Moses was probably the greatest man of the Old Testament era, in many ways a forerunner of Jesus Christ. But there are important lessons we can learn from his life and the manner of his calling. He was called on the backside of the desert after he learned important lessons that God taught him. God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called. And sometimes God has to disqualify people before He can qualify them.
We read in Exodus 3:1-15 about Moses keeping his father-in-law’s flock of sheep on the backside of the desert, seeing a burning bush and hearing God call him. This was after he had slain an Egyptian, and fled from Egypt into the wilderness. He had spent 40 years on what the Bible calls “the backside of the desert.” I would like to make several points about this calling of God.
1. Moses Wasn’t Ready When He Thought He Was Ready
Forty years before this account in chapter 3, Moses thought he was ready to deliver God’s people. He had strength, he had an important position in Egypt, he had experience on the battlefield, and he was from a priestly family in Israel. On paper, he was imminently qualified to lead. He stepped forward to begin the task.
Paul wrote in Hebrews 11:25-27 that Moses made a choice to forsake Egypt and cast his lot with God’s people. In Exodus 2:11-12, he slew the cruel Egyptian taskmaster.
Moses saw the oppression of his people, and saw a need, and he acted. Just because we see something that needs to be corrected, doesn’t always mean we are the one who is supposed to take action – that might not be God’s will, or God’s way, or God’s time.
The Bible says that Moses looked this way and that, but he didn’t look up. He looked horizontally at the things of this earth, but didn’t look up to heaven. Just because it looks like it needs to be done, or said, from the human perspective, doesn’t mean it is God’s perfect will.
In the rest of chapter two, Moses had to flee for his life and spend 40 years in the desert. It seemed as if his attempt to do the right thing had ended in humiliating failure. That failure was God’s plan for Moses. We are all willing to serve God in success, but can we serve Him in failure and humiliation?
Stephen, in his sermon in Acts 7, said the people refused Moses. The 40-year old Moses thought the people would acclaim him; instead they rejected him. Does God sometimes allow us to fail in order to teach us how to handle success?
Moses had religious zeal and innate ability, but he needed to spend time on the backside of the desert. There, all his good intentions died. His own plans, his hopes and his dreams all evaporated in the sandy wasteland where he tended someone else’s sheep.
The Exodus 3 account is about a broken man. By the time he was 80 years old, Moses is not the man who slew the Egyptian. He has no illusions anymore. He doesn’t feel qualified to even speak. He is devoid of human aspirations. He has no confidence in himself. That is the kind of a man or woman God can use. The Lord said in Isaiah 66:2 that He looks to those with a poor and contrite spirit.
Jesus said in Matthew 21:44 that you have to fall on the rock and break or the rock will fall on you and grind you to powder. In the 80 year-old Moses, God is seeking a broken spirit; but not a wounded one. A wild horse isn’t useful until it is broken. Once it is broken it can be ridden, or used to plow, or many other useful purposes.
It seems that God has to break you before He can use you. Suffering and humiliation and failures are the tools God uses to mold and make a man or woman He can use. Consider this anonymous poem:
When God wants to drill a man, and thrill a man, and skill a man, When God wants to mold a man To play the noblest part; When He yearns with all His heart To create so great and bold a man That all the world should be amazed, Watch His methods, watch His ways! How He ruthlessly perfects Whom He royally elects! How He hammers him and hurts him, And with mighty blows converts him Into shapes and forms of clay which Only God can understand; While man’s tortured heart is crying And he lifts beseeching hands! Yet God bends but never breaks When man’s good He undertakes; How He uses whom He chooses, And with mighty power infuses him, With every act induces him To try His splendor out - God knows what He’s about.
Numbers 12:3 says Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth. He didn’t start out that way, but the trip-hammer blows of adversity and humiliation made him the man who was ready to be used of the Lord.
Moses wasn’t ready when he thought he was ready; but 40 years of humiliation and failure prepared him for greatness. He became the man God needed for the hour in God’s school of brokenness.
2. Moses Had to Turn Aside
God waited 40 years – until Moses had emptied himself of all his ambition, pride and confidence; and then He sent an angel to burn a bush. One day, a typical day just like every other day, something unusual happened. Moses noticed that a bush was burning but did not burn up. Exodus 3:1-2.
In verse 3, Moses decided to turn aside. God didn’t call him to turn aside; it was a choice Moses made. Verse 4: “And when the Lord saw that he turned aside…” God began to speak to him.
I believe the point of this is that God doesn’t force Himself on us. If we aren’t interested in the things of God, maybe the Lord won’t interest Himself in us. Regardless how deep your disappointments, how discouraged you may feel, and how depressed you seem, never pass up an opportunity to investigate whether the Lord is speaking to you. Revelation 3:20 says “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
We have to hear and open the door. Moses did. He could have passed this burning scrub bush on by; but he turned aside to see. So many times it seems that God is calling out to people, but they are so busy, so preoccupied, so set on their own course, or so discouraged, that they won’t “turn aside” to see what the Lord might be saying. We probably all know people who have had experiences that should allow them to hear God speak to them, but they didn’t heed, they didn’t turn from their course, they simply passed on by.
Habakkuk said, “I will watch to see what the Lord will say unto me.” Habakkuk 2:1. We all need to watch for a burning bush and turn aside to hear God’s voice.
Always be ready, like Samuel, to say, “Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth.” Always be willing to say, like Isaiah, “Here am I, send me.” Always be open to ask, like Saul of Tarsus, “Who art thou Lord, that I am kicking against the pricks?”
