The Mission of Moses

The mission of Moses seemed straightforward when God called him while he was in exile tending to the herd of his father-in-law saying “… Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt”. That seemed straight forward enough although in retrospect, Moses probably had inkling about the enormity of this job because he gave God enough reasons why he is not the best candidate for this. We all thought that it was mainly because he was a wanted man in Egypt. Eventually he grudgingly accepted and that was the beginning of a very difficult assignment.
To start with when God told Moses that Pharaoh will resist, I doubt that he envisaged the drama that went on in Egypt before the Israelites finally left Egypt. As you read the plagues and the frequency and severity of it, one wonders how Moses was being dribbled by the Pharaoh man and yet each time God says “go tell Pharaoh, let my people go” he goes and each time the plague comes Pharaoh begs Moses to beg his God and the drama was endless.
Now we get to the people for whom mosses had taken so much stress and given so much of his life and their rebellion over and over again on their way to the promised land to the point that God will wipe out a whole generation over the age of twenty for disobedience and doubt about the capability of God to fulfill his promise to His people. Then we come to the wars… it was one war after the other to even get close to the promise land.
It is amazing for short of a better word that in leading the people Moses became not only a political leader but also their spiritual leader until God set apart Aaron and the Levites to reduce the role and one recalls that even when his father –in-law visited them as they came out that he observed that he was doing a lot and asked him to find some assistants. Later he will lead them again into wars and that is really what struck me about this assignment, the job kept expanding and getting more difficult but Moses held on… yes there are a few cases such as when he struck the rock and when the tablets dropped for which he paid for by not getting into the promise land. I remember thinking “common God, for a guy who did all these, you could at least have forgiven him and let him enter the promise land instead of just seeing it”.
Another intriguing thing is that with the difficulty of managing the Israelites, the rebellions, the deaths, the wars, Moses still managed to marry another wife along the way to the point that even his sister complained about the woman and God came to his rescue.
Apparently, when God gives us an instruction to do something, we truly do not know the assignment in its entirety until we obey and set out. As we walk and work with him, he reveals the demand of the assignment step by step and phase by phase. All He demands of us is full trust that he is able to do that which He said He will do. Also, before God sends anyone on any mission, He first reveals who He is and that would be the point of reference for the messenger … an encounter that one can never forget and the one that will be the bedrock for the messenger.
Has God sent you on a mission? Have you had an encounter with God resembling the burning bush? One that takes away the doubts and the fears and one that will be the reason you will face Pharoah confidently and not panic when you see the red sea?