The Making of a Wise Man

The Making of a Wise Man

Moses had spent his early life doing things in his own strength… No one could tell him otherwise. To defend God’s people, he would take a man’s life, and expect to be appreciated. He thought, “At least the Israelites will understand what I did!” They did not, and thus began a 40-year wilderness journey designed to make a man of God out of him!

As Chesterton writes, “Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness!” When Moses began, he thought he saw what was right and wrong. He felt he had the right to judge a situation involving God’s people. He also thought he was the one to do something about it. He had the power. He had the wisdom. He had the talent. He had the connections. He had the credentials. He was ‘God’s man’ for the hour. However, after God had prepared Him, he was a stutterer unwilling to speak. He was disqualified as a spokesperson in his own eyes. He had nothing. He also had almost no one with him in his desert abode, except those he needed most – his family! In this way, God often shapes a man for his future. He takes him aside from his circumstances, and makes him a family man – a man, who learns to provide, to live simply, and to raise his kids, so that he can better understand the heart of His heavenly Father. The new Moses saw God [in the burning bush], then heard Him, then saw himself as honestly as he ever had – as a man incapable of doing God’s bidding, and finally he saw what he had to do. God had initiated all four of Moses’ responses! God revealed to Moses that only what comes from God could endure. When a man has been thus prepared he does not try to resolve, or to control, or to pressure, or to organize his situation. Rather, he is tender, humble, attentive to God, gentle in action, and devoted to God in service. The old Moses did not need God. The new Moses said, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh…?” We hear, in his words, the heart of every spiritual giant. Isaiah said, “Woe to me. I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips”. Paul said, “I am the worst of sinners”. David said, “I have sinned!”

Moses, in the end, did all that the Lord required because he knew it was the Lord doing it. What the Lord initiates, the Lord completes! We are told that Moses was the humblest man on the face of the earth! It is only a revelation of, and encounter with God that makes a man humble. Secular Humanists, such as Carlyle, and others, would have us believe that the man who must lead is the one who thinks he can. Our response is to point them to such men as Moses, so that they might see also, that he who is emptied of his own way, and thinks himself incapable, is the one most qualified to lead. Solomon, filled with wisdom wrote that when the righteous thrive, the people rejoice, when the wicked rule, the people groan. Again, that a wise servant will rule over a disgraceful son!