Moses was in his darkest hour, but it was at that point that the bush began to burn. Maybe the Lord has something for you in your low point, as well.
3. Moses Wasn’t Called on the Front Side of the Desert
Exodus 3:1 specifically mentions “the backside of the desert.” Civilized Egypt was on the front side, but only desolate sand dunes, scrub bushes, rocks and wild animals were on the back side. It is a very lonely, forbidding place. There was nothing there that tantalized the flesh.
The front side of the desert had the Nile delta, the fine cities, the engaging entertainment, the refinement of civilization, and the joy of fellowship. Egypt is a type of the world in all its lush carnality and fleshly gratification. Moses had been there; he had been a prince in Egypt. He was raised in the palace by Pharaoh’s daughter. Josephus says he was a respected and successful general of their armies. He had everything the most advanced civilization of his day could offer. But he lost everything but the clothes on his back when he fled into the desert.
Significantly, God did not call Moses when he was successful. God didn’t call him to the front side of the desert. Rather, God sent him to tend to another man’s sheep in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing lower in Egyptian values than to tend sheep. Genesis 46:34 says that shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians.
Moses didn’t even own any sheep. Exodus 3:1 says he was tending his father-inlaw’s sheep. How low was that for a former prince of Egypt? Truly, with God the way up is down. Truly, he that is greatest must first become the servant of all.
It wasn’t until Moses was out of the limelight, seemingly cast aside and forgotten, that God finally called him. By that time, he had lost all his worldly ambition, all his human pride, and all his vain glory.
At that time, Mount Horeb was the mountain of God. According to the Book of Exodus, Mount Sinai (Hebrew: Har Sinai) is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God. In the Book of Deuteronomy, these events are described as having transpired at Mount Horeb. They are two names for the same place. It was the place God chose to meet with His people – this time with just Moses, but later with all the Israelites to give them His law.
I Kings 19:8 calls it, “Horeb the mount of God.” The word “Horeb” means parched and desolate. That’s where God is. He isn’t on the front side of the desert. Remember that the next time you feel you are in a parched and desolate condition in your life. God doesn’t speak to you in the glamor and allure of success. The same Lord who was born in a stable instead of earth’s finest palace calls to His people from the backside of the desert.
From all outward and human appearances, Horeb was vastly inferior to Egypt. It was a very humble place, where God called a very humble man. Moses had been on a very long journey – one that took 40 years or maybe even 80 years, before he finally found the place where God was. It wasn’t an impressive place; but it was the place where God was working.
It is much like that in the world today. God isn’t working in the impressive place; He’s working on the backside of the desert with a people who are learning to wear sackcloth.
4. The Body of Christ is Called to the Backside of the Desert
Most ministries, churches and denominations constantly seek the front side of the desert. But the Mount of God isn’t there. The burning bush is on the backside of the desert. You have to traverse desert wasteland to get there.
The backside of the desert is unsavory, unbecoming, unspectacular and unpopular. The front side, where Egypt was located, has all the glitter, all the big names, the large crowds, the impressive programs, the fine buildings and colleges and finances. Mystery Babylon is on the front side; as are the pleasures and enticements of the sinful world. But you cannot turn aside to the burning bush there.
Egypt was the epitome of human wisdom, civilization and worldly pleasures. Mount Horeb was desolate, forbidding – the very polar opposite of Egypt. But God was there. Holy ground was found on the backside of the desert. As we are told in Hebrews 13:13, we still find Him “outside the camp” of organized religion.
Moses spent 40 years on that backside of the desert before God sent him to be His prophet to Israel and proclaim judgment on Egypt. Forty symbolizes a period of trial. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness. The children of Israel were later tempted to worship a golden calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai. Moses wasn’t ready when he thought he was ready; he was only ready after God’s prescribed period of testing and trials.
There is a great future for a restored church. It is prophesied in the Bible. But it won’t happen until a period of trial and testing makes us ready. It won’t be exactly 40 years, but it will be a completion of the testing period. There will be a Body of people who are ready. They will have surrendered their human ambition and pride. They will have no confidence in themselves. They will exist merely to glorify God, and not flesh. That’s when God can give power to witnesses who are clothed in sackcloth. Revelation 11:3.
But you cannot be constantly looking back to Egypt and find the burning bush. Moses was not constantly climbing a mountain to get a glimpse of Egypt in the distance. He wasn’t telling himself that not everything in Egypt was evil. God had people there. There were leeks and garlics and fine foods and nice houses, and such.
This is the mistake Lot made. He pitched his tent near Sodom, but kept looking at the city and seeing just how nice it was. Not everything about Sodom was wicked. Lot could live in a house instead of a tent. He thought he could keep his family insulated from the evil in that society. But he was wrong. Later in Revelation 11, there is a mention of a place spiritually called Sodom and Egypt.
So many people in the Body of Christ look at Sodom and Egypt and feel that not everything is sinful there. They look at other good Christians and other churches and ask why we can’t be more like them. They think they can have the pleasures of this world, the lite religion of Babylon, and it won’t contaminate their families. They might make it with their values intact, and they might not; but they will never find the burning bush there.
It may not happen when we think it will happen. We may not be ready when we think we are ready. We need to find the burning bush of God at the end of our testing period. We must forsake Egypt completely. That means forsaking the worldliness and the allure of earthly pleasures for the holiness of God. We’ll find God waiting for us on the backside of the desert when we are ready to hear Him and to represent Him to the world.