Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites our of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)
After Moses had spent forty years tending sheep on the back side of the desert, God was ready to use him to deliver His people out of bondage in Egypt. Moses started out well; when God called to him, Moses readily replied, “Here I am.” But as soon as God declared His plan to make Moses the divine deliverer of God’s people, Moses began to hastily back away from the opportunity to be a servant for God’s use, offering up excuse after excuse. Let’s take a look, and I promise you will be as comforted as you are challenged to answer whatever call God has placed in your life today.
When Moses said, “Who am I . . . ?” he was speaking the truth; he was not qualified for God’s call in his life to do anything, at least from his human perspective. Forty years earlier, when Moses was in the court of Pharaoh, he killed an Egyptian slave master who was beating a Hebrew slave. When Moses’ crime became known, he fled Egypt and spent the next forty years as a shepherd in Midian.
God knew who Moses was. God knew that Moses had tried, in his way and his timing, to free his countrymen from their bondage in Egypt, but he went about it the wrong way – in his own strength, rather than in the strength of the Almighty. Yet now God was calling Moses into His service to deliver His people out of slavery. Truly, this is one of the greatest comforts we find in all of sacred Scripture: God sees past our past, and He looks all the way to our current potential as an instrument of usefulness in His mighty right hand. This was the case with Moses, and the same is true for you and me.
Have you ever wondered why God chooses to use such messed up people in His service? It’s because that’s all He has to work with! We are all messed up. We are all sinners with a past that would crush us under the weight of shame if those closest to us knew what God knows about us. Yet God, in His magnificent mercy, raises us out of the pit of our sinful past and brings us into His promised plan and purpose for our lives.
That is why God refused to accept Moses’ excuse that he wasn’t good enough to answer God’s call. It is true that Moses was not good enough in his own strength, but in the strength of the Almighty he was more than good enough; he was God’s ordained instrument of usefulness. Moses threw up several more excuses, and God simply took Moses from excuse to use, and that is exactly what God wants to do in each of our lives.
Have you answered God’s call on your life today? Remember, God knows everything about your past, yet He still wants to use you in the present for two simple reasons: His glory and your ultimate good. So when you sense God’s call, your answer should not be “Who am I?” but rather, “Here am I! Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:9).
This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!
Grace for the Race 