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 (Manna 82: Winter)
Moses Returns to Egypt (I)

Adapted from sermons by Aun-Quek Chin—Singapore

Infinity vs. Infinity

For man also does not know his time” (Eccl 9:12a).

Few phrases exist in our vast literary canon that can scare the modern man as much as the seven words above. Pulsating in all of us is the urge to tame the unpredictable randomness stretched out before us. All of history has been a documentation of our efforts to satisfy this primitive urge to know our time. In this digital age, more than ever, we are terrified of losing our tight grip over the minutest aspect of our lives, and even our deaths. Tellingly, the advent of wearable virtual-reality technology brings this point home: we now even wish to conquer, and create, the worlds we inhabit. Every advancement in technology and science, from the life-support machine to the field of genetic studies, is modern man’s indignant reply to Solomon: You are wrong, we do know our time, and in fact, we can even control it.

But perhaps the great teacher did not mean to frighten, only to warn.

What Solomon understood, as taught to him by God, was that some things will always be beyond man’s reach. Wielding the full force of statistical science in our hands, the most man can ever hope for is not to reduce randomness, but to prepare for it. The only certainty is death.

In stating that terse but bleak truth, Solomon warns us of the Christian who struts down the streets of life expecting to always know what lies ahead—what comes round the corner may surprise him, and send him flailing headlong into a crisis of faith. So if false optimism is not the answer, surely we cannot simply accept the terrifying status quo! Even the most veteran church-going Christian can attest to the soul-wrenching experience of living in this state of constant uncertainty. Every tomorrow harbors untold horrors: Will I still have my job? What will the prognosis be? What will happen to my child?

While Solomon does not have any easy answers, Ecclesiastes 3:11 gives us piercing insight into our struggle with this existential anxiety:

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in [man’s] heart, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.”

This verse holds the key for the Christian paralyzed by fear of the unknowable future, and disheartened by life’s setbacks: wait for God’s time to come.

What is God’s time? God’s time is not an alternate dimension. It is also not a distant future when all sufferings will cease and everything is predictably perfect. God reveals to us, through Solomon’s handsome prose, that “God’s time” is the eternity He has given us—the profound human awareness of, and unquenchable thirst for, beauty and goodness that has no end. This consummate clarity comes with having a relationship with the infinite God.

Oddly, the verse marries this empowering fact with a sombre reminder of our overwhelming ignorance in light of God’s omniscience. Why? Because, in Christianity, faith buoyed by knowledge and experience is important. But, as our current anxieties prove to us, we will never know or experience enough, especially about our futures, to give us peace. Therefore, our only solace is in a faith that is comfortable with all uncertainties because it is intimate with one certainty: that trust in God and His word is all we need. Solomon, again, helps us with a summary in Proverbs 19:21: “There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the LORD’s counsel—that will stand.” If worldly chaos seems endless, then God intends for us to fight endlessness with eternity, infinity with infinity.

Of course, such things are easy to say, but often hard to do. Which is why we turn our eyes to Moses, to a time before the advanced scientific and technological achievements we now enjoy, to see how Christians today can live full lives by holding on to the promise of God’s time.

All in Good Time

Although Moses possessed an impressive organizational mind, what truly made him excel as the chosen messenger of God had less to do with his clear-headed planning and more with his trust in God’s time over his instincts.

The first thing Moses did after his famous encounter with God at the burning bush was to plead with Jethro, his Midianite father-in-law: “Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see whether they are still alive” (Ex 4:18b).

A puzzling observation: why did Moses seek to gain permission from his father-in-law when he had already received divine sanction from his Father-in-heaven to leave for Egypt?

The custom of the ancients was for a man to seek permission from the head of his tribe before he set off on a long journey away from home. Moses knew that performing this Midianite tradition was a risk. What if Jethro denied his request? Moses would no doubt still be resolved to complete his mission, but at what cost? Would Jethro have sought to sabotage his quest? If his meeting with Pharaoh did not go to plan, would Moses be endangering the lives of his family? Would he lose the land and the people he had learned to call home? Moses could not have hoped to predict the outcome. So why did he take such a risk?

Moses understood the first truth about God’s time: to truly believe in it, we have to abandon our compulsion to control everything in our lives, and take refuge in the only certainty we need—that God has a plan. How does this translate in practice?

