Face to Face

And Moses lost his opportunity of proving what God could do. He took, shall we say, God’s second best instead of His best!

He yielded to his fears instead of believing that God could do the “impossible” thing for him. Moses had to later regret his fainting heart that day, for he made difficulties for himself through Aaron, that need never have come in his path.

Are we not doing the same thing day after day? Let us never look at our human limitations, and, because our hearts fail us, choose God’s second best.

The conversation was over. Moses now goes to Jethro and asks for permission to return to Egypt.

He says nothing of all that had taken place on the mountainside. Souls who have had experiences like these are not disposed to talk much about them; neither does God reveal Himself often in such a way until the soul has learned to walk silently with Him.

We need not trace the steps of Moses as he returned to the land of Egypt, other than to note one incident on the journey in that direction.

God seems to have given no definite directions as to His will concerning Moses’ wife and their little ones in the path that lay before him. We read only that he took his family with him on the journey. Perhaps as a matter of course and without seeking God’s will! But God will not have us take His will for granted; and He must let us find out, sometimes rather sorely, that we have never sought His mind about a particular step, so quickly and so instinctively do we run our own way.

The life of real dependence upon God every moment is not an easy one to learn.

He could have said to Moses, “Go, take your family, and return to Egypt”—but He did not, and we do not see anywhere that Moses asks Him about it either. The LORD permitted Moses to start on his journey, together with his family, but when they rested at an inn, we are told, “the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.” Exodus 4:24.

He had evidently failed in obedience to God’s commands concerning circumcision and had done so through the objections of Zipporah, his wife.

But the faithful God could not overlook one single deviation from His will and lays His hand upon Moses so unmistakably that his wife was forced to recognize the cause and yield the disputed point.

And God spared his life.

This sharp discipline seems to have shown Moses that he must go alone into Egypt, for Zipporah evidently could not partake in the solemn conflict with the powers of this world, behind whom were the powers of darkness, which lay before him. The bitter words she used showed clearly how she might embarrass him in his mission to Israel.

So, he sends his family back to the care of Jethro for a time, and the lonely man goes forward into the unknown.

One step at a time! — Moses did not think of all this when he stood at the burning bush and heard the words of the LORD.

Aaron now meets him on the way, sent by God; Together they go to the elders of Israel.

And begin their mission, — and the people believed! Yes, God bore witness to all that He had promised, in such a powerful way, that they not only believed but “bowed their heads and worshipped.”

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God . . . .” Matthew 5:8.

Let us briefly consider the main characteristics of Moses’ walk with God from this time forward.

His absolute, implicit obedience to God. He had to do exactly what God told him to do, and no more.

Again and again to God he went, sorely tried with the first results of his mission, until at last the conflict of faith grew too keen for him to bear, and he said, “LORD, . . . why is it that You have sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people; and You have not delivered Your people at all.” Exodus 5:22-23.

It was a severe test, and if he had not had such a conversation with God in Midian behind him, such an unqualified, unmistakable commission, such a knowledge of His will, his heart would have failed him.

But Moses goes “from faith to faith,” and faith grows by testing. Only in this way can it be developed and matured, until it can believe against hope and cry in the face of every obstacle, “It shall be done.”

God now gives him a fresh and more explicit message for the oppressed people, with seven “I wills” enclosed in the Alpha and Omega of “I am The LORD God.” Exodus 6:6-8.

He was known to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as “El-Shaddai, God Almighty,” the one who pours-forth blessing; but now He will reveal Himself to Israel as The LORD God, the Righteous God who must judge sin because He is the Just and Holy One.

Back to the stricken Israelites Moses goes with this Magna Carta of promised deliverance, but the people were in such anguish and serfdom that they could not listen to Moses.

What can be done now? How can souls be lifted up when they are too crushed to heed? Surely God had let it go too far! Moses’ heart must have been wrung with anguish.

To be sent by God to deliver, and to be the very means of plunging the souls he had come to help into deeper suffering—it called for faith to trust through this!

It is in truth “the fellowship of His sufferings” when we must stand back and wait for His hour to come; wait for His permission to move, or to speak; wait and watch the fiery furnace grow still more heated.

Moses suffered for these afflicted souls as he had never done in the early days, when, moved and stirred by looking on their burdens until his fiery zeal burst out, and he smote the sinner.

Oh, the anguish in his voice as he cried to his LORD, “and you have not delivered Your people at all.” The cruel bondage of oppressed Israel had clouded his heart, and when the LORD bids him go again to Pharaoh he is depressed and disheartened, and replies,

“Behold, the children of Israel haven’t listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me?” Exodus 6:12.

