned, that mighty heavenly apprehending has failed.
(b) Crisis
So the thing began with Moses inwardly, and that inward thing led to a definite crisis, the crisis of the earthly and the heavenly. The Lord has wonderful ways of producing this crisis. You know it is not always produced and precipitated by some ecstasy - if that is what you are after - the glory of a great light and vision, the enrapturing of your soul, some tremendously wonderful heavenly experience. It does not always happen like that. It did not happen like that with Moses, nor with others. How did it happen? He went out one day and saw an Egyptian persecuting a Hebrew, and this sense of destiny took possession of him and overmastered him, and so, being evidently of powerful physique, he laid on to the Egyptian and slew him there and then. That was the crisis that precipitated this whole thing. Sometimes we only wake up to the heavenly or are brought face to face with the heavenly by some ghastly misdemeanor or failure; for, almost immediately after this, things were made untenable for Moses in that realm in Egypt, and he had to quit.
But what was inside the crisis, what was the meaning of it, why did God allow it? Moses might have said, 'Why did the Lord allow me to do that? Why did the Lord, who had foreknown me and had in His own free knowledge called me to His great service, let me make a mess of things like that? Why did He let me become involved by my own act in a thing like murder, to have the stain of murder on my hands? - I who am called to be the emancipator of God's people! Why has the Lord allowed it?' And the answer would have been: 'That is not the way in which heaven does things, Moses. That is the way the world does things; it is the way the flesh does things. It is not heaven's way of doing things. You, Moses, can never bring out a heavenly people into a heavenly place by earthly methods and means. Learn that once and for all. It may seem a terrible way of dealing with the situation, but there it is, clear and plain. This people, that you are chosen in the foreknowledge of God and b the sovereign act of God and by this sense of destiny in yourself to lead out: this people, chosen to be a heavenly people - how can you get them on to a heavenly level of life if that is your level of life?' We will come back to that again in a minute. Heaven breaks in and says with terrible emphasis, 'No, Moses. Carnal weapons for carnal ends, but not carnal weapons for spiritual ends; earthly ways for earthly ends, but not earthly ways for heavenly ends. Heaven is governing here and must register itself like this.' What a lesson for a life! What a foundation!
Now, you may never have been a murderer, but I have no doubt but that some at least who read these lines have learned very deep lessons of this kind: that you just cannot go on with God on that level, you cannot get through with God alone that line, you cannot serve God in His heavenly purpose in such ways, in the strength of the flesh. It is so true to principle. Heaven will have none of them; it demands its own life, its own nature. That was the crisis of the heavenly and the earthly in the training of Moses.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 14 - "(c) Forty Years in the Wilderness")
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