We fear the unknown so much that we fight for every bit of control we can possibly get, even if it means souring friendships or injuring the feelings of loved ones along the way. This is what would have happened had Moses, in all the splendor of his great calling and mission from God, marched straight off to Egypt. To Moses, the numerous risks faded into irrelevance because he believed that God had His time and His plan. God would not allow His work to be compromised by Moses’ simple desire to be sensitive to the feelings of his loved ones. 

This is a unique kind of patience that flows from a deep trust in the divine. Hosea, the prophet renowned for obeying God’s command to marry a prostitute, knew firsthand what it meant to relinquish control to the Lord and trust fully in His plan, no matter what. So when Hosea relays sage advice in Hosea 12:6, telling us to “[o]bserve mercy and justice, and wait on your God continually,” we ought to take it to heart. Hosea is telling us that waiting on the Lord requires us to embody certain Christian virtues. It requires us to be kind and fair, to be a positive moral influence on the people we encounter on our walk of faith.

Take, for instance, the issue of church work. Church affairs tend to arouse intense sentiment because, quite rightly, many of us take matters of faith seriously. Breaking sacred tablets, carelessly striking rocks, delivering robe-ripping public prayers—Moses regularly demonstrated how emotional and affective the journey of faith can be. As human as Moses was then, so are we today. So when we find our ideas and contributions obstructed by this or that person or committee, the uncertainty piles on and, in our frustration, we may lash out at our co-workers-in-Christ. We allow our fear of losing control to dictate actions we later regret, hurting the harmonious order of God’s church in the process.

Man is a strong-headed and quarrelsome animal, and changing is hard. But to believe in God’s time is to demonstrate a trusting self-restraint; as long as we are faithful to God’s will, we need not charge head-first against the ordered customs of church and community. Paul puts it best in 1 Corinthians 14:33, reminding us that “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace,” continuing in verse 40 to advise that “all things be done decently and in order.” If Hosea and Moses understood that being respectful, forgiving and, most of all, patient, would not impede God’s work but enrich it all the more, then it would behoove us to do the same.

More Than We Know

The popular historical film Schindler’s List tells the moving story of a former pro-Nazi German businessman who ends up saving over a thousand Jewish lives during the Holocaust. It is, as the cliché goes, the story of an ordinary man doing extraordinary things in extraordinary times.

Moses was one of the first “Schindlers” of the ancient world. Before his brush with God at the burning bush, the only responsibilities Moses had were to his family and livestock in uneventful Midian. Then all of a sudden, the fate of an entire nation was thrust into the untested hands of this simple shepherd. Moses was standing, rod in hand, at the brink of history. Moses was scared—of that we can be sure. Though he trusted in God’s time at first, his nerves got the better of him. Moses was probably paralyzed by fear—for all his fervor and faith, he had yet to begin the long trek to Egypt. But God understood. And so on His second visit to Moses, God reassured him, “Go, return to Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead” (Ex 4:19). This gave Moses the courage to return to Egypt.

This is a heartening depiction of the second truth about the nature of God’s time. The concept of God’s time, while seemingly lofty and high-minded, actually means that God is heavily involved with our private insecurities. And because God knows all our concerns, He never gives us more than we can handle. Time, as we know it—coldly measured in minutes and seconds, months and years—is unforgiving and cruel in its relentless onward march. God’s time is different; God cares about our feelings and worries, and yearns to help us along.

As it was with Moses, just as we are about to embark on something truly important in our lives, unexpected burdens and anxieties may visit us. As we survey the innumerable problems before us, we ask the universal questions of suffering: Why me? Why now? What next?

God had great plans for Moses. He has great plans for us today (Eph 2:10). The problem with great plans is that they often carry too many unknowns. Somehow, Christians are buoyed by this constant feeling that they are meant to do some good in their lives. What holds many well-intentioned believers back from rising to the occasion is the fear of uncertainty. Often, these are uncertainties about individual ability: What can I actually contribute on the missionary trip? Can I really lead a Bible study? What if I get a question I can’t answer when I start preaching? We drown out our extraordinary calling with our self-perceived ordinariness.

The truth is, we can never predict whether our gambles will pay off, like Schindler’s, or if miserable failure awaits us. But that’s alright, because believing in God’s time means knowing is beside the point. What matters is that God knows, and that God reveals in His own special way. God knew the one big thing that was bothering Moses, and gave him the chance to regain his confidence to rise to the call. The tricky part is how God reveals His grace and will to us. Humans are naturally stubborn, and when we choose not to see something, we close both eyes. We refuse to accept that God cares about our talents, and pass up the opportunity, as Queen Esther almost did, to serve God when He calls.

