Will the Real Moses Please Stand Up?

When I was in grade school, the curriculum in my small Christian school required third graders to memorize Hebrews 11. While I missed the point of the assignment as a nine-year old (my only goal was to earn the Twizzlers promised to those with perfect recitation), Hebrews 11 presents us with a beautiful lineage of faith, beginning with Abel and stretching to those nameless saints who suffered for their faith in Jesus because their eyes were on the promise of a better country, a permanent home, a city and a kingdom built by God Himself.

My pastors have been preaching through Hebrews since last fall, and what I’ve noticed in revisiting the list of the faithful in chapter 11 is the way the author describes some of these saints as opposed to the Old Testament narrative accounts of the same people. It’s tempting to accuse the author of Hebrews of glossing over the negative, sinful actions of people like Moses or David since their stories are retold as admirable accounts of faith we should imitate. Take Moses, for example. The author of Hebrews describes Moses’ obedience to God like this:

“By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” (Heb. 11:23-27)

If you have no knowledge of Exodus 1-4, you might think Moses a paragon of heroic faithfulness who never fell prey to doubt or fear. But if you read the first four chapters of Exodus, you see an entirely different side of Moses. We’re introduced to him as a baby born to a Hebrew slave, hidden, and then put into a basket in the Nile River because the king’s edict required killing all Hebrew baby boys. Moses is discovered in the river by the king’s daughter, nursed by his biological mother, and then raised in the palace as a grandson of the king. Torn between his Egyptian raising and his Hebrew blood, he flees Egypt after the king finds out that Moses murdered an Egyptian foreman for beating a Hebrew slave, an act that Moses thought would illustrate his loyalty to his biological countrymen.  In Midian, he is taken for an Egyptian by the daughters of a man named Jethro, so despite his Hebrew biology and affinities, Moses apparently still has the carrying of an Egyptian prince. He marries one of those daughters and spends the next forty years herding sheep.

It is to this man the Lord appears and commissions to go back to Egypt and demand that all the Hebrew slaves be released. And…Moses refuses God’s command. More than once.

First, he tells God no one will listen to him. And, maybe he wasn’t wrong. Forty years had passed since his flight from Egypt, and Moses had been living in virtual anonymity, shepherding his father-in-law’s flocks in Midian. Egyptians abhorred shepherds, viewing those who worked in animal husbandry as an “abomination” (see Gen. 46:34). Perhaps no Egyptian would listen to a shepherd. But God gives Moses examples and promises of miraculous signs he would perform to make sure they listened to him. Still Moses balks. He then tells God that he is “slow of speech and of tongue” (Ex. 4:10). Some argue that Moses had a stutter or some other speech impediment. Some argue he wouldn’t have known how to speak well in front of a crowd that honored oration. Steven, however, remembered Moses as one who was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds” (Act. 7:22). Because God replies with a reminder that He is the one who made Moses’ mouth, I tend to think it wasn’t Moses’ education but rather his physical speech that was the issue. God promises to be not just with Moses but with his very mouth. The God who created the universe promised to give him exactly what he needed in Pharoah’s throne room! But then, well, then Moses just goes for broke: “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (Ex. 4:13). Please send someone else.

We know that Moses did go to Egypt. He did obey, eventually and with accommodations. God sent Moses’ brother Aaron to speak for him to Pharaoh. And Moses did perform signs and wonders. And Moses did lead God’s people out of Egypt. And Moses did take them through the wilderness and intercede for them and receive God’s law on Mt. Sinai. And he shepherded a people who had no idea how to belong to the God who rescued them. According to the author of Hebrews, he did all this by faith. According to Exodus, which was authored by Moses himself, he did it reluctantly.

So which is it?

How do we reconcile the Hebrews account with the Exodus account?

Both stories were written under the inspiration of the Spirit, and as an inerrantist, I don’t believe the Spirit contradicts Himself in Scripture. So how can both accounts be true of Moses? I believe we’re given the answer at the very beginning of that famous lineage of faithfulness.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation” (Heb. 11:1).

Sometimes, I am ashamed at the smallness of my faith. Sometimes I look at the way I respond to the Lord’s call to obedience in the Christian life and I am ashamed at how faltering, how weak, how flimsy my devotedness to Jesus.

And yet—faith exists. In my heart. A gift of the Spirit.

It might be smaller than a mustard seed, but Jesus said that’s all it takes (Matt. 17:20-21). For the size of one’s faith doesn’t seem to be the issue so much as the object of one’s faith. Faith is being sure of the promises of God realized in Jesus. Faith is being convicted by the reality of a God who exists and created everything and sent His Son to free us from the oppression of sin. Faith is holding on with gritted teeth and clenched fist to His promises to return for us and take us to the better country, the home where we’ll put down roots that anchor us there for eternity. Faith is persevering and saying yes when you look at yourself and see your weaknesses. Because faith is looking at God and deciding that even though you can’t, He definitely can.

Moses questioned God thoroughly and tried to back out, but with his eventual obedience came a lifetime of training in living “by faith.” And when you read the Hebrews account of Moses’ life you can see the effects of a life lived by faith. Daily faithfulness changes your story because daily faithfulness changes you. And maybe God remembers our faithfulness differently than we do. Maybe He doesn’t actually despise us for our small, reluctant beginnings. Maybe love covers a multitude of sins. Maybe He delights in changing us over time. Maybe this weak, faltering, please send someone else, but if You really want me to go, I will go kind of faith is the faith we are to emulate because we can. Maybe the faith of the saints in Hebrews 11 isn’t so heroic as to be unattainable. Maybe we’re supposed to compare the ending with the beginning so we don’t lose hope in God’s ability to use ordinary, unremarkable shepherds to accomplish His good purposes. Maybe a moment of objections can still grow into a lifetime of obedience.

Maybe, just maybe, He does a lot with a little bit of faith.

Maybe we’re supposed to compare the ending with the beginning so we don’t lose hope in God’s ability to use ordinary, unremarkable shepherds to accomplish His good purposes. Share on X

Photo by Pawan Sharma on Unsplash