With all the injustice happening in the world today, surely a person can’t be blamed for getting upset, losing sleep or even throwing a temper tantrum now and then.
Seeing injustice is easy. Getting upset about it is easy.
But what if God says it’s your job to go do something about it?
Hang on a gosh darned minute.
That’s hard.
I’m not qualified. I’m not brave enough. No one will listen to me. And who are You, anyway, to give me an assignment of this magnitude?
Send someone else.
Meanwhile, I’ll just hang out over here with my righteous indignation and resentments while someone else takes action.
Moses Meets a Burning Bush—and Gets an Assignment
This is essentially the scene in Exodus 3–4, when Moses meets God in a burning bush.
I was struck by this passage this morning, although I’ve read it many times before. Until today, I think I was so awestruck by the burning bush—the white-hot reality of what it must have been like to encounter God in the physical reality of earth—that I missed some of the richness of the conversation between Moses and God.
And how much I can relate to Moses’ stubborn obstinance.
I’ll bet Moses was nodding his head vigorously as God described the injustice Pharaoh was inflicting on the Israelites: the harsh treatment, the suffering, the cries of His people. God announced that He had seen their misery, heard their cries and was coming down to deliver them.
“Finally!” Moses may have thought. “Amen, God! It’s about TIME You’re gonna DO something about the mistreatment of my people. I mean, it’s only been, what, a few hundred years?”
I imagine Moses getting more and more excited as God spoke.
After all, Moses was living in self-imposed exile in Midian, having fled Egypt after killing an Egyptian. He’d been born a Hebrew, raised in Pharaoh’s palace by Pharaoh’s daughter, miraculously nursed by his own mother, and surrounded by the lavish life of Egypt while his people suffered in slavery.
Moses was a man caught between two worlds and firmly at home in neither.
Now he was a shepherd in Midian.
And maybe—just maybe—Pharaoh and all those who had hurt him and his people were finally going to get their comeuppance.
Then God gets to verse 10:
“So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
Moses must have stopped short and looked twice at the burning bush.
Say what, now?
Suddenly, righteous indignation takes a backseat to concern for Moses’ personal comfort.
And the litany of excuses begins.
Excuse #1: Who Am I?
Moses’ first question is about his own identity:
WHO AM I?
Who am I to talk to Pharaoh, God? You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not equipped. I’m not qualified.
I love God’s response.
God doesn’t puff Moses up with false praise. He doesn’t argue, “Yes, Moses, you ARE good enough! Believe in yourself!”
Because God knows Moses, on his own, does not have what it takes.
Why argue with the facts?
Instead, God tells Moses the one thing that actually makes him enough for the task:
“I will be with you.”
I can relate to Moses’ self-doubt. When God hands me a job that feels too big, it’s usually because I’m evaluating my ability to do it based on who I am and what I’m capable of—not who God is and what He’s capable of.
On my own, apart from God, I can do nothing (John 15:5).
But with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).
In other words:
It doesn’t matter WHO you are. It matters WHOSE you are.
Excuse #2: Who Are YOU?
Moses isn’t done.
He asks what he’s supposed to tell the Israelites when they ask who sent him.
Essentially: “God, not only do I doubt who I am. I’m not entirely sure who YOU are. What’s Your name? How am I supposed to explain You to these people?”
And I wonder if Moses’ question comes partly from his own identity crisis.
He was born Hebrew but raised Egyptian. Now he was an outlaw in a foreign land tending sheep. He didn’t feel qualified to approach Pharaoh, but he probably didn’t feel particularly qualified to walk into the Hebrew community claiming to speak for God, either.
And now he finds himself standing before the painful truth that he doesn’t fully know—or fully trust—his Creator.
We will never understand what we’re capable of with God until we begin to grasp the full weight of who God is and what He’s capable of.
So how do we grow that kind of faith?
The answer is right there in the text.
God reminds Moses exactly who He is by pointing him backward.
I AM WHO I AM.
I’m the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God who made covenants, kept promises, provided, protected and redeemed.
In other words:
Moses, I wasn’t born yesterday.
Actually, I wasn’t “born” at all.
I have always been.
God speaks directly into Moses’ fear about an uncertain future by reminding him of the truth about the past.
Let me say that again:
The TRUTH about the past.
Not the toxic self-talk Moses may have rehearsed during long, lonely nights in the fields with the sheep.
Not the story that nobody loved him, nobody understood him, his best years were behind him, his mistakes had disqualified him and whatever future he once imagined was gone forever.
Maybe Moses had nearly convinced himself that a quiet shepherd’s life in Midian was enough.
It wasn’t much, perhaps, but it was safe.
It didn’t require courage.
It didn’t require faith.
And it certainly didn’t require walking back into Egypt and introducing himself to Pharaoh.
God even tells Moses that the Israelite elders will listen to him and that he won’t have to approach Pharaoh alone. They’ll go with him.
Surely that settles it.
Nope.
Excuse #3: What If They Don’t Believe Me?
Moses has another objection:
“What if they don’t believe me?”
What if my words aren’t enough?
What if I come up short?
What if I am insufficient?
God’s response is brilliant.
He essentially asks Moses:
“Well, what DO you have?”
“What is that in your hand?”
A shepherd’s staff.
Granted, it’s not much.
Moses has lost a lot: his family of origin, his adopted family, his community, his home, the future he once imagined for himself.
What does he have left?
A new family in Midian.
And a stick.
But God says: Give Me what you DO have.
Put your staff in My hands, and I’ll make it enough.
