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| Volume 26 Number 2 February 2024 |
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| Volume 26 Number 2 February 2024 |
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Louis Rushmore, Editor
I’ve never been athletic, and besides, my environment as a youth didn’t lend itself to participating in team sports. So, even in school gym classes or for recesses between classes, when some sort of game was afoot, I didn’t volunteer, and I was always one of the last students picked for a team. A little later in life during military bootcamp, I didn’t volunteer for anything and tried my best to somehow be invisible in the middle of the group. Some people go throughout their entire lives and never step forward for anything. Perhaps, they have the notion that they’re just ordinary people who are unable to do extraordinary things. Several Bible characters exclaimed that they were just ordinary people when, for instance, God called upon them to do extraordinary things. Moses was such a person.
Moses
Moses is the first Bible character who comes to my mind who was reluctant to accept an extraordinary challenge presented to him by God. He certainly was qualified and well-schooled. “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22 NKJV). He knew that God would use him to deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt (Acts 7:25), but he acted initially on his own timetable instead of waiting for God to send him. Consequently, following his failed attempt, Moses fled to the land of Midian to avoid Pharoah, who wanted to kill him (Exodus 2:15).
Forty years passed, and Moses was a sheepherder and a family man in Midian. Then, on God’s timetable, He called upon Moses to rescue the Israelites from servitude in Egypt (Exodus 3:10). Moses wasn’t the same man he had been four decades earlier. “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). “Then Moses said to the Lord, ‘O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue’” (Exodus 4:10) – a reversal of his deportment half of his life earlier.
When called by God, Moses argued with Him, Who eventually became angry (Exodus 4:14). (I don’t ever want to argue with God or to make Him angry with me. No one can win an argument with God!) Moses attempted to sidestep the mission on which God was sending him. He essentially responded by saying, “I’m a nobody; send someone else” (Exodus 3:10). Moses offered more excuses, too (Exodus 4:1, 10, 13). Lastly, he told God, “…‘O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send’” (Exodus 4:13).
Moses was an ordinary man who ultimately did the bidding of God – accomplishing something extraordinary – leading a nation out of slavery and for 40 years through a wilderness to a new home in Palestine. He was an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.
Elijah
James 5:17-18 says of another Bible character, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.” Elijah was just a man, standing on two legs like men and women today. He had things about which he was concerned that were beyond his ability to control, and he had fears, too. Elijah was mortal with an immortal soul – just like anyone living today. Though he was an ordinary man, Elijah accomplished extraordinary things for God in a particularly sinful and troublesome time in Israelite history.
Elijah suddenly emerges in Scripture as a prophet of God, without the usual background information accompanying the introduction of other Bible characters. The name “Elijah” appears 100 times in 94 verses of the NKJV, though a couple of instances do not refer to the prophet. Elijah first appeared as a messenger from God with a condemning message to one of the evilest Israelite kings, Ahab. “Now Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him… Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30, 33).
After condemning Ahab’s sins, Elijah went into hiding, according to God’s instruction to him. Later, God sent him to a widow’s home near Sidon, which is north of Palestine (both sides of the Jordan River). There, the widow and her son, as well as Elijah, were sustained “many days” (1 Kings 17:15) from a near empty flour bin and an almost empty container of olive oil. He also resurrected the widow’s son who had died (1 Kings 17:22-23). Perhaps the most notable event recorded in the Word of God about Elijah was his contest between the prophets of Baal and himself at Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18:20-40). Consequently, 850 false prophets, tied to idolatry, were executed (1 Kings 18:19, 40).
The esteem in which God held Elijah became apparent when during the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ, Elijah and Moses appeared with our Lord (Matthew 17:1-9). Moses represented the Old Law, whereas Elijah, though not the first prophet, nevertheless, exemplified the body of the prophets. The phrase, “the law and the prophets,” appears frequently in Scripture to denote the entirety of the Old Testament (Matthew 7:12; 22:40; Luke 16:16; Acts 13:15; Romans 3:21). The combined gesture of the disciples to reverence the three persons observed in the Transfiguration as equals (Matthew 17:4) and the voice of God at the Transfiguration, “…This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” (Matthew 17:5) demonstrates that the Old Testament was about to be replaced with the New Testament of Jesus Christ. Clearly, Elijah was an ordinary man who performed extraordinary things for God.
Conclusion
Moses and Elijah were merely two among several other Bible characters who – though just ordinary people – did extraordinary things when called upon by God to active duty. Gideon, King David, Amos, Jeremiah and Isaiah also were some ordinary persons who did extraordinary things for Almighty God. The prophet Amos said of himself, “I was no prophet, Nor was I a son of a prophet, But I was a sheepbreeder And a tender of sycamore fruit. Then the Lord took me as I followed the flock, And the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to My people Israel’” (Amos 7:14-15). An ordinary man doing something extraordinary for God!
In the New Testament, especially the apostles – ordinary men from simple environments (Matthew 4:18-22; Acts 4:13) – performed extraordinary feats and proclaimed the Gospel to the world (Mark 16:15-18; Acts). John Mark is an example of a biblical character who stepped forward to serve God but returned from accompanying Paul and Barnabas instead of continuing on the first missionary journey of the apostle Paul (Acts 12:25; 13:5, 13; 15:37-38). Mark, however, bounced back to go on and complete another missionary journey (Acts 15:39), and later the apostle Paul recognized Mark as a profitable laborer for our Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 4:10; 2 Timothy 4:11; Philemon 23-24). Though any of us might falter in service of our God, we can make a course correction along with a renewed commitment – just like John Mark. We, too, can be ordinary people who can serve God, maybe even in extraordinary ways. “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I! Send me’” (Isaiah 6:8).
