January 20th, 2021

Day 302

Pray (ACts)

Read - Exodus 3:1

Message - Alan Burke

It’s Wednesday morning again, seriously I wonder where the weeks go, maybe your the same. The weekly monotony continues although it may be slightly more wearisome than this time last year for you because of Covid. What is it today? another day in front of a screen, another day trying to get back on your feet, another day homeschooling and praying that your children don’t hate you after it, another day taking six hours to do something that you know you can do in two, another day out on the yard, another day in the van or something completely different because your so skunnered and you’ve decided to do your weekly food shop in the form of a supermarket crawl only buying one item in each store and that will hopefully fill your week.  

Well for Moses it was just another day, the usual monotony, moving his sheep to new pasture, making sure that they were all there, traveling great distances with them in the wilderness that would have been etched into his mind from the years of being alone with his sheep in the wilderness with no fences, dry stone walls to worry about. Moses most of the time was in a place of solitude only having sheep to talk to and exposed to the bitter reality of life. 

What a change in the life of Moses, he was brought up in Egypt, in the place of Pharaoh, surrounded by servants and any want or whim his heart desired would have been catered to, the opulence of his upbringing when he was taken to the palace, now it would have seemed like a different life after these forty years.

Yet in it all The Lord God was at work and had been leading him throughout his life and to Horeb, to the mountain of God. For in his divine providence, God had brought Moses to this place and God would speak to him. It is not the setting that is significant, the mountain itself but rather it is that God appears and speaks to the wondering Moses. 

These forty years were not forty wasted years, rather it was forty years of training and preparation for Moses in what lay ahead, it was his discipleship training for want of a better term, a forty year internship in looking after sheep. In all of it though God was shaping him, preparing him for what lay ahead by sending Moses to look after someone else’s sheep. 

The Lord doesn't work according to our time scales, he is not in a hurry as we are often are, this apparent delay was not wasted time, this was part of the purposeful plans and purposes of God to bring salvation to his people. For God was training Moses up to the the shepherd of his people (Ps 77:20).

All his life God had been preparing Moses in what lay ahead. I’m sure Moses through those years cried out to God, he had no idea of what God was doing but God by his providence was at work. God by his most holy, (Ps. 145:17) wise, (Ps. 104:24, Isa. 28:29) and powerful preserving, (Heb. 1:3) and governing all his creatures, and all their actions (Ps. 103:19, Matt. 10:29–31) was at work in the life of Moses and all that he face and likewise he is at work in what we face this day. 

I don’t know what that is, I don’t want to belittle what anyone is going though, but know that God is at work. We thought about this last week to, how many of us had experiences in the past or present that we haven’t a baldy why we are faced faced them, jobs that we only did as a stop gap, times of despair, heartache or hurt, suffering, yet in it all God was and is at work in our lives just as he was in the life of Moses. In all that we face remember that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph 2:10), that means in all of it, God is at work in our lives preparing us for what lies ahead. We were never promised an easy life as believers, our Saviour reminded us that following him means that we are to take up our cross (Matt 16:24-26), but remember that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope (Rom 5:3-4). 

Pray (acTS)

Sing

WSC
Q71 What is required in the seventh commandment?
The seventh commandment requireth the preservation of our own and our neighbour’ s chastity, in heart, speech, and behavior. (1 Cor. 7:2–3,5,34,36, Col. 4:6, 1 Pet. 3:2)