Therefore, to believe in God’s time is to believe in three things: firstly, that God knows more about our own abilities than we do; secondly, that we have to be sensitive to God’s calling through frequent prayer and Bible-reading; and thirdly, when the call comes, we  should have the courage to rise to meet our destinies. A fear of the uncertain has no place in the heart of the Christian who heeds these words: “Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established. The LORD has made all for Himself” (Prov 16:3–4a).

Another interesting observation is that Moses surely had more worries on his mind than the one which God assuaged. Why was one pithy consolation enough to bolster Moses? Because that one divine remark reminded him that God knew his anxieties, and that he had no cause to worry for God was with him every step of the way. The Christian does not need to know all his troubles are gone. Sometimes, all we need is a little nudge.

Everyone’s Waiting

Sadly, even in matters of faith there is no panacea. Believing in God’s time is not a solution to all our problems. It is hard work. Most times, waiting is not enough, because we wait for earthly time to pass, thinking that God’s plan has a schedule just like our plans. This is wrong; God, unlike the clock, is living. There are two things about waiting on God’s time that we must remember.

Firstly, we have to be able to accept that suffering and problems will not disappear just because we believe in God’s eventual deliverance. Moses could brandish his miracle-rod all he wanted, but his supernatural feats could not intimidate the mighty Pharaoh. Even after their escape across the Red Sea, miracle after astounding miracle could not satisfy the children of Israel. God does not promise quick and easy solutions. He delivers us today, and tests us tomorrow. Some trials in our lives make sense not because time passes and they disappear, but because our belief in God’s bigger plan and time reveals to us that we needed those trials to become better Christians. For instance, Apostle Paul pleaded bitterly for his thorn to be removed, and he waited. It was not the passing of time that helped him make sense of his pains. It was his belief in God’s time and plan for him that helped him understand why he suffered so (2 Cor 12:7), inspiring the unforgettable Pauline hymn to godly trust: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9b). Therefore, we wait with a hope not of a paradise on earth, but of the paradise beyond, and a trust in the God who dwells there.

Secondly, and what comes as most surprising, is that as much as we think we are waiting for God, most times God is waiting for us. A common habit of man is to recollect all the events of his past and play god, thinking, If this had happened here instead of there, if that had been postponed till then, then things would be better. The crucial difference between our imagination and God is omniscience. We can mentally rearrange our past to fit an ideal chronology, but we do so in the darkness of our ignorance. We have to trust that God knows the rightful time for all things—from the blooming of a flower, to the death of Jesus (Rom 5:6), everything happens according to His appointed time. And that means if something we know to be good, to be holy, pure and righteous eludes us, then perhaps the problem is not the extent of our patience, but how we fill our time while we wait. When we seem to be mired in our problems, unable to make any progress or find any reprieve despite our earnest prayers, we ought to remember that waiting upon the Lord is not to have a sit-around-do-nothing faith. It means taking concrete steps toward becoming a better Christian. Often, God also wishes to use such tests of endurance to remind us to lean on Him as we walk with Him.

It is impossible to dispute that Moses’ faith had grown tremendously after his ten-plague-long encounter with Pharaoh. Why did God have to send ten plagues, not one, or five, or seven? These become redundant questions when we remember that trusting in God and His time frees us from needing to know all the answers. Likewise, when God withholds the Holy Spirit from the earnest forty-year believer, for instance, we are understandably puzzled. Perhaps there are things for that Christian to learn; perhaps he is not yet truly hungry for the Spirit; perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. These speculations do not matter. What matters is the eternity within us that remembers—however long we have to pray on earth is negligible, for we will gain infinity in heaven.

Conclusion

Wait on the LORD,” sings the sweet psalmist. “Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!” (Ps 27:14).

It may well be that we will never know our future. When all we need is a reliable peek into what lies ahead, our statistics, algorithms, and machines may fail us. What Moses has taught us, in his evolution from faint-hearted to faith-hearted, is that patience and trust will never disappoint us. Uncertainty will persist, but it must not prevail. God has His time, and it is ordered, not chaotic; compassionate, not indifferent; active, not lazy. And as long as we are aware of the great eternity within us as we walk our Christian journey, the victory will be ours.

But those who wait on the LORD

Shall renew their strength;

They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary,

They shall walk and not faint.” (Isa 40:31)

 

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Author: Aun-Quek Chin
Publisher: True Jesus Church
Date: 04/06/2017
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