Daily Lesson for February 28, 2020

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Numbers chapter 11 verses 10 through 17:

10 Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, all at the entrances of their tents. Then the Lord became very angry, and Moses was displeased. 11 So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? 12 Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors’? 13 Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ 14 I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. 15 If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.”
16 So the Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you. 17 I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.

Moses is learning to be a leader in today’s Lesson. In the Exodus out of Egypt it was largely a one man show — or two if you count Aaron who, though he was supposed to be the primary speaker, appears largely silent. It was Moses who led the people. It was Moses who took on Pharaoh.

But here in the Wilderness Moses begins to recognize that he can’t do it alone. He begins to see that the task is too much for him, and that he needs help. And we see that what the LORD is doing through Moses’ fatigue and inadequacy is actually raising up a group of leaders who will help lead the people into the Promised Land.

One person can lead us out of somewhere old, but it takes a team of leaders to lead a group somewhere new. And the irony for Moses as he becomes a great leader is his necessary acceptance of his own shortcomings in leadership. He must accept the limits of his time, age, and energy, and inabilities in order that he can enable others.  In other words, the manifold strength of God in Israel must be revealed through the accepted and acknowledged weakness of Moses.


NOTE: We’re reading the whole Bible together this year. Monday’s Lesson will be from Numbers chapters 14-20 and Psalm 90.