At God’s command, Moses throws the staff on the ground and it becomes a snake. At God’s command, he picks it up again and it becomes a staff.
My “not enough” in God’s hands is all I need.
Then God reminds Moses in a dramatic way that even his physical health is no accident. Moses puts his hand inside his cloak and pulls it out diseased. He puts it back inside and, by God’s power, it is restored.
Moses had become so accustomed to ruminating on everything he’d lost that perhaps he’d forgotten the value of what he still had.
Excuse #4: I Don’t Talk Good
Undeterred, Moses keeps going.
Basically:
“I don’t talk good.”
Moses is remarkably adept at cataloguing his deficiencies.
And now he takes a swing at God Himself.
It’s Your fault, God, that I’m not up to this. I’m slow of speech. You made me this way.
God turns the argument right back around:
“Who gave human beings their mouths?”
In other words:
Moses, I know EXACTLY who you are.
I know exactly what you can do.
And—news flash—I also know your limitations, weaknesses and deficiencies better than you do.
God knows exactly who He made me to be and exactly how I’m wired. He can use my strengths and my weaknesses to bring glory to Himself.
Not to me.
To Him.
Excuse #5: Fine. I Just Don’t Want To.
Finally, Moses runs out of excuses.
But he’s not out of disobedience.
“Please send someone else.”
There it is.
No more arguments.
No more reasons.
Just: No.
I will not do what You’re asking me to do.
Has that ever happened to you?
It’s happened to me.
I’ve battled with God, argued with God and carefully outlined my case for why I shouldn’t have to do what He’s asking me to do.
And He’s thrown every one of my excuses out of court for lack of evidence.
When all else fails, I sulk.
I cower.
I hide.
I pull the covers over my head and flat-out refuse to get up, get out and get on with the business of trusting and obeying God.
And even then, He persists in pursuing me.
God provides Moses help. He sends Aaron, Moses’ brother, to speak alongside him.
But God doesn’t rescind the assignment.
Moses is still going.
And then comes one of my favorite details.
God knows exactly whom He is sending:
A slow-talking, reluctant, disobedient, misfit Hebrew shepherd.
A shepherd.
And shepherds were detestable to the Egyptians.
Hebrews were considered detestable enough that Egyptians wouldn’t even eat with them.
Moses?
Hebrew and shepherd.
Double whammy.
So God essentially says:
Hey, Moses. You know that shepherd’s staff that announces to everybody exactly what you do for a living—the job Egyptians find abhorrent?
Yeah. Bring that.
I want you to lead with it.
What If the Thing You’re Ashamed of Is the Thing God Wants to Use?
How typical of God to take the very source of our self-consciousness and shame and transform it into the thing He uses to glorify His name through our lives.
Friend, that thing you keep locked behind a closed door?
That chapter of your story you’d rather nobody read?
That part you may not have told even the people you love and trust?
God may very well want you to bring it into the light, put it in His hands and allow Him to use it as part of your testimony.
Your secret past may turn out to be your secret superpower.
Moses didn’t have to look far back in Israel’s history to see another man caught between the Hebrew and Egyptian worlds.
Joseph.
In Genesis 43:32, Joseph ate separately not only from his Hebrew family but from the Egyptians because Egyptians refused to eat with Hebrews.
In other words:
Hey, Joseph, you’re good enough to wear Pharaoh’s signet ring. You’re good enough to save Egypt from famine. You’re good enough to help us build our empire.
But could you go sit at another lunch table?
Because at the end of the day, you’re still a Hebrew.
Like Moses, Joseph found himself caught between worlds—and fitting neatly into God’s hands.
Later, in Genesis 46:33–34, Joseph tells his family to make sure Pharaoh knows they are shepherds. Because shepherds are detestable to Egyptians, they’ll be settled apart from the Egyptians in Goshen.
The very thing that made them socially unacceptable helped preserve their separation, their identity and their way of life.
And that makes me wonder:
When has my rejection by people steeped in the world’s ways actually been God’s protection?
It sure didn’t feel divinely orchestrated at the time.
It hurt.
But perhaps God knew, as I did not, that acceptance by a certain crowd might have brought my downfall.
So Now Go
How about you?
Are you ready to now go?
Where has God been calling you to follow Him into something that feels dangerous, uncomfortable or wildly beyond your qualifications?
Where has He responded to your righteous indignation about the world’s injustices by saying:
“Yeah. I know. It’s awful.
And I’m sending YOU to do something about it.”
Does the move from outrage to action suddenly have you fumbling for your own list of excuses?
Who am I?
What if they don’t listen?
What if I fail?
What if I don’t have what it takes?
What if all I have is a stick?
Maybe God has brought you to this very moment for such a time as this.
Maybe He doesn’t want you merely losing sleep over everything wrong with the world. Maybe He’s inviting you to get up and join Him in doing something about the very thing you’ve been fretting over, complaining about and wishing somebody would fix.
And all those reasons you think you’re not qualified?
Maybe those are the very things He intends to use.
Even the painful things.
Especially the painful things.
Maybe God wants to heal the parts of your story you’ve carried in shame for years by showing you what they become when placed in His hands.
Maybe whatever you’re holding isn’t merely enough.
Maybe, in His hands, it can become beautiful.
So go to God and talk it over with Him.
Your burning-bush moment may leave you with an unexpected fire in your belly—the courage to stop letting your past be your prison and allow God to transform it into an exodus from the hurts that have held you captive for years.
And then?
So now go.
