Exodus 3

Exodus 3:1

A Famous Training Ground Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness.—Exodus 3:1.Not very long ago a wonderful religious poem appeared. When people read it, they all wanted to know who the writer was, and where he had got such a deep knowledge of the heart of man. After his death, the story of his life was told. It had been a very, very sad life. He had been for a long time “at the back of the wilderness.” But God had spoken to him there, and he could not keep silence: he wrote poems that made the world wonder. You try to think where the poet’s wilderness could be, I daresay.

It was the streets of a great city and that poet’s name was Francis Thompson. And the poem that he wrote is called “The Hound of Heaven.” You will read it some day when you are a little older, and then you will marvel too.The wilderness that Moses knew was the side of a rugged mountain.

You remember how he came there. One day he was so angry at an Egyptian for ill- treating one of the Hebrew slaves that he forgot everything except that he also was a Hebrew, and slew the man. After that the palace where he had been brought up by Pharaoh’s daughter was unsafe for him, and he had to flee from the wrath of Pharaoh.He travelled and travelled until he came to a weird mountain region. The loneliness and desolation of it seemed in keeping with his state of mind, so he settled there and became a shepherd. It was a place with no outlet for his learning or his ambitions. Moses had had the best education that Egypt could give.

He had had opportunities of studying science, art, and philosophy—everything in fact that would fit him for the position of an Egyptian noble and statesman. And now he, who from childhood had known what it was to wear only the finest linen, was clothed in the coarse hair-cloth of the mountain shepherd!We cannot tell what his thoughts were, or what struggles he went through in his mind.

But we know this. He went into the desert a young man apparently born to command, ready to smite down if he were not obeyed; and after a long time he came out of it one of the meekest men that ever lived. The wilderness, where day after day he led his flocks to the little fertile places near the streams on the mountain-side, was his training ground. It was Moses the meek man that God needed. When Moses had learnt his lesson God called him, and called him in this very wildernessMen in the loneliness of the prairies of America have felt conscious of what they called an “Awful Presence,” and have come out of the great solitude different beings. We can imagine that for Moses every bush blazed with glory, and that the voice of God calling him to go forth to help his brothers brought him no surprise.

Moses’ wilderness was a great wilderness, and his call a great call.But even boys and girls may have their time of being in the wilderness. One of my earliest recollections is of peeping in at the door of a homely parlor and seeing a boy of seven or eight years old—he seemed big to me then—leaning with his elbows on a table, his hands covering his face.

He had met with an accident at school; he knew that his eye was badly hurt, and he was thinking, “Perhaps I shall be blind all my life.” To one who was the very spirit of fun in the playground, that seemed a hard lot indeed. He was in the wilderness. Many years afterwards I came to know that God had spoken to him there.Your wilderness may be quite near home—in a plain little parlor, at a kitchen fireside. A girl may feel a call to remain by her father and mother, when she would fain be out in the world working. A boy’s wilderness! What could it be?

He has so much to make life happy. “I would like to be a minister like father,” said a boy to his grandmother the other day; “but—but Granny—and his voice broke—why is it that I can’t speak properly like Jim?” His heart was sore because of a stammer with which he had been born. You understand how he felt, don’t you, boys?

He was at “the back of the wilderness.”Why has the wilderness become such a famous training ground for men and women and boys and girls? It is because the wilderness is a place where God often meets with people. Then it becomes holy —so holy that we feel we must “take off our shoes from off our feet” when we hear Him saying, “Take courage, I will be with you and help you.” Boys and girls, we need not fear the wilderness. God is our Friend there and everywhere.

Exodus 3:11

A Man Who Was Afraid Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh?—Exodus 3:11.Boys and girls, I want to speak to you this morning about fear. Perhaps some of your grown-up friends think that is a mistake. They may be saying to themselves—“If he wants to cure a habit of fear, let him preach about courage,” A very wise remark indeed. All the same. I feel sure that there are among you boys and girls so possessed by some nameless fear that at times they cannot allow themselves to think of courage at all. It is to these especially that I wish to speak.Very few boys will acknowledge, even to a companion, that they are afraid of anything. Girls, on the other hand, cannot help showing that they shrink from certain things: you know how you boys laugh and make fun of your sisters over this. It is unkind.

Laugh as you may, their shrinking very often is something they cannot help.Some young men join the military, knowing that it might mean giving of their lives for their country, yet seem bashful when speaking to a roomful of people. Then some men have an indescribable fear of the battlefield, but face a life ending illness with courage and dignity, without fear.Carlyle had a great friend called John Sterling. He loved him very much, and when he died he wrote his biography. This John Sterling was one of the gentlest, most timid souls one could meet; yet when he was very ill and going to die, he wrote to Carlyle, “I tread the common road into the great darkness without any thought of fear, and with very much of hope.”And girls—once a wonderful family grew up in a Yorkshire parsonage. They were all girls but one— shy girls too. She who was best known to the world was a frail delicate little thing.

Her life, from its very beginning, was full of experiences far too sad for a child to have to suffer. When, as a young girl, she went to school at Brussels she felt she could hardly pray because of a terrible fear that came upon her. “When I tried to pray,” she wrote, “I could only utter these words: ‘From my youth up Thy terrors have I suffered with a troubled mind.’” Back at home, in the parsonage, one family sorrow followed on the back of another.

She was nearly heart-broken, but her courage was marvelous. Persevering all by herself, she became one of the greatest novelists of last century. Famous men in London wanted to meet Charlotte Bronte, the wonderful little woman who could write such bold things, but her shyness had never disappeared— she shrank from any public contact, even from her fans.I believe there is hardly a boy or girl in it who is not conscious of some fear that keeps him from doing the right thing at the right moment. It is a fear that grips very hard. God knows all about it.There is put very near the beginning of the greatest book in the world the story of a great and strong man who was afraid. I do not think, however, that he was afraid as a boy.

I rather believe he would be proud of himself, living as he did in the royal palace in Egypt. There was only the greatness of man to make him afraid there; and he had at his command everything that his heart could desire.

But in Midian Moses found himself face to face with God. After thirty or forty years of the solitude he said, “Who am I?” Fear had been born within him.I believe that most of yon boys and girls who fear have got your shyness, your diffidence, from God. You were born with it. It is what is called constitutional. If that is so, your Heavenly Father understands it. He is just—He is more—He is kind as a mother.When your mother sends you to school or for an overnight trip, she puts certain things into your backpack or suitcase.

She remembers what you need. If you are liable to take cold, she puts in warm things to protect you; if you wear out your socks quickly, she remembers you are no hand at darning—there seem to be pairs of socks rolled round everything.Your Heavenly Father remembers what you need for going out into the world.

He knows you through and through. The “Who am I?” of Moses was met with God’s word—“I will be with thee.” He is constantly speaking to this fear in men and women, boys and girls—“Fear not . . . Fear not.”Once there was a minister who was always very nervous and timid when he stood up to preach. A good old elder noticed it, and sympathized with him. “Don’t be troubled in the pulpit,” the old man said to him one day. “Don’t think about anything but the word of the Lord and the souls of your people. We will pray for you; and maybe you will be able to say to yourself next Sabbath as you look down on us— ‘They all love me.’”Boys and girls, if sometimes you fear even to face your day’s work, remember there is Someone who loves you very much, Someone who knows all about you. Then courage will come.