The LORD God takes no notice of this passing cloud, but simply bids him go to Pharaoh and says that He will make him as “God” to him, with Aaron as his prophet.

That is, that he shall be clothed with all the power and authority of God and stand in His stead before the heathen king.

After this we get the constant refrain, “As the LORD commanded them, so did they.” Step by step, they had but to obey; and we watch these two men quietly, faithfully following each direction given them by the LORD.

How their faith increased as God bore witness to each step! The first manifestation of His power was the turning of the rod into a serpent, as Moses had seen it done once before; and then from this point, from faith to faith, the wonders grew.

“With open face beholding . . . the glory of the LORD” 2 Cor. 3:18.

What could God not do with that little rod! It was the medium of power in the first three judgments God sent upon Pharaoh.

Then Moses is simply bidden to say, “Thus says the LORD,” and God bore witness to the word without using the rod. Had Moses begun to lean upon it somehow? God will not have us lean upon even the things He has given us or used in the past; and it requires His constant watching to keep us from clinging to, or relying upon, anything outside of Himself and His pure word.

This accounts for many of His strange dealings with us. The things He gives must be returned, given and returned, so that we may be kept free and pliable for Him to do with us as He wants.

We must also be freed from rigid conceptions of His method of working. He used the rod in the first miracles, then He shows Moses that He can also work without the rod, for nothing is necessary to Him. The next miracles were performed by the word of The LORD God through Moses: The swarms of flies came after the word, “Thus says the LORD, . . . tomorrow shall this sign be . . . There shall be a very grievous pestilence,” Exodus 9:1-3—and it was so.

The sixth plague was brought about in a different way, and the rod was used again. All this taught Moses to be very pliable in the hand of God, and very obedient. It taught him to go forward just one step at a time, and to have no pre-conceptions as to how God would work that day.

2. His uncompromising faithfulness.

It was absolutely necessary that he should not depart one iota from what God had said. Pharaoh parleyed and sought to compromise as the judgments fell upon him, but Moses did not swerve from what God had told him.

Had he yielded one degree he would have failed the LORD and frustrated His purposed deliverance for Israel. He did not dare to act for one moment as an independent agent.

“Sacrifice to your God in the land,” said Pharaoh, and Moses might have said, “Why not in the land? This is a great concession; we cannot expect more.” But no, God had said three days’ journey out of Egypt, and three days’ journey it must be.

“Go now, you that are men,” again said Pharaoh. No, God had said “all.” Then “Go, . . . only let your flocks and your herds stay.” No, “not a hoof shall be left behind,” said the uncompromising servant of God, who was faithful to Him who appointed him.

“We see Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honour . . .” Hebrews 2:9. Revelation 19:11-16.

Let us note also in Moses: his ceaseless recognition of God’s responsibility. It has been said that perfect obedience brings perfect rest, if we have confidence in the one we are obeying.

Moses knew the God he had met in Midian, and therefore he just obeyed, and did not question the issue of the conflict in which he was engaged. “Moses cried to the LORD,” we read again and again, and as a result he spoke in such a way that Pharaoh knew that it was God he had to do with and not Moses. Would that we had learned to be God’s ambassadors in this way, and to be so self-effaced while delivering the message that the souls to whom we are sent know that it is God they have to do with, and not us.

Alas, it is to be feared that many of us have scarcely learned the first elements of spiritual service! We are so occupied with our little part that we get between God and the souls He sends us to. Even more, we fear saying “Thus says the LORD,” because we have not learned how to know Him and His laws.

Pharaoh knew, too, that when Moses “cried to the LORD” the thing was done!

“All things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them.” If Moses had prayed something like this: “O God, if it is your will, then remove this plague, then in this case it would not have worked.”

Yet we read that he said to Pharaoh, “I will spread out my hands to the LORD; and the thunder shall cease,” and the thunder and hail ceased! Exodus 9:29, 33.

Ignorance of God and of His heart and His written Word lie at the bottom of much unanswered prayer.

How can we say “if it be Your will” when He has made His will clear about many of the things that we ask for? We need but to point Him to His Word, and say reverently, and with the boldness of faith, “Do as You have said, Lord.”

This is the prayer of faith, that gets whatsoever it asks for, because it happens in accordance with the Word of God. It is also in accordance with the Holy Spirit’s intuitive knowledge in the heart which comes only to those who walk closely with God.