Wednesday, 16 January 2019

Exodus 7:1-7 – God works best through yielded vessels

God could have blasted Moses for being so loquacious and windy. He could have said to him, “Once is enough, Moses. Why are you coming at it over and over again? Moses, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you trust me?” But God did not. He patiently dealt with Moses and taught him how to go about it. He was literally teaching him how to serve. What a patient and gracious God! In so doing, He was virtually answering Moses’ question when He told him, “See, I make you as God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land.”

Effectively, God was telling Moses, “You have my authority, just use it.” The exact words were, “See I have made you as God to Pharaoh.” These words are significant because in their culture, Pharaoh was considered a god incarnate and would have thought of himself divine. Imagine what all these would mean. Moses was now placed over the Pharaoh who considered himself to be a god. God was literally engaging Pharaoh in his own game. He was in effect showing that Pharaoh wasn’t a god. Because Moses, the shepherd who returned from Midian would be God to him. And this Moses truly had the power of God. He could literally control nature, creatures and even life and death because the one true God would be acting through him.  

Moses, of course, was merely God’s instrument. He was just a prophet of God, an ordinary man but would have extraordinary capacity because God would be backing him to the hilt. He would be representing God to the king. Isn’t it so gracious of God? Today, this is the way He will also work through us, His people. We are His representatives when we trust Him and do as He has instructed us. We too can become extra-ordinary vessels to demonstrate His glory. We should always bear in mind that we are created in God’s image and likeness. And the more Christlike we become, the greater will be our capacity to represent Him to the world.

God sent Aaron to act as his brother’s prophet so that Pharaoh would have no choice but to see and recognize Moses’ authority. He would be the one speaking on Moses’ behalf. The things he would say would be as if they were the words of Moses. God knew that Pharaoh would understand what all these would mean. Like Moses, we all should have nothing to fear as we act on God’s behalf. Our words do have authority when they are inspired by Him and spoken on His behalf. What we see in these seven verses should give us the confidence to serve God boldly. Accept it or not, God has the ultimate control over everything, even the human heart. What God does always point to the fact that He is the Sovereign LORD and nothing is outside of His control. And He still wants to work through us to claim lives for Himself, no matter how hardened hearts may be. Notice the ages of Moses and Aaron? What they indicated to us is that age should not be a barrier to serving God. These two brothers were both in their eighties. So, if anyone of us think we are too old to serve, just consider them. What these seven verses tell us is this: we must not allow fear, personal inadequacy and much less our age to stop us from serving God. We must give Him our youth, our adulthood and even our senior years. We can be God’s willing vessels today. He wants to use us! 

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